Breadcrumbs
- Home
- Research staff
- Research staff blog
- The silly season: Or, nine ways to distract yourself from work
The silly season: Or, nine ways to distract yourself from work
25 August 2010
By Sarah Davies
I’ve already written about the summer doldrums and why I hate them. Apologies to those of you out there who are working as hard as ever, if not harder, but this week – the run-up to the August bank holiday – has to be the peak of boredom for the left behind who aren’t on holiday and who don’t have deadlines (well – urgent deadlines). So, as a gift to those whose only options are staring at the rain and staring at your computer, here are my suggestions – born of tedious experience – for some semi-productive time-wasting…
1. Reading the entire archives of the Piled Higher and Deeper (PhD – geddit?) comic strip.
2. Checking the news.
3. Checking the weather.
4. Pepping up your CV with the help of Vitae’s advice (and avoiding stupid, if amusing, errors).
5. Obssessively following that story about the woman who put a cat in a wheelie bin.
6. Planning all your conference travel for the next six months, and then – when that’s done – your holidays for the next year.
7. Sign up for content alerts for every journal of any relevance to your field.
8. Did I mention checking the news and weather?
9. Build a web presence. And, of course, write a blog post…
Anyone else got any good distractions? Please?
Tennie Videler26 August 2010 at 02:02 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Linked In? Has proved to take up a lot of time but is considered important professionally these days and ties in with your point 9.
Facebook probably less professional, but sucks up time
making yourself a cup of tea?
Helping out colleagues who do have deadlines (always handy having a few favours in hand for later..)
Rachel Talbot26 August 2010 at 04:57 PM
permalinkreport this comment
Actually, I quite often check this blog when I'm avoiding doing 'real' work ;)
I agree with Tennie about making a cup of tea. The problem with that one though is that if there is no one around to chat to whilst making it then it doesn't take much time!
Matthew Salois31 August 2010 at 08:34 PM
permalinkreport this comment
While I am envious over your current situation of boredom, I too have used your number 7 advice to sign up for journal alerts when I am trying to get away from doing actual work.
Of course, now I get like 20 alerts a day.
And although I fail to see how reading an article on "Low-Dose vs Standard-Dose Unfractionated Heparin for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention in Acute Coronary Syndromes Treated With Fondaparinux: The FUTURA/OASIS-8 Randomized Trial," is going to help this aspiring young economist get his job done, I at least like the option of knowing this article exists for my reading now.
Oh and here is another way to distract: look for jobs on jobs.ac.uk -- even if I am not on the job market, I like to browse and see what's out there!
Andy Humphrey02 September 2010 at 12:55 PM
permalinkreport this comment
In my case, Matthew, that's invariably quite a short browse :(