Archive for February 2010
Engineer, mom, athlete, hobbyist…
Alicia Volpicelli is one of those people that seems a little bit magic. Like time and space warp to help her excel at everything (and still have time to laugh and chat up a storm at parties.) But her magic is actually the result of a set of considered choices she has made based on quantitative self reflection. She gave birth to Zephyros (Z) a few months ago. So I asked her to explain how that has changed her work habits.
In her statements to follow Alicia mentions an eating disorder that she worked through a couple of years ago. In this case, the recording of her daily eating/exercise habits was a bit too successful and pushed her body into a temporarily unhealthy state. Professional help, family support, and her own introspection brought her to a full recovery. I wanted to explain this so the reader understands that intensive self management is not without its risks. I’ll let Alicia take over from here…
“I am a research engineer at Lincoln Laboratory – specifically, my group and I are researching laser communication. I am on the PAT (pointing, acquiring and tracking) team, where we handle maintaining an optical link with a variety of different components… I get along with everybody… 
I’m lucky that [the] 2 guys I work with most I really like and respect. I picked the group I’m in based on one of them (he was one of my interviewers).”
“I used to bike to work every day, and play hockey on weekends, and then frisbee at work a few days a week… I don’t quite do *as* much as I used to now that we have Z – I do still play disc and hockey but haven’t been biking to work (for a while I needed to get home quickly to feed him, since he was hard to nurse unless he had just woken up) now he’s a bit easier so I am hoping maybe to get back into doing it a few days a week – but its a good 90min of exercise and time I don’t get to spend with him…”
“I work both at work and at home, so I like to keep my mind on what I’m doing, even if its in the background. I’ve realized errors I’ve made or come up with something new while biking home, or at home knitting, as much as at work.”
“For me, specifically, I work best if I am working on something in the middle of a project. I know I have trouble getting going if its at the start, if there’s a lot of setup to do, etc, so I try and set time aside to do that and not procrastinate. Once everything is in place to just code/debug/take data/etc I do much better, and work much faster and efficiently. I know I’m like this with a new program I have to write – so I’ll use an old program that I *know* won’t work, redo parts of it, compile, and then enter ‘debug’ mode even though it had no prayer of working – I just work better when fixing a broken something than spending too long in a ‘design’ phase. That being said, some design is necessary most times, I just tend to do it after an initial run at something is already done. I just work better that way.”
“I used to keep daily records of eating/exercise but that really contributed to my eating disorder. I now sometimes do [keep records of] exercise but just to see changes – I checked when pregnant to see how much not playing hockey in the winter changed things (not much, since we had a lot of snow and I was xc skiing instead) I checked a few weeks ago too to see where I was at w/ being a mom. So I can tell you pre-momhood I exercised about 10-20 hours a week… during pregnancy I was more like 8-15… Now its only about 6 hours a week, but I do a lot more walking that I don’t count.”
“Heh, I do track Z’s sleep every day though. If I am super cranky or getting sick its easy to see why! (Lots of night awakenings for him = sick momma later) when he’s teething though I know it will pass and it does and I catch up.”
“Lately I feel about a day behind. Its hard to keep up w/ my hobbies/exercise/work/etc with a baby but its not too bad. I still knit a ton, and am exercising an okay amount. I am slacking a bit lately at work and need to fix that, so am trying to do more at home which helps.”
“[My husband] Stos of course is a lot of this, our partnership really works. He has only about 20 hours of work a week – he gets most done on Thursdays when his mom is over helping – and then between 4 and 8pm when I’m home before Z’s bedtime (8) and after Z’s bedtime too. He’s been great w/ getting a lot done so that he’s free weekends so I can play hockey, and sometimes brings Z halfway through so I can breastfeed him right after and not miss a feeding. Our balance really works well, better than I would have ever guessed.”
“I ended up being a pretty hippy-crunchy parent (why am I surprised?! I guess since I thought I wasn’t that *maternal* or something)… I am fine w/ Z still waking multiple times a night and that’s why he’s still in our bed, and I’m fine with that. I don’t want to ‘sleep train’ him or feed him solids before he’s ready or wean him before he’s ready or anything like that. Many folks at work complain about their life ‘before kids’ and how nice and free and this and that it was – and I just don’t do that. Sure it was different, and sure I had more free time, but I don’t have free time now since I *want* to spend it with Z! and to compare seems so silly, life before was fun and everything, but I didn’t have Z, so how could it have been better? just different.”
Create something small, daily.
This is useful advice for anyone doing creative work. Writers often talk about how writing every day is a great way to progress as a creator (and of course to be more prolific). My adviser, Tom Butter, asked me to make a sculpture every day when I was in grad school.
So for comedy? Jerry Seinfeld’s working technique has gotten a lot of attention. The “do it every day” technique…
My dog says I should play less tankball.
Sometimes I wish I could record my regular field of view as I experience life. If I could then you would now see an attached video of Bear (my dog) interrupting my virtual pummeling of RC-like tanks. The scene shifts (but not the camera) as Bear steps firmly into the living room. “Hey Buddy.” He quick-walks around my legs, squeezes past the coffee table. He leans around my lap and stretches his neck into the flaccid space between me and my laptop screen. His alert eyes, that practiced pout, and a whine so quiet that it can’t be ignored. “Yeah, I know Buddy. We’ll go outside after this game, ok? Outside, Bear?”
Bear sees the way my laptop glows and he certainly looks confused when I turn the speaker on. But he doesn’t get why I stare at the screen. There’s one thing he likes about laptops… they make a definite clicking sound when they close (and maybe then it’s back to fun time.)
