Perseverance
By: Artemy Malkov
Tags: Productivity, Organize Research, Routine

Science is a creative profession. Many scientists I know, myself included, are very spontaneous people who wait for inspiration to start working. Yes, of course, there are those sociopaths among us who can lock themselves in their tall towers and work all day and night. However, if you are developing a product, you need to communicate with customers. And if you are a manager, you’ll have a lot of distractions that make it almost impossible to concentrate.

In research, discipline is super important. Inspiration gives you an impulse, but if you can’t keep yourself in working condition for an extended period of time, it will quickly fizzle out. This is especially true when research has been going on for some time without positive experimental results, and it’s important not to fall into procrastination and despondency.

I came to this understanding nearly ten years ago. Being a scientist, I felt that I was a man of unpredictable moods. I had lots of bright ideas and started lots of new initiatives, but I lacked the focus and perseverance to continue what I started and bring it to completion.

I found a solution for myself — daily jogs, either in the morning or the evening. I decided for myself that it was not a matter of speed or distance, but regularity. Something inside my head should stay alert, lift me out of my comfortable chair at my laptop, check the clock and remind me to go out for a run.

This problem may seem ridiculous to some. I know people who are very organized and diligent, but I was not that breed. I’m a dreamer and an inventor, and as such discipline really was not easy for me.

There were days when I suddenly realized that it was time to go for a run at 11:25 pm and frantically jumped up from my laptop in order to complete my daily ritual and not miss a day. There were days when I was sick. There were days when I was in the hospital and could not get out for a run, but instead I ran up and down the stairs from the 1st to the 8th floor.

There were days when I was on transatlantic flights when the days got shorter because of flying from West to East, or when the whole day disappeared because of flying from California to Japan. At such moments, so as not to lose the day, I jogged through the airport with a rolling suitcase in one hand. I hope I didn’t look ridiculous, just like a man who was late for his flight. Though, after a couple of minutes I was running in the opposite direction as if my gate had changed!

I have accustomed myself to this routine. For almost 10 years now, every day (really), I go out for a run. It got a little easier to keep discipline and to track progress after my old friend Alex gave me an Apple Watch as a birthday present in 2016.

There were really unpleasant situations, like in April 2018, late in the evening, when my Apple Watch decided to apply a software update and erased all the records about the run that I made that day. But anyway, today I celebrate 1,111 days of officially-completed daily workouts.

1,111 days is a good number, being just over three years. There are 27 more years of daily jogging until the next beautiful number — 11,111. I don’t know if I will have enough perseverance, health, and glitch-free operation of my Apple Watch to achieve such a record, but the main value is probably in the skills that I have acquired along the way.

Running is not the only routine that keeps me in good shape. When it comes to work, I have a special classical music album that keeps me concentrated. No procrastination and distraction allowed before the album is over :) This piece is amazing for helping me get in the mood for work. Also, Chopin’s nocturnes are just fascinating.

And what do you guys do to develop your discipline and maintain your daily research routine?