Answer: when you’re doing something vaguely connected to the task you had actually planned to do for the day.

Today, as you might see from my twitter update was to be “return to book day”. And I did do this for some time, looking back through the introduction. It’s okay at the moment. The conclusion is the area that needs my undivided and uninterrupted attention. This does not seem possible at work. The phone rings, prospective students return my call, I spend time doing my interview, the email tings with something inconsequential, people walk in wanting things to do with my actual job they are paying me for. Inconsiderate 😉

Anyway, then I realised I had left the book usb at home so the conclusion would have wait until tomorrow, because I don’t have the current copy saved here and I’m not about to double up.

So, what’s a girl to do who has blocked out the whole day for “Research” on her outlook calendar. I thought, I’ll have a read of the Arrested Development paper that got the kindly rejection. I did write it way back in September and hadn’t looked at it since. And here was the key, I didn’t pick up my pencil once to make a change of word, phrase, sentence structure, paragraph order…nothing. I read it and liked it. So, rather than putting it on the backburner and returning to twiddle with it in a few months, I submitted it to another journal as is. It may as well be being read by someone else, rather than sitting in the darkness of my filing cabinet. And even if all it comes back with is more feedback then that can’t be a bad thing.