The exchange experiment

Unable to make myself write as much as I wanted to, I came up with the idea of making a pact with Mindie Kniss, who I knew had a lot of writing to get done herself. I approached Mindie about this in an email proposing some vague kind of exchange. She immediately responded, "I'm in," and we hammered out the details in a few more emails. So the deal is that we are to send each other six polished pages of our thesis manuscripts every Sunday night before we go to bed, starting today. We don't have to read the other's work if we don't have time. We just have to send it to each other. There's no punishment (yet) if we don't, but we'll send each other little rewards for getting the work done on time.

So it's Sunday, and I am actually grateful that we have this deal, because I don't know if I would have sat here all day and all day yesterday and all evening the day before if not for the fact that Mindie will know if I don't get my work done. It really is good to be accountable sometimes. I have about a page and a half left to write--which you might say is easy, but the previous page and a half has taken me all afternoon. But still, the goal is within sight. Man, I hope this gets easier as the weeks go on.

And I can't wait to see what Mindie is writing.