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| You can be successful at what you do and sleep a lot. Edgar is. |
Do you do the same thing
every day, or is your life spontaneous (or chaotic)? One of my favourite vets
told me he gets up at 3.30am, has breakky (I think it’s Crunchy Nut Cornflakes),
gets his email out of the way at an hour when he’s not likely to be flooded with
replies, heads into work, checks all his patients and starts surgery at 7am.
Another colleague told me
that a neurology specialist used to wake up, have breakfast, sneak into the
teaching hospital at the University he was based at and perform a neurological
examination in every single patient
(I am suspecting with the exception of critical or aggressive animals). Then he
would leave a little note on the cage for the residents (I imagine, something
along the lines of, this animal has delayed proprioception or you might want to
check that nystagmus, or maybe even this cat has multifocal neurological signs)
and then spirit away again. He must have been highly skilled at neurological
exams.
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| My routine starts with putting the guinea pigs out for a run. This is an old photo showing Cornflake (mum) pictured with Osler (left)(named after the great William Osler) and Cushing (right)(named after Harvey Cushing). Spooky - I just realised that each of these names is related, somehow, to someone with a very structured daily routine. I wonder what my subconscious is trying to tell me here? |
Physician William Osler went
to bed around 10pm and spent an hour each night reading.
Charles Darwin made sure the
dog was walked every day (I wonder if he cleaned up after the dog?).
A physics lecturer I know writes a to do list then simply does the biggest tasks first. He says he imagines filling a jar with rocks, and the jar gets fuller quicker if you stick the big rocks in first and then the little ones around those. But its hard to structure a day around tasks alone.
I came across this page
where someone, clearly a bit obsessed with the routines of others (in
particular how much they sleep vs how much they work) created a table based on
information gleaned about the lives of creative geniuses. You can check it out
here.
Computer scientist Cal
Newport, author of the study hacks blog, plans every minute of this day (read about it on this blogpost).
I had a crack at this the
other day and it worked wonders – except I forgot to plan the following day and
the rest of the week has been less than optimally structured (which is code for "something of a dog's breakfast"). That's partly because I'm doing a project that has involved much skyping of people in the Northern Hemisphere, which isn't normally a multi-daily occurrence.
One thing I have found
talking to students and new graduates is that most don’t have a routine and
tend to roll with the punches, often with a bit of a sleep debt building up. (One
notable exception is the sporty types. Anyone who also has to juggle training
and sport seems to be more specific in planning their day).
Many vets and academics I
know (though there are plenty of exceptions) have very structured routines. Maybe rituals and routines are a good way to manage stress. Certainly there is some research suggesting this (for example, see this article summarising a study).
How do you structure your
day, if at all? Where do companion animals fit in? Do you schedule any protected time
without interruptions for “deep work”?
