I’m going to follow up on a recent post of Thomas Basbøll and argue that patience is an important, and I think under-appreciated, practice in research.
This is an odd post for me to write because I’m usually not a patient person. In some ways, though, and surprising as it may sound, blogging is a good way for me to exercise my patience. I’m writing this on 2 Sept (at 3:55 in the afternoon, I’m still coming down from the high of teaching two classes so no way I can do real work, and it’s not 4pm so I can’t yet read my email) but I’ve scheduled it to appear on 18 Oct, at the current spot at the end of the queue. I love the feedback from commenters (in the old days, I also loved when I’d get reactions from other blogs, but we don’t see so much of that anymore), but I’ll patiently wait a month and a half for that.
Anyway, I don’t have anything deep to say here, just the commonplace notion that we typically have to try lots of things until we get some success. And apparent success is often illusory. (Obligatory link here to that 50 shades of gray paper.) The fractal nature of discovery.
I agree. Our impatience will be the driver for ideas and change. Our patience allows us to act swiftly when the right opportunity/synergy for implementation arrive. Ie. Team formation, funding, approvals etc.
We probably have to distinguish between individual and institutional patience. There’s a difference between making a discovery and not being able to wait to tell your peers and your students, on the one hand, and not being able to wait to have it adopted as the received view in your discipline or being implemented as national or corporate policy, on the other. It think it’s fine to rush a discovery into the tentative form of a blog post or classroom discussion, as long as it’s understood that it’s being put out there to be discussed. It’s the impatience to get “everyone” to believe you’re right that I’m worried about.
Every successful day of mental work is a litany of failures.
The Imitation Game is nice movie – lousy history but nice movie – and the visual image of the machine dials turning (which is kinda sorta what it looked like, without the cables and in a nice case) was cool and they say the right thing but I wish it were clearer that the machine is eliminating possibilities by finding contradictions, that it is in the most basic sense getting every attempt wrong until it hits one that works. The movie does convey the frustration of every day getting it wrong over and over and over and over. Because that is what it takes.
I think about this while lifting weights and while doing yoga (because they complement each other, if you’re interested). It may look like every rep is the same or at least similar but they never feel the same and only a handful feel completely right. You look for the ones that are right and hope to re-use the knowledge so you can get their faster the next time … and then you’ll find you’re getting something else wrong that needs work and so we beat on, boats against the current.
I was chatting with a friend who is recovering from shoulder surgery. It’s going slow. I said, “Think about today and how you feel. Now go back to just before the operation. Now try to get rid of all the time in between. You feel a lot better. My knee is a lot better. But we can’t get rid of all the time in between.” Kids can. I had major surgery when I was little and within days gave it no thought. The difference is absorption in the moment. You mentioned in your post that it wasn’t 4PM and that awareness shows how hard it is for adults to reach that level of immediate focus. Like many people, I have rituals for getting to that place.
“Like many people, I have rituals for getting to that place.”
Mind expounding on this a little? I’m always looking for something to borrow.
And to continue the discussion of weightlifting, heavy squats are a great way to go there, but the “there” is for training, not for working.
A link to quotes from Thomas Edison seems as obligatory as one to the 50 shades of gray paper. So here’s one: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/t/thomas_a_edison.html
You have a no-email-before 4pm policy? I wish I could pull that off…
Anyone who embarks on a scientific project that takes a long time to complete…looking for the Higgs boson, or in my case being involved with the Hubble Telescope (we signed on in 1977 and saw first light in 1990) learns patience. But the rewards are worth the wait.