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Why, in Writing, Process Trumps Product, And Why You Shouldn’t Worry About The Quality of Your Work
Everyone’s obsessed with quality, but the way to achieve it is not to focus on it. That’s because: 1) Quality is an Emergent Property An emergent property is one that’s intrinsic to a system, and that arises organically as that system operates. Think of relationships: if you try to force them, they wither and die.…
Read MoreI Bought the World’s Best Coffee Mug at Goodwill Recently, and The Best Part is…
no matter what J says to me, I can respond simply by pointing at it.
Read MoreBetty Ming Liu Quits Her Job: Liberated Time Management in Action!
If your job is not central to your mission, but simply a way to earn money, then one of the profoundest acts of self-liberation you can make is to reduce your hours or (even better) quit. Blogger Betty Ming Liu just quit her job, and her list of goals for her next stage is awesome:…
Read MoreJerry Seinfeld to Writers: “No Slack For You” Even on Festivus!
We like to look for one primary secret to the success of the superstars of the world, even though almost always a combination of factors, people, and circumstances were involved. It remains instructive though when a highly successful professional freely offers the big reveal on how they got to the top. As reported in Lifehacker,…
Read MoreGuest Post: Tips for Thesis Writers: How to Get to the First Draft
Terrific advice for all writers from Ph.D. student Nolanne Chang, reprinted with kind permission. Here’s her blog. She sounds very empowered as she works to create a context that supports her writing productivity! – Hillary Previously in my posts I’ve outlined my feelings on the general structure of writing a science thesis, and what the…
Read MoreAttention all Graduate Students and Junior Faculty
A new cycle of the Academic Success Catalyst Program – 4 weeks of small-group conference calls – starts next week. The ASCP is for graduate students, postdocs, junior faculty, and other junior academic researchers who would like to: • get more productive in their writing and other work • finish their thesis, papers, or other…
Read MoreWednesday Dog: Bowled Over
Most Mad Men-era Men Didn’t Have it So Great, Either, But…
A moving New York Times essay about how most men didn’t have it so great during the Mad Men era. But the fact remains that most men had vastly more choices than most women, back then (and, to a lesser extent, now). Many jobs were closed to women, and classified ads routinely specified an age…
Read MoreIf No One Falls Over, We’re Having a Great Class!
One of my recent newsletters discussed a misguided essay (and now, regrettably, book) by a prominent philosophy professor on his notion of “constructive procrastination. I’m happy now to refer you to this essay, I’m With Stupid, by a writer who is not, to my knowledge, a prominent professor, but who nevertheless has figured out a…
Read MoreIn Which I Advise a Young Baby
My friend, free software activist, Ciaran McHale and his wife, Bianca, recently had a baby–the gorgeous Toby. And they did something completely cool, which was to ask friends concerned with social justice to write letters to Toby, which they would publish in a book. The book Letters to Toby is out, and you can read…
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