Distance

“It is good to take distance for a while, days, or weeks or months, I don’t know. If I let it be for a while, it gets significantly better. When you are finally through finishing your study, taking all the bureaucratic steps, and everything is off your desk, it’s a bit of relief for many of us. Especially for a paper. I have sometimes returned to my own work and thought—Who wrote this? This is really good! That happens almost universally.

I’ve had some experiences that every other day, it looks great, and every other day I am ready to throw it into the rubbish can. When we get so involved with our own work, it becomes difficult to look at it objectively. That gets better with time. I’ve seen this happen to my students, too. When they go back to the earlier work, it starts to look much better.”

(Timo Korkeamäki)