I guess I need to update on what's going on to keep my credibility here. Deadline 1 (the poster): Finished 1 day before! The joy I thereby experienced gave me some thoughts on the value of this... (I WISH I had been able to feel this say 4 years ago, and I might have been able to keep the years leading up to this point less painful... Then again it's hard to make timelines when the work incorporated is totally exploratory, and you have no concept whatsoever on how long time it's going to take).
This joy made me very motivated to be able to finish the second deadline asap. I gave myself 1 week to write 2 chapters. Once I realised that this might not be entirely feasible (after 2 days), I also checked my timelines (I have 2, one including all the the work, and one for the writing only), and noticed that I had given ambiguous deadlines for one of the chapters. I.e. I could finish 1 chapter (the first one), and still be on track.
I also had to push the deadline forward 1 day, since I worked on research a full day. Flexibility is necessary, but I have to make sure that I do fair exchanges of the days rather than take out loans from the future - that won't go well.
Results so far: I managed the 2nd deadline, although it was a bit more on the limit (writing does that, you can keep changing things around forever...). Now I'm 3 days into my 2 weeks of pure research. And, it's going well so far! I'm very happy. The code is half done, and the immense amounts of data will be painful to extract, but I know how, and it's all ready to go. Deadline: June 15.
Now that I'm in writing mode, there are so many topics not related to my research that I'd like to write about. Gah.
