Fighting summer distractions

Right now there are a lot of things going on in the world. Tenure is being threatened. ISIS is ISISing. Rachel Dolezal is identifying as black. Donald Trump is running for president. LeBron James is taking on the entire state of California in the NBA finals.

With so many things going on it is easy to spend all of the time you had planned to work on a given day (between the hours of 2 and 4, for example) reading things on the internet instead of actually getting work done. If you, like me, suffer from summer doldrums, it may be that you just need some motivation. Here, then, is the key to fighting summer distractions:

I’m going to take his advice starting first thing tomorrow…

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Summer doldrums

Many academics likely see summer as a time to get to work on the things they really want to be doing during the academic year. Freed of students and committees, they turn to research, course prep, and reading Important Books. Each summer, I look forward to being able to focus on those things. Each summer I fail.

This failure makes me feel bad about how little I am actually accomplishing, which leads to lethargy, which leads to accomplishing even less. Although the title seems appropriate, my experience in the summer is, in fact, the exact opposite of the problem faced by the protagonist in “Summertime Blues,” who is forced to work so much that he misses out on summertime fun.

I miss out on summertime fun because of how much I don’t work.

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