Just out of curiosity

I get it when fiction-writer Dean Wesley Smith says that we have a 'creative voice' and a 'critical voice'. Smith always writes with his creative voice, never with the critical one, not even when rewriting the text, simply because he never rewrites. He says the best work is done with the creative voice (and actually, it is the way to enjoy the process the most). It is easy to distinguish between the two voices: the critical voice is always finding problems, and difficulties, it is negative, complaining, judging; the creative voice says 'let's play!' . I think this is the best description I have ever encountered about creative voice: 'let's play!'. No judgment, no evaluation, no worries about reaching the objective. That is why the creative voice is so important: because it does not create barriers, it allows anything to happen ; it does not stop action by analysing it, evaluating it, judging its value, measuring its importance.  The creative voic...

I see that there are some  recurrent  themes in this blog. I do not even remember some of the things that I have written, so probably I am repeating myself.  It doesn't matter: the middle point is always important and worth repeating many times.  This came about yesterday when I was talking with a colleague about my plans of coaching first-year students. We discussed that it is not an easy thing to do, especially because we need to relate to each other, and for that, students have to communicate what is going on with them. First, we discussed students with low self-confidence. I think this is one of the main themes in coaching, because it is pervasive. But then, we started to discuss the opposite case: students that are over-confident or that are perfectionists. Well, they suffer too, and not only do they suffer: just like people with low self-confidence, they sabotage themselves, it is just that they use different strategies. Students that have an identity of 'being...

When we want to achieve something difficult, or something that we find hard, we are told to use our willpower. My experience is that this only works if you know that you only need to exert your willpower for a given period of time, even if that period of time may be long. After that, willpower wears out. Willpower is finite, you just have a given amount to use. So if I have to use willpower every day to wake up at six in the morning and go out for a run, you can imagine that I may do it for a while, but that it will be very hard to keep doing it for life.  It is said that if you sustain an activity for a given amount of time, then it becomes a habit.  I think there is a little trick here. It is true that starting something new may require a lot of willpower due to the initial resistance. But the key here is that the resistance must subside at some point so that you do not need willpower, then the activity can become a habit. However, for some, resistance subsides, for others, ...

This friend of mine told me something interesting today. He had heard a podcast where  a military leader states that a leader should bring emotional balance to their group. T his also happens when leading a group of researchers.  In leading research groups, there is an important part of the role that is not based on knowledge transfer or experience, but on being an emotional counterbalance: they are too excited, you have to calm them down to avoid over-motivation; they are too nervous, you have to downplay  and relativize; they are anxious, you have to stay calm; they are under-motivated, you have to show excitement and positivity; they think "they are shit", you have to show extra appreciation,... If emotions are too high, you have to bring them down; if they are down, you have to bring them up. The toughest part, though, is to not get infected by their emotional state. For example, it was hard for me to be with a student that showed high signs of anxiety. In the beginni...

  "Tension is who you think you should be, relaxation is who you are" - Chinese proverb

I do not know how people manage their email, but for a long time it felt like the devil itself had invented it. It felt like a source of distraction, time waste, and stress. Seeing all those messages piling up, thinking of the person behind them waiting for a response, and getting them at any time was driving me crazy. And there was the guilt. The guilt of not responding to them or if I responded to them, then the guilt of not doing something that was "more important". At times it felt that either I replied to emails or I did research, there was not enough time to do both. With emails sometimes I was frozen in the process of decision-making, "what do I do with this email?" And they would stay in my inbox and I would keep reading the subject line, again and again, every time I opened the inbox anew. What a waste of time and energy. It also hindered my capacity to take action. The solution for me came with an 'empty inbox' policy. The only thing that gives me ...

On the surface it may seem that we are giving equal opportunities to everyone to study mathematics at university. Of course, we know that it is not completely true because many factors play an important role, like differences in economic and social background - being well off and having people supporting you makes opportunities seem more real. Still, the fact is that, where I am, everyone has the right to go to university and, therefore, everyone has the right to study mathematics. But even before going to university, children and youngsters may already have been robbed of the opportunity, not because of lack of financial or external support, but by lack of internal support. Robbing opportunities this way works very simply: convince children that they are inferior to others (because, e.g., they belong to a given group), convince them that they cannot do it, convince them that they do not belong somewhere. This process will create an inner voice in the child that will whisper relentless...

Randy Ingermanson came up with the "Snowflake method" for outlining novels. It is an analytical approach to plotting, based on iteratively refining ideas for the novel.  I will give this method a try. Given that I am quite analytical myself (Ingermanson is a doctor in Physics), maybe his method will suit me well. I will not explain the method here, but I give a link at the end. I was listening to an interview with Ingermanson and there are  three particular points that thought of sharing: 1. The one-sentence summary.  The first step of the snowflake method - there are ten steps in total - consists of writing down a one-sentence summary of the novel. This is actually pretty difficult to do and, therefore, easy to get stuck there. Ingermanson recommends dedicating just one hour to this process and then moving on to the next step. This is not a problem because after each step we can revise and update the previous ones, so this one sentence will evolve during the process. I l...

In Zen philosophy, we are encouraged to focus more on the process needed to achieve a goal, rather than on the goal itself. Of course, goals are important - they give direction, - the point is that the process and the final product are not separated from each other - the process is part of the goal . Eckhart Tolle asks something along the lines: 'If in the end you achieve your goals, but you become depleted, was it worth it?'. That is why we are encouraged to take care of the process and live it joyfully - to avoid becoming victims of our achievements.  I was thinking about how many of our goals - when looking at them holistically - can be seen as processes. Say I write a blog post. One could think that my goal is the final product: the post. But I do not write to have a product - at least not just because of that. As a creator, I have two processes in mind: my own writing process, and the reader's reading process. My actual objective - producing a blog post - is just a mea...

Going from a post-doc position to a group leader position is a big jump. For me, the biggest difference is to have people under my care. And I use the expression "under my care" on purpose: I feel responsible for them - at least to an extent. This puts pressure. However, what puts more pressure on me is the mentality of "now I am a group leader", i.e., I have a new identity and I have to live up to its expectations. And what happens when group leaders feel that are not meeting their own standards? Group leaders may feel like hiding their own lack of knowledge and weaknesses. This is human, but also devastating. When leaders try to hide their vulnerabilities, they avoid situations of growth: asking questions, meeting people, starting discussions. Not only that, every situation is about " what does this say about me?" rather than being about the project, the people, the lesson. In the end, every situation becomes a potential threat - a threat to their ident...