Here is a list of
minimal actions that will
be required for participants in the WoK Practice, using a working
hypothesis on a daily basis. The main focus is on lab work and
field
work. Each
morning, you will spend five minutes of `laboratory time.' The only
firm
specification there is that you just do it, and never ever skip it just
because
you don't feel like it. It should be part of your daily routine. You
would not
normally skip tying your shoe laces or doing other small chores, unless
you
would be seriously ill and unable to follow your normal routine.
Similarly,
don't ever skip the morning lab work, come hell or high water.
What exactly
you do during those five
minutes is in fact less important than the fact that you make the
gesture of
setting aside those five minutes, really every day, to focus your mind
on
working with the working hypothesis. By the time you have made that a
firm part
of your daily routine, you will find it much easier to keep carrying
the
working hypothesis with you throughout the rest of the day, as an
ongoing
research question. Even so, it is good to keep tabs on how you spend
each lab
session, so you should keep a lab journal. After each five-minute
session, you
should spend a minute or so writing a brief entry for that day. It
could be as
short as writing a single word like "boring" or "done!" or
it could be a single sentence or a whole paragraph or more.
During the
day, try to keep the working
hypothesis in mind, but please do that very lightly. In fact, the first
few
weeks you should focus mainly on getting into a very firm practice of
not
skipping your morning lab time, without worrying about how to do the
field work
during the day, of keeping the working hypothesis in the back of your
mind. Over
time, naturally, the field work will take root, and before you know it,
you
will find yourself suddenly wondering about the working hypothesis
while
waiting for a bus, walking on the street, or lying in bed.
What is
essential, though, is to spend a
minute each evening writing down something, anything, to summarize your
field
work of the day. You can keep a lab journal for the morning and a field
journal
for the evening, or you can take one journal in which you interleave
the
entries, as you like. There are clear advantages in making the journals
electronic, to allow easy cross referencing and searching, but that's
up to
you. If you make them electronically, and you find yourself without a
computer
at any morning or evening, do make sure to write down your entry on
paper, and
to copy it as soon as possible into electronic form. And of course, if
you
prefer old-fashioned pen and paper, or feather, or whatever, that's
perfect
too. A typical evening entry can be "not much" or "nothing"
or "fun!" or again a full sentence, a paragraph, or
more.
Once a week,
on a Sunday, you should take
an extra few minutes to write a summary of the fourteen entries you've
made
during the week, seven lab notes in the morning and seven field notes
in the
evening. That summary can again be short. A single paragraph is fine,
and
several paragraphs would be fine too. You probably should not start off
writing
more than a few paragraphs, unless you really really want too. The
danger with
starting any new habit is that you get excited about it at first, and
then,
when the novelty wears off, you drop it. It is far far better to start
with a
very modest but sustainable activity.
Since we are
dealing with a group activity,
it is important that we stay in sync, as a mutual form of encouragement
if
nothing else. Therefore, we should all write our summaries on the same
day, and
send them in to the WoK Webmaster. Since Sunday may be the most
convenient for
most people, we just picked that day. Do make sure to finish and send
off your
summary before you go to bed on Sunday. It is infinitely better to
submit just
a one-sentence summary on Sunday than to wait till Monday or later to
do so. Once
you start slipping, the whole process will become far more burdensome.
There is
a beauty in strict practice.
If you
really can't find internet access,
still do make sure to write your summary, on paper or electronically,
and
submit it as soon as you can, without changing a word. Don't start the
slippery
slope of changing history -- lab and field notes should never be
manipulated or
overwritten. They are part of the legacy of your life.
Each first
Monday of a new month, you will
take all the weekly summaries of the previous month, up to and
including the
one you wrote just the day before, and you write a monthly summary of
the
summaries. Again, it could be just a paragraph; it may well be shorter
than
each of the weekly summaries you are summarizing.
Similarly,
each first Monday of January,
April, July, and October, you write a seasonal summary of the monthly
summaries. And, you guessed it, each first Monday in January, you write
a
yearly summary of the seasonal summaries.
Here is a
list of one-liners, repeating the
main points:
-- each
morning, five minutes (or more) of
lab time
-- immediately after
that, one minute (or
more) of lab notes
-- each evening, one
minute (or more) of
field notes
-- each Sunday, a
summary of last week's
notes
-- each first Monday of
a new month, a
summary of weekly summaries
-- each first Monday of
Jan/Apr/Jul/Oct, a
summary of monthly summaries
-- each first Monday of
January, a summary
of seasonal summaries
Good luck,
and most importantly, have fun!