Last week's blog post was a struggle. I've be concurrently teaching a course in a local high school which has taken up more time than expected. I ended up leaving the blog post until Sunday evening to complete. Previous entries hadn't taken me more than an hour to complete and so I figured I'd have plenty of time. When the time came to work on it, I found myself tired and the time pressure began to weigh on me. Suddenly, what ought to have been a straightforward exercise, felt like walking through tar and I couldn't access the creative and self-reflective parts of myself. I eventually got the post completed, but it was a slog and it felt uninspired.
I teach Physics and, as I work on PIDP courses, I'm having to practice writing skills that aren't second nature to me. In another course, I've examined the work of Daniel Pink (TED, 2009) who examines workplace motivation. Pink observes that a reward and punishment-based system is effective when workers (and, presumably students) are given simplistic tasks, but such a system is counterproductive as soon as work requires even rudimentary cognitive skills.
I've realized that time pressure on tasks requiring creativity, such as the writing I do in PIDP courses is completely unhelpful. I'll be working on rearranging my weekly schedules to give myself enough breathing room for effective blog writing!
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