One of the many wonderful things about my marriage is that my wife and I like doing complementary chores. Actually, to be accurate we don’t mind doing complementary chores, but that’s good enough. Heather prefers cleaning the bathroom to taking out the trash. I prefer the opposite. Heather would rather clean the dishes than cook dinner each night. Luckily, I like cooking. We have complementary “least-worst” chore preferences and that suits us well.
But one chore that I love–I mean LOVE–is grocery shopping. I could shop every day if I had the time. I love picking out food for my family, trying free samples, and mentally putting together meals. My wife is a self-professed proceduralist; like in her day job, she prefers chores that involve following tried and true methods in a linear fashion. As for me, I enjoy the creativity of shopping and cooking. Except for my trip on Monday. Here’s how an enjoyable, efficient experience can go downhill in a hurry, and at the same time remind me of the academic paper-writing process.
The Dreaded Afternoon Deli Line
One of the markets I go to is set up in such a way that the deli comes last on my trip. I’m usually 30 minutes into my shopping experience when I hit the deli. If it’s morning, when I prefer to shop, I get my sliced meats and cheeses and head on my way. If it’s the afternoon or evening, I have to take a number. Taking a number is cool when you look up and you are next in line: “hey this process is totally efficient!” Taking a number is not cool when you draw “68” and you look up to see the number thirteen flashing at you.
The problem is that Central Market’s deli can take forever and it just destroys the efficiency of an afternoon shopping trip. They usually have only a pair of butchers working three electric slicers. They’re fine at their job, but there are just too many variables in the process for two employees to make it work. Every other full-service section of the market has a “bag, tag, and go”-type structure. Your ground beef is put in a bag, tagged with a bar code and handed to you. No one is sampling raw sausage at the meat counter. No one is requesting that their catfish be sliced thinner at the seafood department. And there are no old ladies asking which of the 18 types of chicken breast are best because there are only two or three. But not at the deli. A customer asks to sample a ham and the butcher has to pull it out, take off the saran wrap, slice off the end slice, slice off another, give it to the customer, wait for them to swirl it around so they can taste the tannins or something, and then they ask for a quarter pound. Of cheese. But they have to sample it first. Efficiency of a trip to the market destroyed by waiting 20 minutes at the deli, and if you want the meat there’s no way to get around it.
Bottlenecking
Such is the problem–at least for me–when it comes to writing manuscripts: too many hams.
Sorry, I mean bottlenecking.
Regarding the manuscript process, I can do everything else with reasonable efficiency (conceptualization, research, outlining, editing, proofreading). But when it comes to fleshing out a paper with actual words–the meat, if you will–I tend to stall for a few reasons. First, I don’t like that part of the process as much as I like others. An employee at Central Market told me that no one likes working in the deli; my friend David got of there as soon as he could. Second, My mind becomes clouded with too many variables in the writing process. How long will this take? Should I tend towards an informal or scholarly style? What will the reviewers think? I’m like the woman who can’t decide which of the 6 black forest hams to get, so my solution is to go back and buy fig newtons. It’s a mental block more than anything, but academic writing is a mental process and it still creates a bottleneck for me.
Can I use this analogy to help ease the writing bottleneck? I think constantly about how the market can increase its efficiency. For example, they can have division of labor: one person taking orders, two people slicing meat. That way, I can put my order in, shop around, and come back. How does that relate to writing? Maybe I just need to put anything down, come back to evaluate if it’s right, and then adjust accordingly. Another possible solution is have a streamlined process for the most popular deli products. They used to do this by having ready-to-go packages of popular brands. I believe I may need to streamline my writing process by having go-to writing templates, like I know some professors do. Granted, the format of their papers may not be particularly interesting because the template limits creative writing, but it’s hard to argue with getting accepted for publication. Well, it’s not hard to argue but that’s for another post. (If you have other ideas, please let me know in the comments.)
Analogies help us to see things in within the figurative context of something else. Here’s hoping I can apply my ideas for supermarket efficiency to writing.