The Pomodoro system is really helping me out. This week has been much more productive than normal I think, or at least I can look back on exactly what I have achieved. The technique really seems to do two things for me. First, that it does really help me focus on one thing at a time. Secondly, and I think most importantly, makes me aware of how little I can actually do in a day. Which might sounds negative at first, but is vital for long term planning, and mental well being.
More of less finished my PhD progression report and prepped my talk for this week’s Gesture, Technology and Play symposium. Completing the two of those has made me quite excited, galvanized and enthusiastic about my overall PhD project and academic life.
Was interviewed for Fry’s English Delight. Talked about the future of keyboards in light of touch, gesture, mobility and our changing relationship to serialized text. Should really write up my notes from that.
It has been a while since I’ve written anything, due to a potent and potentially dangerous combination of workload and procrastination. However I’ve just started using the Pomodoro technique last week, and it is really paying dividends already.
The thing that really got me enthusiastic was Cirillo’s contextualizing it through Bergson, Minkowski and Becoming. Call me a philosophy snob, but it just rung more true than all the efficiency chat around GTD.
So far it has done two really important things. Firstly it does keep my mind on the tasks I’ve got, but more importantly, the granular day planning makes me very aware of what I can actually, reasonably, achieve. Which is always a lot less than I think I can do.
For example, right now I’m in the middle of writing my RD1 progression report for my PhD and I’ve been pomodoro-ing it from beginning to end. The draft took about twice as long as I had originally planned, which became quite apparent very early on. So I’ve been able to plan around that. It is obviously having a knock on effect elsewhere, but not to the extent that it is driving me crazy like all the other writing projects I’ve had.
The Pomodoro thing is making me break it down into planned sections, as well as making me take breaks to think about things. It does help me focus, both through the little, crunchy blocks of time and with the enforced breaks. All up it has a lot in common with a micro-Scrum sort of a process.
My biggest concern is that it has a silly name. I now have to say to people that “I’m just off for a couple of Pomodoros.” Maybe if they were Bergsons I would be happier.
The one major thing I came out of it with was realizing that recognizing shapes is not the same as recognizing patterns. Most of the time when someone says they see patterns in data sets and visualizations, they see shapes in the data, not patterns.
Also the HEAT workshops keep progressing. Still looking into behavior change through both mobile devices and serious gaming as part of that.
A busy week, though looking back I don’t know why or what filled it. However I know it took me all week to get an ethics approval application in, which mostly involved filling in a few boxes.
Lots of presentations at the beginning of the week from the students I’m teaching on Play and Games. They came back with initial concepts for their serious board game designs. Quite a lot of good work, and we were quite impressed with a smattering of proper citations and name checking in the talks. Some nice ideas coming out, though many still have their heads stuck in the Monopoly space.
The previous week I was impressed with the quality of the Play and Games essays, and finally after collating, double marking, remarking and all the other tedious admin stuff that makes up teaching we got them finished and back to the students. It probably isn’t methodologically accurate but we did see a massive increase in the students marks between last year and this year. The average mark last year was 51, and this year’s average is 61. There are probably lots of factors in the mix, but I do think that between Ian and myself we got the students to actually read, dissect and analyse academic articles. As well as getting them to think through constructing an argument, writing coherently and lastly doing proper citations and referencing (big thanks to Ian who I think did most of the work on it). Phew… it paid off.
The choices of essay topic were interesting as well, considering that, apart from one, they are all boys. I gave them a choice of four topics, with some starter texts on each. 23 wrote about girls and gaming, 22 wrote about immersion, 11 on simulation vs narrative and only 2 on definition.
Segueing onto something completely different, On Friday I went to the DCRC’s Pervasive/Invasive seminar/workshop on the ethics of pervasive media. A bunch of interesting talks, much interesting chat, and one big realization for me. That we’re already there in discussion the ethics of these things, pervasive media is not something way off, we are in that posthuman space already. Which marries up with a few other things I’ve been reading and pondering recently by way of Katherine Hayles and Andy Miah. The Future Has Arrived. Though I’m sure Sam will pull me up on my loose attitude towards thinking about this and what we can or cannot do or say about how we create, imagine and relate our present and future.
Started the week by going to this month’s Sandpit as a kind of kick off for my DCRC funded research project, Attitudes to Pervasive Gaming. Wow! It was busy. It almost seemed like there were more people there than at Hide and Seek.
Although I’ve not started data collection for the project I used the occasion to do a bit of observation and collect some participants for later phone interviews. My initial plan of trying to interview people at the sandpit isn’t going to work. It is just too hectic at the event. So I think I’m going to drop back to fewer face-to-face, and more phone interviews. But the good news I think is the project is starting to take shape.
Also had Tom Burton, Beef’s Technical Director in this week for our industry talk. Again a dismal turn out from the students, but that meant it was more informal and we chatted about Tom’s path from university to running his own business, alongside how to use technology in creative ways.
Otherwise there was much marking going on, I finished my share of the Play and Games essays. Which, I have to say, have largely been better than last years. There is some truly outstanding work, and far fewer that made my eyes spin trying to understand them. I think our rigorous tutorial plan last semester to tie the students down and make them think seems to have paid off.
On Wednesday I had Phil Gyford down for a talk to the Web Design students. I bumped into Phil last year and I was surprised to find he was a UWE graduate (through Bower Ashton, in the days before it was UWE and still the West of England College of Art) so I invited him down for a talk.
Also marked/watched the first presentations from the Play and Games students. I’ve set them a design exercise to come up with a “serious board game.” Which has resulted in four games about global warming, two about the recession and two about somalian piracy, plus half a dozen other ideas. The multi-stage, gateway approach seems to be working already, these guys are much more engaged in their coursework than the students over the last couple of years.
At the end of the week I also did a spot of project debriefing and lessons learnt for Ed at the end of his transition network mega project. Though overall the problems were very small and it seems like he’s put together a cracking little co-op of dedicated webinistas.
Having spotted week notes recently, via Phil Gyford and Anne Galloway, I thought they would be a worthwhile thing to do for reflecting on teaching and the work I’m doing on my PhD and other research. It seems like a nice way to see some progress in what are otherwise long term and fairly monumental undertakings.
Having thought about it the best crux point to count these weeks from is from the point that I became an, err, ‘academic’, whatever that means. Though it does mean that I’ve been at it for 171 weeks, or just over three years.
On Friday I had a nice chat with Jo Morrison, who is also doing a part time PhD through the DCRC and teaches design at Central St Martins. She’s working on art in public space and drawing on a lot of similar theorists to myself.
One other thing we talked about was an interesting project she set for her design students to explore process. She makes them give themselves five rules that they must stick to. The final product can be anything, but they must strictly follow their rules. This has been keeping me thinking over the last few days about what rules could I put in place to help my process?
Otherwise my week was dominated by finishing my paper exploring the epistemological basis of patterns. Got good feedback on it from the reading group on Thursday, however they did warn me that thinking too much about this would drive me insane and I would end up living out the movie Pi.
Trying to delve into patterns has been interesting and much further reaching than I thought it would be. I think that my central thesis of patterns being an increasingly important way of thinking for the 21st century is generally validated by my research. We’ve gone from the systems theory ideal of trying to model and understand systems to a more instrumental approach to just knowing enough to be able to use systems and effect change. And it is a big subject, as we discussed on Thursday, there is a whole book in this… though a book that would make my brain bleed if I tried to write it.