What you pay attention to becomes your life, and your attention is being pulled on purpose toward things you can't affect. One 45-minute block today, phone in another room. Count the minutes before you reach for something. More of this in the Edge Academia newsletter →

You control your body, your attention, your thoughts and your words. Funding rates and reviewer two are outside the list, and energy spent there is gone. Two columns today, mine and not mine. Act on the first. More of this in the Edge Academia newsletter →

Goals set a direction. Plans decide what happens on a Tuesday in February. Shrink the thing you keep failing at by half, twice, attach it to something you already do, and write it as "when this happens, I do that." More of this in the Edge Academia newsletter →

Feelings follow what you do, far more reliably than the other way round. Reading about writing feels like writing, and that's the trap. Pick the thing you're waiting to feel ready for and do a two-minute version today. More of this in the Edge Academia newsletter →

From: simohosio.com/ai-slop-papers… / it's crazy how even tenured senior faculty falls for... vain optics and nonsense. I know I know, if we're to tap into the wonderful giga-productivity of the future that is driven by AI, there should be nothing wrong with publishing 15 or even 150 papers per year. And I'm sure there is a handful of people out there who are already doing this, but the vast majority is just producing nonsense. If anyone has any ideas about the underlying psychology of this phenomenon, hit me up. Going to write up my own wild guesses soon. Personally, I don't really see a big problem. I'm just very interested in why people self-destruct this way. I don't see a problem because I don't think a paper carries much value soon anymore. Research, yes. A paper as we know it now? Nope. Also, I think as AI is taking over, the human connection will just grow in value. A fair strategy going forward is just to do stuff together with good people and team up. You'll go much further that way.

Grant application season for Simo. Not going to lie, it's a little bit painful to prepare the entire whole thing just to already know that reviewers will complain about something anyway. Daily battle to keep a positive mindset, battling against the odds in that sense. I wish I could have a chat with the reviewers instead. Meh. It's fine. One's got to do with what one's got to do, but I will just tell you that I do find it, personally, a little bit akin to a crime against taxpayers and humanity in general. So much of one's taxpayer-funded job goes into begging for more taxpayer money. All the while, you could actually be doing the research already, trying to benefit humanity. But every time I start getting these thoughts, I'm reminded how much dumb money the world is filled with. It's okay. But the distribution of it should be handled maybe a bit better. One thing is sure: all these thoughts go away after a good session at the gym and that good old overdose of iced coffee. And the mandatory morning walk: simohosio.com/qs/

"Use your mornings to do focused work" . "Ridiculous!" "I have kids!" "This guy has no idea what he's talking about!" Look, you take the wins you can and work very hard to ignore the ones you can't. It's a buffet, not a recipe. No other way to go about things. Our worlds are different. So is everyone's. Nothing in social media generalises. Half of the days, I can't even follow my own advice! I know it's not easy. And I fall for it every day too, I am jealous of a billion things that don't fit my current world. It's a daily struggle to focus only on what's possible. But given how infinite the world is at the moment (and it's never been easier in the history of humankind to find options, to create options, and to knock on doors), I'd say we have it pretty good right now. Find and claim the wins you can. Repeat daily.

thanks to everybody now being an expert statistician (Opus 5 🤢 ) we now we see 2-6 citations added to papers to justify using p threshold 0.05 oh, how fast this all changed

More people need to read this. We are all just human.

Discord 💀 Slack 💀 Mail 💀 Teams 💀 Calendar 💀 Coffee and L-Theanine Morning walk, done Good sleep Brain.fm Dive - (And strategically placed how-to-relax book in the background that I still have not finished or learned) (And Kikkeliskokkelismiehen tuhannet kasvot also peeking there, which one I HAVE finished...and learned)

The academics who can still sit with one hard thing for 90 minutes per day will own the next decade. Everyone can now send out a paper with shallow ideas with AI in an afternoon, Deep is tough. And it starts with your mind. It's the craziest thing in the world when you just, for a couple of days, start practising self-awareness and look at where your focus leaks when you're supposed to be working on something important. Thinking of your problem, through reading and writing. It's infuriating. Makes you angry. First you get crazy mad at all the distractions and everyone else, and then, at some point, you have to admit defeat and just look in the mirror and face the fact that it's your own fault. You're the one who is ultimately distracting yourself from doing the work. And yes, of course, there are people who have too much work. I'm not blaming them, and this is not to say that everyone has enough time to do meaningful work. It's a crazy world. But for the vast majority of us, we choose to be distracted by stuff rather than slay the dragon and work on stuff that matters. Good planning can help. It's not a panacea, but at least that gives you a fighting chance. Give yourself that gift. --> simohosio.com/planners/

Okay I laughed a little. Not a laughing matter, though. It's crazy how many people have turned into slow language model zombies.

Flashback to 2012. Still have warm memories of "Reject Bingo" -- a whiteboard where we logged submissions to the same important venue, and everyone could publicly guess whether something would be accepted or rejected. Everyone cross-authoring most of it, so no hard feelings. Some papers are better than others, we all know that. But we also know how random peer-review is. So it's really hard to guess what gets in and what gets murdered at the gates. +3 points for a correct "accept" -1 points if you guessed accept and the paper got rejected -3 points if you guessed reject and the paper got accepted Fun fact: wisdom of crowds did well. Research is so much fun in a good team.

Folks outside science might think... It's all about the p-values and merit. You'd be surprised how much it comes down to vibes and personal bias. That superstar with the magic touch with grants? You think they choose their partners through merit and merit alone? Or that lab head who has the smartest, hardest-working students, chooses their collaborators... on merits and merits alone? Or, indeed, even that public call... quite often is not quite as public and open as advertised. How things should be != how things be. Such be life.

It took me forever years in academia to learn this, and it's for anyone who's ever told themselves "I'll start next week." You will always find a reason not to write today. Your inbox has 47 unread emails and one of them feels urgent. You will always find a reason your idea isn't ready. Someone published something adjacent to it last month. You will always find a reason your supervisor's feedback means you should quit. You will always find a reason today isn't the day. Tomorrow has fewer meetings. But. You are equally good at finding motivation. You can find the fifteen minutes. You can find the version of today that's good enough. Excuses and motivation come from the same search engine. You just decide what you're searching for. And it's so tempting to look for excuses. Excuses give you freedom to not do it. And you can guarantee not failing when you don't even start whatever you should be doing. No try no fail no win. I still catch myself hunting for the excuse first. I doubt that instinc ever really goes away. The only thing you can do is catch yourself doing it. Become a self-awareness (and iced coffee) maxximizer -- (And walk with me: whop.com/edgeacademia/quick-…)

We should drop the AI use disclaimers. They are counterproductive. And may actually encourage people to be dishonest. At this point, many people use AI for many parts of their work, but they do not want to admit it. Even to themselves, I think. The people who are honest and include an AI use disclaimer may end up being punished for their transparency. For example, if a paper includes a long AI disclaimer, maybe two-thirds of a page, it can influence how a human reviewer sees the work. The reviewer may judge the paper more negatively, even if the AI use was reasonable and openly disclosed. This becomes especially unfair when the paper is reviewed alongside others that may have used AI too, but did not include any disclaimer. In practice, the honest authors stand out, while the less transparent authors avoid scrutiny. Should just be done with it. In things like MSc or PhD theses, I think it still has a point, as those are not judged by external reviewers in the same way that papers are. It's okay to talk about and disclose these things to your supervisors.

Also academics on their way to tenure.

You can't really work 9 to 5 in academia. Last night I was in a super cool meeting at midnight. Now I'm taking a two-hour break in the middle of the day to go to the gym afterat two month break. Yippee Also Hear me out For those of you who are ready for a culinary secret known to only a few elite coffee drinkers in the world: you can just put sparkling water in your iced coffee when it's about to run out. Lo and behold you have a new large iced coffee in your hands The holy combination of gym and iced coffee, aka the nectar of the gods, is the best natural cure for reject anxiety and the pain of old failures Onward and upward!

Academics on their way to tenure