I gotta learn to be disciplined

It's late and I gotta go to bed soon so that I will be able to wake up early tomorrow and begin what I call my "scheduled" days. I am not very much a routine person, but I am certainly not a chaotic person. I am one of those people who writes a To Do list every morning and feels great checking items off the list as tasks have been accomplished. I am one of those people who would feel guilty at the end of the day if nothing of significance have been achieved.

So since it's late and I gotta go to bed soon (I know, I'm repeating myself), I'm just going to write this down really quickly.

Last night, the thought of publishing my Master's thesis into a form of a book suddenly came to my mind. I attended a publishing workshop not too long ago, and the invited speakers somehow managed to convince us that it was very easy to write and publish a book, and that "everybody was doing it already". I don't think I believe them, on both accounts. And I know that this must sound like a joke because I haven't even started writing those 3-4 papers from my research for publication, and the data in the thesis are kind of yelling at me to "write us up!"

Former Advisor has just kindly hinted today that I should start writing those said papers whenever I have the time to. The thing is, I have a lot of time in my hands, I just spend my time NOT writing those oh-so-important papers.

I really dislike how a researcher's credibility is measured by the number of publications s/he has, but I guess there's nothing I can do to change it, is there?

Sometimes I wished that I was as disciplined in writing those papers as in writing my To Do list.