Tomorrow evening I’ll be giving a fairly important talk. Not because a huge number of people will be there, but because I am using it as an opportunity to try out our latest interactive research software. Of course the software could fail miserably, and then I will end up looking foolish, but that’s part of the fun.
Over the last week I’ve been gradually pulling the pieces together for this talk, but today those efforts increased exponentially. It’s not exactly that I had been waiting until the last minute, but rather that I was preparing for the last minute.
It seems that just before a deadline, one can attain a kind of superpower — an enormous increase in ability to focus, coupled with a combination of tirelessness and tenaciousness that is usually very hard to come by.
So there is no point in trying to fake it several days earlier, to pretend that you already possess that superpower. The best strategy is to get things ready, line everything up, lay out the tools and the weaponry, and be prepared for the arrival of the superhero that you will ever so briefly become.
this talk was fantastic! I had a really great time and learned a thing or two about noise and turbulence.
Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it!! I had a really great time giving the talk — and also getting a chance to demo a new way of giving talks, for a great group of people.