Helping academics to achieve their full potential without burning out / passionate about healthy productivity habits / offering workshops for PhDs to Professors
Bristol, England
- Tweets 831
- Following 171
- Followers 189
- Likes 260
Amazing! I did not know that you can use @Affinity for batching image conversion. This video explains it really clearly!
piped.video/watch?v=ln2QFceL…
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Nice little feature from @TextExpander. It gives me summary of how many snippets I have expanded this year and how much time I have saved. For me is two full days of working by typing less. 🥳
Btw., you also get a weekly summary in your email!
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📣New blog post! 📣 "75 Ideas to Organise your Research Community" - Organising your research community not only lets you give back, but also demonstrates leadership, which is vital for job applications. Organising also helps you to rapidly build a career-boosting network. No seniority or budget is needed. Here are 75 inspiring ideas!
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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E-Mail is a portal to hell! 🔥 Don't start your day with openign this door. First thing in the morning, work on your big goals first (proposals, promotion, tenure, etc.). Then set a timer for replying emails!
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.@Affinity now shows Tints/Shades/Tones and complementary colours directly for any colour you are currently using. I love it!
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This week, Tuesday Oct. 14, I will be in Cambridge to deliver my Productivity Workshop! Looking forward to meeting a lot of new people and having great discussion!
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I had a wonderful time @tudelft last week. I provided one of my Productivity Workshops. We had lot of great discussion!
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Where do good ideas come from? A great 4 mins talk by Steven Johnson (there is also a longer TED talk)
piped.video/watch?v=NugRZGDb…
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You can use it in a @TextExpander snippet by making a shell script like this:
#!/bin/bash
curl -s naas.isalman.dev/no | jq -r '.reason'
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Getting easily distracted during your #academic work? Check out my blog post about how to avoid distraction. worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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It's so true! 😂 A great way to overcome this resistance is to set a timer, e.g., just 10 minutes. You can sit down, write, and push through the discomfort for those 10 minutes. Then, you can do it again.
However, often, the first 10 minutes are enough to get past the initial hurdle, and you gain momentum.
This is called the Pomodoro technique:
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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More ideas on how to avoid distractions can be found here:
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
#ProductiveAcademia
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Make it easy for your to avoid distractions. Before you go home, close all your applications, clean your desk and whiteboard. Just keep one file open with your goals!
Tomorrow you'll have a fresh start.
More ideas on how to transition from work to private life can be found here:
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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To be successful in academia, you have to block off time regularly for thinking. This is where you reflect on your goals and priorities.
Since you could do that anytime (today, tomorrow, in one week, or even in three months), the day-to-day grind always gets in the way, and you never do it! ⭐️Make time for it!⭐️ Otherwise, other people will set your priorities.
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A great way to become a leader in academia is to organise the "tribe". Seth Godin's book "Tribes - We need you to lead us" is a must read for that. While it's not written with academics in mind, it applies well. I use to organise people around teh ideas of #MorphologicalComputation. @ThisIsSethsBlog
tinyurl.com/27taaqtw
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I use my morning routine to reset every day. It brings me back to my original goals.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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Upcoming Productivity Workshop next Tuesday (April 22nd) at the IEEE RoboSoft Conference. Participants from all continents (see map) and 13 countries ranging from BSc students to Associate Professors.
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📣New blog post alert📣 Be Thankful, be Proud! As academics, we often jump from one task to the next without appreciating our hard work and the help we receive. This can easily lead to burnout. Here’s a little daily ritual I do to celebrate small wins.
tinyurl.com/2aalrqp8
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Do you want to improve? Reading books, blog posts, and watching YouTube videos isn't enough—you must act! Try, test, fail, and improve.
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⭐️New blog post alert⭐️ How to Avoid Distractions!
We've all been there. We sit down to tackle a proposal or dive into a paper, but ten minutes later, we're scrolling through social media or watching a random YouTube video. With everything just a click away online, staying focused feels like an ongoing struggle. However, to accomplish anything meaningful, we must stay on track. Deep, uninterrupted work produces our best ideas and results. We must minimise distractions as much as possible.
Here are my practical tips to help you maintain focus where it belongs.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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We still have a few places left for our Productivity Workshop at #RoboSoft2025. We'll assign the free spots on a first-come, first-served basis. Everyone from the Soft Robotics Community is welcome!
More details and a sign-up form are here:
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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Being distracted on webpages? Safari has a nice feature that lets you read articles without ads or sidebars. It offers font and colour controls and even summaries with Apple Intelligence.
support.apple.com/en-gb/guid…
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You don't know what the LaTeX command is for a certain symbol? Use @Dextify. Draw it and you get number of options. Machine learning used for the good 😉
detexify.kirelabs.org/classi…
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⭐️New blog post alert⭐️ The Rule of Three
The rule of three is a highly effective productivity technique. For me it was a game-changer! Focus on 3 daily goals that flow into 3 weekly goals, link to 3 monthly goals, and stem from 3 bold yearly goals. Step by step, you’ll conquer even your wildest ambitions!
It will keep your goals at the forefront of your mind. As a results, it will allow you to see opportunities. It also helps you stick to highly ambitious goals where more work is needed than just a few days right before the deadline!
You will be amazed what you can achieve—I certainly was!
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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⭐️Blog post alert⭐️
To stay sane and healthy in academia, it's crucial to make a clean cut at the end of your workday for a smooth transition from work to private life.
#WorkLifeBalance #HealthyAndSaneAcademic
#WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
Here are my tips on how to achieve this.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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I am absolutely thrilled to announce that I will be giving my Productivity Workshop at the IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics 2025 in Lausanne.
Come and sign up for one of the limited spaces:
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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📣New blog post alert📣
"Challenging Traditional Metrics: What Does Productivity Mean in Academia?"
There is a misalignment between traditional productivity metrics and the true nature of academic work, creating unnecessary stress and friction. We must rethink how we measure productivity in academia. Here are my thoughts.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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📣New blog post alert📣
"Morning Routine without getting up at 5 A.M."
Having a morning routine is one of the most powerful productivity habits that you can acquire. Don't worry, you don’t have to get up at 5 p.m. A morning routine is what you do in your very first part of your working day. The idea is, how you start the day will define how the rest of your day is going to be. Set yourself off in the right direction.
Here are my tips on how to give a great start to your working day.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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If you interesting in learning more about not only to survive but thrive in academia, follow me here on X or on LinkedIn (tinyurl.com/2cd49x5h) or my webpage worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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⭐️new blog post alert⭐️
"Eat the Frog" is a powerful productivity technique, which suggests that you should do your most difficult and important task (your ugly frog 🐸) first thing in the morning; everything after that is much easier. This is incredibly powerful if you are able to make it a habit.
worksmartandberemarkable.com…
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⭐️blog post alert⭐️
Read about how you can use the 🍅 "Pomodoro Technique" 🍅 to be more productive in your academic work.
tinyurl.com/28n9ak3j
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"Make Good Art" (20 mins). An excellent talk by author Neil Gaiman. Although he shares insights from a writer's viewpoint, his message resonates strongly with scholars. We are creators too!
buff.ly/40u54lS
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Without a plan you will miss opportunities! You need to have goals in order to be able to feel lucky!
Where do you want to be in 3, 5, 10 years?
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"In the absence of clear indicator of what it means to be productive and valuable in their jobs, many knowledge workers turn back towards an doing lots of stuff in a visible manner (from Deep Work by @Cal Newport)
My spin on this:
Make sure you have goals 🎯, otherwise you will do busy work 📧! You will be exhausted, treading water, frustrated and, eventually, experience a burnout.
buff.ly/2I3i9wm
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Struggling to pick colors for your figures? Try this stunning color palette generator by
@ColorhuntBot!
Explore a variety of categories and moods to find the perfect fit.
#DesignInspiration #ColorPalette
colorhunt.co
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Failing is key to growth. Each failure is a lesson learned.
Check out this cartoon by @tomgauld. It's funny, because it's true.
Admire people who fail often and big!
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Great YouTube channel by @quietquestmusic
with music to study and do high-focus work.
🎧🧘
piped.video/@quietquestmusic
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Try to find the right tasks to work on! Avoid busy work! Prioritize improving your skills to be effective over skills that make you more efficient.
#FoucusedWork
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It's easier to write when you're not alone ✍️. Check out the "Silent Zoom Writing Group" webpage. You can sign up for different time slots to write at the same time with other people.
#WritingRetreats #GetItDone
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Check out my ⭐️latest blog post⭐️ on the Pareto Principle and how it can help you to be more effective in academia.
#ProductiveAcademia
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If you want to dig deeper, check out this great tutorial with cool examples from @affinitybyserif the makers of #AffinityDesigner
piped.video/watch?v=AEl1AYol…
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I created a quick 1-page tutorial on drawing chains using Affinity Designer's Shape Builder Tool. This technique works great for any overlapping or complex shapes!
@affinitybyserif
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If you ever need to count your character/words/paragraphs and you don't want to open Word, check out my little @alfredapp workflow (for the #Mac)
tinyurl.com/2cduw4yg
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Did you know Affinity Designer also has an iPad version, which has almost the entire functionality of the desktop version? It takes advantage of clever gestures to make it even faster to draw beautiful and precise figures.
Also, you can work seamlessly between devices by syncing through cloud. ☁️
@affinitybyserif #WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
buff.ly/3BFnIxC
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Here are my 3 top tricks that I use in every drawing I make with Affinity Designer
Checkout my latest blog post with little videos to show you how it’s done.
@affinitybyserif #WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
buff.ly/3PhTbZR
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🎧🎵 Music can be incredibly powerful for your productivity. Here are my 5 Top Tips on how to use it to your advantage.
#ProductiveAcademia #WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
buff.ly/3Z6dXB8
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#AffinityDesigner: Want to quickly copy an object? Use the Move Tool (shortcut “V”) and drag the object while holding down ⌘ (Windows use Ctrl). Release the mouse button.
Extra tip: Keep the button pressed to repeat the copying quickly. Click + move + release, click + move + release, etc.
@affinitybyserif
#WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
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Did you know in #AffinityDesigner, if you hover over ⭐️any numeric field⭐️ and scroll your mouse wheel you can adjust values instantly! 🖱️✨
@affinitybyserif
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Using SHIFT to constrain rotation to 15 degrees steps. Perfect to (re)align objects.
@affinitybyserif #WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
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Here using SHIFT to constrain movements (horizontally, vertically, diagonally). Look out for the yellow line that shows you the alignment.
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Unlock your creativity with #AffinityDesigner's intuitive shortcuts! 🔥
Check out this cheatsheet for quick boosts in productivity. My favorite? Using SHIFT to lock movements to perfect squares, circles, or 15-degree rotations
@affinitybyserif
#WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
buff.ly/403QRKO
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The Dune Soundtrack works surprisingly well for me to do focus work.
piped.video/watch?v=uTmBeR32…
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Little iconography in figures can help readers understand them better. This is especially helpful if you have many similar figures. Draw simplified iconographic versions of the different cases and add them throughout the paper.
The attached examples are from our paper: “Evolution of morphology through sculpting in a voxel based robot”
direct.mit.edu/isal/proceedi…
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Stages of ideas you have in your academic career (tongue-in-cheek):
1️⃣ You have an idea and your supervisor tells you this has already been done.
2️⃣ You have an idea and you read that it has already been done recently.
3️⃣ You have an idea and you find out somebody is already working on it.
4️⃣ You have an idea and you find out it had already been done 40 years ago.
5️⃣ You have an idea and everyone tells you it's not possible.
Addendum: You had an idea and explored it, but your PhD or Postdoc left.
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I use Hazel by Noodlesoft
buff.ly/4flZzd3
Wonderful atomisation tool for the Mac. You can choose folders that are observed by Hazel (running in the background) and when a rule apply you can move it, rename, extract information and many more. , file it subfolders, run a script on it, etc. Only your imagination is the limit.
Attached is an example of how I use it, Hazel
- observes a folder where I download my VISA statements among other things
- checks for the right filename pattern VISA_[with some year]_[…]
- moves the PDF to my Visa folder
- but sorts it into subfolder based on the year (all 2024 statements are in the 2024 folder)
- send a message on the screen that this has been done
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📚Book tip📚: I read every year "The War of Art" by Steven Pressfield @SPressfield . While it's written for authors struggling with writer's block, it works beautifully for the academic context as well. After all, we are creatives too.
The book is about the force that holds us back from delivering creative work and how it can show up all kind of forms.
Know your enemy so you can fight it!⚔️
buff.ly/41wF4ab
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Creativity is a fundamental building block for research. Make sure you hone this skill. Write poems 📘, paint 🎨, develop a board game 🎲, write a play 🎭, make music 🎹, build an app 📲, etc.
A strong artistic muscle will help you come up with truly ⭐️novel⭐️ solutions!
#WorkSmartAndBeRemarkable
#ProductiveAcademia
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