4 ms·

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playin

by lqet 4y ago

The three fundamental ideas of my PhD came to while: 1.) Sitting in a park sketching solutions on a notebook. 2.) Laying at the beach on vacation. 3.) Playing Legos with my daughter. Without these ideas, I doubt there would've even been a PhD, or even a paper publication. (There was a period of 2 years in my life where I did not have any significant ideas, at all. During that time, I was employed at a company which offered a constant stream of urgent TODO emails and tickets. I worked until exhaustion for 2 years, but did not get any work done.)

marmot777 4y ago
Many top novelists, scientists, engineers, etc., have come up with ideas doing something other than work. We’ve all had ideas at odd times and contexts. Sometimes good and occasionally outstanding ideas or solutions.
jayde2767 4y ago
I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.
- dvergeylen 4y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but as a father of two (toddlers), I can relate to this. I have plenty of ideas but if I have (say) 15min available, my brain won't even start because it "knows" the next emergency / interrupt will probably occur within that time period. A bit sad I confess...
- lqet 4y ago
  This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience. At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months and months at the company).
  - qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
    Creativity and experimentation are not needed for survival, so stress hormons flow and the nice things are postponed.
- walthamstow 4y ago
  This is also happening in government, IMO. Govts get caught up in the latest emergency in the social/media and completely forget about innovation and long term planning. It's particularly acute in the UK at the moment.
- hinkley 4y ago
  I kept my sanity at one place by working on refactoring every moment there wasn’t an emergency. I was trying to make all the changes easier. But that was after having tried several other solutions, including the dreaded Infinite Configurability, which has to be the absolutely best way to punish most of the team for how clever two or three of them are. I’m working at a place like that now and it’s been an eye roller. After ten years on the project one of the problem people has finally seen this as a problem (though I haven’t heard him admit that he contributes). He’s looking at code now written by two people who have been copying his code style for years, and suddenly feeling the pain of it. It’s great he’s growing, but he’s over forty and should have learned this years ago. I blame a mix of things including staying at one place for far too long. And I keep telling him this code used to be worse, but I’ve been chipping away at it for some time.
  - shakadak 4y ago
    Hi, do you have some resources I could check out to understand the concept of what infinite configurability is, and how to recognize it ?
  - uglygoblin 4y ago
    I empathize deeply with you. I have been dealing with a system of "infinite configurability" for the last couple years and it's playing out the same way. The best I've been able to do is slowly codify the most problematic corners and put guard rails as many places as possible. Sometimes I want to put my hands up in defeat and leave but there is also a satisfaction and growth from simplifying the Rube Goldberg machine. It still sucks though.
    - hinkley 4y ago
      "Code coverage" and code that does everything and thus nothing are a potent cocktail as well. You can have 90% 'coverage' on a file and still only be covering 5% of the actual code paths (that's unfortunately not hyperbole, but a real number from a real analysis I did. When the numbers disagree that much, people tend to ignore the terrifying one)
  - 4y ago
mr_gibbins 4y ago
Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination. The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what turned out to be another 5 years of work. Those eureka moments are where true creativity turns up, I find it impossible to solve problems through dedicated, stare-at-the-screen thought, but I'll get a brainwave at e.g. the gym and nearly drop the weights on my head. Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces, and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free lattes, but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of working that promotes this kind of thing. No idea how this could be done in practice, though.
- sarcoplasmic 4y ago
  This is similar to that ai researcher, Kenneth Stanely, and his talk/book about how planning and having an objective sabotages reaching it. "Greatness cannot be planned" I think was the title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI
- cma 4y ago
  The question is would you be able to still get those spontaneous ideas at a background level without also the staring at the screen and deliberate work?
- lqet 4y ago
  I also vividly remember the moment I had idea 1 from my list above. It was such a nice warm autumn day in the last months of a very turbulent year: I struggled finding something worth doing a PhD on, and in the 10 weeks before, I got married, my wife got pregnant, was rushed into emergency for a suspected ectopic pregnancy a few days later, which then suddenly turned out to be a completely normal pregnancy. I also had an upcoming conference talk a week later, for which I was completely unprepared. Suddenly the idea was there, and it was like a door to a wide avenue opened, with follow-up ideas left and right all along the way. It turned out quite beautiful in the end, and when we published 6 months later, one of the reviewers found the idea "elegant", which was by far the most positive thing I ever read in a paper review.
Fnoord 4y ago
Yes, this is undervalued. It is called the diffuse mode of thinking (as opposed to the focused mode). Walk around in the park during lunch break is work, too.
psychomugs 4y ago
I got an Apple Watch in the endgame of my PhD to catch all the thoughts I'd have out and about, particularly on runs. I rarely reviewed them and a lot was adrenaline-induced ranting and raving, but the act of documenting helped cement them better and drastically cut out the anxiety of potentially forgetting something really good. David Lynch analogizes his sitting-with-cigarettes-and-a-notepad-to-catch-ideas to fishing. You can't chase after them but once in a while a big one will come along.

by lqet 4y ago

marmot777 4y ago

Many top novelists, scientists, engineers, etc., have come up with ideas doing something other than work. We’ve all had ideas at odd times and contexts. Sometimes good and occasionally outstanding ideas or solutions.

jayde2767 4y ago

I know the castration of ideas in the "Everything-is-an-Emergency" company culture. If you're not careful, it will condition you to delay work because the next "emergency" and shift in priority is imminent.

dvergeylen 4y ago
Slightly off-topic, but as a father of two (toddlers), I can relate to this. I have plenty of ideas but if I have (say) 15min available, my brain won't even start because it "knows" the next emergency / interrupt will probably occur within that time period. A bit sad I confess...
lqet 4y ago
This is exactly how my working days looked like in the last 12 months before I quit. Sitting in front of the screen waiting for the next emergency ticket. Why even bother to start some deep work? It will be interrupted, possibly for days, in the next hour anyhow. It was corporately-enforced procrastination, non-stop, for 2 years. At the same time, the technical debt grew and grew, until it towered above everything. It felt like torture. A miserable experience. At some point, my partner mentioned something like "I sure hope you will smile again some time"; around the same time I noticed that I took immense risks in traffic, especially as a pedestrian. Getting up in the morning was extremely difficult. 2 weeks after I left, the ideas came flowing again (ironically for problems we struggled with for months and months at the company).
- qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
  Creativity and experimentation are not needed for survival, so stress hormons flow and the nice things are postponed.
walthamstow 4y ago
This is also happening in government, IMO. Govts get caught up in the latest emergency in the social/media and completely forget about innovation and long term planning. It's particularly acute in the UK at the moment.
hinkley 4y ago
I kept my sanity at one place by working on refactoring every moment there wasn’t an emergency. I was trying to make all the changes easier. But that was after having tried several other solutions, including the dreaded Infinite Configurability, which has to be the absolutely best way to punish most of the team for how clever two or three of them are. I’m working at a place like that now and it’s been an eye roller. After ten years on the project one of the problem people has finally seen this as a problem (though I haven’t heard him admit that he contributes). He’s looking at code now written by two people who have been copying his code style for years, and suddenly feeling the pain of it. It’s great he’s growing, but he’s over forty and should have learned this years ago. I blame a mix of things including staying at one place for far too long. And I keep telling him this code used to be worse, but I’ve been chipping away at it for some time.
- shakadak 4y ago
  Hi, do you have some resources I could check out to understand the concept of what infinite configurability is, and how to recognize it ?
- uglygoblin 4y ago
  I empathize deeply with you. I have been dealing with a system of "infinite configurability" for the last couple years and it's playing out the same way. The best I've been able to do is slowly codify the most problematic corners and put guard rails as many places as possible. Sometimes I want to put my hands up in defeat and leave but there is also a satisfaction and growth from simplifying the Rube Goldberg machine. It still sucks though.
  - hinkley 4y ago
    "Code coverage" and code that does everything and thus nothing are a potent cocktail as well. You can have 90% 'coverage' on a file and still only be covering 5% of the actual code paths (that's unfortunately not hyperbole, but a real number from a real analysis I did. When the numbers disagree that much, people tend to ignore the terrifying one)
- 4y ago

mr_gibbins 4y ago

Snap. Whenever I sat down to cast about for ideas on how to develop the initial form of my PhD, nada, zip. Deliberate concentration on one thing was a shortcut to procrastination. The 'big idea' came when I was on campus, standing outside smoking. Hit me like a bombshell. I literally ran to see my supervisor, blurted out IT'S JUST A F**G MOLECULE, cleared off his whiteboard and spent the next hour sketching out what turned out to be another 5 years of work. Those eureka moments are where true creativity turns up, I find it impossible to solve problems through dedicated, stare-at-the-screen thought, but I'll get a brainwave at e.g. the gym and nearly drop the weights on my head. Companies need to promote creative problem-solving spaces, and I'm not talking about a beanbag area with free lattes, but a sit-and-think, light, non-social way of working that promotes this kind of thing. No idea how this could be done in practice, though.

sarcoplasmic 4y ago
This is similar to that ai researcher, Kenneth Stanely, and his talk/book about how planning and having an objective sabotages reaching it. "Greatness cannot be planned" I think was the title. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXQPL9GooyI
cma 4y ago
The question is would you be able to still get those spontaneous ideas at a background level without also the staring at the screen and deliberate work?
lqet 4y ago
I also vividly remember the moment I had idea 1 from my list above. It was such a nice warm autumn day in the last months of a very turbulent year: I struggled finding something worth doing a PhD on, and in the 10 weeks before, I got married, my wife got pregnant, was rushed into emergency for a suspected ectopic pregnancy a few days later, which then suddenly turned out to be a completely normal pregnancy. I also had an upcoming conference talk a week later, for which I was completely unprepared. Suddenly the idea was there, and it was like a door to a wide avenue opened, with follow-up ideas left and right all along the way. It turned out quite beautiful in the end, and when we published 6 months later, one of the reviewers found the idea "elegant", which was by far the most positive thing I ever read in a paper review.

Fnoord 4y ago

Yes, this is undervalued. It is called the diffuse mode of thinking (as opposed to the focused mode). Walk around in the park during lunch break is work, too.

psychomugs 4y ago

I got an Apple Watch in the endgame of my PhD to catch all the thoughts I'd have out and about, particularly on runs. I rarely reviewed them and a lot was adrenaline-induced ranting and raving, but the act of documenting helped cement them better and drastically cut out the anxiety of potentially forgetting something really good. David Lynch analogizes his sitting-with-cigarettes-and-a-notepad-to-catch-ideas to fishing. You can't chase after them but once in a while a big one will come along.