the intellectual clock

This is the way I WOULD work if I could: Get up early, run, come back, errands, nap the afternoon, a few intervening hours to do whatever needs to be done, to finally settle in with a cappuccino to BEGIN working on the dissertation around 10:30 or 11:00 pm. Work until 2 or 3 in the am, go to bed. Get up, do it all again.

Working on a variety of academic projects over the years, whether it be graduate and undergraduate seminar papers in the early years, the LL.M. thesis later on, and now the dissertation, it amazes me how important one's intellectual clock is to productivity. There really seems no way around it. No matter what variety of hours I attempt with my work (job) schedule, nothing gets around the fact that for me my time to work on any intellectual project, that is to say when I'm fully alert and the mental process is clear and strong and the fingers glide across the keyboard, is set. I suppose others are like this as well. Hopefully, for them, they have more conventional intellectual clocks -- or at least the luxury of sticking to theirs.

Today did just that. Managed a great, if somewhat chilly run, a nap and am now ready to begin.

B.