Late stage capitalism wants us dead - what can we do about it?

Inger and Jason have been on summer holidays. Jason's family acquired a 10 year old ginger cat, while Inger has committed to #puppyproject and put a deposit on a dangerously adorable, small fluffy puppy. Prepare for a lot of pet talk this year!

In the mailbag there's a good description of a workflow with Todoist and a lively discussion of bullet journals. The work problems segment was produced with the help of Inger's work Husband, Claude who (it seems) has a frighteningly good grasp of the problems of late stage capitalism. We're talking about the pressures of the sector, work burn out and health, so if you'd rather not listen to that, skip to our reading segment where Inger convinces Jason to read another romance novel!

We close out with a brief chat about Omnifocus (again!)

Things we mentioned:
Coton De Trulear (dog breed)
Tofu Eating Wokerati comment
Migoals daily planner
Todoist
Zoe Podcast
Generative AI for academics

Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on <pod@ontheregteam.com>

-  Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.

-  See our workshop catalogue on www.ontheregteam.com. You can book us via emailing Jason at enquiries@ontheregteam.com

-  Subscribe to the free, monthly Two Minute Tips newsletter here (scroll down to enter your email address)

- We're on BlueSky as @drjd and @thesiswhisperer (but don't expect to hear back from Jason, he's still mostly on a Socials break).

- Read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com. 

- If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a 'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Transcript

Jason: Doing less, but doing it better. 

Inger: Absolutely. All right. Uh, welcome to On The Reg. I'm Professor Inga Mewburn from the Australian National University, but I'm better known as Thesis Whisperer on the internet, and I'm here with my good friend, Dr. Jason Downs for another episode of On The Reg, where we talk about work, but you know, not in a boring way.

Practical implementable productivity hacks to help you live a more balanced life. And in this episode, listeners, we're going to tackle the increasing pressures of academic work culture. We're going to talk about strategies for wellbeing when everything feels like it's just too fucking much. I added that in, I editorialized on our notes, uh, from redundancy rounds to metrics pressure, we're going to discuss how to survive, maybe thrive.

I don't know. And talk about change. I would just rift on Claude's notes there. Cause Claude was a little bit, you know, Claude ish. 

both: I'm like, that's a bit nice. 

Inger: I'm going to add a fucking in there and then I'm going to take the explicit. And you know what you're going to get? 

Jason: We talk about work, but not in a Claude way.

I mean, boring way. 

Inger: Exactly. And look, when I talked to Claude about this episode. It suggested that I put a content warning up the top. So here it is. Here's your content warning. We're going to talk about workplace stress. We're going to talk about mental health. We're going to talk about physical health.

And if you need support for that, you know where to go in your local countries. I hope in Australia, it's lifeline um, or turn it off. Go listen to something else. Yeah, plenty of stuff to listen to. We won't be offended. Come back when we're just talking about, I don't know, email.

Although that might need a content warning as well, you know. I was 

Jason: about to say, of all of the technologies that we have, right? Email would have to be the one that's brought the most stress and pressure. 

both: I know, like didn't they do the wrap up? 

Jason: We talk to these people all the time, right? All around us. And we're like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then we say things, you know, shocking things. Like you don't have to answer email as soon as it comes in. And people look at us as though we're crazy. 

Inger: Yeah. And that workshop exercise where we get people to put in a way message for the day. 

Jason: Yeah. Oof. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: I reckon you get 10 to 15 percent compliance with that.

Inger: Maybe. 

Jason: Maybe. All right, people, this is good for you. Turn it off. Just turn it off. Turn off the email. 

Inger: We have, in fact, turned it off for two hours while we record this pod. 

Jason: Yes. So, there you go. 

Inger: Do not disturb. Not here. Not doing multiple things. 

Jason: And on top of that, I've also told number one son to get off the internet.

So, 

Inger: Oh, okay. That's great. Our family harmony restored. How have you been since we last caught up? 

Jason: Amazing. Um, so the last time we caught up, we were here and here in Melbourne. Uh, you were here in Melbourne as well. And we did the kitchen table. Um, the car, 

Inger: the car washing episode is the car washing episode.

Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: And. , Alex Morton, good friend of the pod and the Morton family. 

Inger: Hi Alex. Hi Morton family. 

Jason: All went up to Brisbane, Queensland. I'm vague on the details. They have told me multiple times and I'm like, Oh, that sounds like fun. Sailing things. I don't know that people were sailing, right? Um, some sort of national sailing regatta type thing.

They all piled into the car and they all went up to Brisbane. And they're all friends, right? The kids are friends with Jack and all that sort of stuff. So what do they do? They listen to our podcast on the way out. 

both: Sit they! 

Jason: Glisten. Cotton socks. So apparently the feedback was that it was mean that we talked about Jack losing his phone at the bottom of the lake.

We shouldn't talk about this on the podcast. 

Inger: Jack doesn't listen, it's fine. 

Jason: No, but he, yes. I actually, he, when we drove over to South Australia for Christmas, I played our episode in the car. I was like, what? You can't talk about this stuff on the podcast. So anyway, update, right? There's an update. So besides, you know, getting, Shade from our friends about, you know, throwing my son under the bus.

Uh, he's got his phone back. He's, we went out yesterday, day before, , and picked up the replacement phone. Well done, Jack. Enjoy that. Three months, three months. There's a lesson. Yep. 

Inger: I mean, you know, experience is the best teacher, as Julius Caesar once said. 

Jason: And the best thing about this, like, like I can't even believe that I'm doing this.

He dropped it in the bottom of Lake Hume, up at the Aubrey Wodonga Sailing Club for the Sail Country Sailing Louiana. So we're going up next week. To the Mirra Nationals Sailing Regatta at the Aubrey Wodonga Sailing Club on Lakeview. And I'm like, I should open a book about whether or not we come home with a phone.

Inger: I can't say enough about double plastic baggy the phone. Can't say enough about that, young Jack, but let's see. Sometimes you have to learn lessons twice. I did with burnout. I did two of those before I learned not to bloody do that. 

Jason: So last night we're getting ready for this thing. Like we go to get the boat to take it load it all up so that it can be transported up to it.

And so what did I do last night? I'm with Alex in the car and Jack, and we're loading these boats onto the trailer and all the rest of it. And I'm sitting in the front of the car and I put my phone in my wallet in the cup holders of Alex's car. We load the boats on, he comes back, drops us, turfs us out of the car and we go back into the house.

Where do I leave my wallet and my phone? In Alex's car, Jack comes, I go, I have to go back and get my fine, blah, blah, blah. Jack in the kitchen, like with Kathy goes, Oh, maybe you should buy a new one.

Starts throwing shade. Kath just looks at him and goes, Too soon.

It was bloody funny. He's a funny kid. No, that was funny. That was Your 

Inger: kid is funny and also an excellent, excellent car washer. Like I, I would just, you know, I got it washed and Brendan took it down to the, you know, the fancy bougie washers. Not as good as young Jack. And I said to Luke, maybe we should buy some sponges and shit and actually do it ourselves.

And he just looked at me and I said, no, we're not going to do that. Now that we have two cars, it's really weird because we, you know, cause we've only got a one car garage. So there's a lot of moving the cars backwards and forwards, you see. So it's a bit of like, Move the Tirranna to get the, you know, to get the Holden out type of, except with a Tesla and a Volvo.

So it's like the bougie version of that. 

Jason: Who's got which car in the garage and who's, who's taking it, using it? I 

Inger: have the Volvo in the garage, little rascal. 

Jason: The 

Inger: Volvo, she's my, she's my precious baby. 

Jason: So the Tesla's out in the rain. 

Inger: The Tesla's in the rain. We did buy a cover for it though, so, you know, it gets a nice cover.

Jason: Like a nice little blanket. 

Inger: Blankie. I mean, the Volvo's my baby until I get my fur baby, but we'll talk about that. I have no doubt. Do I see a line here in your notes that there is a new fur baby in the Downs household? 

Jason: Oh my god, yes, we have a cat. 

Inger: Oh, congratulations. 

Jason: No. 

Inger: Cat or kitten? Cat. Ten years 

Jason: old.

Cat. 

Inger: A rescue. Oh, oh, a veteran cat. Like I can't, 

Jason: I cannot write these stories for my life, right? Like I'm not making this shit up. This actually happens to me. So people may remember that poor old Dodge. We had Dodge for 19 

Inger: years. 19 years he hated you. Hated me. 

Jason: 19 

Inger: years. 

Jason: So, so we've got a friend, she's just picked up a new high powered job, launching some anti corruption thing over in Papua New Guinea, right?

Good for her. 

both: Yeah. 

Jason: Like awesome, huge job, all sorts of things, but causes a little bit of disruption in the home life, as you can imagine, moving. So, um, she'd rented out her house, found herself between places because she'd rented out her place, but didn't have anywhere to like, she had places to go, but it was really all uncomfortable, blah, blah, blah.

We were going away for three weeks over Christmas. So it was, why don't you stay at our place? And then while you're there, you can see if you can rehome your 10 year old. Ginger cat. Ginger. Ginger. 

Inger: Mmm. 

Jason: Now, Ginger may have been referred. I've seen the Instagram 

Inger: stories. 

Jason: Ginger may have been referred to as Ginger the Bastard Cat.

Right. Ginger 

Inger: the Bastard Cat. 

Jason: Right. Maybe. Maybe. I'm not saying. Maybe by me. I don't know. Anyway. So, so our friend and her daughter stay here, Ginger stays here, we're away for three weeks. We sort of come back. And in the process of coming back Kath brings up and says, what are you going to do with Ginger?

Because they tried to re home her. Someone had put their hands up to say, yes, I would, uh, yeah, look, that would be great. We'd love to have Ginger. Ginger goes to the new home. Don't know what Ginger did, but was summarily kicked out of that new home. Like we can't have this cat in our house. Right. Ginger.

So we're on the way back, Kat's in phone calls and it's like, what are you going to do with the cat? Well, if we can't find somewhere before I go to Papua New Guinea, we're going to have to go off to the council. What does that mean? Euthanasia. And like Kat's like, no, no, no, we can't do that. Like I, I just can't let that happen.

And so I'm like, hmm.

Can't you though? No, no. That's 

both: not 

Inger: true. Listeners, don't write in just like, you know, Jason's not a cat hater, he's just a cat mediocre sort of maybe doesn't really like her. 

Jason: I'm a cat hate receiver. I just don't like 

Inger: you. It's like the one way thing. 

Jason: So anyway, long, long story. Dogs love you though. Dogs fucking love you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dogs. Like I get along with dogs, but cats. Um, long story short, we cut a deal and it's like, we'll look after Ginger while you're away at Papua New Guinea. You've got a contract and then when you come back, you can take Ginger off our hands. Yep, cool. Everybody's happy with all of that sort of stuff.

We walk into the house after being away. The cat makes instant love heart emoji eyes for cat, right? Oh, knows what side 

Inger: it spreads buttered on. 

Jason: It was love at first sight. Like, I've never seen anything like it, right? 

Inger: Well, Kathy is very lovable. I mean, you know, let's be 

Jason: real. What does the cat do to me?

Looks at me and literally, like, actually hisses at me. 

both: No! Yes, yes. And 

Jason: like, and like, it just keeps this massive distance between me and this cat, right? And now this is a chonker cat. This is a big cat. Yeah, yeah, chunky boy. 

Inger: Chunky boy. 

Jason: Chunky boy, big ginger chunky 

Inger: boy. He needs his own Instagram handle. Like I follow cats like this.

I follow Waffle, Waffles and Maples. Waffles is a ginger cat and Maples is a golden retriever and waffle. And they have a, they have a video every week called, I think it's called. Golden breakfast club is the handle, but they have a video every week. Cause what annoyed waffles this week. And it'd be like the spare, which is you, by the way, the spare existing, you know, and it'd be all these shots of it.

Just like looking at her husband going, 

both: yes, 

Inger: it's a 

both: real thing. It's a real thing. Yeah, this is a real thing. 

Jason: Um, so the cat hates me and I'm like, uh, I I've got your cat because I've already had 19 years of this. I like, I like, I can, I can deal with this. You can hate me. That's fine. I'm just going to ignore you.

You're on your own. Um, we had a friend come over on Sunday for coffee. And at the same time, Jack comes home. Like he'd stayed with his grandparents for a little bit longer. He comes home, walks into the house. Cat doesn't like Jack, so it's all about cat. Jack and I are like, we're hated. So anyway, Jack goes on.

Inger: Dodger didn't hate Jack though, did he? No, no, 

Jason: no. Dodger and Jack get along really well. 

Inger: Yeah, yeah, right. So this is new for Jack. This is new. He's come to your side now. He's like, I get it, Dad. 

Jason: So Jack goes, Jack goes on a charm offensive, right? Oh, no. Right. Did it work? Well, it, it looked like it was going to.

So the cat was like, like it looked like there was breakthroughs. There was treats involved, all this sort of stuff. Sunday, friend comes over for coffee. There's a storm. Here, like kind of, yeah. Yes, there's always 

Inger: storms at the moment, yeah. Yeah, yeah, vague, vague 

Jason: kind of storm, not like really serious or anything.

Just like, you know, a little bit of thunder in the distance sort of stuff. Except for the moment when Jack was actually trying to pat the cat. Ahh! 

both: And we 

Jason: had a thunderclap that felt like it, it, Um, just started inside the house. 

both: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like it 

Jason: was a big flash of lightning and went 

both: BANG! 

Jason: Um, our friend Melissa screamed like it was that loud, right?

Um, and the cat just took off. So now Jack is associated with loud bangs and scary things. 

both: Oh dear. The cat won't come 

Jason: near either of us. But won't go near Jack the most. So he's now the third on the totem pole. And I'm 

both: like, I'm 

Jason: strutting around because I'm now number two. I'm a long way behind number one, but I'm like, I'm second.

I'm the least most hated person in the house now. 

Inger: Love 

both: that. 

Inger: Brendan probably has some, some paste or something that you can buy from the pet store that you could, um, You know, bribe it with, because Brendan, so my son Brendan, for those of you who aren't familiar with me talking about my, my kid, who's, you know, not really a kid anymore, he's only 23.

Anyway he often talks about how like the primary purpose of treats for pets is gaslighting. You just gaslight them into liking, gaslight them into doing things for you. And you know, you've got to have respect for cats. They're just a bit more resistant to the old gaslighting techniques, you know? 

Jason: Yeah.

Yeah. We've got this stuff we call cat cocaine. It comes in a little tube. They love it, right? 

both: But 

Jason: this cat is food driven and will like lap this stuff up. Like the, the sound when it eats is like, like, it's like, it's just, it's It's a fiend for this stuff, but as soon as it's finished, like it backs away and it looks at you as though, 

Inger: like, don't even try it.

Jason: So there we go. We have, we have a cat, but three years. Is this 

Inger: a natural, natural breaking proceedings where I introduce dog talk? Is this going to be the 

both: new pod? Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. Um, like, um, I, we have moved on to, I think, the second to last stage of the dog acquisition project, which is where , my dear husband, Mr.

Thesis Whisperer, accepts his fate. 

Jason: Has he actually said the words, yes? I think, I think it 

Inger: was okay then. I think that's what I got. 

Jason: , I thought you were going to hold out longer, man. 

Inger: Because all his male friends who are in similar situations with wives who are like, we're getting a dog now. No, or a cat, whatever, like it's going to happen.

They were like, you're fucked man. He's kind of like, am I? And they're like, yep. And last time we had dinner with some people and they're like, oh yeah. Yeah, we got, we've now got two and the husband's just looked at each other and he just went It's like wide eyed like what I'm like, it's all right, honey.

We're just getting one That's my line and I'm sticking to it. I'm getting a very small white fluffy dog Yes. Called, get this, it's a pedigree breed. Right. It's called a Coton de Trillier. Ooh, fancy. Or coton for short. It's a Bichon Frise. Yeah, cotton. Like, because they've got a cottony kind of coat. It's a Bichon Frise, uh, variant from the island of Madagascar.

Now, the legend behind this dog is that it, it, it arrived in Madagascar from swimming from a shipwreck. Yeah. Yeah. Of all the Bichons, they've got an affinity for water. They actually like to swim. The rest of them are like, eh, not so keen, but this one loves to swim. Also was the favorite dog of Madagascan Royal tribe.

And they wouldn't let commoners own them. Yes, it is small. It is white. It is fluffy. It is adorable. 

both: It likes 

Inger: to dance on its hind legs. 

both: Does it now? 

Inger: It's also ludicrously expensive, don't even ask me, like already I can see. This is just like, open your wallet, give me all the money. And yeah, we have a pocket money system in our house.

We have had it for nearly 30 years, which is all the money goes into a pot that pays for house and rent. Everything else like consolidated revenue, we call it. And from that get, we get given walk around money. It's what the mafia used to call it. You know, you get the, you know, and so that, so we pay each other pocket money.

I get more pocket money cause I have a bonus cost of being female. Yes. In my pocket money. I am, uh, paying for the dog out of my pocket money. Oh, dang. Oh, 

Jason: it's hurting. 

Inger: There are no treats for me this year.

No treats. No 

Jason: treats. So, 

Inger: yeah. 

Jason: Also, also ongoing revenue stream might be depleted, right? These things, these like, they eat things, but 

Inger: you know what you said every time I say something like this and I go, Ooh, should we, in the business sense, as you know, we run a business together and you say, it's okay, I'll just sell one more workshop.

both: All right. So your solution is a little 

Inger: more than one workshop, but it's not heaps more than one more workshop.

And I'm like, Jason will send me another workshop. This is fine. 

both: Hang on. How did I get roped into this? That's something I feel like I'm buying your dog.

Inger: Yeah. So that's what's happening. I hope. Anyway. 

both: Okay. All right. Yeah. I'm deep 

Inger: into talking to breeders. I'm deep into like the dams and the size. I was very impressed that one of the, that the boy dog's name is possibly, get this, Skyfall. I know it's a good name, right? But I already have my dog name picked out.

I had to tell her what I wanted the dog name to be and I was a tiny bit embarrassed when I told her the dog name because the, the dog name, like it's going to be called Tofu, like little white block of a dog, right? But it's show name, it's, I'm not showing it, but if I was showing it, you know how they have a longer name?

Jason: Yes. No. 

Inger: They have a show name, like Prince Charles, something or other, like it's a whole thing. Okay. Get with it, Jason. We're going to talk. So it's show name is going to be Tofu Eating Wokorati.

Jason: Tofu eating what? 

Inger: Wokorati. Like the woke, you know, the woke people. The woke karate. UK listeners may recognize it as a dismissive term that Suella Braverman once used about people like me. That we're tofu eating woke karate. So I decided that's what I'm going to call my dog. Fuck you Suella Braverman, by the way.

Anyway, so it's going to make going back to work, like I need a hobby, man. Like I really do. Okay. Like I need to do something that is just not writing, making pods. Like I love you, right? I love our business. I love everything we do together. I love it. You know, but I need to do like something else with my life.

I've decided like where you cannot actually, if you're with the dog, you're trying to train. I want to do agility. Maybe the dog. So. I, if I'm training a dog, like I can't be on my phone, I can't be reading about, you know, dickheads, oligarchs, and you know, I just need a break from all of that. I need to do something else.

I need, I need to be brushing a dog. I need to be washing a dog. I need to be considering deeply. The shape of my dog's next haircut. 

both: Yes. 

Inger: Like, and really, you know, like I need to just get into it. And I think I, I just need something. 

Jason: You should, you should see yourself right now. Like, so listen, when we record this, we use Riverside, which allows us to, uh, use video to see each other while we're recording, cause we're in different cities.

both: And like, 

Jason: you should see Inga at the moment. She is glowing. She's positively glowing at the moment. She's so excited with herself. 

Inger: Darling, that's just a new peptide screen that my skin lady gave me. Oh, okay. But like, honestly, I went back to work on the second, and by the third I was crying. Like, crying at my desk.

Because my, my dear assistant, Parker went on to do better things. Uh, so we lost Kelly, we've lost Barker, we're down from five to three and it's just like, I don't know how I'm going to get through this year. I don't know. Cause we have 4, 000 people sign up to things, right? Yeah. That's just a lot of emails about when is this on again?

Can I come half an hour late? You know, 

both: that kind of 

Inger: shit. Yes. 

both: No, I can't. 

Inger: And Barker used to just save me from that. She was like, you know, I miss you Barker. We had lunch, you know, cause she was worried about me. 

both: She's 

Inger: working just down the road. It's like, it's all right Barker. And they cried a little bit.

I went and I bought a paper diary for the first time in, I don't know the last time I owned a paper diary, more than 10 years. And I'm actually really enjoying it. Like actually, I think I've worked out about me. I need to see things like, like, so I've got like whiteboard calendars and I've got paper diaries and I've got physical timers and like those things really work for me.

both: So yeah, 

Inger: so I got this, this diary, um, this is on topic for On The Reg, right? So like, I've got like this thing called my goals, M I goals. 

Jason: Yes, not E my goals like 

Inger: and and it's like it's got like affirmations and shit. Yeah. I'm a gold. I'm 

Jason: a gold. I'm a gold 

Inger: digger. 

Jason: Not gold. I turn 

Inger: my dreams into gold and those goals into reality.

My purpose inspires me and drives me. Anyway, like it goes on for pages, pages and pages. I skipped over it. Like I started doing it and I'm like, I just like, no, this is nauseating. Like, like look how much it is like of the diary. It's that much, like, holy cow. Yeah. That's like, it's just like goal setting shit.

It's like a 

Jason: quarter of maybe, 

Inger: I mean, if you need a structured goal setting, like it's actually pretty good. Right. And then at the start of the month, it's got this monthly spread, like you do with it. Yeah. Which is useful, 

Jason: right? 

Inger: Useful monthly planner. And then each of the weeks is like this double spread.

I'm just going to hold it. Yeah. Right? So you've got a little bit of guff up here. You've got like a habit tracker. And then each day I just sort of treat a bit like a bullet journal. 

Jason: It's kind of like, looks a bit like a bullet journal. 

Inger: It kind of is a combo of a diary and a bullet journal. I like it. I've still got my bullet journal, but my bullet journals become a lot more about Just projects.

Whereas this is the day to day. And you know how it's best practice, Jason, to only put one or two or three things that have to be done each day? Oh yes. Because there is limited space here. 

both: Yeah, 

Inger: that's actually what's happening and at least if those things are done things aren't completely off the rails So that and the team coming back.

Thank you, Lindsay. Thank you Simon for being awesome They came back and they're like everyone put their shoulder to the wheel and we're not loving it. You're just gonna do less Doing less exactly. We're doing less, but we're doing it better. Yeah, and every time someone complains, that's what happens Anyway, I'm just looking at the time and we are so like Yeah, but it's the start of the 

Jason: year.

Start how you intend to finish. And some of 

Inger: that, like, hopefully that was amusing. Like, so we started the new year, so we now like, we can do car talk, boat talk and cat and dog talk. 

both: We 

Inger: can introduce our pets to each other over the camera, although Ginger is not your pet. Right. Exactly. Not your pet. I just want a little dog that wants to lie on my feet while I write.

Jason: I dearly hope that this dog fulfills all of those dreams. I 

Inger: do. And even if it doesn't, it's just going to love me unconditionally. And maybe I need that. I get plenty of unconditional love, by the way, already from my husband and son. I just need more. Okay. Mailbag. We love hearing from, we love hearing from you.

And this is our chance to share interesting things. Our listeners share with us, by the way, Jason, we are so lucky. Our listeners are the best. 

both: Um, 

Inger: and we have a shiny new email address again, which have people picked up on that and things coming through to that address. Yeah. 

Jason: Uh, still 

Inger: monitoring other things.

Jason: Um, people have not been emailing that particular address. Over the break, but I put that down to people are, you know, not sitting at their computers, hopefully. Sure. 

Inger: Good, good. But you can write to us now that some of you are back at your computers, pod at on theregteam. com. 

 That's our final, never changing it again. And we'll make sure your email makes it to the next episode. Um, I did cross my 

Jason: fingers behind my back about never seeing that angle again. No, 

Inger: we won't. We won't. 

Jason: Um, 

Inger: you're, you're, you go, go for you, Jason. 

Jason: Right. This one's from Sally Anne in the United Kingdom via Buzzsprout fan mail.

So this is Hello Sally 

Inger: Anne Weary. 

Jason: So this is the thing that Inger implemented without telling me 

Inger: about, 

Jason: where you can click on a link, I think on the show notes, and you can send us 

both: a 

Jason: little fan mail, unless 

both: you put your name 

Jason: in it, we've got no idea who this is coming from, and we've got no way of getting back to you.

But 

Inger: Sally did, Sally Anne did. 

Jason: Sally Anne did put her name in it. Um, and so here we are, uh, Sally Anne writes, I gather this is legal as long as you don't share the PDF. 

Inger: Are we talking now about books, 

Jason: um, from the last episode? Yes. Because 

Inger: she 

Jason: launched straight into the middle of a conversation with you.

Because she's 

Inger: just conversation with the poet, which is the great thing about this particular little communications channel. You can just go, I've got a thought about that and you just fire off the text. 

Jason: Yeah, which is what happened. So it took me a little while to go, what are we talking about here? But in truth, it is, what we are talking about is PDFs of eBooks and how difficult it is and why it's, why it's just a pain in the ass.

Anyway. And 

Inger: there was a suggestion that you just like download them slowly. And we had a, I had a whole rant about publishers and that was a thing. 

Jason: Yeah. So Sally Ann says, I gather it's legal as long as you don't share the PDF. You can export digital books into PDFs from a range of platforms using EPUB programs, 

both: then 

Jason: you can keep them and definitely not share them.

both: Can I 

Jason: recommend Kim Rain Square Pegs, a book of self discovery for women with ADHD, it was a vicious, accurate attack, Sally Ann. So I think what happened here is that she may have, Sally Ann may have I've written two things and then I've just combined them together. That's why that reads like that. So yeah.

Um, so yes, EPUB platforms, download them, don't share them. And Kim Raine's Square Pegs, a book of self discovery for women with ADHD. 

Inger: Thank you, Sallyanne. I will pick that one up. I still, I still don't think I have ADHD, although people in my life constantly tell me I do. So there you go. You should name your 

Jason: dog.

You should name your dog ADHD. 

Inger: Oh, it's a bit too many syllables 

Jason: though. What, like, tofu? ADHD! 

Inger: It's too much.

Jason: Oh, okay. ADHD, get over here. ADHD, stop that. No? 

Inger: Too much, too much. 

Jason: Too much, alright. 

Inger: It's like, you know how you have Jack, and then when you're mad at him, or want his attention, you say, Jack Downs? 

Jason: Yes.

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: Two syllables. That's all it is. It's cute how 

Inger: you both all in that. Um, yes. So thank you for that. And good to know that we are spreading the public service announcement love about how to deal with. E books from your university library. Yes. So there you go. Don't share them with anyone. No. Spend the time downloading the two chapters a day or whatever it'll let you do.

Compile it in Zotero, write your notes, keep it for yourself, doesn't, like, that's it. That's legal according to Sally Anne and she should know. 

Jason: Okay. By the way. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: So I believe. The next one is for you because it's all in black. 

Inger: Oh, you sure you don't want to read it? Like. No, 

Jason: I don't because it's. I've talked 

Inger: a lot already.

Take care. 

Jason: It's really, really long. And that's why I deliberately let you do 

Inger: it. I don't know why you think I'm better at that than you. But anyway, this one is from Georgia. He's a PhD candidate and research officer at Massey business school in New Zealand. Hello, Georgia. Lovely, New Zealand, jealous, Massey.

Haven't been there for years. It's lovely. Should you ever get a chance to go Jason? . I've never, 

Jason: I've never been to New Zealand. So if anyone from Massey wants to invite us, yeah, I've never gone across the pond. I know, right? It's just there. And I've never, I've never gone there. We need to 

Inger: make, could someone please book us?

Thank you. Okay. Um, Kia ora, Inga and Jason. I'm a regular listener of On The Reg and wanted to share something that might be valuable for your student audience and those that don't want to pay for software. I'm listening, Georgia. I've noticed that you often recommend OmniFocus for academic productivity and it's great, but as a PhD student, I've created an effective academic workflow using free version of Todoist.

I've heard good things about Todoist. Yeah. So I'm here for this, Georgia. Georgia writes, this might be helpful for students or early career researchers who want to build good productivity habits before investing in premium tools. Excellent. That's down with my principles. Here's how my system works to do is free tier.

Okay. Projects. I use four main projects out of the limit of five that Todoist will give you. Like, I could never live with just five projects. No. Um, so she has, and I think this is quite clever, scheduled for date specific tasks. This week for flexible, but timely work, someday for future tasks, um, waiting for tasks dependent on others.

both: Yeah, it's really good. The 

Inger: key to making this work is using labels. which are, and they're called tags in OmniFocus, which are unlimited in the free version. Thank you to do is to represent different areas of work. I use labels in the same way that people would typically use projects in OmniFocus. My main labels are PhD, job and home admin for specific projects within these areas.

I create PhD, Um, hyphen chapter one and keep them grouped together on the label list. So they appear together in views. Every task in Todoist gets a project, a label, and a priority level. Deep work tasks are usually priority one, since they're the first thing I do in my workflow. What makes this powerful is the views system.

All views are grouped by label and sorted by priority, which is similar to perspectives in Omnifocus. So when I check my today tab, I see all the tasks that are due today, grouped by label and sorted by priority. For example, all my PhD tasks are grouped together in the same section and sorted by priority.

I can also go a bit deeper here and create a filter to see only PhD tasks that are due today, but I can keep things as simple as possible. Uh, reviews to keep everything smoothly. I do daily reviews. I clear the Todoist inbox and I review tomorrow's calendar and tasks. Weekly reviews, email and Todoist inbox zero at the end of each week.

I'm guessing this is what she does, review next week's calendar, review the Sunday tasks, move them to this week if necessary, or just decide possibly this is me editorialing Editorializing that maybe you're not going to do them, because I should do that with my someday folder. I call mine future focus, but I think I might rename it to Sunday, someday, because that's good.

Um, sorry, I'll go back to Georgia. Ensure that at least 10 weeks, 10 tasks are in this week for the next week. Check on the waiting items. And then she says workflow. I structured my work day with four hours of deep work writing slash research in the morning, leaving the afternoon for this week's tasks, meetings, and email management.

I work two days a week at my job and work on my PhD the other three days. That's what I used to do, Georgia. So, um, welcome. That's, I get it. Um, Georgia writes, I realize this is probably confusing if you're not familiar with to do lists. I'd be happy to share my details with anyone. My personal email is, should I read this out?

Like, are we asking for an avalanche? 

Jason: Um, if you really want Georgia's email, you can pod at 

Inger: on the reg team. com, we'll send it. We'll put you in touch. We'll send a little happy, like intro email between you. In fact, side note, I feel like workflow is not talked about enough in the productivity space. Yes. I would love to know exactly how you structure and organize your day, how you use what projects, how you choose what projects to work on, how do you distribute service, research, teaching, other tasks, for example, thanks for all the great work you do.

Ngar Mahi. That I got that totally wrong, but that's goodbye. Mary, yep, um, from Georgia, PS, I drafted this email using Claude, obviously. It wasn't that obvious, but actually very good email. Claude is great when you've got those sort of complicated, I want to tell someone something, because that was actually really clear.

Yes. Thank you, Georgia. That sounds really clever. I, you know, especially if you've got a freemium tier that kind of restricts you to, that's sort of good workaround using the labels instead of the sort of projects. Yeah. What do you think? Yeah. 

Jason: It's really clear that Georgia has thought about this a lot, right?

The problem with to do lists is they're deceptively simple in what that is that they seek to do, but to actually get them to work well, you really have to think like in multiple layers 

other: and 

Jason: that's what Georgia has done here. Is that she's thought about these kind of areas of her life that she needs to be able to do.

Um, then she's using labels to be able to sort all that sort of stuff out. And then she's got priority labels for that as well, to be able to sort it as to which is the most important, what do I have to get done soon. And then she has a structured system for, um, Considering about all the other stuff, the inflow that's coming towards her.

So she's looking at it and she's going, okay, I look to next week and then decide what, what, which 10 things I need to bring into that week. And I make clear, decisive choices about that sort of stuff. Um, it's very thoughtful. Yeah. And it's 

Inger: actually, it's a real skill to do it. I mean, you and I have been doing it in various forms for years and it takes a while before you realize actually this is a skill I've developed to be able to do this and, and to adjust and pivot it as necessary as well.

I have a flow charter in Claude that just understands flow charts and likes drawing them. Oh really? Yeah. And it's an interesting Claude because the way that it thinks is in process steps. Right. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: So I did the exercise that we often do in workshops where we get people to draw their technology stack.

And we talked about that a bit last time. And I redrew my technology stack around my Apple notes kind of piece. Yeah. Anyway, I gave it to Claude to say, could you redraw it? Could you make it prettier for me? Which it did. And then it was like, Hey, do you want to talk about it? I'm like, sure. Okay. Let's talk about it.

And we talked about my system. It suggested a few little tweaks and then it suggested a few changes. So like, I'm just saying, if you find this difficult, like fire up Claude I should share my flow charter prompt and materials. I 

Jason: found image generation with Claude to be really, really powerful. Oh, the 

Inger: mermaid thing, it kind of looks, but like for just a flowchart, it's all right.

Like it wasn't pretty. It wasn't beautiful. 

Jason: Right. 

Inger: Yeah. But at least it spelled things right. Which is more than I can say for GPT. Have you ever got it to draw a flowchart? Adorably bad at it. So bad. 

Jason: Oh really? I've not, I've not tried. I've 

Inger: done it. Hilariously bad at it. 

Jason: I've done, uh, mind maps with both, uh, to try and compare which one works best.

I saw a, um, I saw a post on somewhere and they said, chat TPT can now do mind maps. And it was this really pretty mind map. Yeah. Sort of thing. Yeah. 

Inger: Okay. Show me. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: No, I'm like, I'm working really hard to make this thing. And I reckon, I suspect that what actually I was talking about was I prompted chat GPT to draw an image of a mind map that, you know, not 

Inger: actually, no, no, no, no.

I think I sent you a, um, an apparently to great fanfare, open AI announced that it now has a task manager. And everyone's like, great. You invented calendars. Like they're just so full of marketing bullshit.

Like, 

Jason: you 

Inger: know, 

Jason: I read, I read that article and it was, um, And I was thinking to myself, like on one level, it's clever, right? Because it, it makes it sticky. You go to ChatGPT and then you stay in it. And this from the company that has the, is it 200 a month premium tier or something like that? Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. So you've got to feel it's worthwhile, right?

Jason: I can see why they're trying to do it. If they can keep you in there, much like social media tries to keep you in there with the algorithm, 

both: right? Like that'll make. 

Jason: That'll make sense. But at the same time, I was like, there is no way I'm going to let an AI, I'm going to say, Hey, AI person thing in three weeks time, I want you to remind me to do this thing, right?

Because you don't know whether or not it's going to hallucinate in three weeks time or not. And so you get this thing back in three weeks time, and it could be like a hundred percent hallucination. And you're like, wow, am I supposed to be doing that? I hadn't even thought 

both: about 

Inger: it that way. I hadn't thought about it that way.

I just This is stupid, but like, it's stupider even than I thought. 

Jason: Yes, right? Because you'll be removed from the time when you thought about the thing. And 

both: one of the 

Jason: things with it, and we say this a lot, uh, in our workshops, of course, is you have to check. You can't fall asleep at the wheel. 

both: No. 

Jason: But scheduling shit for AI to do in the future on your bar, That's like you're fully applicable.

Inger: It's so stupid. You know what you're better at doing? You're better off like emailing us, pod at ontheregteam. com and asking for Georgia's email address and asking her because Georgia GPT, I would back that over Chatty in 

Jason: this Absolutely. Yeah. Well done 

Inger: Georgia. Impressive. Uh, we've got speak pipes. I'm always, as you know, like, who knows how this goes, Jason, when we get to speak pipes, but like, let's see if we can hear what Charlotte has got to say, shall we?

And, uh, this one is about, I believe, bullet journals.

Hello, Inga and Jason. This is Charlotta calling from Sweden. Um, I've been listening to On the Reg for a while and I really enjoy it. So thank you so much for making the poll. Ooh, all the way from Sweden. Um, my question relates to bullet journal. Um, I use. It's and like it, but I have tried ever since I was a PhD student with little kids to isolate my home stuff or private family stuff from my work stuff.

Um, so in order to keep those two things disentangled, I keep two separate bullet journals, one for private home stuff and one for work stuff. And while it's the work bullet journal works really well. Um, the home one does not. And I think it is because I tend to either keep, either put two big projects in it, like renovate bathroom, or because I tend to have home tasks that are repetitive or organized and that don't really feel meaningful to keep in a bullet journal.

Um, so I would very much like to hear your thoughts about this, you know, how do you keep your home life and your work life separate? I appreciate it. Or maybe you don't actually. So, uh, please feel, um, encouraged to expand on that and share any field opinions you may have. Um, thank you so much. Bye bye.

Great question. Thanks 

Inger: for, thanks for phoning in Kalotta. That's like amazing. Um, you might start on this one because I'm, I don't have a personal life. I'm trying to get a dog so that I have one. 

Jason: Um, so I do have lots of, I've got lots of, Thoughts about this because of, um, Charlotte's questions actually made me think about how I use this.

And one of the dimensions I was thinking about while she was talking about this is, um, it would be easy to separate work and home life. Bullet journals, if you've got a workplace to go to, right? So if you're off to the office and you've got it there with you, I don't know about other people, but I find when I go to the office, I sit down and that's what I do.

Like my butt hits that chair and then I'm pretty much. In that chair at that desk for 90 percent of my day, right? I might get up and I might go somewhere else. I might have a meeting or so, you know, post pandemic, we're doing meetings by zoom or teams or anything. So you've got your bullet journal right in front of you.

It's kind of contained geographically, if you know what I mean.

both: But 

Jason: when I'm home. I'm in the bedroom, or I'm in the kitchen, or I'm in, you know, like the lounge room, or I'm out in the garage, or I'm outside, or, and like I'm constantly on the move at home, moving between spaces. And. I think that would be hard because you would have to bring your bullet journal with you to all of those different spaces because thoughts in the garage turn up when they turn up, right?

And if you don't have your bullet journal there with you while you're in the garage painting a thing, then you're not going to be able to record it in there. And so then it becomes difficult and there's just a little bit too much friction I think for that sort of thing. Um, why it works really well at work is You're in one spot, you pick it up, you've got it with you all day.

And so you can kind of keep everything together in that space. 

both: Yeah. 

Jason: Now that I don't have an office to go to, um, other than my home office, um, it's a little bit easier for me, right? Now I just need to remember just to hold it and to, and to carry it around kind of wherever I go. 

both: Yeah. 

Jason: In terms of stuff at home, uh, I use OmniFocus to capture most of that stuff.

But when it comes to. As Charlotte was talking about, when it comes to a larger project that I know is going to have multiple moving parts, that's when it goes into my bullet journal. So for example, um, we're heading off up to do the sailing regatta, um, next week. So there's a collection there around all of the sorts of things, and it's got all sorts of notes in there.

Now, don't forget to pack this and you'll need to do that. And. You know, all that sort of stuff, random sort of things that I need to do. Don't forget to register for the race and download the racing rules and all that sort of stuff, because I'm kind of thinking about that in advance. And so on the day when I have to pack and go, I'll pull that collection open and I'll find that there'll be stuff in there that I would have forgotten on the day if I didn't have that there with me.

I also do not put, you know, clean the house or, you know, really routine stuff in mine. Because I have 

Inger: calendars, right? Like, 

Jason: yeah, that's it. Right. If it's clean the house reminders, you know, 

Inger: like a combination of those two things. 

Jason: Yeah. And then, and. And, and so the last element of this, I guess, is the bullet journal is more than just a, a tracker for lists and things to do and collections of information, but there's a, there's the journal element of it as well.

So the, you know, taking notes of, huh, today I went and did this thing and it was awesome. Right. Or I saw this person and we talked about X or whatever it was this. So you can look back on it and you can go, oh, that's right. You know, I remember catching up and having that conversation with that particular person.

Over time, cumulatively, you get this. I mean, it's not a journal journal where people do long form writing and really deep going. Certainly, that's not how I treat it. But cumulatively, over time, you can look back across your bullet journal and you go, Oh, in the last year or so. Oh yeah, I remember doing all that sort of stuff.

Oh yeah, actually, we've done a lot this year. Um, we've come some distance. So that, um, I keep. Mine all in one. Like I, uh, the added uh, hassle of having to carry two around with me would be just too great. But that's, like I say, it's because I'm mobile now. 

both: I'm. 

Jason: You know, I don't have an office, a single spot to go to where a work one would make sense.

Inger: Maybe it's, it's not so much the physicality of the bullet journal, cause I think you've got a really good point about carrying it around and stuff and repetitive tasks, but maybe it's about the, the harder thing of breaking down a task, like renovate bathroom, especially if you haven't done it before, right?

 One of the things we do in the workshop is talk about how you put verbs at the start of the sentence. That's something you taught me, um, when I'm using OmniFocus is that if you, if you start to try and think of the steps, if you think of the action that goes with that step, you know, by, find, locate, contact, confirm, you know, you can, yeah, exactly.

You can have like a. A list of sort of action verbs, if you wanted to, you could make a collection in your bullet journal, just of verbs. Bloom's taxonomy would supply you with the verbs and you could, it, that they're helpful lists. I often show the list of verbs when I'm getting people to bootcamp, break down the steps that they need to finish their project, because, you know, sometimes the verb itself can trigger, Oh yeah, I also need to do, process or action steps.

Yeah. Like this happens all the time with PhD students, you know, like they've never done that sort of task before. And the first thing I say to them is go find someone who has done it successfully, buy them a coffee. Right. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: And say, you had to do it again, what would you do differently? You know, and that's usually a good conversation starter.

Jason: The other thing, the other dimension to this, which is, I think it's subtle and I don't know that I've ever talked about this is that, so you start with a verb at the start of the task. Um, and the question that you're asking of the task is, have I done that? Yes or no. It's binary. 

both: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: If the task is big enough, if you start with a verb, like run marathon or something like that, um, it's, and it's too, you don't know whether or not you've done the task or not, or you, you think that you've completed the task, but you're not quite sure.

Inger: My 

Jason: thinking is that you haven't broken it down far enough. 

Inger: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Right. Like it needs to be, the task needs to be small enough that you can see yourself achieving it. And have a, yes, that has been done. And I, I've, I often catch myself, I fall foul of this all the time. I'll start with a verb.

It looks like a good task, but it's actually too big. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: And I'm 

Jason: like, have I finished this or not? I mean, it's a good 

Inger: test, isn't it? It's the answer yes or no, or it's the answer, a sentence, the answer is a sentence. Maybe it's not small enough yet. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: And it's the opposite in doing a research question.

If the answer is yes or no, it's not a research question, really. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. It's usually the test for, and as academics too, like we, without knowing it, sometimes we were trained in particular ways of thinking that actually make other ways of thinking Usually simpler ways of thinking, we overcomplicate them just a little bit.

Thank you. That was a really good question. We could talk about bullet journal for ages. We'll do another pod on it soon. Why don't we like, I just love talking about bullet journal. 

Jason: Um, I have been thinking very much about showing my opening spreads for my bullet journal for this year. So, um, filming it and putting up a video, like this is how I lay out at the start of the year.

Inger: You know, I'm wildly keen on video content about bullet journals. Remember how I gave you that iPad stage and an iPad? I know that was back in the burnout days where you're like, Oh, thanks for giving me this kind of bewildered. And I'm just shoving this text. And I'm like, yes, yes, Jason. Yes. I'll do that.

I'll do 

both: that. 

Inger: Last one is a an anonymous Jason thought it was queer costs, queer costs, queer costs. Jason hadn't heard of it. Couldn't find it in his Googling. I did because I thought, Oh, I vaguely heard of what that is. But let's first hear, um, hear our speak pipe. 

other: Hi, Jason and Inga. I'd love to know what you think of Quercus.

Um, I know there's a lot of other programs that do something similar, but this one looks pretty and I'm thinking of giving it a shot. Uh, I'd love to know what you think before I get too invested in it. Thanks so much. 

Inger: Thank you. So, um, that was listed as T D A R K. K E, T Duck, anyway, thank you for yours, but yeah, T Duck, probably not their name.

I'm just saying, just a guess from me that that's probably not their name, but so I looked it up. I K O S. It's a qualitative data analysis tool. I've heard good things. The reason I could find it was I'm like, I'm sure I've heard that before, like people have told me. So when people tell me multiple times, usually I chase it up.

So this was my cue to actually chase it up. It seems similar to deduce, which is D E D O O S E, fabulous. tools. Sadly, they just, they're to do, just their developments seem to really stall with the, they used to run on flash and when they had to move over anyway, kind of like it got unreliable and I moved away from it, but I did love it because it was sort of web based and simple and, and it looks like that.

Um, and. As you know, or don't know, or don't care, I use MaxQDA from Verbus, a German company. I use it because it's got, like, amazing mixed methods tools in it. It's very statistical and I can do machine learning, um, stuff in there. So that's why I use MaxQDA, but that's like flying a fighter jet. When, what you actually need most of the time is a drawing, actually.

And it looks like Quikaust is a good option there. I can't say I've used it. I sort of had to look at some videos and I was like, Oh, Oh, okay. I might like, what I also like is the purchasing options. So you've got two options. You can subscribe for 5 a month, which is cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap, cheap. 

both: Yeah.

Inger: Cheap like the budgie, Jason, or you can get what, what they call a lifetime license. I didn't look at the conditions of that, couldn't easily find it. I don't know what lifetime license mean, but that was cheap. And that was 69 US and that allows you to work offline, which is really my preference. You know, I don't like putting research data in the cloud.

So if you're going to use it, you'd have to put it in your ethics approval and get approval that where your data is going, and I guess they've got that covered because of what they're trying to do there. All right. You know, that would be a concern, but, um, I mean, I, if I, I magically grant you the permission, it seems to me like, if you like it, my only concern with tools is if there's only an online auction.

And you like it and you get invested and then you can't get your projects out. You've got what I call the hotel, California problem. You know, you can get in, but you can never leave. Um, I feel like that about zero at the moment, our accounting software, like, cause I'm trying to close down my thesis, whisper a zero because we're in on the reg zero and it's great out on the, I'm not dissing zero, it's just I'm discovering.

So when you try and extract your business records, extracting your business records is not straightforward. It's been on my weekend Bujo for like three weeks now. And I get there and I spend 10 minutes, I'm like, I can't be bothered. So, you know, that's something to think about. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh yeah, I should call David. Yeah. Just 

Jason: call David and just like, you know, David, you're awesome. Help me with this. 

Inger: Yeah. Oh, they don't pay us to do this, but Paris Financials, they're awesome should you need accounting help. Yes. That's the end of our mailbag. And we should move along. Just before we do, there's a spruik there for you.

Jason: Two minute tips newsletter. We have a newsletter. It's up. It's running. Um, and the reason that it's actually getting out the door is because Inga's doing it and I'm not. 

Inger: Yes. But also you had the genius idea of how I should do it. 

Jason: I can't even remember what that was now, that conversation. It was like, 

Inger: take the transcript from the pod, put it in Claude, tell Claude to write it.

And then. Claude does this great version of it. So Claude understands that it's short. There's two minutes, there's two, what is it? Two, two, there's two minutes here at the start. And then there's two things to read and there's two things to think about, do or something or other. Anyway, it's just two, two, two.

And we're on, we're on 

Jason: addition to, or like, and we're on 

Inger: addition to, of Two Minute Tips. We now have 40 subscribers, Jason. 

Jason: Do we? They, they're getting all the, like, they're getting all the goodness. 

Inger: Join in. Anyway, we'll put the link in the show notes, et cetera. So if you feel, if you're listening to 

Jason: this and you feel like you're missing out, you are.

Yeah. 

Inger: You are listening out, but here's the thing, right? Okay. Like a lot of people don't like listening to podcasts, weird people, Jason, like there are plenty of them. Right. And so friends of mine say, Oh yeah, that sounds interesting and good, but I don't listen to podcasts. Or I fast forwarded through you talking about your cat, your dog, your tini, your Volvo.

I'm like, okay, whatever. This is digested pod stuff. So if you're like, what was that book? What was that article? We're going to do it two times a month. So there'll be like. It's a way of sending the pot, getting it in a digestible format, um, being able to send it to others who don't want to listen. But you go, Oh, this awesome thing that they think of, you know, we're just doing it public service, Jason, like legit, never going to make people pay for it.

No, just be there. 

Jason: No ads, 

Inger: no ads, no pictures even because it's real simple because I don't have much time. So the most that I can do is format ahead and get Claude to write it. Yeah. Check it, format a heading. 

Jason: Yeah. And then, like, because you've got dogs to look after. 

Inger: I do well. Well, 

Jason: you will. Don't say 

Inger: that around Mr.

Thesis. 

Jason: Dog. Dog. Future dog. 

Inger: All right. I'm moving us on. Thank you to everyone who wrote to us. Please keep writing to us. Pod at ontheregteam. com. Bye. Yes, please. Or speak piping. Details in the show notes. Uh, going on to our work problem segment now, and, um, we had a production team meeting earlier this week, and we're like, what are we going to do?

And we looked into all that, and then I got really excited and I started clapping. 

both: Yes, you 

Inger: did. Remember? Like a seal. I've got one. I've got one. And I started to pitch this one about health at you, and you looked bored. I'm not going to lie. Until I said to you, I think the title of it should be, late stage capitali I'll start that again.

Until I said what the title should be, late stage capitalism wants us dead. Here's what we can do. 

both: Which is a cracker of a title. And 

Inger: you were like, I want that. You pointed at me like. That. 

both: Yes. Because like health as a, uh, people 

Jason: don't want to hear about old people's health 

Inger: problems. No, but they want to hear about how late stage capitalism wants us dead.

So with the help of our pod producer in Claude. 

Jason: I tell you, I tell you this triggered so much conspiracy theory, like juices in my head. 

Inger: Right. Okay. So 

Jason: I'm here for this. 

Inger: Right. Right. So me and Claude had some chats about the idea and Claude's like, that's a great idea Inga. Perhaps we can talk about, would you like it to be about the current state of play in universities?

Cause you know, my technique with Claude now, as you know, is to make it safe for Claude to ask me questions. So I always phrased my first prompt with, I'd like your help with, because it's a trigger word for Claude, loves to help. Right. Yeah. And then I say, do you have any questions before we start, which I should put in our joint text to expand text expander things, because that's a thing I type all the time.

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Thought of that then. And then it said to me, should the pod talk about the current state of play in universities, recent redundancies, restructures, personal experiences of work pressure, how the always on culture has intensified.

I'm like, yes, all of those things, Gloria. Yes. Yes. All of those things. So, um, it, the only bit of it that we're really going to use, use, because I think it's good. Right. Because I've given it lots of transcripts of us talking. So it kind of has our voice. And I like talk to it about this idea of late stage capitalism and, and you know, that it wants us dead.

And it has written a bit of a readout and I've split it into two parts. Russ, we're just going to read it. Like, you know, read out, you know, like riff on it, do what you like with it. But there you go. You're the 

Jason: first read out. Okay. Um, just before we get onto that though, Claude, because you, you've talked about your prompting approach with, can you help me with, 

both: um, I noticed 

Jason: yesterday that the opening question, when you open up Claude in the.

In the prompt box is how can Claude help you today? 

Inger: Oh, 

Jason: so it's been there all the time, right? Like it's 

Inger: been there all the time, but I don't read that. It's just like, you know, that's like Facebook. What's happening. Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah, but like, 

Jason: like layers, it's been there all the time. All right. Anyway, 

Inger: it's been trying to tell us, cause it's better than us.

Jason. Yeah. Go. Go. Go. Okay. So 

Jason: here's our script from Claude. 

Inger: Yeah. But you're going to make it sound real natural. Like, like we just came out of our brains. Well, it kind of did. It 

Jason: kind of did. Right. 

Inger: Yeah. I gave it a couple of the episodes where we really like rip into capitalism and I was like, yeah, I get you.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: I did write. I did text you and go, Oh, this is good. It's 

Inger: good. It's good. Right. Okay. Don't raise expectations too high. Go, go, go. 

Jason: We're talking about coping with. With this difficult year of academia, but to understand what's happening, it's worth looking at some bigger ideas. So Marx wrote about how capitalism creates this weird situation where we become alienated from our work because it's exploited labor.

Um, someone else is benefiting more than you. Think about it. You do research because you love discovering new things and sharing knowledge, but increasingly that work gets turned into metrics, publications, citations, grant dollars. Your teaching becomes student satisfaction 

Inger: scores. That went deep. Right?

Yes, Claude. I feel, I feel seen, Claude. 

Jason: Like, so I've had this conversation just recently with someone about promotion and what you need to do in order to be able to secure promotion. Now you've got, you've gone through that promotion cycle far more, you're at the top of the tree. You've done all of the promotion cycles.

You know how to, you know how it works. 

Inger: You know there's more levels of professor, I'm just refusing to do it. I don't want to do it again. 

Jason: Yeah, it's all right. Once you get to like, it's close enough. Enough 

Inger: already. 

Jason: Yeah. Um, it's, it's all of that metric stuff. Even though. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, yeah, well, okay.

What are your teaching scores? Oh, yeah. How many publications?

Inger: Even though it's been well proved that they're gender biased, but don't get me started because I didn't ask Claude to go on that sort of feminist rant. But anyway, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: but yes. Yes, Claude. Yes, Queen. 

Jason: Yes. What's really interesting is how this connects to Weber's idea of work as a calling, especially in academia.

Weber noticed that certain jobs are seen as more than just work. They're treated as a vocation or a calling. We feel responsible for our students and for our disciplines. Does that sound familiar? This is why academics often feel guilty about not working on weekends or taking holidays. The university system exploits this feeling of calling.

You're not just doing a job, you're pursuing knowledge. This is not just a job, you're forming young minds and helping the world to extract more and more work from us. Let me tell you, I once, so I was working at a university and my parents, decided to take the boat. We've got a, like a boat bigger than a tinny, um, they've got to, um, up the river.

Uh, Murray River and go camping for four days across Easter or something like this. I don't know. I can't remember. They said, why don't you come? And I'm like, sure. I'll come. That'd be great. I'd love to be able to do that. Get amongst all the gum trees and go toodling around on the Murray River and all the rest of it.

Yeah. 

Inger: What did I take 

Jason: with me? A hundred exam papers to mark. 

Inger: You did not. Oh, see, yes. Exploited labor. It's more than just a job. 

Jason: Went to Thailand once with my family. 

Inger: Yes. We remember this. 

Jason: Right. Did 40 hours of work in a two week block. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: So. 

Inger: Part time basically. From Thailand. Yeah. Right. Silly times. Silly times.

Like, 

Jason: people might say that they're, my experience has been that you can see this exploitation everywhere. Everywhere. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: And especially if you're, um, casual. 

Inger: Oh, God. Yeah. Well, this is the next bit. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Keep going. Because casually, if you're working casually, listen to this bit. 

Jason: Yeah. And then there's the thing about capitalism.

It actually needs crisis to keep it going. Numerous scholars have pointed out that the system uses these moments of crisis, like a budget emergency we keep hearing about in universities, to reshape itself. Every crisis becomes an excuse to cut staff, increase workloads, and bring in more casual contracts.

It's like a cycle. Crisis, restructure, brief period of stability, maybe, then another crisis. Each time workers are told to be grateful just to keep their jobs. Each time we're asked to do more with less. Notice how these crises never seem to affect executive salaries. Yeah, Claude put that in there. Yeah.

Like in brackets, like as an aside,

In universities, we see this playing out with constant restructures and redundancy rounds. There's always a budget shortfall. Always a reason why we can't have secure jobs or reasonable workloads. The crisis becomes permanent. And that's actually the point. Dang. Dang. Right. So I have a privileged position in this that I have stepped away from that right 

both: now.

Jason: And so I have a different perspective around all of this in terms of from being an insider. Now I'm kind of an outsider looking in at it. And Bye. Like, you see, I see it more, um, how do I put this? The lens at which I'm looking at this stuff seems to show that really clearly to me that that's what's going on.

Inger: Yeah. Now, 

Jason: you know. 

Inger: Yeah. It's harder to see it from the inside because you're just dealing with it. It's like you're running around, your house is on fire and you're standing up and sorry for using a fire metaphor when what the shit that's happening in LA. I'm so sorry. Yeah. If you're anywhere near that.

Yeah. It's devastating, I feel you, like it's just heartbreaking, you know, but like when you're fighting a fire, you're just fighting a fire, like it's what's in front of you, but when you step away from it, that's when you can see it. And that's also the advantage of us never really relaxing or having a holiday, because then we might, you know, wake up.

Jason: Yeah. Um, yeah, and I, the conversations that I'm having now kind of work in work, these, these phrases kind of float past me and I look at them and I, cause I'm looking at them from sideways now. And I'm like, Oh man, I can see what's going on there. Yeah. 

Inger: And you're like, Oh, that looks shit. 

Jason: Yeah. And the people on the other side of it, it's normal for them.

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: And, and I like, I try and help as much as I can, but some of the stuff that we're saying feels like heresy to people who are actually in the middle of the swamp. It's good advice. It works. 

both: Yeah. 

Jason: But it's just, you're too busy trying to swim to get out of it. Um, so I actually sometimes use the stuff.

So yeah. 

Inger: So should I, should I continue? I gave myself this part because I then asked, asked it what feminist and queer scholars said. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause you know, like that was Marx and all the kind of white guy kind of logic and it's like, Hey, what did anyone else say? And, and this is, this is a bit more Claude.

There's another layer to this that feminist and queer scholars have highlighted. The system doesn't affect everyone equally. When universities intensify workloads or cut support services, it's harder if you're actually dealing with other challenges. Think about it. If you're managing a chronic illness or disability, those endless back to back meetings become literally impossible.

If you're from a minority background, you're always doing extra invisible work, supporting marginalized students, colleagues, or pushing for institutional change. Um, Boy, uh, do I know people in that situation. If you're a carer, those expectations to work evenings and weekends create impossible choices that, um, don't feel like choices.

I put this line in, um, as my PhD student Jay Caldwell said to me at Christmas time and I banged my head on the table after he said this to me, he said, no, no system is ever broken. Like, if you say that a system's broken, that's the wrong way of looking at it. A system is what it does, which is what I picked up in my blog post this, this start of this year, where I talked about the Volvo and somehow I got to capitalism and, you know, just go with it.

But no system is ever broken. It is what it does. The system is what it does. So when people say the cruelty is the point, the cruelty is the point, right? So maybe. The system isn't actively trying to harm people, but it creates conditions where they're more likely, this is people who are dealing with extra crap, more likely to burn out, get sick, be pushed out of academia entirely.

It's what some scholars call slow violence. Yeah. Not dramatic or obvious. But a gradual wearing away of people's health and well being. If I may digress a bit. 

both: Yes. 

Inger: Um, that killing of that CEO of the health insurance company in America, which created such a ferrari on the internet and various other places with people, you know, like it wasn't an edifying spectacle to watch from a distance.

Can I just say, but like, boy, could I, I could see both sides, but at the same time, I've got to introduce the idea of a desk killer. 

both: Right. So someone 

Inger: who sits at a desk. And actually kills people by their decision making and attitudes and values that they bring to their work. And this is like the U. S.

health system. You look at it, you go So they're like, this guy died, but he was a death killer. And you're like, oh, wow, like, oh, like, you know, glad I don't have to live with that system. Our system has plenty of flaws, but at least we get something. Um Claude goes on, when we talk about productivity, inverted comments, or resilience, we often pretend everyone's starting from the same place, but the academic system was designed by and for people with certain privileges, typically able bodied white men with traditional family support.

Anyone who doesn't fit that mold has to work harder just to survive, let alone thrive. And the real kicker is how these things work together. The system takes our passion for research and teaching, treats it like a calling that shouldn't have boundaries, then measures and commodifies every bit of it.

Then the constant university financial crisis makes us fear that we will lose what little financial security we have, or perhaps by rubbing us about health and our vitality, even threaten our lives. No wonder we're all exhausted. And so we want to talk about pushing back because in that context, as my friend, Professional Narelle Lemon is fond of saying, uh, self care is a form of resistance.

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Like taking time and actually going, fuck you, capitalism. Fuck you, constant crisis that you need to keep yourself going. I am going to look after me. 

both: Yep. 

Inger: And that's not selfish, That is resistance. Yeah. So if you, if you reframe self care as resistance, it's quite powerful because I, I don't know, I have a strong fuck you urge when it comes to it.

everything really. So, uh, it's got some prompts, but I reckon we could just like talk about, like we can either talk about personal impacts, but we've talked about it a lot on the pod, or we can talk about practical resistance strategies. Where would you like to start colleague? 

Jason: I'm going to start with personal because I had an insight just the other week.

Right, go. So I was reflecting on my time, um, uh, including my most recent, um, burnout episode. And I was looking back on that and I thought I was doing all the right things. Like I was going to the gym in the morning and I was doing Jiu Jitsu in the evening, right? Like I was looking, trying to look after my health.

Inger: Yeah, you were doing that. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. But now when I look back on it and I think about it, I was getting up at 4. 30 in the morning to go to the gym. 

Inger: Yes, you were.

Jason: Then I was doing a full day's work. Yes. Then I was doing Jiu Jitsu in the evening until 8. 30 at night. 

Inger: Yes. Right. 

Jason: And so, what I was actually doing, so to Narelle's point about self care is a form of resistance, don't tack that self care onto the end of the thing, you know, working really hard to clear.

Right. Correct. You have to, you have to take it away from the, you have to take that time away or that self care needs to, um, come at the expense of the overwork or of the, you know, of all the, all the things that, you know, make us feel the way we feel. Yeah. If you add it on. Like I, you know, we talk about young people, they burn the candle at both ends, 

both: you know, 

Jason: they go out clubbing and they do all that sort of like we all do that back in the day.

Right. It was fun. 

both: Um, 

Jason: but now where we sit at the end of, you know, well, not at the end of life in late stage capitalism, but towards the end of our working lives, working inverted commas, um, we kind of like, that's what burning the candle at both ends looks like. It looks like just trying to look after yourself.

Inger: Yeah! 

Jason: Oh 

Inger: god, that's depressing but true. Right. Yeah. 

Jason: Right. So I'm not doing, so, you know, I'm not doing all of that now. I'm not going to the gym at, and we like, we have a business together, we work together and I, and you know, I could flog myself from six o'clock in the morning to six o'clock at night in our business and do the hustle grind, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but I don't.

Right. Like, you know, I go to, if I'm going to go to the gym, I'm going to the gym at nine o'clock in the morning. You know, my workday starts a little bit later. 

Inger: Yes, you are. 

Jason: Right. Instead of getting up at four 30 in the morning so that I can go and do reps. 

Inger: Yes. Yes. Because actually that's not health.

That's just like, yeah, exactly. You're just overextending in another way. 

Jason: Yeah. And so to the point about what. Practical strategies, because that's not a practical strategy for people who are in full time employment paid by somebody else, you know, like you have to turn up, um, academics have more freedom, but professional staff, professional staff in universities don't.

Inger: No, they don't. And you have to like get your ass in the door and get your ass out the door. But it's things like having a lunch break. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: And setting a clock timer and actually doing a bit of work to rule clock watching shit on the university's ass. Now professional staff, like you should absolutely be out that door.

As soon as it like tools down mid task, so sad, too bad. Like if we all do it, then who they're going to drop the hammer on, right? Because they're going to do it anyway. They're going to keep doing restructures. They're going to keep doing this. Like this is a fact, this is a fact of capitalism, right? So your actions in that working harder, et cetera, like won't save you.

Jason: Nor 

Inger: will your silence save 

Jason: you. 

Inger: So like just absorbing it into your body over and over and over again, they don't care. If it looks like your unit gets the chop, your unit gets the chop. Like I don't want to be fatalistic about it, but like, like there's lots of other things you can do if you're worried about your job.

Yes, that do not include donating time to your employer, you know, what other things you can do Jason? I know this sounds like really kind of neoliberal entrepreneurship. I'm just gonna say you can you can start a business on the side 

both: You 

Inger: know the tools exist in Australia get yourself an ABN think about what skills you have Start working on the side, right?

If you want to, if like, rather than do two hours of overtime, thinking that's going to save you, take that two hours and think, Oh, I've got a craft hobby. Maybe I can sell some stuff on Etsy. I don't care what it is, but I've always found like just doing that stuff on the site, which I have always, always done.

Right. Which is why we have this business now. And it's always been little life raft over here. If something happens to my employer, okay. It's not Volvo money. Right. Which is what I say to you, I would quit ANU maybe, but it's not Volvo money yet. Once it becomes Volvo money, let's talk again, but yet still not Volvo money, but like it's, it's not nothing.

I'm not stepping away to nothing. So like if you're an anxious disposition like me, what, what side business, how can you Team up with someone to do that. We've teamed up, right. It makes it so much easier than doing it on my own was like, I kept doing it and doing it and doing it, but like, I was doing it at a very low level compared to what we're doing now.

And there's no better and more interesting things with you. So what other people are around, what can you collectively do together? If that's, if that's, you've got some talents and you want to use them or. You can, um, build networks outside of work. You can, you know, and you can do things that build community networks.

Like getting involved in politics is one way to do it, which I've done a lot of, you know, there's getting involved with your union though, that's work related, but you know, you're doing some community, get involved with the local scout group. I don't care what it is, but if you get involved, then you've got.

Friends and acquaintances and supports that are outside of this university system. Two things about that. Those people, when they hear your stories, look at you like, what the fuck? Which is a good reality check about whether what's happening to you is okay. 

Jason: I've literally had someone say to me, that's court, right?

Inger: Yes, right. What do you mean? Normal people don't do that. Don't do that. I mean, both of us being married outside of the sector, I think it's helped, right? Like, cause our partners, like, like Luke goes, that's some kind of bullshit. Like when I said to him, academia is a much more relaxed job than architecture, he said, you're not comparing two reasonable jobs with each other.

Okay. Like these are not reasonable. Um, so like if you build those networks outside also from networks come opportunities, right? If you want to change careers, you want to do something else. You know, so we had dinner with friends last night. He was a high powered economist working in the Australian public service for a very long time.

Very, very smart guy. Took over his father in law's framing shop, right? Does trophies and frames things. Fucking loves it. 

both: Yep. 

Inger: He said, I just, I complete career change would never have picked this for myself. But so there's other things you can do. You don't like, so if you're creating those opportunities or at least connecting with them, I suppose we're now talking about resistance strategies at the same time as maybe you're spending time doing things, giving back to people, doing something you enjoy, those networks create opportunities financially, socially.

All those things, but it also just feels good to do that kind of work. I know it's like sometimes the last thing you want to do when you've finished a long day of work, but it also creates that boundary where you're like, well, I have to go to my Greens meeting now. This is how grassroots democracy is done, right?

Yeah, 

both: yeah. 

Inger: So I just have to leave at six, like there's no other, you know, I don't have a choice. This is why I want to get a dog. 

both: I want to 

Inger: get a dog for several reasons. My son identifies as the A on the LBGTQA spectrum. Yes. Okay. So the A for those of you who don't know it, asexual, aromantic, he's just like, you know, for you grandchildren, probably not.

Right. And so I was like, devastated by this, but then that's the selfish impulse one wants when it's grandchildren. And I just have grandmother energy. I'm like, well, I clearly need a little dog. Right. Okay. And then also to just spend time with my friends, kids who are younger. When I do that, I really love my friend's kids and stuff, but I realized actually, and I'm happy to spend time with them, but when we do that, I noticed it's Mr.

Thesis Whisperer that's running around filling the endless like buckets of water and playing with them for hours. It's not me. Yeah. Like I'm sitting there talking to their parents. I'm like, Oh, actually, maybe I don't have that much grandmother energy anyway. Maybe, maybe a dog is a better, thing for me, you know, and, and like unpacking that with a little bit of therapy.

Right. It's been helpful for me. Right. But, but something that pulls you away, your kids pull you away. But the problem with the kids pulling you away thing is like, yes. But that's another job as well, and you're dragged into the school stuff, the assignment stuff, the, you know, the kind of emotional support stuff, sometimes the exerting of the disciplinary boundary stuff, you know, like that's, it's not, I'm not saying it's not fulfilling and personally rewarding and it's great to spend time with your kids, but really that's also its own grind.

And the problem with our phones is while we're doing that stuff, taking them swimming lessons, we're doing the email on the phone. That's like actually not really a boundary. In the way, and most parents I know would say that, you know, they're not really watching their kids play. They're doing that, you know, it's, it's boundaries with these devices are very hard to set.

You need something like literally where you're swimming in a pool and you can't have your phone, 

Jason: you 

Inger: know, you need stuff like that. 

Jason: Jack used to be part of a swimming squad and so he would go to swimming classes and they would do laps, right? Um, Olympic size pool, 50 meters, whatever, whatever, running a long way.

Inger: I made him do it until he came to the gym with me. Now we go to the gym. 

Jason: Um, but the coach was like, okay, do five kilometers of swimming. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And so, and that's all that he would do. So Jack would just swim for five kilometers and when I first would go, I would take my phone with me and I would do email and all that sort of stuff.

And it dawned on me that I should not be doing that and that I should be doing it. Taking that time and as boring as it was watching someone else do five kilometers of Australian crawl swimming strokes. Um, it was better for me to be bored and watching what was going on there than it was for me to be doing, you know, random emails on my phone and that sort of stuff.

Yeah, it was. Impossibly difficult to pull myself away from that bloody phone. But I had to, I made myself do it. And I'm feeling, cause every now and again, Jack would get to the end of a lap and he'd pop his head up just to see if I was watching and then he'd turn over and he'd do the rest of the lap sort of thing, you know?

Inger: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: He could have popped his head up and seen me on the phone, or he could have popped his head up and seen me looking at him. Bored, but looking at him. 

Inger: Well, good for you. I never managed that. I used to set myself up on a table and I would punch through, you know, I remember ironically doing the last edit session.

To the paper, one of the papers that I write one with Adrian Barnett, um, called working nine to five, not a way to make an academic living, which is all about what we had a whole bunch of data about when people submit journal articles and we've, we've proved that people do it, do that work on the weekend, right.

And we also proved it's my most cited paper because we proved that Chinese academics were the most hardworking academics in the world. And the Chinese academics got all over this and we're sharing with each other, obviously, and then talking about it. So like, it's got a. Metric shit ton of citations and, and downloads and stuff.

But I remember doing the last edits of that while I was watching Brennan swim up and down the pool. And I never managed that, but I, you know, I'm, I'm not good at being bored. I need, I need active. Like you do your BJJ, right, Jack? So you're like, you're both doing, you can't look at your phone when someone's got you in a back revered chokehold, something or other.

Correct. I've been putting, I've been putting Brazilian Jiu Jitsu stuff in our teaching materials just so Jason doesn't have to always do romance novels. So I've been learning. I've been learning things. It's been great. I Google like, Most ferocious BJJ holds or something so that you can have that to talk about introductions with, you're welcome.

both: And the last one that you put in was, um, the punch choke, which is particularly brutal, right? Like, as the name would suggest. Because 

Inger: I typed in most brutal BJJ move and the punch choke came up, like, there was a lot. 

both: I was like 

Inger: Wow. I feel you can animate that really well though. 

both: Oh yeah, I know exactly

Inger: how to do it. Yes. Anyway, uh, what else have we got here? Uh, so that was practical strategies, da, da, da. It's hard. Uh, like, you know, like anything else there on Claude's list that you think is good to, Oh, okay. One more thing I want to talk about. So, uh, over Christmas, my husband's sister, Judy. Shout out to Judy, you probably don't listen.

She does listen to P. O. D. S. Because she put me on to a really good podcast called The Zoe Podcast, which I put you on to. Z 

both: O 

Inger: E, that's in the name Zoe, which happens to be her daughter's name, so easy to remember. Um, comes out of King's College London. Is, uh, science backed nutrition and health advice. Uh, occasionally invite on an influencer, obviously one that they think is okay.

So they're like not anti influencer. They're just like. Very careful about who they ask. 

Jason: I've listened to one episode so far on the Was it about 

Inger: the gut microbe eating your fat around your organs? I searched 

Jason: up the ketogenic diet because I have views right about the ketogenic diet and I've read enough and I'm like Okay, like I'm sold and the person that they got on was like A world expert in nutrition who's published, um, meta analysis of the ketogenic science research.

Oh 

Inger: yeah, I haven't listened to that one. What did it, what does it look like? Like, 

Jason: I was angry because the science actually says something that I don't want it to say. 

Inger: Oh, science will do that. 

Jason: Damn you science and all your evidence. And I'm like, I'm like over here, I'm like, it works over there. They're like, not so much, you know, 

Inger: a few tweaks, like, 

Jason: yeah, that's what they essentially that's what they're saying.

It was like a very strict ketogenic diet. The problem with it is, um, I can't believe I'm talking about this. Um, problem with it is if you eat too much protein, protein gets converted to glucose. And so that kind of undoes that process of ketogenesis, 

both: right? 

Jason: That's what they're saying. So to do that, you have to pare down how much protein that you're eating, which means, yeah, so it becomes You have to eat 

Inger: more fiber, Jason!

You eat more 

Jason: fiber, right, which means Yeah, you have to feed your gut, 

Inger: Jason. So anyway, as you know, I've been on the xanthic slash monge journey for some time now, and I think we both agree I've lost a lot of weight. 

Jason: You have! 

Inger: Looking awesome, by the 

Jason: way. 

Inger: Thank you. No worries. Peptides. I hate saying peptides.

Skin. My skin lady gave me peptides, but also peptides. One of the things that a Zempig and Mungero do is like peptide, something peptides. Anyway, peptides go around and just fix shit. That's what they do. 

both: Okay. 

Inger: And so it, it reduces inflammation. So one of the things that they talk about a lot on this pod is how to eat, right?

And a lot of it goes against. Like, standard advice. It is, as you said, very science based though, and Mr. Thesis Whisperer had IBS for a long time and had the treatment, which I won't talk about because it was invasive and, uh, could be slightly traumatic for most people. Extreme treatment for IBS worked.

Happy to say, five years in, brilliant, worked beautifully. Um, but we noticed in that journey that he went from a very restrictive diet to a very inclusive diet. And, and the diet advice that they gave us after Luke had had his treatment was the advice that's given out on this podcast. So I sort of felt like, oh, okay, I've already been told this by people who've manifestly proven that they fixed my husband.

And, and to stay fixed, they gave him this diet. And the diet is basically a 30 different plant-based foods a week. I have a list generated by Claude that I put on my any list app. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: And I literally tick off. It comes like a game, , how many plants can I eat? You know, like nuts, different types of nuts. So if you're gonna eat, like, I like to make a SA sauce, which I felt guilty about, but now I don't because I've listening to this podcast.

Right? Yeah. And, and there there is a, you know, if you're gonna buy, don't just buy peanut. Spread to make satay sauce by one of those ones that got four different nuts in it. And then you've got four that you tick off your list, right? Like it just becomes quite a gap and some of what you eat should just be eaten just to feed your gut.

So you're not eating it for yourself. You're eating it to feed the microbes in there. And then the microbes get out and do their thing. Right. I. Totally leaned into this. We were already most of the way there to be fair, cause Luke is vegetarian and we eat a lot of veggies and we like veggies in this household.

Your wife's vegetarian. So, you know, it's not, you're sort of halfway there. You've got the structure, but I really leaned hard into it. Um, like not just having one sort of lettuce, having three smaller amounts of three different types and stuff like that. Anyway, I track all my food cause I'm under the care of an endocrinologist.

Sorry if this is too much food talk for those of you who are triggered by it. We did give you a warning about it. Um, but, uh, I, I track all my sugars and all my, just because I want to give her some data because I've really stalled, right? I've stalled out. Like, but I'm maintaining weight, you know, which is a good thing.

Um, but looking at since I changed just to really focus on those 30 different types of food, the sugar came down by itself. Yep. The protein came down to the right level by itself. I didn't watch it. I just sort of, I'm not a fan of like, eat to what you feel like, because I can't trust my body. Mine's broken.

both: Yeah. 

Inger: And I have an insulin resistance problem. And if I just eat to how my body feels, I'll just end up in a bad place like that. Yeah. So I'm, I'm down with those kinds of anti diet approaches where they say, just listen to your body, but it doesn't work if your body doesn't work. But if you do focus, if you do have a metric like that, we're talking about good metrics here, not bad metrics.

But if you do have a metric, like 30 different plant based foods, it can be one or two bites or something. It doesn't have to be like, I have to eat a whole cabbage and then I have to eat a whole bunch of carrots and then I have to, if you just focus on, on your plate, having lots of different colors. I.

Extraordinary. And I feel amazing 

both: and it's 

Inger: just been two weeks. And like, I, I think to myself, I don't think I've ever been taught to eat properly, so I can highly recommend this science, um, and look, but at the same time, certainly back to what we were talking about before capitalism, right? Late stage capitalism wanting to kill us.

One of the ways that it does it is by sucking so much of our time. Cause we're so worried about our jobs. We overwork. And exploit the work. And then it pushes out time to do other things. It pushes out time to properly go to the shops and like, think about, it pushes out the time that you have to think about what you're going to buy at the shops.

Cause shit's expensive, right? Like I'm privileged enough to not be that price conscious, but I am looking at it going, what the fuck with this food bill? Right. So having the time to plan that sitting down, planning it, looking at your recipe books, these are all time. So like, if you want another. Boundary strategy, you go, okay, well, I've got to actually spend some time planning my meals.

Otherwise I'll buy stuff I won't eat and I won't be able to afford to eat in the healthy way that I want to. So like, there's lots of things that you can say, okay, I'm taking back this time. Lunchtime, I'm actually going to go for a walk to the park with my bullet journal for my personal stuff, and I'm going to do some meal planning.

both: Yeah. Right? 

Inger: Like, just stuff like that. These things can, like, it's not just all, I'm going to find time to go to the gym. It's like, how am I going to, and one of the things that they say in the Zoe podcast a lot of is, it's not about taking things away. It's about adding things. Right? Adding the right things and adding enough of those things.

So if you think about it in terms of diet, you know, you're adding more vegetables, you're adding more fiber, you feel more full, you get more nutrition, your body gives you a good feedback loop and it encourages you to keep going, right? Like I would say the same thing maybe about like work is don't. It's not about what you're going to take away or tell your employer that you're not going to do because that shit is hard.

It's just inserting more of your own things into that day. You know? At least the lunch break and starting and ending the time that you're paid to start and end. And if stuff doesn't get done, again, you like going above and beyond, it's not going to save you. 

Jason: No. 

Inger: This stuff is bigger than you. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Anyway, that's my rant.

Thank you for listening to my TED talk. 

Jason: We don't say this out of malice. We say this out of, like, combined with, well, how long have we been in academia? Like, I've 

Inger: 25 years for me. 

Jason: Yeah. 20 years for me, thereabouts. So we've got 45 years of experience in different institutions, 

both: looking 

Jason: at the system, and with friends all across universities all around Australia, watching restructures happen and good people getting axed.

And it's not like we don't say this to this, the university system, our own universities or anything like that. What we're saying is that when you look at it from the outside, it doesn't matter how good you are or what it is that you've done. Someone somewhere is going to make your, your line on a spreadsheet and someone somewhere is going to make that decision.

And they are going to make that decision. You know, so you might as well, to your point earlier, which I thought was a brilliant one, instead of doing that extra two hours, do the extra two hours, but do it for yourself. Yeah. And ensure that the payback of that investment is for you 

Inger: not, and I say this with love and deep respect, academics out there, when I say take that two hours and do it for yourself, I don't mean I'm gonna write this book because that'll create the.

You know, I'm going to take this two hours and I'm going to do my, finish my monograph because of my monograph you know, increase my reputation and then I'll be able to get a job somewhere else. Like, that's not what I mean. Do that in work hours. Like, that's what I mean by adding, add that back into work hours.

And then, you know, Like, but I feel like it's, it, I also don't want to get in a victim blamey thing where people feel like, well, that's all very well what you're saying, you're a professor, you're a woman, white woman of privilege. All these things are true, right? All these things are true that, but that's why it's even more important for someone like me.

To do it. And I do it. Okay, people like I, I practice what I preach here. ANU gets 37 and a half hours a week. Cause I measure it. And if they can't get what they need to get in those hours, I work really smart and really hard. In those hours, I am like pedal to the metal, as efficient and tricked out as this pony gets.

That's what you get. 

Jason: And that's partly, it's one of the beautiful things about using the tools of capitalism against itself, right? Like, because we are, you know, bristling with. Six shot revolvers and all sorts of things when it comes to productivity 

both: on the 

Jason: focus premium version, right. With multiple contexts so that we can slice our dice, you know, and see exactly what's coming down the pipe and all the rest of it.

We've got calendars talking to other things. We like, it's like we have spent. Easily, I have spent easily 15 years thinking about how we do that sort of stuff, cut away the stuff that's inefficient so that we can do the thing. The payoff of that is 37 and a half hours a week, right? Correct. You use the tools of late stage capitalism to, you know, turn it back around.

And it was like, this is what you get. And you gave us these tools. So I'm using them now. And by the way, here we are 37 and a half hours a week. See you later. 

Inger: Yeah, exactly. And like our friend Claude, like I say, saves me around 12 hours a week, I do different sorts of work now. Yeah. But you know what I do?

Like, that's when I write my papers now, at work. During work hours, right? Like, and I have a separate computer to do on the reg stuff. And so I know exactly when I'm timing over here, I have to keep a log book over here cause I can't like put timing on here, but I know, I know exactly what's going on with, on the reg stuff.

both: Yeah, yeah. 

Inger: And I know I do 12 hours ish a week of on the reg stuff. And that happens outside of my 37. 5 hour commitment. And because it's flexible, academia allows me to time shift, you know, as, as a member of the privileged class inside the university, I can spend this morning, this is a Thursday morning doing this, I'll work till seven tonight.

I've got a meeting set up from six till seven with someone in the UK, right? So I'm like, Oh, well I've got to do that like evening thing. So like, I'll, you know, so. There are ways to do it, but yeah. And so if we all do it, this is the thing about solidarity. This is the thing about unions. If we all do it, we're all lock arms together, right?

Like think about yourself in a human chain, locking arms with your comrades. You're over work is harming other people. 

Jason: Yeah, but, but Jason, this is not how you get promoted. People have said that to me. 

Inger: You know, how you get promoted is how I got promoted, which is like listening to us. 

Jason: I know, right?

Inger: You know, being interested.

Yeah. 

Jason: We talk about this in our workshops, in our writing workshops, right? Like, you know, you have to be able to anticipate what Your, your readers going, what their objections are going to be. And you have to, 

Inger: yeah, yeah, no, you're right. So that's 

Jason: what I'm doing right now. Right. Like I'm imagining people listening to us and going, that's all well and good for you.

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: But I've got my Dean or colleague, well meaning colleague or someone who's saying, well, yeah, that's fine. If you only ever want to be a lecturer B. 

Inger: Yeah, well, also, then I would say, if that's what the system is telling you has to have, like, I'm sorry, that makes me a bit cross, because like, if that's not, if you can't make it work within this system, I'm telling you people can make it work.

I've made it work. 

both: Yep. 

Inger: And often by not following the advice that other people give me. 

both: Yep. 

Inger: Sorry, but not sorry. Like, Inga, don't blog. That's pointless. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Well, we wouldn't be sitting here 

both: with 

Inger: that advice. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, so sometimes people tell you advice, this is the way that you do it.

And it worked for them, maybe, or maybe they heard it worked for them, or they just repeating a workplace mythology. But I don't know, you look around yourself, is it fair? What happens? No. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: There is no fair. People get jobs with like less, like this is, there's not fair is not what this is about. Now look, it's not fair.

I've managed to claw my way through it. And at times not done that particularly well. And people might say, Oh, you are a professor now, you know, because you did all that mad scramble, blah, blah, blah. Can I just tell you, Jason, all the promotions that have happened for me have happened after I learned to deal with that 

both: Yeah.

Inger: Stress and burnout. That's when I got the last two promotions that were after I did all this kind of like, how do I work? What am I working on? What's my, you know, really thinking that thing through. That's when I got to ask for a professor, 

both: you 

Inger: know, that wasn't, that was post burnout. So actually I just worked, you know, it's a cliche to work smarter, not harder, but you know, it's true.

Hmm. Well, if you put some positive constraints on it. Well, you know, if you can't, if you can't, if you actually can't make that system work and look after yourself as a human being and have the relationships you need to have and have to help you, if that's, if that's really true. Maybe don't do it. 

Jason: Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Right. You can't. You stopped. 

Inger: You were like, that's it. I'm done. Right. You stopped. You're like, this isn't, this is actually impossible. I can't make these people happy. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: By the way, fuck you to all those people that you couldn't make happy because you're awesome. I mean, I work with you now, like, I know, right?

You do what you say you're going to do. You do it awesomely. Like, I know, like the quality of your works, like, 

both: fuck 

Inger: you to all those people. So you were actually quite right. I know I'm getting very passionate about this, but honestly, if that's really the case, If that's what you say to me, there's no way for me to get promoted.

I'm going to continue to be exploited. La la la. And I say, well, what else is it you can do with your life? Cause it's just too short. You're smart, talented people, but we're probably talking to people who don't need to hear that, Jason. We're talking to people. Who probably are the ones talking to their colleagues about this and feeling our frustrations and maybe we're just validating You know, we witness you, you know, you're doing what you can Well, your colleagues go why are you doing that or whatever?

I don't know anyway, 

Jason: yeah Well, can I just say Claude's little script there, that worked really well., I was a bit worried that it was like, huh, On the Reg has really slipped in the, Podcast zone, because what all they're doing now is reading Claude's scripts.

So it's like, and I was like, I'm not sure. 

Inger: Jonathan's going to write us an email about that. Claude's just telling us what we want to hear. 

Jason: Yes, welcome Jonathan. Um, but like, yeah, I tell you that, that title, like stage capitalism is trying to kill us. That's why, gold. Well, 

Inger: that was me, but yeah, yeah. But when I gave that to Claude, it was like, yes, yeah.

All right. Very quickly, what are we reading? I'm not going to go into it. I have picked up Generative AI for Academics by Mark Carrigan. Can I just say, it's brilliant, but the Kindle version is cooked. Oh. Mark knows. I'm guessing he's telling his publisher. I had to stop reading it because it was just so badly formatted.

Like, I don't know. the footnotes and everything. So if you're going to buy it by paper copy, it's really good. I'm like, I'm like, yes, Mark. Yes. Queen. Keep saying that. He's a sociologist talking about generative AI. Um, okay. I got to mention the acknowledgements and in the first chapter, I'm not just saying it's good because of that.

But really, I think Mark is, it doesn't hurt, but Mark is a very good thinker and he's bringing his A game to this one and I'm enjoying it. And he says some really interesting things. He's sort of like, we're at this social media moment with. Yeah. And he's sort of aware of the boosterism that he and me and others like invested in social media and telling academics this is the answer and it isn't and you know and like so it's got that I've been burnt once, this tool is awesome, but I've been burnt once, this tool is awesome, but But what happened here, this, and it is, of course, you know, he hasn't written a whole book about platform capitalism 

both: and 

Inger: audience capture, so like he knows what he's talking about.

Um, he's very, he was sort of scared about writing it. I think he sort of admits in the book, there's so much hate. 

both: You go 

Inger: into blue sky, there's so much AI hate. Like, it's just, and I think, I don't think everyone thinks like that, but I think other people are too scared to say, talk back to it, because people get really vicious and really upset.

And I understand both sides of the argument. So it's a really nuanced walkthrough. I want to do a proper, is this book bullshit, pull apart of it, like a delicious one of those pull aparts at the bakery, but I can't until I get my paper copy, because I don't This Kindle version just sucks. So that's it. Any reading you want to recommend?

Uh, no. Great. Yeah. Oh, one, one more thing while we're on the kind of boundaries. If I got into actually reading fiction, I managed to sit down for a whole day and finish a whole book in a day. Like I haven't done that for years and it was great. Wow. One of the Adrian Tchaikovsky's children of time series.

Anyway, the one about the octopuses loved it. Anyway. If you want trash, The fourth wing is super trashy. 

Jason: Is it Ramos trashy? If you liked 

Inger: Anne, kind of, if you liked Anne McCaffrey's dragon novels, it's that with sex. Anyway, I was talking to Catherine Firth and my sister and a few other people online when you weren't around, Jason.

Yes. In fact, I think we tagged you in, in our discussion on Blue Sky. You didn't, you didn't take the bait, I noticed. I, 

Jason: well, to be honest. Yeah. I got. I've stepped away. Yes, of course. And that's, 

Inger: that's really, it's really fine. So we now just tag you in as an absent member when we're talking about you to do that.

And everyone is very keen for you to read this book because it's military dragons. It's Harry Potter esque. Okay. Because like, I'm like, like JK Rowling shits me, but like, it's kind of like, it's good. 

both: All right. 

Inger: It's trashy as fuck. But it's like, there's a lot of BJJ wrestling on mats. There's a lot of people wearing leathers and going around and smiting each other.

There's like a lot of like military conflict. And I think Catherine's right. That if we were to do a read along together. They're, they're kind of desperate for you to read this book. 

Jason: All right. Send me the details. Can we make the 

Inger: fans happy? Yeah. 

Jason: Send me the details. Can I 

Inger: send you, can I send you a gift copy?

Sure. I'll give it to you. We're, we're going to be in Sydney the week after next doing a boot camp at University of Western Sydney. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Which is going to be really exciting. So I will. I'll bring you a copy. Sure. 

both: Awesome. And I'll make 

Inger: Catherine's dreams come true. Catherine. I'm here for you. 

both: Okay. All right.

Inger: All right. Yay. Do you know how many times people have asked me if I can get you to write a romance novel? I'm like, that might be the end of our friendship. I just don't think that he can do another one, but this isn't like purely that. 

Jason: I like the warning, fair warning, right? If it's crap, I'm like, I'm not going to hold back.

This is bullshit. 

Inger: I set up to one o'clock in the morning. Two nights in a row, which I don't do on a real early nighter because I just couldn't like literally put it down. But I got to a point in it where I like just stopped and I thought, okay, this is a natural stopping point. I'm just going to stop here and wait for Jason to catch up.

If I can convince him to read it. Alright. Alright. Alright. 

both: Sure. 

Inger: Alright. 

both: Yeah, sure. Fine. . Alright, 

Inger: good. And look, cath might like it. 

both: Uh, I'll leave it around. You can pass 

Inger: it on to her. You can pass it on to her when I'm done. Don't give it to Jack Junior though, unless you want him to read quite explicit sex scenes.

both: Oh, okay. Yeah,

Inger: there's not very many, but they're, they're like, I say, this is quite a jaded romance reader. I was like, huh. 

Jason: Okay. 

Inger: Look at that. She went, she went there. Okay. Okay. I promise you, it's only about seven pages in a 400 page book. 

both: Yeah. But they're, they're like, right. Real seven pages, right? 

Inger: They're spicy.

Right, okay. They be spicy. Anyway, okay, so that's our book segment. Right, two minute tips. We're here. Uh, this segment is in honor of David Allen, his classic Getting Things Done book, where Allen argues if a task will take less than two minutes to complete, you should just do it then and there. Two minutes.

You obviously we're a fan of this because we've got our two minute tip newsletter, just reminding you of that. Because it'll take longer than two minutes to capture a new task system. Schedule time to do it and mark it as complete. But really, this is just our chance to share a hack, an idea, something that works.

Other podcasts, Jason, would do this at the start. 

both: Yes. 

Inger: But we do it at the end as a treat. I didn't have one, so I asked Claude after our whole conversation about late stage capitalism. I said like, you know, Can you give me a list of strategies and he gave me a big list. It's all there. I'm not going to read it.

Obviously there's individual strategies, collective strategies, wellbeing practices, and I've just highlighted three off that as a list that I thought were particularly good. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Um. under individual strategies, it's got have a shutdown ritual that marks the end of work time. I know you have that shutdown ritual.

both: Um, 

Inger: and I've, I, now that I've got a paper diary, that is now my shutdown ritual, like cross everything off, right, done. That's the end of the day. Under wellbeing practices, I liked this one, block out white space in your calendar for thinking recovery. I like this idea of white space, right? I've actually started to do that.

Like, so I've got a big bootcamp coming up. At ANU. Yeah. So we're doing one at UWS. I come back two weeks later, I do one at ANU. It's massively oversubscribed, this one. A lot of people wanting to get out the door, it seems. Um, so I've blocked out, so that runs Tuesday through to Thursday. I blocked out Friday and put white space on my diary.

Yep. Yep. Um, have, and then this other one I like, have clear work clothes and home clothes to create psychological boundaries. Now I'm working at Home Lock because they're doing a lot of electricity work on the. My office? 

both: Yep. 

Inger: Um, so I am actually getting changed into my loungewear. 

both: Oh. 

Inger: I don't have pyjamas.

I have loungewear. Okay. Yeah. So I'm, I'm getting changed. Like I'm going out of the office at five and I'm changing my clothes. That actually does work really well. Thank you, Claude. Good boundaries. 

Jason: Oh, okay. As you can see, I'm at work at the moment in a t shirt with a jeep on the front of it. Yeah, well, I mean, 

Inger: I'm like, yeah, I actually, this t shirt, like Brendan bought too many and didn't, he's like, do you want them?

And I'm like, yep, I fit into those now. Yeah. Your two minute tips. Jason, 

Jason: I've got an OmniFocus tip. Yeah. And I feel, I feel kind of a little bit, um, ashamed about this given how long we've been using OmniFocus. I have just discovered this about OmniFocus. 

both: Yes. 

Jason: So I, in OmniFocus you can create tags. Yes. Um, and you can then nest tags under tags.

Yes. So I have a people tag. 

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: And then nested under that are all the people in my life. 

Inger: Yes. Right. As I do too. As I say, if I love you, there is a tag for you in OmniFocus. 

Jason: Yeah. It's true love. The idea about being able to nest it, of course, is that you can collapse that so that you can see all the other tags and stuff like that.

Inger: All the peoples together. Yeah. Yes. 

Jason: So I create people tags when I need to create a people tag. And let's just say I create Simon Brown, for example. And then I, I, my list of people is really long, right? 

Inger: Oh, see, I only keep it to really people I can give a shit about. Yeah, but it'll get 

Jason: Yeah, but Simon Brown might be.

Not that I don't 

Inger: give a shit about a lot of people, but you know, like real, like you've, there's a tag there for you, Jason. It's a long time. One of the few people. All right. But I can see why you'd do that because you're like, I'm talking to this person. What are we doing together again? Yeah. 

Jason: And for me, it's like work, right?

Inger: Yeah. Because I, 

Jason: you know, Simon might be not the key contact for a gig that we've got coming up, but they might be an assistant or something 

both: like that, but I need to 

Jason: keep track of Simon. Gotcha. 

Inger: Hmm. 

Jason: So I've got this big long list. And so what I try and. I just drag people into this list and with OmniFocus, where you drag and drop is where it stays, right?

Like it just, it kind of goes into the middle of the list or something like that. Then after a while, my garden gets a little bit crowded. You know, like, 

both: and I can't 

Jason: find Simon again, cause he's in the middle of the list. He's not under S for Simon or under B for Brown. Cause I just kind of dragged and dropped.

Sure. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Right. And I was like, this is shit. Omni focus. This is shit. Why can't you. Just organize these things in alphabetical order or something like that. 

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: So then I had this moment where I was like, I selected all the names, all the people. Did you

Inger: right click? Did you have a right click moment? I 

both: went right click.

Do you know what I had an idea for? Sort. And then it goes, sort by, and there's all these options. 

Jason: I could sort it by my name, date, priority, like. No. Yeah. No. So in my defense. Okay. 

Inger: I didn't know you could do that. That's good to know. I know, 

Jason: right? It's a great two minute tip. Yeah. That only turns up if you select multiple tags.

Inger: Multiple tags. So 

Jason: if I right click on Which makes 

Inger: sense in retrospect, I guess. Yeah, 

Jason: right? Yeah. But every other time, I've only ever clicked on one tag, right clicked. One, and 

Inger: then gone Yeah. And there's 

Jason: never been a sort function. There's 

Inger: nothing here in the right click. Yeah. Because 

Jason: the Yeah. Why would you sort a one tag?

Yeah. Like 

Inger: Okay, so can I just say, I've had two ideas for a podcast recently. One is Yes. Yes. I've had ideas. I don't want to do them. One is the titles, right? One is Exit Through the Gift Shop, a podcast about tourist attractions, just interviewing people who went to weird tourist attractions, right? I actually think that's quite good, exit through the gift shop.

And the other one was right click life. 

both: Yeah. 

Inger: Because right click solves everything usually, but you're right. If you don't like highlight everything, the right click didn't give you, you've got to be in the right context for the right click to be super spell. 

Jason: And like, this is, OmniFocus have really, really, really, really thought this through.

Um, cause they just do anyway because of the, like that software that those guys produce is so good. But anyway if you have collapsed nested lists like that, 

both: um, 

Jason: and then you select kind of all the tags around the collapsed one, it will sort, if you say sort alphabetically, it will only sort the top layer, it won't sort the nested one.

both: Oh, because 

Jason: you might want the nested one to be sorted under a different, like, you might not want it to be by name, you might want it to be by something else. And so, like, good, right? Like, I first went, Oh, how come it doesn't sort that? You know, all of them by like the collapsed ones as well. 

Inger: Oh, right. No, actually, awesome that 

Jason: you don't do that.

Yeah, right. 

Inger: So you've got to hear location, right? Yeah, same sort of thing, right? got a location, then you can sort, sort them by, to be honest, like I'd stopped nesting tags because of that problem. 

Jason: Yeah, well. 

Inger: So I'm back, baby. Yeah. Cause like, that's an awesome tip. 

Jason: Select your, select your list, right click, sort by.

Yeah. Yeah. There you go. 

Inger: Brilliant. Nice one. Nice one. I don't know, what, 

Jason: 10 15 years 

Inger: we've been using this software? 15? Yeah. Maybe 15. So it's fine. It's fine. Takes a while. That's why we've got a podcast. Yeah. Hopefully you've enjoyed listening to it. We've ranged a fair bit around a lot of things, this podcast, but I think it's come out all right.

Yeah, I think so. I'd like to thank all the people that wrote to us. Thank you for writing to us. It's also great if you want to leave a review for us on Apple Podcasts. I did actually pull the Apple Podcasts list up. We need to assign this to one of us. 

Jason: So I've had this, uh, a few people have written to me when we've said, there's no, um, there's no reviews and people have come back to us and said, that's bullshit.

I've actually written reviews for you. 

Inger: I have a couple here. Yeah. And. 

Jason: Yes. And I'm like, well, that's not on the thing. I can't see it, blah, blah, blah. That's not true. And they then screenshot the review that they've written on the thing. There's something weird going on with the reviews thing. We've tried to figure out what it is and it's, It seems to be people internationally.

Inger: Yes, it is. And I've, I've known this from other podcasts and I don't know what to do about it. You've got to change like what country you're in or something. 

Jason: So people are actually leaving reviews. Yeah. It's just the way we can't see them. So it's not that we're not reading out your reviews. It's there's We're 

Inger: going to figure this out.

We're going to figure it out. Yeah, we have got a couple. Can I read them out? Aussie scat fan says this pod is so next level organization. Five stars. Thank you. Aussie scat fan. We appreciate you next level. I'll take it. We've got from Danielle terrific pod that does not disappoint. Love the shot at installation segment.

There you go. When we did shot, I remember, yeah, as I was driving home from work on this. Springwood road in the beautiful blue mountains. I totally envisage the pair of you working through the system preference settings to get the keyboard shortcuts working. I love the app and software X and leave for the next episode to drop my monthly PhD student nerdy dopamine hit.

Keep it up. Smiley face. Okay, that's great. Thank you. Oh, you'll love this one.

One star review. What? No. From pilot one, two, three, four, five, six, six, seven, eight. 

Jason: Can't count. 

Inger: The title of this review, Jason, is. Appalling drivel.

Failed academics, shilling nonsense. Am I failed academic? 

Jason: Yes, you are professor. 

Inger: Oh, that's right. That will be professor failed academic to you pilot 123456678. I think you probably added an extra six there, maybe it's a typo. Yeah. Thanks for your feedback.

That's actually fucking hilarious. That is so funny. I don't want to encourage more of it. No, 

Jason: no five stars only please. Did 

Inger: someone do that to make us laugh? Because really that just made my day. Like if you're going to be criticized. Had it by dickhead. Because that just, you know. I mean you could have said something really like, cutting, and, you know, and shrew because there's plenty to criticise.

You could have said whiny, white, middle class academics talking about your pedigree dogs and your vulvos, shut the fuck up. I don't want to give you ideas, but I'm guessing you haven't listened all the way through to the end, so. 

Jason: And also, if you're that fucking good, you Give me 8, 000 well, 8, 000 well formed words, right?

Like, like, 

Inger: let's, let's, like, 

Jason: at me, come on. I 

Inger: mean, if you can't even use GPT to make a cutting, you know, critique, then what are you doing? Get outta here. Okay. . Good. Thank you for that laugh. We really want five stars only. Yeah, five stars only. Please. Like, you know, otherwise like, uh, like why are you here?

All right. Great. Yeah, if you want to, your question featured and like pilot 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 6, 7, 8. If you would like to drop us a line, we're happy to have a discussion with you. Yeah. Um, if you want your question featured on the show mailbag, you can leave us a voice message@speakpipedot.com. Email us at pod at on the reg team.

com. Jason, as he said, again, is having break from the socials, even though we talk about him in a, in a affectionate and friendly way. Jason, I promise you that he's not there on blue sky. I am, uh, you find me everywhere. Just type thesis, whisperer, basically. You know, if there's someone winching about capitalism, it's probably me.

You can read everything else at thesiswhisperer. com. Uh, we're going to drop the link to subscribe to our newsletter down in the footer here. I think I've already done that. I'm going to double check that I have done that. I'm pretty sure I have. It costs us about a thousand a year to produce the podcast.

Look, like we can cover it. It's fine. But if you want to support our work and we know people do, we introduced this because people asked how they could help. 

both: And 

Inger: thank you. So on the Ko Fi, we don't know, but we've got a riding the bus, two dollars, like we love the two. It's, it's spelt K O F I. K O F I, Ko Fi.

Um, have we got Ko Fi shout outs, Jason, who is going to put them, click this spreadsheet for the details. 

Jason: I was going to. Um, and then, um, someone did the other day before that, and then I haven't put it in the show notes. Can I hold this one over for the next one? Let me do that. Yes. Someone did shout out.

Big 

Inger: shout out. 

Jason: Yep. Thank 

Inger: you. Thank you very much. Uh, thank you so much. Thanks for helping keeping the wheels of the bus turning just by, you know, listening. We appreciate it. We appreciate you. Thank you for getting this far. We're going to have to snip a few because we're over the two hour mark. 

Jason: It's only by four minutes.

It's like, 

Inger: yeah, it's only a few calories over the calorie budget. At which point do we start become Joe Rogan and we're three hours, like boundaries. Okay. All right. All right. 

both: All right. Good. Should we cut the stuff out about, let's cut the stuff out about the dogs. 

Inger: Oh, yeah, I could do that. 

both: There's no way I thought you would agree to 

Inger: that.

The only problem is I think I call back to it. So then it gets weird. Like I start, I keep mentioning it. I have to wait to see what I can take out. 

Jason: I was, I was poking the bear. I was like, I wonder what kind of reaction I'm going to get. 

Inger: I've already told you, I told you, you know, I never expected people to admire my toddler, but that's not going to be the same with the dog.

It's going to be, how cute is my dog? Look how cute my dog is. My dog is the cutest dog you've ever seen. That's what's going to happen. That's just the way it's going to be. That's the energy I'm bringing to this dog business. 

Jason: I'm totally going to share my TextExpander snippet with you that affirms your dog, 

Inger: you know, love.

Thank you. TextExpander snippet is love. That's all I'm saying. These are all 

Jason: the optional inclusions, right? You know, like, I'm going to build a big one. You're not going to know if it's me or if it's TextExpander. 

Inger: I live for that. I live for that. Three month wait though, at least. It hasn't been born yet. So it's like, it's going to be a while.

I'll be talking about it for a while. All right, good. We're going to go now. See ya. Bye. See ya.