Training Through Stagnation

As I mentioned in my last post, I've been working crazy-busy hours trying to prepare for my academic/work demands, and so my training has suffered a little in the meantime. I've been keeping it up with little bits here and there, drills and standing and other quick things in between long bouts with the (rather boring) math book I wrote (but won't be getting published). In the last few days, however, I've been doing less and less of that, despite the fact that I don't feel "ready" for what's in front of me yet. I'm stagnating with it.

This is putting me in a position that I'm sure is unique but not unique to me. I keep finding excuses not to work on my stuff that I'm supposed to work on (yet while remaining productive) and yet I'm not doing the training that I could be doing with the spare time because I'm "not supposed" to be training because my focus is supposed to be on this math. I get like this sometimes, and it's silly. Basically, I feel guilty for not working on the math and then somehow manage to "waste" a bunch of time doing little piddly (but important enough) things not working on what I'm supposed to be doing and still not feeling willing to use that time to train because I somehow feel like I'd be doing something I'm not supposed to do. It's weird. I know that just about everyone that gets serious about academics (and probably any career, particularly ones that don't really end up being "left at the office" at the end of the day) has times like this. It's a trap.

I broke out of it today. After spending an hour or so staring at the thing I'm supposed to work on next and then not working on it for more than about five minutes of that time, I decided I was just going to shake myself up and get unstuck. I went out for about 90 minutes and trained, hard. It did the trick. I felt great to have trained. I felt great to have exercised. I felt great to have done something different, and I came back in from my little workout feeling great about getting back to work on my mathematics, which I actually did for a while before making dinner. Still somewhat enthused about it (now that I feel unstuck), I'll be getting back on it once I finish this post, which I'm taking time to write partly because I want to and partly because I'm so excited about getting unstuck and know there are probably lots of folks out there that read this (meaning a fair proportion of my small readership) that could benefit from the following advice: if you're caught up with a lot to do and feeling a burn to train or to just do something different, get unstuck -- go train.

Believe me, you'll end up getting more done. I think this is like the people on diets that deny themselves cookies and can't stop thinking about them. I denied myself proper training so I could "focus on my mathematics," and I found that I wanted to train WAY more than I wanted to do mathematics and therefore thought way more about the training I wasn't doing (and wasn't willing to do). Stupid. Set some time aside, and go train.