a one-dimensional man

I happened to re-read the "One-dimensional man" by Herbert Marcuse a few months ago. I was hoping to get a better grasp on it being older and -supposedly- more mature than when I first read it during my early university years. But although I did not, I got a pretty good reminder of a number of concepts related to this so disturbing uni-dimensionality, which Marcuse puts at the center of his attention. Most of all, after re-reading the book I regained part of my revolutionary reflexes, which I seemed to have lost after a hectic summer full of useless work. Today, after a full 36 hours of increasing pressure and with a terribly busy rest of the week ahead of me, I realized I am about to lose them again.

I find myself in the rather unpleasant situation to have to produce, interpret and present a significant amount of work in a very short period. The way my boss put it -in a rather stressful way- yesterday night I have "a lot of work and too little time". This stems from a number of things.
One: I am not the finest example of a hard-working scientist. Always too easily distracted, always getting my hands on too many things just because of curiosity, most of the times leaving unfinished business behind me. Well, this business needs to be finished now.
Two: The business to be finished looks quite stubborn to remain unfinished. Numbers don't exactly fall into place but rather need to be "massaged" into it. It's something I am supposed to do, but more and more I find I am quite reluctant to do so.
Three: The business remains unfinished because my bosses thought it could go on forever. Now that they know that I am about to leave soon, they find this to be a comfortable way to put some extra pressure. A pressure not exactly that comfortable to me though.

Still, my laziness and increased sense of inertia notwithstanding, I have put myself to the test. How about getting up earlier and leaving from work later than usual? I can save two more hours of work this way. How about a bit less of reading before going to bed? That would help me wake up earlier. How about skipping climbing on weekends while trying to put some of my results on paper? That will compensate for the fact that nobody feels like writing the papers his name will be on. How about a bit less blogging, a bit less of reading the newspapers, a little less (meaning almost null) of practicing with my trumpet? This way I can run three or four different analyses at the same time, while preparing slides for my upcoming presentations.

Well, guess what! It works!

Now don't get excited, this doesn't mean science is progressing at a fast pace, nor that major breakthroughs are being accomplished. Nonetheless it means that I am being more productive. I program faster, I design the analysis pipelines more efficiently, I optimize my time in such a way that I am getting an unprecedented amount of things done and I manage to put them into slides or on paper in a sort of fashion that resembles a factory's production line. In brief I have convinced myself that I can be what I thought myself completely incapable of. Work like there is nothing else in life. No music other than the one that helps me program (Rage against the machine mostly). No books other than science-related ones. No leisure activities other than the necessary rest to keep me going. Even this post is to be seen as a major distraction but it's just because all my CPUs are working to burning temperature.

At last, after three years of being a post-doc, I have managed to become the one-dimensional man. And you cannot imagine how utterly boring it is.