Thursday, October 20, 2005

Travel and time management

It's been awhile since I last posted, but I have a good excuse: I was out of the country.

I have to say that on this trip, I didn't make good use of my travel time to get reading and note-taking out of the way. I usually overpack books and study materials when I am flying, but this time I underpacked, only bringing one textbook on international relations and two issues of Foreign Policy magazine. I blew threw the magazines (and several newspapers) on the first five hour leg, and the textbook on the second jump of four hours (including airport waiting time). That left nine hours on the return trip with nothing to read except newspapers, not to mention three hours of intermediary train travel where the only thing to look at was scenery outside the window which I had seen many times before.

Moral of the story: When you are working on research and have to travel, bring twice as much reading material as you think you'll need. When you are trapped in economy class airplane seats, books and journal articles are great -- they don't require a plug or Internet connectivity, and they might even help you get to sleep.

No comments: