procrastination in absentia

Now that the initial excitement of owning a blog has worn off, it appears I have settled into a nice regular schedule of posting... never. The most plausible explanation? I am a notorious procrastinator and tend to get myself swamped with last minute writing and project-finishing. At times like these, I would rather occupy myself with unnecessary tasks like (a) repeatedly cleaning my bathroom, (b) organizing old utility bills, (c) re-categorizing my iTunes library, or (d) making lists of books that I would like to read when I finish said last minute writing and project-finishing. One time I even felt the sudden need to make a list of people who I plan to send holiday cards to this year. I've brought up these tendencies of mine in conversation occasionally, and am happy to know that I am not alone in my distraction. One person painted their apartment when they were supposed to be writing a comprehensive exam. This makes me feel much better. Another story revealed that a notorious investigator had a friend at the post office who would post-mark his grant application envelopes for the day before, when they took an extra day at the last minute to finish up. Academics are supposed to do everything right before it needs to be done! We're too busy dreaming up experiments and reading articles that have no obvious implications for our research. And, more realistically, spending long hours in the lab doing tedious repetitive stuff.

So I ask myself, will I ever succeed in being prepared a week in advance? Will I have the slides for my student seminar finished and my talk rehearsed and tailored impeccably with time to spare? Will I submit my next conference abstract days, or even hours before the deadline.. rather than minutes?

Insight into these tendencies unexpectedly came at a TA training seminar this past week: Teaching to different learning styles. We covered Kolb's system of classification - the Converger, Diverger, Accomodator, and Assimilator. For anyone who is not familiar, this is just a general 'personality/learning theory' similar to Myers-Briggs. After filling out my copy of the inventory, I charted my results and came out a Strong Diverger. Apparently, Divergers like to relate everything they learn to the real world, creating a narrative into which new information and concepts are incorporated. They also like to talk about concepts with other people, rather than focusing inwards to sort them out. I had to laugh when the facilitator used an example of how the Converger vs. Accomodator vs. Assimilator vs. Diverger would put together a bike. Something like.. the Converger would study the instructions, follow them word for word, and work alone. The Accomodator would throw away the instructions and figure it out based on what they thought a bike should look like. The Assimilator would do a week's worth of background research on bikes, then evaluate their compiled information and use the most relevant to assemble an ideal set of instructions for bike putting-together. And the Diverger would invite their friends over for a barbecue and some drinks, then talk them into putting it together for him/her. This sounded uncannily like the time I had my cousin over for dinner the night my new sofa was delivered... which required assembly.

Point being: those with Diverger tendencies take a more relaxed approach to information gathering, and feed off the energy of others. While I don't necessarily buy into the fact that I can be neatly categorized based on Kolb's inventory, I can see that I have certain characteristics that are identified with the typecast Diverger. Compared to my previous lab environment, my current grad student life is somewhat devoid of collaborative efforts/informal science conversations... and I can see how this has impacted my creativity and energy. More socializing = More productivity? I sense an experiment coming on.