A DBA Week at Kielder Water
This last week I took a week off from work to spend time focusing on my DBA. We booked a lodge at Kielder Water from Monday to Friday to help get away from the distractions of every day life. This post is just a bit of a fun snapshot of how my week went. In a second post I have written more seriously about what I learned from the week and how far I got with my work.
Day 1
Day one of my DBA week was mostly travelling up to Kielder Water and settling in:
- Miles driven: 142
- Haribos eaten while travelling: 12
- Stops on the way: 1 (or 2 if you count bike pick up)
- Yoga:15 minutes
- Swim: 30 minutes
- Sauna/Steam Room: probably not long enough
- Chaffinches on the patio: 4
- Work emails seen: 0
- Work related emails that come to personal address seen: 4
- DBA word count: 976
- DBA Progress: Context chapter mapped and intro and some random stuff written
- DBA time spent: 2 hours
- LinkedIn Posts: 1 (and some comments)
Day 2
Day 2 is really the first full day of DBA focused work as most of Day 1 was just getting here. There was an element of settling into a rhythm but working in roughly 45 minute bursts seemed to work and having yoga or exercise breaks definitely helped. Day two stacked up like this
- Yoga breaks: 4
- Hot tub breaks: 1
- Run: 1 (45 minutes)
- Broken cafetières discovered: 1
- Cups of coffee drunk: Not enough (see above)
- Ginger nuts dunked in tea: 6
- Duolingo Spanish streak broken: 1 (but had a streak freeze left so it’s ok)
- Chaffinches: loads, about 30 all at once
- Great tits: 1
- Nuthatch: 1
- Blue tits: 2
- Wagtails: 2
- Osprey: 1
- Pigeon: 1
- Other birds: lots
- Other people: Almost none
- Red Squirrels: 0
- 45 minute writing bursts: 5
- 20 minute writing bursts: 1
- Random kinda editing on the sofa but faffing too: 90 minutes
- End Day Word Count: 4865
- Words actually written: More than that but they’re rubbish
- Tabs Open: Go Away
- Sworn at SQE: Lots and lots
- Glasses misplaced: hmph
Day 3
Today brought a change of pace. I slept later and then again started with some yoga. I had a first writing session full of faffing and not being able to locate some statistics I know I saw only a few days ago.The second session after a 10 minute yoga break was better and I used the stats I had to hand as placeholders for now knowing that there will be at leat two more reports before I submit the thesis anyway. I went for a run in the morning rather than in the afternoon today and that resulted in a 3rd really productive session before lunch. After lunch I struggled to get the focus back so after persevering for a bit I switched from writing to reading some of the materials I brought with me. So here’s how Day 3 looks in random numbers
- End Day Word Count: 6638
- Draft chapter: 85% complete
- References to sort: Ahem
- Run: 2 miles
- Tabs open: fewer than yesterday (not on purpose)
- Yoga breaks: 3
- Writing sessions: 4
- Book chapters read: 6.5
- Sticky tabs deployed: 29
- Ginger nuts dunked: 5
- Haribo eaten: 2 (packet’s empty)
- Times glasses were not where I was: Every time
- Red Squirrels: 0
- Rabbits by lodge: 3
- Annoying emails dealt with: 1
- Birds not noticed yesterday: 2 (Coal tit and robin)
- Hot tub staring at the sky: 20 minutes
- Confidence crisis: 1/2
- HIIT session: 20 minutes
Day 4
Day 4 has been less focused. I woke up very early, started with a slightly longer (still only 20 minute) yoga session and spent most of the time on the sofa rather than actually sitting at the table. I did less writing but more reading and thinking and mapping out structures for the literature review chapter.
- End Day Word Count Context Chapter: 7010
- Context chapter complete: 90%
- End Day Word Count Literature Review: 2483
- Book chapters read: 7
- Sticky tabs deployed: 32
- Highlighters dangerously close to empty: 1
- Red Squirrels: 0
- Ginger Nuts dunked 2
- Flapjack remembered, found and eaten: 2 pieces
- Yoga breaks: 2
- Hot tub breaks: 2
- Swim: 45 minutes
- Times sworn at Word formatting tools: too many to count
- Coffee forgotten about: 1
- Chaffinches within touching distance: 4
- Mice on patio: 1, possibly 2
- Invites to track Kath’s activity on Garmin: 2
- Feeling of not really having done anything: high
- Talking to given to myself: 1
- DBA progress: 1 near complete draft chapter and one chapter mapped out with headings and some quotes and text in place
Day 5
Day five was just packing up and travel really as well as thinking and reflecting time and a stop off at the Wensleydale Creamery in Hawes. So really the question is: How much Cheese is too much Cheese? And I am still not sure I understand that question.
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