The good news is that changing fields is not necessarily bad.

Early specialization is overrated. Generalists excel over time. Data on >34k stars in sports, music, science, and chess: Focusing on a single field predicts a faster rise, but cross-training foreshadows a higher peak. The most successful adults start off as well-rounded kids.

How long should a written sentence be?

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…

Think about this

Email.

I started Electrical Engineering in 1994.

Typo: It was Modula-2 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modula…

Yes, almost. For me it was mid-90s.

Module-2 as part of a mandatory class during my university years. 😂

- The War of Art - Steven Pressfield: Great reminder on how to deal with Procrastination - Tribes: We need you to lead us - Seth Godin: Great book on building a community and be a leader

Writing a proposal is not linear. Some days you write full sections, while others barely a few sentences. Don't avoid the difficult parts. Stick with them, even if you feel unproductive. In the depth of your mind, you come up with a solution. Too many people give up too early.

I completely agree! So much time and energy is lost in these in-betweens. The shorter you can make these periods, the better you get at achieving anything. A good way is to have systems in place where you remind yourself regularly of your own goals!

These are also the best people to work with.

If someone is interested, I have written about something related in this blog post: "Challenging Traditional Metrics: What Does Productivity Mean in Academia? " worksmartandberemarkable.com…

Not sure that uploaded preprints are a good measurement of productivity. Even published papers are not a good measurement. Maybe I misunderstand the graph.

A and B are extreme cases. Most academics are in between.

When you start as an Assistant Professor, some of the most important things to learn are: - Who is making decisions - Which are soft and which are hard deadlines - Who can you ask for help (mentor) - Who solves problems in your department - What is valued for tenure/promotion

My take is twofold: 1️⃣On one side, I agree that there are more important things in our lives than our academic career. Nobody will die if we underperform or make an error. 2️⃣However, on the other side, being an academic is not a normal job. We have the freedom to do anything (within some ethical and resource limitations), which means we have to make very profound decisions on what is important to us. If you have a permanent position, you don't have a boss or the vision of the company that steers you. A lot of people don't sit down and think about their vision and priorities. This means everything is important, which means nothing is important. The result: emails, meetings, emails, meetings, ....frustration, burnout.

I agree so much with that! We are really bad at assessing our own value. A rejection is a good data point. Also, if your publication is immediately accepted with almost no corrections, you should wonder if you should have submitted it to a more prestigious journal/conference.