Two interesting observations today.

I have been trying to rework a paper and from past experience I know that making a start on any piece of writing is the hardest part of the whole process for me. I tend to read, read, read papers relating to the topic or that will be useful for my argument to the extent that it feels like a way to productively procrastinate, then I tend to organize, sift and turn the ideas… and finally when it seems like I have exhausted all means of putting it off and I know that I really must start if I am going to have any chance of finishing it by the deadline—in this case I have a serious deadline because I absolutely do not want to work on this when I travel home in September—that is when I finally start. Though I also make a lot of flourishes before I do start. An analogy came to my mind while I was in the middle of some of these flourishes. It is how we make chapatti or roti back home in India. I am not good at making chapatti/roti at all but the people who make it routinely tend to emphasize that it’s all in the kneading. If you knead the dough very well, the chapatti or roti turns out well! And it struck me that all this reading, thinking, organizing, reflecting is the kneading process for me! Now I have an intuition for how much kneading needs to go into it for me to be able to write something remotely coherent. I do not know this consciously which is why I tend to feel guilty wondering if I am wasting time but subconsciously there is something that knows more is required, I am not yet there. I suppose this process might be different for different people just as different people have a different technique for making chapattis/rotis, and some like me, try to follow the rules instead of practising and it doesn’t work out. 

The second observation relates to my visit to a grocery store. I wanted to get some milk to have a cup of tea while procrastinating on said writing piece. It’s summer over here and very warm these says. I don’t wear a jacket for that reason. When I entered this store, it was like entering a freezer or something. I couldn’t wait till I got out of that place and though I have a habit of browsing around even if I am there to get something specific, I just couldn’t wait to finish my purchase and run out. The cashier was wearing a thick sweater, no surprise. This made me wonder why the place was so cold and the only logical thing I could think of was that that’s their way of keeping veggies etc. fresh maybe. It’s a small store and maybe that is why it gets colder than the large superstores where it’s relatively fine even if they use the same strategy. This made me think about how in certain contexts people tend to do something to maximize returns in a way, if we think of increasing the durability of veggies and stuff as maximization, but in the process they perhaps do something else that damages the outcomes in a more serious way, if one considers that one is driving away customers who might have purchased other things if they could hang around.