Ai powered research workflows: Inger finally realises her dream to become a cyborg

This one's a bit overdue folks - that's Inger's fault, don't blame Jason! 

After a long catch up, where we bemoan the state of the higher education sector, and a very full mailbag, we talk about AI powered research workflows. 

Inger talks Jason through her new AI enabled process for doing literature reviews, analysis and writing research papers. The crew muse on the shift in working practices how you might take advantage (or not) in your own work. 

The team are looking at a teaching slide deck as they talk, which Inger stupidly altered, so you can't read along... (doh!). But you can see the final version of it, as delivered, here. The pre-print version of the paper about AI that Inger wrote can be retrieved here.

Things we mentioned:

• Reading like a Mongrel
• Text expander for academics (ebook)
• Bullet Journal (BuJo)
• Speechify
• The art of procrastination (book)
• Microsoft power automate
• Migoals journals 
• Mind on Paper (book)
• Cabells Analytics (for finding journals)
• Consensus
• Elicit
• Semantic Scholar
• MaxQDA Tailwind
• The importance of being intereresting (blog post)
• Cognition in the Wild (book)
• Patter blog (Home of the Queen: Pat Thomson)
• Johnny Saldana's coding manual
• Tiny Experiments (book)
• Amphetamine (app)

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

Inger: [00:00:00] Hang on a second, like we've gotta do our cold open bit. 

Jason: We col I am cold. Does that matter? Like I'm wearing short. You 

Inger: dunno what? A don't you know what a cold open is? 

Jason: No. 

Inger: You know how I always have a bit of authentic, authentic banter before? Yeah. I turn on the thing that's called a cold open. 

Jason: Oh man. I'm not gonna be able to unknow that now.

Inger: You've been schooled. You know stuff. I do.

Jason: All right. I'm gonna, I'm gonna bring this cold open to an end and start with Excellent. What's the, what's the actual opening called? Just introduction, I suppose. 

Inger: The, I, I dunno, actually, ah, the read. All right. I dunno. We should know these things, aren't we? Podcasters 

Jason: professionals. 

Inger: So 

Jason: professional. Welcome to On the Reg.

I'm Dr. Jason Downs, and I'm here with my good friend, professor Inga Newburn from the Australian National University, but she's better known as the Thesis Whisperer on the internet. And we are here 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 [00:01:00] a more balanced life.

Inga, welcome. Have you been since we last caught up? 

Inger: Uh, I've had an interesting time over the last month. I. 

Jason: Oh yes. Recovered from the, uh, political wind. Have we, 

Inger: I have, I have. There's still mop up, so I am still doing, some post-game analysis work for the team Uhhuh. So, you know, give them a hand in enjoying watching all the binge juice politics, licking the binge juices of all the, like I listening to every podcast, reading all the articles about, the liberal party implosion.

It's shouting for it. Yeah. I just like, sweet, sweet shouting for it can't help it. It's not a nice side of my personality, but I have a lot of text chains where we talk about that. Yeah. And, uh, I had some discussions about not working at a NU anymore 

Jason: for a while. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Oh yeah. And, and did who did we discuss this with?

Friends over coffee or were they more serious? Oh, an actual, 

Inger: an actual [00:02:00] recruiter who was lovely and actually listens to the pods. So knew. Oh, knew. Well that was interesting for both of us. 'cause um, anyway, I, I won't name the recruiter, but she knows who she is. Hello. 

Jason: Was there a strong Parasocial relationship there?

Inger: Oh yes. Yeah, and she actually suggested I should mention it on the pod because she thought people would be interested. To hear stories like that. And I mean, not to brag, it's not the first time I've had one of those calls in the Yeah. I've been working at AMU since 2013, so where does that put me?

12 years coming into year. 13. Yeah. I've probably had about eight 

Jason: Wow. 

Inger: Of these approaches from various people offering me the next stage up. Um, and like sometimes it's just been very easy to say no. Like, don't even engage me in this conversation. Um, and put them onto other people that I think would be good, you know?

Yep. Like, so like part of a recruiter's job too is if you are not interested, you are probably the [00:03:00] person who knows the people. 

Both: Yeah. So 

Inger: I've played a role in that quite a few times. Yeah. By taking the call and saying, not me, but hey, what about so and so? Um, so with this one though, when the email came through, I thought, yeah, that sounds like it's good time for change.

I thought to myself, 

Both: Ooh, the grass greener. And I went 

Inger: through, I went through the process, right? Like, yeah, I, I did, I did say to the recruiter, I am a Prada handbag, you know, I'm not like, I'm not a cold shopping bag. And if you wanna go to the Kohl's and do the shop Prada handbag's not gonna cut it. Right?

Yeah. Like, because it's a bit small and everyone stares at you and goes, is that Prada?

Which she, she got what I was saying, like, totally. Yeah. So I said like, you need to go back, talk to these people and make sure that they're prepared to wear Prada, 

Jason: because Yes. 

Inger: And you know, to their credit, they were interested in that. So I was like, okay. Right. And then, there's a certain writing of a letter.

It's [00:04:00] slightly different at a recruiter level. It's more like, we'd like your response to this prospectus. 

Both: Ooh. So 

Inger: they send you a big thing about the whole university and blah, blah, blah. I've got this far before Yeah. But not, like, not as seriously as this, I guess. So I sat down, I started to write it, Jason.

I thought, yeah, let's, let's go. Right. Right. What's this look like? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, and then I just, I, I couldn't do it. And then I tried to get Claude to do it for me. Claude did a pretty bang up job and I was like, well, I'll just sit on that. Yeah. Like, I don't actually feel great about submitting a chord written thing.

I just, I was just sit on it and then I had a dream.

Jason: Oh yes. Do tell. 

Inger: And my, my dream was I was being interviewed for this job. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And then they said to me. You are not good enough for this job. And then I felt annoyed with myself because I thought, I don't even want this job, and now I feel bad about myself. 

Both: Oh. 

Inger: Which like your standard stock, [00:05:00] standard anxiety dream.

Like, I'm not sure that that's how it would've rolled out, but that's what my brain said to me. My brain basically propositioned me and said, how would you feel Inga if that was the outcome? And I felt pretty shit. Right. And I thought, and I sat up annoyed with myself, like really angry. You know, when you think your dream's real and you sit up and you're like, you are like, I 

Both: you're 

Inger: fucking idiot.

Why did you put yourself in that position? And then I thought, well, these are very easy way not to put yourself in that position. Just don't put yourself in that position. Yeah. So I didn't, yeah, okay. But I mean, it did make me think, you know, what is it I really like about my job? Yeah. Why am I there in the first place?

What is it I find satisfying? What is it that, frankly, I'm finding annoying at the moment. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, as everyone in higher ed, educ, I'm not unique. Like everybody in every Australian university is having a fucking hard time. Yeah. And friends are losing jobs all over the place. Good people, as you know, Jason.

Like you go who you know. Yeah. What? [00:06:00] 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And like your silence doesn't save you being a good girl or boy doesn't save you or person, non-specific binary, whatever doesn't save you. I think people do think that that will save them. But these decisions get made with spreadsheets. They're quite cold-blooded and like, you're on the chop, you're on the chop, you're for the chop.

You can be great at your job, you can be shit at it. Very few people are, in my opinion, shit at their jobs, but 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: You know, and there's, it's not, there is no fair 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: In these situations. So yeah, I felt pretty good about it actually. So I am here and as someone said to me this week, stay with us in the fight, Inga.

And I'm like, okay, I'm here comrades, I'm here. Like, 

Jason: yeah, we 

Inger: continue on. But did start me thinking about what the push and pull factors around why you stay in a job or not. I mean, especially when you have choices. 

Both: Yeah. Like 

Inger: I, I do have choices and it was good to remind myself that I had choices. 'cause sometimes [00:07:00] that really helps.

Like you are willingly putting yourself in this position that does to some extent piss you off. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: I mean, I'm not gonna lie, like my team's smaller. I haven't got an assistant. I'm doing the email. I love it. Yeah. I mean, the email's getting done. Mind you like, you know, I. Shit. Oh, 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: I mean, I have systems mate, like Yeah.

And bringing my systems to bear on that email is, it's, it's fine. The first couple of weeks it was like, oh my God, I'm gonna die. But now it's fine. I've text expanded the shit outta that. So every student, email Yeah. Thing that I, like, it's all just like B dang, B dang, B dang. So yeah, so that's where I've been at.

So it's been a pretty weird time. 

Both: Mm-hmm. 

Inger: You know, because at the same time everyone's been, running around, like the cuts are really coming at a NU now. Yeah. So, colleagues of mine, like the text chains are blowing up. Yeah. , Well, I'm about to hear I guess next week [00:08:00] who's gone and who isn't.

But you know, you've got rumors of this and rumors of that. And again, I'm not singling out management though. I have my views. I'm not gonna air them here. 

Both: Mm-hmm. 

Inger: But I will point the finger at the government, like, what are you doing? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: For reels now. Yeah. Like, we look at, we look at the US and we look at what's happening to Harvard University.

I know we don't bring that fucking guy into this podcast, but I, 

Jason: I know, right. But you 

Inger: know, and we judge, we look at that and go, Ooh, how terrible. And then effectively the same kind of disruption. I mean, slightly different flavor of delivery. Like, we're not getting, don't teach DEI, but we might as well, because guess which units are going.

Generally in other universities, I dunno about mine. That's not to say I have any special knowledge about what's happening to, for us, but you know, in either way you look at it and then, people talk about, oh, all these really great academics in the US are gonna be looking to move somewhere else.

And it's like, well, [00:09:00] it's no better. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like when we're talking about working conditions, opportunity, you know, it's no better here. That's an absolute tragedy. And anyway, that's all I got, Jason. 

Both: Oh dang. 

Inger: Yeah. Oh. Anyway, so we won't have to change the header still at a NU Still, still 

Jason: at a, still at a NU. I am seeing it from a different perspective.

So, we, last year one of the products that we, uh, thought that we would build, that we thought would get a lot of traction in our business was a workshop called The Squeeze. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, you know, like how do you work with less effectively and still get stuff up when you're being squeezed? 

Both: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Jason: yeah.

And it turned out we ran that workshop once we ran it. Yeah, we ran it once for some ECAs towards the end of the year last year, but that. Workshop has, [00:10:00] now it's at least three, maybe four times on our calendar, on our forward looking calendar this year for the second half, half of the year is it?

Right. 

Inger: So it wasn't, we didn't, wasn't immediately popular, but now it's like, oh yeah, tell us what you've got to say about that. Because that's what's happening. Right. 

Jason: Pretty much. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Which I think is really interesting. It's because, you know, that was when I thought that would go over really, really well with, uh, early career academics, ECRs, you know, that Yeah.

Kind of space, you know, system systematization, those sorts of things. But, um, well, all the 

Inger: techniques I'm using to manage having a team, that's it. That's pretty much half the size. It was. 

Jason: Yep. Got a, uh, got an email from the good folk at Text Expander I think last week sometime. They're gonna build AI into their product.

Inger: Okay, well that's a actually useful 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Use of ai. 

Jason: Yeah. So I think there might be, in the case of, you know, when you're designing your, your snippets 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: that's probably where they'll put it. I imagine. [00:11:00] I dunno. Yeah. 

Inger: I don't really so much need it for that I, no. 

Jason: Right. Because it's really, I would like it 

Inger: to analyze my work habits and go, Hey, why don't you create a snippet for this?

Yeah. Well, hey, I'm anticipating that you're about to fire off this one. Would you like me to do that? 

Jason: Yeah, that is clippy from 1996 again. Sure, 

Inger: sure. I liked Clippy. I don't like Yeah, but it, it's interesting, isn't it? That is, that is a reflection on where we're at because I think universities started to feel the squeeze themselves last year and this year is a massive, massive retrenching of human capacity.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And I mean, we are not just lines on a spreadsheet. Imagine in our business, right? We're an intellectual property business. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: You and I together on the reg team. Imagine if one of us left. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: How do you, how do you replace me or you? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Right. I would say, well, you just, you can't, you'd have to change how you do business, but that's [00:12:00] not how they operate.

Universities. They're like, oh, we can get another insert amazing colleague that just got the arse and they'll just do all the things that person did. Well, it's not that simple. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: We're not fungible widgets. 

Jason: Yeah. I, um, you know, like I talk a lot with clients and potential clients as part of just, spinning up business and there's, more, it's more than 50% of the conversations that I'm having at the moment.

Reference in some way, shape or form redundancies of the universities that they're working at. Yeah. They've either just been through it or they're about to go through it, or they're in the middle of it. Yeah. It's scary. 

Inger: Yeah. Must feel good to be out. 

Jason: Uh, I have, I have sympathy for the people that I'm talking with.

Inger: Yeah. And I think that sort of helps. I mean, like, I mean, it just helps in so many ways. But of course, you know, our [00:13:00] business is also connected to the universities and their health. I mean, you know. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: That doesn't, that doesn't feel good either. So we're kind of in this together. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I think also like the work like mine which is what you do now, you know, the work researcher development, uh, it's an easy cut for universities.

You know, they say, well, it's icing on the cake. Cake is still good without icing. Okay, we won't have these people. And then later on they're like, ah, shit, you know, these things we need done. Yeah. Like people, uh, we need people to perform, behave, feel a certain way. We've got no tools to help that happen.

And then we get the calls. I mean, which is great for us. But but you think about the skill in the sector. I mean, I told you about one person that you hadn't realized was leaving and you were shocked by that. Right. And you think of that person leaving that. Yeah. Position, position. I mean the, the thing that that person walks out the door [00:14:00] with.

Yeah. Again, irreplaceable. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: I am encouraging that person to start their own business because I'm like, well, it's not just your university that's gonna miss that. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. And it's a lot of people starting their business. I'm getting calls like you are now, um, one last week with a colleague, um, who said, oh, I've got two more paychecks and I'm going back to my practitioner business.

Luckily you can fall back on a trade, you know? Yeah. Like in the design field. And they're like, oh, I know I can run a business. But there was a reason I I left it in the first place and when I, when I was in business, I was in a collective, and we had an assistant, we had books and we had, now I have to do all that for myself, right?

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Because I'm starting again. I don't want to join a firm. I wanna Yeah. Still do blah, blah. And interesting IP that's come out of their academic career. Really fascinating, 3D printing all sorts of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And, and they're kind of like, oh, so, you know, Inga, tell me about your setup.[00:15:00] 

And I always dread that question now 'cause I'm like, oh, how long have you got? Jason does this, Jason does this. Jason does the other thing and another thing that Jason does and blah, and maybe you should just talk to Jason, like, I'm sure I'm getting it wrong. And then I had to immediately text you and tell you how much I appreciate you for doing all this side of the business.

Jason: It's fun that it's fun that bit. Although it is a little bit of constant chaos, you got an email earlier today that from past Jason who sent it way back in February. Um, you think I 

Inger: had a gig next week, which I don't Yeah. Think you had a gig in a couple of 

Jason: weeks. So here I am. I'm designing this kind of, the problem I wanna solve is in's busy and she's got a gig coming up in a couple of weeks.

Mm. She needs a timely reminder of the sorts of things that she needs to do to prepare for that. 

Both: Mm. 

Jason: Far enough in advance that she's not angry with me. 'cause it's, you know, I could have done with this two weeks ago, but not, not, not so far in advance that like, why is he emailing me about this now? Doesn't he know that I'm a [00:16:00] professional?

I've got, I mean, 

Inger: it was perfectly timed. It would just a phantom appointment. 

Jason: Yes. Just that, uh, uh, yeah, because, uh, I, a little bit of, it was a little bit of hubris there. I'd had this conversation with a client. It had all gone very, very well. You know, we'd, everybody was happy. We'd agreed on kind of on the phone, what was gonna happen, next steps, all that sort of stuff.

And so I started to put it all in place. And there was one more level of authority that was required. And usually these things just get ticked off and away we go. Right? So I jumped the gun a little bit. I figured out a way to make OmniFocus work for me so that I could get you this list of tasks that you needed to do, sort of reasonably elegantly.

And it meant not very much time for me to have to figure out how to do that. And so I did that and it's present and thinking in my mind it'll be fine. And then, and then forgot about 

Inger: it, then everything changed. And you've forgot that you kicked the stone off the mountain. [00:17:00] Yeah, 

Jason: absolutely. Absolutely.

And there's another one in there. I need to go back and have a look. I've got another one or two scheduled for you to go. I just better go back and check that they're actually good to go. 

Inger: No, they're not phantom. They're not a phantom pregnancy. Like rose the beach on freeze. No. 

Jason: Yeah, no, you'll, you'll be pleased to know I've refined that process now anyway.

Oh, 

Inger: great. I'm sure you have. It's good fun. 

Jason: Those processes are fun when they work. But yeah, human hour usually. 

Inger: Yeah. Anyway. What have you been up to? 

Jason: Ah, well, I haven't been doing that. It's like, and things have been going pretty well in the Downs Clan, as a matter of fact. A little bit of more proud Dad moment stuff.

Mm-hmm. Oh, took your advice about, um, maths tutoring. 

Inger: Oh, good. Yes, 

Jason: yes. Throw money at the problem. Yeah. And I was like, Ugh. Okay. So I did, it's expensive nowadays. It is, uh, co Yeah. Cost of living for, for private tutors, for, um, sure. Um, and we, we've got a friend who aced, [00:18:00] uh, VCE and is now doing engineering very strong maths background and he's helping out but still expensive.

Yeah. 95 he got for his last, uh, 

Both: oh 

Jason: yeah. I know. He takes well to being, to direct destruction. I've decided. Yeah. 

Inger: Wow. Jason. 

Jason: Yeah. He went from, I don't understand this, to 95. 

Inger: Incredible. 

Jason: Yeah. That's some bloody good tutoring there. Just like, oh, that is, it's not me. I'm not helping. Really good. Yeah, yeah. 

Inger: No, no.

I mean, we, like, let's face it, we, we were useless after about year. Six, seven. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: probably. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so yeah, you like, that's great and you're saving all that money on private school fees. You're just throwing money at specific problems. Yes. That, that was always my approach to schooling. And I, I still stand by it.

So far. The highest atar of all the clan. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So 

Inger: far 

Jason: the, um, the textbook that they use for maths has got it's riddled with errors. [00:19:00] Yes. So that's the 

Inger: other thing. Yeah. 

Jason: Which I, I was shocked by. It's like Yeah. Riddled with errors and the the tutor goes, yeah. Yeah. 50% of 'em are wrong. No wonder you couldn't figure it out.

Inger: Like, oh, Jesus. That's actually an outrage, isn't it? 

Jason: It is. It is. Yeah. Like this is the curriculum endorsed textbook, right? Yeah. That's, 

Inger: that's, that's appalling. That's just terrible. Yeah. 

Jason: Anyway, to back that up, he has been selected for something called the School of Student Leadership. 

Inger: I know a kid who did that.

Jason: Do you? 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Ah, um, this is a program, there's four schools dotted around Victoria. Mm-hmm. They're usually located up in places like the high country or you know, valley Yeah. Country areas. Yeah, yeah. Country areas. Yeah. They're. Designed specifically for a class of about 45 kids. 

Inger: Yep. 

Jason: And the kids go and they live there for a whole term, um, on site.

So 

Inger: that's during [00:20:00] school, school time, yeah. Yep. 

Jason: During school time. 

Inger: Yeah. Yep. 

Jason: They go and they they live together. Days start at six 30 in the morning, finish at nine 30 at night, six days a week schooling. Yeah. 

Both: Wow. But it's 

Jason: all, it's all kind of leadership focused. A lot of outbound activity kind of stuff.

Overnight hikes, you know, they have to organize their own cooking and laundry, and they've gotta sort of become a little bit self-sufficient and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. And on top of that, 

Inger: yeah, it's like a share house sort of situation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But 

Jason: for year, but for year nines. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, how, how chaotic would that be? But anyway, 

Inger: I, I would've, I actually, to be frank, I think I would've hated that. But Jack, Jack will be, Jack will thrive in that. 

Jason: Yeah. So it's a, you can't bring your mobile phone, can't bring your iPad, can't bring your brilliant laptop kind of environment. Brilliant 

Inger: brilliance.

Yeah. 

Jason: So, and, and he's okay with that because, 

Inger: but he doesn't really, he's not dependent. 

Jason: Yeah. He doesn't have, but he's actually hooked, 

Inger: be with peers for, who will take a little bit of [00:21:00] time adjusting, but they'll be deprogrammed and then actually be able to interact with people's people. Amazing. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah.

Inger: It's a bit sad, isn't it? 

Jason: A full term. A full term. And we're only allowed to visit once. 

Inger: Yeah. Right. I, yeah, I know the, I know the program. It's really amazing. And I, and some, I think it'll be awesome. Some fancy private schools imitate it, but apparently never as good. Um, but they do like, so one of RA's kids went away for a term and was really, really beneficial.

The other one didn't 'cause COVID kind of scream. Oh, dang. But they, they, they put them in share houses. They, they, they make really enduring friendships. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: yeah. Don't be surprised if he comes back with a girlfriend or maybe two. Because that tends to happen. 

Jason: I, I, I can't imagine why bunch of 

Inger: like push them together with phone 14 and 

Jason: 15 year.

What are they gonna do? 

Inger: I mean, for real though. 

Jason: That's it. I would've been 

Inger: terrible. I would've gone through that place. Like Joseph,[00:22:00] 

I always thought of myself as a shy, retiring wallflower, but I was not.

Jason: This is trail of destructive, like just destroyed relationships. Like behind you as you leave. Well victorious at the end, 

Inger: at 15, I didn't have very much patience, I must say. Like, try before you buy. That's all I say, you know, so by the time I met Luke, I like, I'd done plenty of consumer testing. 

Jason: Right.

Excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. Yeah. You knew what, you knew what you wanted, right? I 

Inger: did. I did. And I knew what I didn't want. That's for sure. So, you know, that's a good environment in which to, you know. Yeah, hothouse, that kind of, yeah. Anyway, just don't be surprised, that's all I'm saying. 

Jason: Okay. Okay. 

Inger: Either come back with it, girlfriend or the second girlfriend.

'cause there's been a breakup during the thing, and then there'll be the breakup after the things. And just be prepared. That's all I'm [00:23:00] saying. Like, just buckle up. 

Jason: Do you know the whole, do you know the whole relationship thing? Mm. Um, I get silence, radio silence. He just does not talk to me about, I'm the parent that he does not discuss this stuff with, 

Inger: but he tells Cath, right?

Oh yeah. Like Yeah. Opens up like a tap, 

Jason: right? Oh, to her. Absolutely. 

Inger: Like, yeah. Yeah. You're out now. You're out, you're out. Uh, 

Jason: I got, clearly I've got nothing to say on the topic. 

Inger: Yeah. Well, what would you know, Jason? 

Jason: I mean, yeah. Apparently. Anyway. Okay. Yeah, that's that. Yeah. Other than that, really it's just been, I've been just been trying to keep on top of things and yeah, we're busy.

Uh, busy and, but the bullet journal, oh my God, it has saved my. Ask more than once, you know? Yeah. And that process of setting out the next day, the what, what you're gonna do the next day. 

Both: Yeah. Just to 

Jason: give yourself some clarity around so that when you wake up, you don't have to make those decisions again.

And [00:24:00] also bit of a, mini moment to reflect on what went on during the day and kind of what's still left, hanging over and all that sort of stuff. I can't tell you the number of times that saved my bacon including last night, for example. Um, I spent a little bit of time with my bullet journal and my calendar and looking at our forward work plan and trying to figure out exactly all the things that are coming up, what I need to do to get them all done.

So, yes. So, uh, not unsolicited praise for the bullet journal yet again. Um, yeah, I mean, especially as an 

Inger: entrepreneur, right? Like you've got set your own structure. There isn't, like there was to me this morning a meeting that you just had to go to, right? Yeah. So then you gotta prepare for it and all, like, you don't have any of that imposed on you.

Yeah. It's gotta come from you. So Bullet journal gives you that structure for the day, like at least framework, right? 

Jason: Yeah. Um, which has been really good. And so then, uh, you know, I started looking at it. I'm gonna have to start thinking about setting out the next month's spread. [00:25:00] Mm. Again soon. It's, you know, coming into June.

Can you believe it already? I 

Inger: know. I can believe it because I'll be at your house on the weekend. I know it's gonna be exciting. We we're recording this on 27th of May. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: So I thought, oh, just hoof myself down to Melbourne. Why not? 

Jason: Well, it was, I think this time last year, I, was it June or July? Might have been July. 

Inger: July when I came 

Jason: out to Canberra. 

Inger: Because it was colder. Yeah, 

Jason: it was colder. It must have been July. Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Uh, I came out to Canberra and we did the kind of the strategy session for on the reg team.

So 

Both: yeah, we, 

Jason: it's almost the, you coming down for the weekend will work except for Sunday. I'm off to the fights on Sunday, but 

Inger: I'm almost tempted to come with you, but I do have to do family things.. 

Jason: Um, we love hearing from you all. Thank you. This is our chance to share the interesting things our listeners share with us. We have a shining new email address. Thank you everybody who's been writing to it.

Um, you can write to us at pod at on the reg team.com and we'll make sure your email [00:26:00] makes it to the next episode. 

Inger: Are we caught up now? Is that true? What you just said? We're 

Jason: mostly caught up. I've got, I found some I from January. So we, I think, I think, I think there might be one or two out there.

'cause we've got multiple channels now. 

Inger: I knows so many channels. People can do the 

Jason: fan mail thing. 

Inger: Yeah. Which is great. Love it. When you do the fan mail thing, just tell us your actual name 

Jason: Yeah. Turns because we don't get 

Inger: told that turns. Yeah. 

Jason: Weirdly that I, we've got that set up somehow that turns up to my personal email address.

Inger: Does it? Okay. Yeah. Change. Alright. Which I don't 

Jason: look at very often. Oh. And so when I look at it and I kind of. A whole lot of stuff in there that's just crap. And then every now and again, there's this Hi Ingram. Jason. Like, well, hey, what? I need to figure out what, I have to figure that one 

Inger: out. Yeah. You need to figure that one out.

Yeah. Yeah. Move it somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: Anyway, our first email is from Jean Frederick Ard. I think I've said that. Apologies if I've got your, 

Inger: there's a lot of, there's a lot of flicky [00:27:00] things on the top of letters there. 

Jason: Yes. That's too much. And we're, we're 

Inger: Australian and we're, we are not, we're not real good at stuff like that.

No apologies. 

Jason: Jean. And they wrote, they wrote back to us in March, so, uh, sorry. Jf who, and they work at the University of Sherma Sherbrook in Quebec in beautiful Canada. 

Inger: Amazing. 

Jason: Yeah. JF writes, hi Ra and Jason. I'm a huge fan of the podcast. I've been to the back, back, back catalog during the pandemic.

Sorry. And I'm now delighted. Yes. And I'm now delighted every time a new episode comes out. The Thesis Whisperer blog was a tremendous resource when I was a student, and now I'm a couple of years into an academic career. The podcast is playing a similar role as I navigate its various challenges. Mm-hmm.

In a small effort to contribute to the community from which I've received so much. I thought I would share what I believe to be an interesting tip at the intersection of so many of your interests. Ooh, 

Inger: go on. 

Jason: A younger colleague of mine directed me towards the Speechify [00:28:00] app. Which is, uh, speechify.com, which is geared among other things to people with A DHD.

I haven't received any formal diagnosis, but if you ask my better half, well that allows you to Yeah. My 

Inger: better half will say the same thing about me. Mm, 

Jason: yeah. Yeah. Relate. Yep. The uh, app allows you to listen to various text formats, E-G-P-D-F, Google Docs, but also Kindle. Mm. So far so good. But what has been a real game changer for me was when I started using it to listen to the papers and essays I have to grade.

Oh, good idea. Mm. My that's just as an aside, this is not jf this is me. My supervisor, when I was doing my PhD, was also a lecturer, teacher type thing, and she was blind. Mm. Um, and, and she used to use a di, a dictation, I think it was Dragon. Dragon dic, dragon Tape. Dragon Speech, 

Inger: yeah. Dragon Dictator. Yeah.

To 

Jason: do dictation. Mm-hmm. But she also used to listen to the [00:29:00] essays. The digital copies of the essay, she, she had a screen reader type thing and she used to listen to them as well. I tried it. It was, it was pretty good. Like I found that if I'm marking students' work, listening to it gives me time to kind of really, I just process it differently.

Both: Mm-hmm. And. 

Jason: You'd have to go back and then add comments and do that sort of stuff in the paper, like provide feedback. Mm. But I, I, I found it way better than reading. Mm. I'm, I'm not quite sure why. When you read, you, you formulate the question in your head, like the question that the author should answer for you.

Mm. But sometimes doesn't. Yeah. It's like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you go, oh yeah. But what about, you have that kind of thought. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. When I'm listening, I'm not sure that I have that as much. Mm. I think when I'm listening to them I go, oh, it might, it's probably coming. Mm. Whereas when I read, I'm a little bit more critical about it.

Mm. Like I actually go, huh. Yeah. But what about, I don't know, it'd be interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, [00:30:00] JF continues. I can listen at high speeds up to three times. Wow. Yeah. And still remain focused on the task. I stop listening to make notes. Yep. Good. And when I'm reading a longer piece such as a Master's thesis, I sometimes take it out for a walk for a first read and then get back to it in front of the computer to write my report.

Both: Mm. Good idea. Overall, 

Jason: this way of engaging with student productions allows me to be more efficient and to do a better job as an evaluator. Mm-hmm. This is also useful for peer reviews, however, I'm not sure why, but I haven't adopted it for reading papers. Perhaps because I tend to read like a Mung girl as I learned and got permission from the thesis whisperer.

That was interesting. You were saying the last time we recorded the pod, the movement. Movement and listening. We were talking about audio books. Yeah, I was thinking about 

Inger: that. And I started to read a book about it because I'm, I'm intrigued. Yeah, I think there's something in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But reading like a Mong Girls is a very old blog post and the favorite of mine.

So, um, I'll put the link in the show notes. But yeah, it's, it's nice when [00:31:00] people tell me they remember, remember particular posts. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: I also have a question. Do you have any plans to offer your workshops online? Uh, as I live in Canada, I have little hope to catch one in person, but many of the themes seem intriguing and I'm sure I would benefit from attending.

Please continue with your excellent work. Best wishes, JF Ard. 

Inger: Oh, thank you so much. What a lovely letter. I feel so affirmed by that. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, I love the idea of listening. So speechify 

Inger: yeah. Dot 

Jason: com is the, I need to check it 

Inger: out. 

Jason: Is the, we do do online 

Inger: workshops. Jf in fact, you did two last week. I did two the week before.

Jason: Yep. I've got another one coming up. I did one 

Inger: in, I did one in, where was Bremen? University of Bremen in Germany. You did? Where did you do 

Jason: University of Bristol? In the uk. Yeah. 

Inger: And like, you can make it, you can find times for most places that mean that we aren't up at one o'clock in the morning. And we're, we, we, uh, we do a lot of online [00:32:00] workshops, even locally in Australia.

And we have we use TI Meter, which is a an. We'll include the link because when we're gonna talk in our work problem segment, I've got a whole ter so you'll see what Mentimeter looks like when, um, 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: And it enables people to write back their feedback and to do polls and responses and gives thumbs up and love hearts and everything.

So it makes it quite interactive. And I actually think some of our content is better online that way than some of it in person because you're in your own space. You can look at your own, especially the writing stuff. You can look at your own stuff on your own computer. Yeah. And so we, yeah, we do that a lot.

So yeah, reach out like we're happy to, we, we, it's easy for us actually. We like it. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, when not those people that dislike online learning, I actually really like it. 

Jason: Yeah. I, I think it has its place. I mean, it's not all of our products are geared for online, uh, learning. Yeah. We can't do 

Inger: everything, but we can do a lot, like a lot of the writing stuff we can do for sure.

That actually translates [00:33:00] quite well. If I could speak to the, the, the movement thing. So I started like, I got interested in my own idea, I guess, and I thought, I wonder if there's, and I found this book like I'd had for ages 'cause I have so many books I take, um, Alberto Echoes approached books, which is like, he owned like a lot as we've thought about before.

And there are tools tool that you have on the tool, you know, the wall of the shed. And, you know, one day you'll need that tool. So I picked up an old book by Dan Olson called Mind on Paper. Oh, and it's, it's an interesting book and it sort of goes through the whole development of the history of how writing developed and how thinking thinking through writing, thinking with writing, you know, as a whole embodied process.

Fascinating book. I've got about halfway through on the weekend actually, so I've got a lot more to say. I think we should do a pod on it 'cause there's, there's some really intriguing evidence about like, embodiment and memory and I, it's a speak pipe that we'll play at the end touches on it as well. So, [00:34:00] yeah.

Uh, it's interesting that you're reporting in that experience 'cause um, 'cause I could see how that would work, especially for a master's thesis, you know, 'cause it's quite long and it's hard to maintain your concentration and there's something about listening to the book and then reading it later. 'cause I often do that at the gym.

I listened to, getting things done recently and then I'm like, oh, I've forgotten that chapter. I went back and read it. I read it so much more quickly. And it's almost like they fired up the neurons or something. Interesting idea. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, you know, it used to work for Carleen.

I mean, she, she, um, and it worked for me when I was doing it as well, so I think if, yeah, it's excellent. If you would like to invite us to Canada. I'm not if you're Oh, we're not against 

Inger: it. 

Jason: Yes, that's it. We can do online, but you know, we will travel for food. You know. 

Inger: Are we, are we able to say that you're going, we haven't got that next overseas trip for you yet.

No, not yet. There's one, there's one on the cards to Jason for a place he hasn't been. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: [00:35:00] Which would be exciting if this comes up. It would be very 

Both: exciting. 

Inger: Yeah. Love it. 

Jason: uh, we've got one, we got a message from Emily Waters on our Cofi site. See my channels. 

Inger: Oh, so many channels. Yeah, yeah, 

Jason: yeah.

Hi and Jason, thank you so much for recommending Bob Dodos book and for the reply about Jason's book indexing strategy. These were indeed the missing links I needed. 

Inger: And these are the links you've been looking for. These are links that you've been looking for. Uh, a system for writing, a system for writing by Bob Doto, DOTO.

Jason: Yeah. And I, um, I wrote back to Emily and told her that I'm currently reading tiny Experiments. 

Inger: Tiny Habits. No, 

Jason: no. Tiny, tiny Experiments by Ann Law Lako. And I'm about halfway through at the moment, and it's a very heavily indexed book at this point. Inga. 

Inger: Yeah. Right. I'm sharpening 

Jason: pencils. I like, I'm making pencils.

Pencils go blunt. And then I'm having to res sharpen them. 

Inger: Yes. I'm doing that with the Mind on paper book too. Luke was like, what are you doing? And I'm like this. And he goes like, he's not a person who writes on books, but, you know. Yeah. [00:36:00] But it's, it's like I've covered the inside cover and then the next cover sheet and then, you know.

Yeah. Yeah. It's great. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Um, does that, the next one's for you, Inga? 

Inger: Oh, um, Inger. Jason. This is from Suzanne. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: I wonder where the power automate has ever been discussed on the pod. It has not Suzanne. So, I was just listening to 2023 August 9th episode. Thank you so much for referring back to the episode with the actual time and date, because usually we're like, which one was that?

And we have to go back and find, so we appreciate. The one about Stephen Hawkings Dining Habits, and Jason was mentioning that his automation got stuck in a feedback loop. This reminds me about one of my experiments with using Power Automate. 

Jason: Anyway, just wanted, I think that that automation is still going, by the way, just quietly.

I think it's still, still powering away on a, on a computer somewhere anyway. Damn. 

Inger: Anyway, just wanna mention power automating, considering that most universities and large [00:37:00] organizations use Microsoft 3 6 5, it's the automation suite that comes with it, similar to Zapier and if FTTT, if this and that, I did use, if there's this and that, so, say more zanne.

Okay. It hooks onto a lot of Microsoft services and can help people with tedious stuff. One example automation I build is sync up availability from my personal calendar to my university calendar, so that when people book meetings, my avail availability is accurate. Jason, we could use this one. 

Jason: Brilliant.

Not, not. So 

Inger: basically, when an event is created in my personal calendar, I create a duplicate event on my university calendar, but with all the details raised. So no need to have my private stuff on a corporate system. Oh my God, I think you just saved my life. Suzanne. This could also be useful for people who have functional inboxes, one for their personal address, another for associate dean, et cetera.

Sincerely, Suzanne. Ah. That is, it's a good idea Don. Change my freaking life [00:38:00] because at the moment Apple is not talking to Outlook and like every time I, when I had to book the hairdresser the other day, yes. I had to like look in three calendars on the rig outlook and on my personal calendar before I could say yes, Friday morning would be a good time.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: By the way, I have so much sitting around with my hairdressing that I just do it during the work week and it's really good coding time. I always sit there and I code tech data, like chat to my hairdresser for a bit. Yeah. And then she just does her thing and I'm just. She's like, what are you doing there?

Oh, what's that about? And then I explained to her my coding regime and actually talking out loud to my hairdresser, having to explain it to someone who knows nothing about it. Actually. 

Jason: Really good job.

You know, when you have to teach to somebody else. 

Inger: Yeah, it is actually. So I actually now save up text coding to go down to my hairdresser and do that anyway, 

Jason: so That's awesome. 

Inger: [00:39:00] Yeah. Yeah, that sounds bloody useful. I don't know about you, but like Outlook and Apple sometimes just don't get on. I don't know.

Jason: Yeah, I dunno. I stopped using Microsoft, like I just, I abandoned Microsoft. It still irks me that I have to pay for a family, um, account every year. Subscription. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just there's so much better stuff out there. Anyway, you have a kid on Microsoft, um, like an Xbox or something like that. Oh, and they, they wanna know all about 

Inger: vertical integration. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. And so they, they, they have this thing, like they couch it as family safety type stuff, but Uhhuh, um, if you are the owner of the kid or the kid's account Really?

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: Then you can start like they just feed you all this stuff about what your kid's been doing. 

Both: Ah, goodness sake. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's like, really? I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure we didn't sign up for that level of surveillance, but 

Inger: [00:40:00] Yeah. Well they gave me copilot without asking, 

Jason: right? Yeah. I just suddenly 

Inger: was paying more.

I was like, why did this cost $70 more? And then I'm like, oh, I got stung by not saying no to copilot. Like yeah, I felt like my, they did not seek my consent. Jason. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: But then I feel like that about a lot of Silicon Valley bro kind of politics. Yeah. But yeah. But that actually sounds really useful.

I'm gonna report back. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Ben wrote to us in January of this year, 

Inger: sorry, Ben, sorry. Here now. Sorry. Sorry, everyone. Hi, Ben. Hope you're still listening. Thanks for, yeah. No, he is. 

Jason: Is he is. I, I, and I know why too. I, well, the other foot will drop soon. Okay. Um, Hey, OOTR team. I have finally managed to listen to the latest episode on Tech Stacks and wanted to ask a question about bojo slash OmniFocus integration.

Mm-hmm. I religiously used Bojo and a task manager app called Suns last year, PC user, therefore, no OmniFocus for me. 

Both: Sad fact, however, 

Jason: I found I was double handling everything and my system was time, [00:41:00] uh, laborious with little benefit. Mm. I am now using a Fast Brain Friend as a bojo replacement, and I do not have a digital task manager.

Both: Oh. Can 

Jason: you please tell me in first year undergrad terms how you use the two, and how do you make it li how does it make life easier for you? Thanks for all you do. And the content, you, your work is an inspiration and good kickstart to my work inspiration each month. Cheers, Ben. Oh, thanks Ben. Thanks Ben.

This is a can of worms. Ben, but I'm going to do my level best going. 

Inger: He's opening it up, explaining. No, no, I'm popping the tin. Yeah, 

Jason: I, I'm gonna keep it short because, uh, the detail is rich in this space. But, and I was thinking about this as, as recently as this morning, in fact the way I use it is I'm bojo for high level.

So I, I kinda lean more towards the journal side of the bullet journal than the bullet side of the bullet journal, if you know what I mean. Hmm. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: [00:42:00] So for example, I know today I have to design some slides for a workshop that's coming up. And so in the bullet journal will be designed slides and then the client number.

Yeah. So I know exactly which client that I have to do that for. And I'll have a separate collection for that client. Hmm. Where I've taken notes or I've got ideas about what I wanna say or that sort of stuff. So that's on a different page. And so I can reference the index at the front of the BuJo for that.

So, so far, so good in my text, uh, not text expander. In my OmniFocus, I have multiple steps that are involved in actually being able to put that presentation together. So you know how we, we store our presentations in various folders within Mentimeter. Oh, 

Inger: yes, I do. 

Jason: Yes. So in text, in not text Expanded in OmniFocus, I've got each of those has got a special, has got a, like a little task.

Mm. It's like, [00:43:00] go to this folder, create a new presentation, name it with a client, fo call the client name create the presentation, move it to the following folder, blah, blah, blah. And then a little bit later, check it. And so each of those, I'll put a date next to it, like a defer date and a due date. Mm.

So, so essentially what I've got is the detail in OmniFocus Mm. And the higher level stuff in Bojo, because I'm referring to the Bojo at the end of the day to kind of plan what I have to do the next day. Mm. But I don't want to have to, I mean, we give a lot of presentations and I don't want to have to, when it says create presentations, when I go, ah, I've gotta create the presentation for that.

I don't, I, I'm the kind of guy that I have to start that loop in my head every time. 

Both: Mm. 

Jason: And what I'm doing with OmniFocus is I'm offloading that. And it also means that I can get, I can put together templates of those kinds of sequence of events that I need to do, [00:44:00] and it gives me comfort. When I design the presentation, I do all the creative work in my BuJo whatever and I go, tick, that bit's done.

And then I move to the minty meter and I build the slides and I go, tick, that bit's done. Like, do you know what I mean? In terms of like, tick done. And I legitimately, it's like someone hits me over the head with a hammer. Every time that that happens, that thought gets expunged from my brain and I never have to think about it again because I've ticked off the OmniFocus thing.

Do you know what I mean? The same I do, 

Inger: but I I use it in exactly the opposite way. So just as you're talking, I'm like, luckily we don't share OmniFocus. 

Jason: Oh yeah. 

Inger: Not work. 

Jason: Well, this is why, oh, this is why. If you had a look at that email that you got sent today of all the tasks that I want you to do, like they're very specific.

Right? 

Inger: I know. I saw, 

Jason: yeah. Yeah, yeah, 

Inger: yeah. How did you feel about 

Jason: that? No. Interesting. Like, I'm interested now, like how did you feel about that? Is that just like, no, don't do that to me ever again, Jason. 

Inger: No, [00:45:00] it's good to have the, I would see that as a checklist, but I'm much more, I think I use the meet computer a lot more for those intermediate steps to me.

Right. And I do use, um, I do use, uh, creative procrastination to run my whole life. I. Right. Structured procrastination, I should say. Yeah. Is my whole approach to productivity, which I share with my distracted academic lecture. I talk about it at length and it comes from a, a good book called, um, you know, the Art of Procrastination, lollygagging Dawling.

And it's written by an academic and it's like, Hey look, I procrastinate. But see the trick is when I procrastinate, I procrastinate with something that's also needs to be done. So like it's just shuffling things on and off the table. 

Jason: Yeah. And 

Inger: the illusion of choice for me is really important. Okay. So I take the exact opposite approach, which is that the high level staff is in Omni.

Okay. So every big project has a moving omni thing that's got like a lot of digital notes and stuff that, that I [00:46:00] can't lose sight of for that project. And then the bojo is every single insane detail. And I've got two as so I've got my, my goals diary. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: And that constrain, so that I don't get too many things that I think I can do in a day.

'cause it only gives me limited space. And then I've got my bojo where every single insane detail of everything goes. Yeah. And I can find it again. With the index again, like, and again, it's like, whatever works, right? Like, yeah. You know, you see, I think this is where the self-reflection, the meta reflection, the learning how to learn all those skills that actually come out of a PhD and other places in your education is so important, don't you think?

Both: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Of course. 

Inger: Because you, I know that you know what you need, you know? Yeah. 

Both: Yeah. And, and that's 

Inger: good for me to have. 'cause I'm like, have I forgotten anything? Tick, tick, tick, tick. No, I've already done that. In fact, I did that two weeks ago. Like, I don't do it in the sequence, but it does get done.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The sequence [00:47:00] in that document that I send you, I can't control the sequences. Like it just spits it out and I can't move it around or do anything with it. That's the, that's, that's the problem with 

Inger: say, but that's what you, but that's kind of what you need from it, right? Like, yeah.

One thing happens after the other, whereas I, in organic, in Gerland, like I do things in a, I don't do it that way. So for instance, a job that we've got coming up next week for me 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: The week after, next week, two jobs next week, one 

Jason: job. You've got a couple next week, you're busy next week. 

Inger: Yeah. One, yeah. I haven't forgotten about them, but see, like I've done.

I've done some of that, but like I know the urgency is brewing inside me that like, I just know I have to by tomorrow or Friday, like get into a panic and then I'll be in the right head space to do it. Okay. But I did a bit of it. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Like I downloaded a bit of it onto fact, so I know where all I like in, if this is Hitchcock's guys to the Galaxy, I know where my towel is.

Both: Right? Yes. Fine.[00:48:00] 

Inger: But I honestly do use structured procrastination. That is what I do. So like I have a whole crowded list of things and then I do whatever feels most urgent. And I knowingly put things off that I know are urgent by things that are not urgent because I'm just say to my brain, fuck you Inga, I'm not. Do what you tell me.

I'm not gonna do what you tell me. How dare you Tam on my creative processes right now, Inga, that is not what this brain wants to do. So like, you can try and make me do that, but you'll do a shit job and I'll punish you. So I just do whatever my brain wants me to do and, and like I'm very mood driven Oh, okay.

As a worker. And I think it, like I just, I have been taught to be creative on demand. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And that's the way I do it, which is just like create a sense of urgency to do it. And then I feel remarkably clear eye and then the [00:49:00] hope that hyper focus kicks in because I can do that. Yeah. Like, yeah, I have that.

Whatever that is. That gene from my probably autistic father, I have that. Yeah. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: It's, I've always had it, I can remember in primary school, I'd sit there and the class would be buzzing in an absolute nightmare and I'd be just like, I'm not really actually here. 'cause I'm like, me and my piece of paper.

Jason: Yeah. I've got my crayons and my butterflies. I'm happy. 

Inger: Like, I, like, I like when I get to that state of focus, I'm remarkably efficient. The problem with me is I think I can overestimate how good, like I've had to learn to just not like, rely on it too much. 

Jason: Yep. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. I, I, yeah. I, I've just, I've been caught so many times by deadlines because I go, oh, I just want to, like, it needs to be right.

Yeah. That, oh, see, I never 

Inger: have that. I never, oh, 

Jason: no. I get the ma the mastery bit. You know, that value, that one. Yeah. Yeah. Like clearly I don't have, I'm 

Inger: like, good in a half.[00:50:00] 

Jason: So Ben, I don't know whether or not we've actually, or Yeah. 

Inger: Between, no, I don't think we have. 

Jason: There's two ways that you can do it. Yeah. And both of them are diametrically opposed to each other, and they both seem to to work. They 

Inger: both work. Yeah. See, that's the amazing thing about both those things, you know, they've got you.

Well, I think look at what works for you 

Jason: if there is a lesson in there. Mm. The lesson is you need a high le you need both a high level and. Detailed view of I agree. What's going on? Yeah. Yeah. That's the, that's the thing. Yeah. So that wherever you, wherever you end up, you can sort it out. I tend to think, I, I'm just thinking why do I do it this way?

I think in tasks, and I've mentioned this before, carrying the bojo around, it is an important element and I carry it more and more and more, but it, my phone is much easier. Mm. So I can just log tasks into the inbox in my phone really, really quickly. Mm. And then I can get to them and I can put 'em in OmniFocus.

'cause they usually, oh, don't [00:51:00] forget, you need to turn that left hand screw four thirds of a turn cancel clockwise on Thursday. Right. Like, I have those kinds of thoughts. And I can capture 'em quickly there. So. Hmm. 

Inger: Interesting. Yeah. Uh, 

Jason: the next one's from Fran. 

Inger: Oh. This one's from Fran, Fran Glaser. Ingrid, Jason.

I absolutely love the podcast. I'm loving. All the points. Yeah. No, 

Both: listen, 

Inger: can I just say thank you, Fran? Thank you all. Everyone who's written to us like it just we ended up like delicious yogurt. I absolutely love the podcast. This Fran, it takes, makes my two hour commute worthwhile. And I only wish you produced more of them more frequently, although then I suppose you wouldn't do much else.

True, true. 

Both: Um, 

Inger: Inga, inga, did it occur to you that perhaps your university locked down your Mac because you were using the data from timing data so well, when you advocated for what you need?

Interesting thought. Yeah, right. Uh, just a thought. Oh my God. Now I can't not have the thought. Keep up the great work F Anne. Yes. Oh yeah. [00:52:00] Maybe they didn't want me to be able to go back to management and say, Hey, bang. Correct. Here's the true cost of your ridiculous demands. Yes. Or maybe, 

Jason: maybe.

Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. God, that's a thought. I do, I do feel weird when I'm on that Mac, like I do feel a sense of pervasive management kind of valence. And I'm very careful what I do in say, on that Mac, but probably it doesn't matter. 'cause a lot of it's in the Outlook system anyway. You could get my teams logs.

Yeah. I think a lot of people don't think about, they feel like email's private and it's just like, it's the opposite. It's the most public form of 

Both: Mm. 

Inger: You know, it's the most easy thing to forward to someone else. And people are constantly surprised by that. So I'm super careful what I say. Yeah. 

Jason: I remember writing to you a month or two ago Google had just told us that they were keeping all of the con Well, they had turned on by [00:53:00] default a history of all of the conversations that you have with Gemini.

And the minimum amount of time that they keep them for is 18 months as part of kind of our organ, our organizational settings. 

Both: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we 

Jason: could either opt out or opt in. Uh, we could, no, it was already going to be turned on by default. We could opt out if we wanted to. But I mean, these large companies that, of course, they're gonna, besides the fat management, wants to keep a log of all of these things for various legitimate reasons.

They have to keep records under various pieces of legislation, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Especially for things that involve large important decisions, that sort of stuff. So take that all that aside. Of course, these large companies that manage data want to be able to keep records of all this sort of stuff because it becomes an important mind from which they can glean 

Both: organizational 

Jason: intelligence, right?

Both: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, 

Jason: You know, if you, if every organization is keeping a, is having every conversation with [00:54:00] Gemini recorded, and I'm not saying Google does this. I don't know, like I've just, I don't know that maybe they don't, maybe they don't access those. From Google hq, but maybe they do. I dunno. I know 

Inger: now we've fallen down a rabbit hole bridge.

Jason: Yeah, I know. Uh, sorry. Alright. 

Inger: I'm, but thank you for that. Thank you for that thought. It's, it's gonna, it's gonna sit for me. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Ah, um, this one comes from Ben, Ben Archer. Mm. The same Ben who I, who wrote to us way back in January. Oh, the Ben, we just 

Inger: talked about Ben. 

Jason: Yeah. Here's another Ben's, Ben's back.

Thanks Ben. And it's that Ben. So Ben, hi again. So Ben, write listening. 

Inger: Thank you Ben 

Jason: again. Thank you Ben. Hi team. Just making my way through the pod and I heard Alyssa's question, so you remember Alyssa, she wrote a question about. she's keeping a spreadsheet of all of the various different bits and pieces for journals and all that sort of stuff.

Inger: Yeah. Ben's 

Jason: got a solution. 

Inger: Ah, thank you Ben. 

Jason: My institution pays for cab's, analytics [00:55:00] cab's, cables, 

Both: cab's, 

Jason: C-C-A-B-E-L-L-S Analytics, which does all the things that ESA was asking about. It's a pain in the rectum to access and navigate initially, but once you get to know it, it works well and is super powerful.

Mm-hmm. I also use s Skima Jo for impact factors and general browsing within a specific discipline. Mm. Feel free to pass on my details onto her if she needs help navigating cabs, cables, cabs. I'm self-taught, so there might be better guides out there, but always happy to help on this front. I often pick up RA work, helping people who get paid more than me to identify journals that their articles could get published in.

Inger: Really. Thanks Ben. Thanks Ben. Yeah. Yeah. Skills to pay the bills, Ben. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Our On the Reg team listeners. On the Reg Pod listeners. Amazing. Amazing. 

Inger: I knew I just needed to put that one out there. I'm looking for it now. Del's, what is it? Analytics, um, catalog analytics. Analytics. I've been doing a little bit more kind of searching [00:56:00] round in what databases, because a lot of people have been asking me to do AI powered literature reviewing.

Oh, yes. And I've been doing a little bit more due diligence on products like consensus and elicit. What databases they actually index and what they don't. Yes. And um, actually getting to grips with Semantic Scholar, which I hadn't got to grips with before and boy did it just confirm what I was saying, which is it's so balkanized like, by that I mean, you know, every database has its own boundaries and is patrolled and who has access and who doesn't, and paywalls and everything.

We've just got ourselves into such a mess. Yeah. As, as like, not only are we paying these publishers ludicrous sums of money for access, but we're actually holding ourselves back now because these AI tools can't be put to work as well as they could be because they're only searching in some corners and not others.

Yeah. So yeah, Cadel, there's artist analytics. Interesting. Looks like they do all sorts of, [00:57:00] how fascinating. 

Jason: Ooh, well you are looking at that. I'm gonna make an executive decision. We've got more mail. 

Inger: Yeah, but 

Jason: not enough time. 

Inger: Oh, no. Really? I'm, so we catching the, 

Jason: I'm gonna, there's, um, there's. Uk. Oh, that's lot.

UK Nottingham. Front of the pod. Ben Crow. Ben, we're gonna get to your mail. We're not gonna get to it today. Yeah, they couldn't speak pod. I can see. Whoa. 

Inger: That looks good. 

Jason: Yeah, I know. But yeah, 

Inger: no, there's some good males there. Oh yeah. Yeah. That hurts. All right, next one. We'll do it. The next one. Next. Male baby.

Jason: Um, so we we're gonna move on to our work problems. Yes. Section of the pod. Yes. This is the bit where we get to nerd out about work problems. Either something that, a problem that we've had and then the solution that we've managed to find to this particular problem. Or somebody has mentioned something on the pod they've written to us or speak, speak pipe us.

Um, and told us about an aspect of work that they want us to have a look at. And so we've had a look at that as well. We always try and be practical, [00:58:00] sharing our own tips, hacks, and feel opinions. And this week our topic is in's topic of amazement. Title in's finally realized her ambition to be a cyborg, an AI enhanced research pipeline, which is a, a really, I I love that we put it in the show notes.

Snappy. We need a snappy title for your work problem. That is a snappy title. Angus finally realized she, her ambition to be a cyborg Yes. And enhanced research pipeline. I was, I love 

Inger: it was, I have been very influenced by Aliens Two and Ripley in Oh yes. In the servo suit at the end. Like yeah. That's how I've always imagined female power.

Uh, 

Jason: all right. I'm gonna turn it over to you. 

Inger: Alright. So, you know, we talk about this being work problem segment. So I've got two problems at the moment at work. Okay. So one is that I, I've been asked one of these gigs that I'm doing soon, which is where people ask me to talk about AI workflows. Yeah.

So I, I [00:59:00] have to do that. Yeah. And um, at the same time I was talking to my boss about doing an issues paper for the new PhD strategy 'cause we ran out of our old one 'cause that we have a new one every five years. And, and she, she's talking about a working party and yada yada. And then I suggested I do an issues paper about the future of the PhD.

I think, you know ai right? I mean, 

Jason: might, might having a slight impact maybe, 

Inger: So we are facing all these issues at every stage, every educator's facing them. So I'm sure I'm speaking to an audience that is well familiar with like, what do you do? And so I start to have a chat with Claude. If I'm gonna do this issues paper, what issues am I gonna put on the table? So it gave me these kind of standard ideas. I thought they sound good.

And then I thought about them and I was like, stop bullshitting me. Claude. Claude, I want you to tell me the truth. I know you've been programmed to not frighten me, but like, let's have a real conversation. Like I know that you could probably, with the right input, write a [01:00:00] pretty decent dissertation. You can do that.

Yeah. I know that for sure. Like, so what does that all mean for us really? So I came up with these five key things, which I think are really important. So I talked about collaborative intelligence, right? Yeah. But it's not with, rather than human versus machine. We are both in a collaborative process together.

It talked about epistemological humility. So I've talked a lot about epistemological fluency here and there on the pod, which is that idea that you're a smart person who can kind of turn your hand to other things. Like my PhD was about hand gestures. That's not what I'm talking about today. Your is about map making strategy.

Well you use, but we both use bits of that all the time. Yeah. 

Both: Um, 

Inger: but that's epistemic fluency where you take knowledge in one domain and apply it in another. And it said epistemological humility is, and this is I think a really key one that recognizing that AI systems may identify patterns, generate insights and make connections that human cognition is ill-equipped to [01:01:00] discover independently requiring researchers to develop comfort with machine assisted insights.

They cannot fully trace. Ill independently verify. And when it came back with that, like that's a bit of a slow burn. That one. 'cause it's like basically, trust me, I'm a machine. Right? Yeah. I won't go into the other ones. 

Jason: Um, but you explain, you explained that to me the other night on the phone and I was in the car at the time, but you explained it to me and you read that out to me and I went, oh yeah.

And I kind of went, I think I understand what she was talking about there. And it really, it's this morning looking at it again and actually reading it, touching the words as I read it, if you know what I mean. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: That, that I really, you are right. It is a very, very slow burn. 

Inger: Yeah. Because like, 

Jason: I. That human cogni cognition is ill-equipped to discover independently.

Yeah. Requiring researchers to develop comfort with machine assisted insights, they cannot fully trace or independently verify. 

Inger: Yep. 

Jason: Where do ideas come [01:02:00] from? Really is right. What that's talking about. 

Inger: Yeah. Now I realized actually when it came up with that, that I'm living that right? Yeah. Because I fully turned myself over to the machine to do this latest research project, ironically, about, not ironically really about ai, right?

Yeah. So I had a bunch of data from the survey. Thank you for those people who filled it out, who are listeners. I appreciate you. 1,234 valid responses. And um, we did a statistical analysis of AI use. We just went into the AI stuff first because that's moved so fast. We thought we should get that out before we get the rest of it out.

Yeah. So we analyzed it, we found that that neurodivergent people and non neurodivergent people, and it's a big sample. It's quite robust. Use AI at the same rate. No, no differences. Right? They also use it for the same things, broadly speaking. So they use it to do writing, administration, they use it in their research work.

So there's this sort of basic categories of use. So, so far, so normal. Yeah. We did find that, um, neurodivergent people use it a bit more in the [01:03:00] writing and administration tasks than the non neurodivergent. And I put that down to executive functioning can be a little, a bit of a precious resource like you Yeah.

You you're as smart as anyone else, but you do have to do sometimes just a lot more work to get through the day. 

Both: Yep. 

Inger: And so you use, if you think about executive functioning as the ability to sort of place one thing in front of the other and plan your way through a task you are having to do that at so many levels all the time.

And it's like you've got a jug of water and you've pulled too many glasses out. By the time you get to your work, you've got less left than someone who is. Maybe not neurodivergence. So that made sense to me. There's also some theory of mind, like there were a lot of comments about, I use an email to correct my tone to make sure I don't offend people.

I'm never quite sure how things would land. Yeah. And so, you know, so AI's performing that role. Then I saw there was sort of five types of companionship that people were talking about. So there was like a motivator, a colleague an assistant, and there was one category which I just [01:04:00] called service dog.

Right? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: So service dogs are highly trained to, if you are got epilepsy sense when you're about to have an attack, make your light day on, on the floor, get the help you need, right? They're really amazing animals. So people were using it for that sort of social emotional, um, navigating of the complexities of the bureaucracy.

Far more than non, like, it was so outstandingly different. Like my p the P value was just off the charts. Right. So like, people with neurodivergency using, so just cope with life. Yeah. So the argument in this paper, which I'm about to submit to a journalist, that it's a tool of equity at that point.

Mm-hmm. So, as the process of doing that work, 1,234 responses to a survey is a lot. 

Both: Yeah. Yeah, 

Inger: yeah. Um, and the statistics, the programs are built to deal with the statistics. My friend Karen Oakley is doing that. Thank you Karen. Appreciate you. Um, but I was meant to do the quals and it's just a lot. And Max QDA, which is the software I use, has a product called Tailwind.

And I wanted to be able to [01:05:00] use it. I also wanted to be able to use c Claude to help me just develop the code book and, and talk about the responses and think about how I was gonna code them. 'cause I knew I kind of needed that on demand collegial advice, right? Yeah. That it does give me, so I wrote to the ethics and as I said last time, I wrote to ethics and then they said, oh, we've got all these questions.

And I got Claude to write them back. And then they said, great, things are thoughtfully engaging. And it wasn't called, it was chatty. Chatty right back. Anyway, so I did lean in and I spent a week and oh my God, I think I sped up, I measured it. 'cause I do that, yeah. Four, four times faster that an analytic analytical work, at least maybe more because it's hard to compare project with projects.

But I'll look back in my timing data. Yeah. And I mean, I think it saved me weeks. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Of time. And in that process as I got it to sort of help me with this coding, I realized that it was seeing patterns that I didn't initially see. And I got really, and I felt this epistemological [01:06:00] discomfort, right?

Both: Yes. 

Inger: Like, I can't see this pattern now that you've told me it's there. Now I'm gonna look for it. Is it really there or is it a mirage? 

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Am I making this up? 

Inger: You know, if I've got a bias now, like, yeah, I, I don't know how to get past that, but I just tried to go okay. That's the first pass across it.

So I thought it'd be good to talk through the pipeline that I used for this process. Not just the analytical pipeline, but the literature pipeline, everything. What is actually work, work, research, workflow. Like, what do I mean when I say that? And of course, what do I mean? I ask Claude what I meant, and then Claude gave me an answer, and I think it's a pretty good one. It said it's a sequence of connected steps, tasks and decision points that moves a project from start to completion.

It includes the processes, tools, resources, and interactions needed to achieve a specific outcome. In research workflows encompass both the intellectual work, thinking, analyzing, writing, and the administrative task, formatting, organizing, searching, required to produce rigorous findings. So that's all we're [01:07:00] talking about here.

Yeah. All the bits and bobs that you have to bring to bear. Imagine that you are working on a very complicated, putting together a complicated machine on a workbench, and you've got a bunch of tools. You've got a soldiering iron, you've got like screws, you've got, so you've, or you're cooking a, a stir fry.

I think it's a bit more like assembling a machine. So that's what your workflow actually is when you break it down because there's no one tool to bind them all that will do everything right. Okay, so what's an AI enhanced version of that? And Claude's definition was that, of that was it integrates artificial intelligence tools strategically within existing processes to automate routine tasks, augment human abilities, improve efficiency whilst maintaining human oversight decision making for critical judgements rather than replacing the researcher's expertise.

AI acts as an intelligent colleague, assistant who handles time consuming repetitive work and provides analytical support. And AI enhanced workflow should enable researchers to focus on interpretation, critical thinking and creative problem solving. And this is my [01:08:00] experience. This is what it does. So I've talked before about how it saves me 12 hours a week in kind of administrative now about six because thanks for now being restructures.

Which I can spend, for instance, taking on a new PhD student ish, which I kind of did recently. 

Both: Big 

Inger: shout out to Esther, who's doing an interesting PhD about ai. And I'm like, yeah, I can meet with you once a month. That's part of my dividend, right? 

Both: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Inger: I found that now using this workflow, I've now then freed up a lot of stuff that would be done repair.

Some of you can't get rid of, and maybe you shouldn't. Yeah. But some of it is, is easily replaced. All right, so can I, can I just jump, 

Jason: jump in there for a second? Yes. I had a really interesting conversation. I did a in the middle of a three series, three workshop series with the University of Bristol, and I was talking about u the utilization of AI in the research process.

Mm. And the idea of positioning [01:09:00] AI as either a consultant or a collaborator and what the pros and cons of each of those are. Mm. I mean, you, you kind of, you lay it out here, right? And a this is a consultant view of ai. It's a tool that is used to assist with the process, but you as the researcher, you ask for a particular outcome or, or some kind of type of work.

The AI tool does its thing. You then get that work, you assess it, and then you decide whether or not you're going to use it or not. Like you, it's a cold-hearted, cold-hearted, rational objective, look at the output. Whereas if it was a collaborator, if you were working in collaboration with the AI becomes a lot harder for you to determine where the intellectual work started and stopped.

You know what I mean? Yes. So I wanna 

Inger: talk about that 'cause I think I'm doing both. Oh. Sorry, did I jump ahead? I think jump ahead both. [01:10:00] No, no. But you, you foreshadowed in a really useful way I think. 'cause this is part of the conundrum. I talked to Claude.

I said, ask me questions about my workflow until you understand it sufficiently to draw it. It took us about half an hour and it was really interesting. We had this long conversation about what I did and asked me really interesting questions. And then it gave me an overview of a standard research workflow versus what I told it.

So that's the kind of overview there. So you can see here and it's so small on my screen for some reason I can't see it. 

Jason: Did Claude do that diagram? 

Inger: Yep. Wow. Yeah, it does. Good diagrams. 

Jason: That's actually way better than I've seen ever seen before. Is overview spelled correctly? It's not, I don't think that's one word.

Right. It's made a spelling 

Inger: mistake. 

Jason: There you go. I fixed it for you. Okay. 

Inger: Thank you. Well, collude didn't make the spelling mistake. I did people, Jason just corrected it. But you can see there's a traditional workflow which has six steps. So yeah, problem identification, [01:11:00] literature of your research design data collection analysis and writing.

Yeah. And then it, it, that, that diagram on the writing read is how it Yeah, it, and that came out of a long conversation, right. So I didn't do any of that. It set that up entirely. So from the conversation. 

Jason: Wow. I'm so impressed by that. I've never been able to get diagrams that detailed or useful or laid out as clearly as that out of school.

Well, you 

Inger: know, I didn't ask it for it to look like that. It suggested it, but it did it from the conversation. So maybe that's, that's the trick, right? Like, just talk until they understand and it, it decided when we'd had enough, like I thought I'd have to tell her to stop the conversation, but it stopped it actually before I would've.

Yeah. It's like, I've got it now and then it drew that and I'm like, you have got it actually.

And I think that pretty much captures . That's my workflow. Yeah. And so one of the things that it says that in that, you know, tell me the truth, Claude conversation was, well, AI can't initiate things for itself and, and it needs to look for direction like it can do our task then doesn't know what to do next.

Right? [01:12:00] 

Both: Mm-hmm. It can't 

Inger: necessarily hold a, an overall aim. And what I think it can't do that we can do at the moment is that we can own an overall fuzzy kind of aim, but then we can sort of adjust that end point dynamically. And then adjust the steps that we are doing at that moment to achieve that endpoint.

Right? Yeah. Like the goalposts are moving when you do research. 

Both: Yep. 

Inger: And you've kind of got a vague idea of where the goalpost is. Now. I need to nudge in that direction. Right. So yeah, step one is just how I've leveraged that embodied research context. What do you think of that idea? 'cause I think there's something in that as well.

That's the human bit. It's not just setting the agenda, it's kind of adjusting and course correcting. And we're doing this now and stop doing that. Well, that's potentially promising, but I wanna go in this direction. It's that kind of, and you know what? Problems have to be solved. You know what, you know your people, you know what's gonna stick with them or not gonna stick with them in terms of interest, you know, that kind of thing, I suppose is what I'm say.

Yeah. I 

Jason: I, [01:13:00] so if I zoom out for a second and I think about, you are about to embark on a research project. You've got this idea, but there's this one particular colleague who you always know is going to be critical of your idea. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: But, but so valuable to have that person, even though when you talk to them, it's like.

Punched in the face. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: But you know that, but, but that person often has really, really good ideas and Yeah. Makes you stop and think about Oh yeah. That you go and use, and if you can 

Inger: argue past them, you feel excited because you are like, right, I've got it now. Yeah, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: yeah, yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: And you seek that person out to get that level of feedback so that you're kind of testing on as you go your ideas to see whether or not they've got legs or not.

Mm. I can see why having having AI perform part of that process is, is very, very valuable. but I don't think it's ever going to be, I think your uniqueness [01:14:00] as a researcher still will shine through because it will not be able to replicate the complex network of individuals and ideas and, and things that you have as a human being.

It won't be able to do that. It'll, I give you some think that's what embodied 

Inger: research context means. You said it better. Yeah. What did you say? Complex network of people and ideas. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Inger: yeah. That you're moving within, right? 

Jason: Yeah. And, and you mo like, as. You know, I, I, as you kind of, you talk to one person and you hear what they have to say and you go and you think about that again, and then you go and talk to another person and they have something else to say, and then you suddenly you combine those two things together, it come up with a third way Mm.

Um, that neither of them mentioned or heard even hinted at before. Mm. That, that process, I'm not, I, I think the way in which you assemble those things around you and you will have, occasionally, you might [01:15:00] opportunistically bump into somebody who might have something interesting to say about that. And you might ask them, but you wouldn't normally ask them.

'cause you probably go back to the same people broadly and then the same literature that you've always gone back to, to really kind of analyze your thinking around this sort of stuff. 

Inger: Um, yeah. And people disagreeing with you is really important, right? Like, and also people, whether they're interested or not.

I wrote a blog post age ago called The Importance of Being Interesting. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And, and, and it's not until you can frame a problem at a person and get them interested that you know, you've got Yeah. You know, you should even pursue it. Do you know what I mean? Yeah. You can see that light coming even if they disagree with you and they're interested.

That's what I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking for. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The, I I still think though that as long as you are mindful about the role that AI plays in this, that when you reach for Claude that you are being. Mindful of the way in which you are doing that [01:16:00] recording, the responses that you get back in maybe a research journal or in your BuJo or something along those lines.

Mm-hmm. So that you can account for that interaction as part of your embodied research context later. If somebody was to ever ask, you know, I just did another 

Inger: slide in, 'cause I think you're right. 

Jason: Australian graduate. Yeah. You know that council of graduate researchers, grad Deans of research. AC 

Both: GR Yes.

Jason: A CGR. You know how they said, you need to keep notes of how you use AI in case somebody wants to ask you about how, how much AI was used in your thesis or whatever. Yeah. I think as long as you do that, as long as you keep those kind of records as and I, and they may be literally journal, journal entries, right?

In your bja, today I spoke to Claude about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and Claude said this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and then I thought this blah, blah, blah. You're still showing and articulating your use of that AI and being transparent about its usefulness in the process. But you've [01:17:00] had, you can also then make an argument that that's just one tool inside what you've called here your embodied research context.

Inger: I think you're right. 

Jason: It's not the, it's not the only tool. 

Inger: Absolutely. And I, if I think about now what I do do, it's like I go around talking to everyone and trying to interest them in the topic. Like for instance, A CGL, same body. Yep. Um, asked me and my, my colleague, Charlotte Broo to, to come and present the paper we wrote with Diana Tan and, and Chris Edwards.

And we're, it's still sitting in Preprint, this one, a neurodivergence having trouble getting it published. It's all over the story. But we, we gave a presentation and 150 people signed up for that on one line in an email. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Right? And that tells you, oh, this is interesting to people. Interesting.

That's worth pursuing, right. Like that. But I will, for instance, have a presentation like that, talk to people. Things will stick in my mind from what they've said. And sometimes I'll go and talk to Claude about, well, some people saying this to me, 

Both: what do you 

Inger: think about blah, blah, blah. They can be in the mix. They are one of your embodied research [01:18:00] context, maybe a sounding board. If you take a collective intelligence approach to it, so you stop thinking about AI just as a smart machine, right?

Mm-hmm. You start thinking about it as a particular type of part of your tool, your network of people or tool bench. It's a helper that works for people to solve problems. It's a tool that stores and organizes information. It's a partner in thinking and writing. It's a translator that turns one kind of information into another, like numbers into graphs or prompts into paragraphs.

It's a spotter. It picks up patterns that you might miss, and it's a memory a, that holds a lot of information. So AI is therefore part of a hybrid cognition sense system in that sense. So it's human plus machine plus context that collaboratively solves problems, makes decisions, or generates knowledge.

And during my PhD I read this great book called Cognition in the Wild, which you might enjoy 'cause it's all about a Navy ship. Oh, okay. Um, and he, he argues that the ship as a whole is a thinking thing like that. It's the people and the machines and the hierarchy of the Navy that makes that [01:19:00] ship able to navigate.

Both: Mm. 

Inger: And he calls that cognition in the wild. It's a, it's a great book. So I like that idea of sort of collective intelligence really. 'cause I think that accords with how I always think about intelligence. Like it's not just me that has thoughts independently in my mind. I have to read a book or talk to a person.

Yeah. Like it's always distributed in the world, 

Jason: in intelligence. Yeah. I, I think where the, the challenge for the sector sits at the moment is that there's a lot of anxiousness that. People will use AI to do the thinking, uncritically to do the thinking. Mm. And I think there's a vastly different approach where you, you come in and go after, a long and storied career in academia and having done all the critical thinking and thinking about the way in which the thinking goes on and mm-hmm.

You know, this idea of collective intelligence is not new to you. And so AI [01:20:00] just is another part of that. 

Both: Mm-hmm. I 

Jason: think for others who might only just be starting out in this space where it, they haven't had to build those kinds or have those kinds of ideas, they can just go to the AI and the AI can produce ideas for them that they can just take.

Hmm. I think that's where it's, I think that's where the challenge lies for, for many people looking into our space and going, it's not intellectually honest anymore. If you've got such a powerful assistant who's feeding you ideas and then you're taking them and making them your own. And, which I wanna be clear, that's not what you are advocating here.

No. Um, you are advocating that it is part of a more complex system, but you are in control of that complex system. Like, you're not just blindly accepting what comes out of it. It's just one voice. I don't 

Inger: think entirely in control of it, though. I don't think I am. Like I've never, I I'm de definitely a highly influential agent in that, but like, I [01:21:00] think that's what it means by epistemological.

Humility as well. I'm not entirely in control of it, but I never kind of am either. Right. Yeah. Because if you think about it, I'm always relying on other people's papers and what they've said. I'm relying on them to tell the truth, and I'll get to that in a minute. Yeah. That's not always the case, right?

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: But yeah, I think you're right. I think that, I think what are we trying to teach in the PhD and what I'm trying to get to with this issues paper? I think so thank you for the opportunity to talk to you about it, colleague. Because I have to write at some point is, you know, that's okay. 

Jason: I'm just, I'm part of your embedded research context.

Don't you worry about that. 

Inger: Ah, you are. I got your thing. Very important part. You're very important part of it. That's what I'm trying to say is we need to teach people that this is what they need to do. Yeah. You can't just go to a machine and say, what do you think the problem's in blah? Well, I mean, you can, but it'll be an impoverished version won't be very good.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like, and and that is an intensely social process as much as it is an intellectual process. Yeah. [01:22:00] Like that involves friendships, right? 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: And crafting and trust. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: Of which gossip plays a, a very intense role in that 

Both: trust building exercise. 

Inger: Right. And so maybe we need a, a gossip class. Right.

That's all I'm saying. Like, you know what I mean? Like, 

Jason: yeah. Yeah. I, 

Inger: I I think this what is it that you're actually gonna have to teach people to be able to do in the future? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And this is this sort of process that I take. Yeah. Which no one taught me how to do. I just kind of watched what other people did and I, I watched how Effective Operators worked.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Right. And I thought, well, how, and then I noticed the kind of conversations people were having with me, more senior people were having with me. 'cause obviously they were coming to me like, good senior academics go and talk to junior colleagues because they've, they think they've got something to say.

Right? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And I noticed the things that were coming outta my mouth when I'd have a conversation with, say Pat Thompson, like they were intimidating conversations at [01:23:00] first. 

Both: Mm. 

Inger: Right. We are much more equal now than when we first met each other. Pat Thompson and I down still 

Both: in. 

Inger: Um, but but Pat would get things out of my mouth that were quite clever.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Like, and I thought, Ooh. 'cause I was trying to impress her. Right. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Both: Yeah. I 

Inger: was on my A game. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: Right. But she kind of taught me to talk to people like that. I don't think I'd had anyone, senior colleague before that really talk to me like that. Because some senior colleagues would talk and like, you could see them kind of sucking.

They were like, Voldemort, they'd suck the ideas out. They, you could see, you'd say something, it would land, but they wouldn't reflect it back at you and they wouldn't discuss it with you. You could see they'd sort of take it away, like an extractive kind of relationship where she never did that.

Both: Yeah. And 

Inger: I learned from watching people like her, how do you talk to people about your ideas? Right? 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Anyway. Yeah, so that's, it's interesting to reflect on , like, okay, so I've got the literature like those, none of those [01:24:00] literature amazing things like consensus or elicit will plug into every piece of avail available literature. The advantage of consensus is you can upload a hundred PDFs, right? Which is about the most you'll ever need for a project.

And you can create in there, I think a pretty good notebook. You could do the same thing in Google, lm. Yeah, I think for free. So I think what gives you is a bit more structure. So it gives you this matrix structure and it's, and it gives you a kind of process to follow. Whereas Google LM would be a lot more freeform.

You wouldn't be able to. Keep it as tidy as you would in elicit. I think that's the advantage. I mean then pro Yeah, like 

Jason: if, if money was a problem and it often is you could probably prompt Google Notebook to output it in that kind of table matrix 

Inger: structure. Maybe you could, I should have a try at that.

Yeah. Yeah. Because it's a matrix table, which I've talked about a lot's in multiple books that I've written. It's on the podcast. The literature review matrix is one of the best ways to analyze it. I won't go down that route at all 'cause we'll be here [01:25:00] all day. But and then, then at a certain point, like I got my data collected and then I had to go into my analysis tool.

And I think the choice of that tool's really important. So I won't talk about why I use Max Qda, it's just that it's the best that I've found. Mm-hmm. Um, and then you can start talking to your data with epistemological humility, I think.

So it took segments of the coding into Claude, not all of it. 'cause I didn't have ethics permission, I only had ethics permission to do partial. So I wanted to just like do little dippy dos into parts of my co my, so generate a spreadsheet. Take it into Claude and ask it to do the first pass, what do you see?

Both: Mm. 

Inger: And it would just see thematic categories and like, this is what I said to you before, you know, was it seeing something that was there or not? And then it had already colored my perception when I went back to the data, would I just see what it saw? Yeah. Or not. Yeah. You know, so the way that I tried to get around that is that I, I just, [01:26:00] I set up the initial categories that Claude did, and then I tried to just put it outta my mind.

And I, art tealy, hand coded the lot. 1,234. Yeah. This is what took the time. Yeah. This took days, three days, three full days to code it. And then I generated some extra codes, but I didn't get rid of any of the, I saw all the ones that it saw, but I saw some things that it didn't see. Yeah. And then I started to also talk to, because I talked to Claude, the back end of of Max QDA plugs into chat, GPT, who had a slightly different view on the data than 

Both: Claude.

Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. So I was bringing in more than one. I was actually talking to three people, if you like. Yeah. Me, myself. Yeah. Claude chatty. And that between it chatty was seeing some things that Claude didn't, vice versa, I was saying. So between us, I think we had it. And this is what I mean by bit outta control.

This is where the epistemological humility had to come in. I'm like, okay, like between the three of, maybe I have to just get [01:27:00] comfortable with not knowing that, that not being able to totally verify that. And I also found co Claude really bloody useful for, I'd take a snippet of data

and I'd just say, oh, well how would you code, like we developed the coding structure using Johnny Sal's qualitative coding manual. If you don't have it, you should buy it. If you do qualitative text, you just should have it, the basic text. Um, and it knows Sana, primed it into knowing Sana, what do you remember of Sana?

Which codes do you think I should use from it? And it kind of initially said, well, I think you should do it this way. I'm like, no, I wanna do it this way because I like this one. This is my. And it's like, okay, well yeah, you should do it that way. And then I'm like, now tell me the truth though. And he goes, no, you should do it this other way and here's why.

I'll show you. And it did. It did sample analysis for me. And there's a picture of a sampled analysis. So you can see in my prompt there, how would you code this one based on a concept coding framework that we've developed? And it was getting tasks done in a way that is aligned with my own [01:28:00] purposes and the purposes of the institution at a rate that is on par with my colleagues and or academic workload model.

So that's someone saying, what do you think productivity is? That's their definition. Yeah. So it would look for concepts. So it's looking, see how it's done, that it's got it's found institutional alignment, self-directed alignment, balanced about academic roles, social comparison to other people, time efficiency, task completion.

So just seeing it do a couple of these for me. Yeah. And in fact, Sal's code book, one of the great things about it is it has these sample analysis. Yeah. Where you see they're working. So again, it's sort of like seeing a maths problem worked or something you can, 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: It's just really helpful to then go back to the another 1,233 that I had to code.

To sort of see how it broke it down like that. I learned a lot from looking at how it was thinking about different bits of data. So this is two and froing right in the workflow. And then I thought, well one of the things I wanted to do is look at [01:29:00] code co-occurrence. So how often do does the same code get applied to the same piece of data?

'cause there's an interesting pattern sometimes there. Yeah. And I just forgot how to do it in Max QDA, like I fucked around for about 40 minutes, like not being able to do it. Like pressing every button, mashing every button. And then I'm like, 

Jason: if I hit a harder, it'll work. 

Inger: Right, exactly. And then I was like, oh, that's right.

Like chat GPT actually is like a librarian. Like I need a piece of knowledge. Tell me this, that now what's, yeah. So as you can see there, I wanna do coco currents. Can you give me some tips? And that was a way of priming it to remember that it knew about Max Qda a and code co occurrence. So then it's got key concepts, blah, blah, blah.

And then I'm like, yeah, but where's the button actually? 

Both: Yeah, yeah, 

Inger: yeah. And then it showed me, right? Oh, right. And what was interesting about that, then I uploaded a table that my colleague had marked up with some P values in it around the code co-occurrence and stuff. And I said, I didn't [01:30:00] understand her P values.

'cause I, I, I'm just gonna say it right here on the pod, I get confused like, what's a good one? What's a bad one? When should I be worried? When should I be excited? And I'm like, oh, this table of P values, Claude, can you show me the chatty? Can you show me? Can you explain my colleagues? It's like, and it generated a table with tick, tick, tick cross, you know?

Like it knew how dumb I was about it. It was like, yep, this is why this one's significant. Here's why. I'm like, right. Good. I'm glad I thought that. Then it said, Hey, I noticed this data. You know, it's interesting, blah, blah, blah. I think it would look good if you represented it as a bar graph. I was like, oh yeah, tell me more.

And so I was like, yeah, well you use a bar graph because blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, really? And then on slide 27, there's the bar graph at Jerry. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: So I just said, okay, show me what you can do. Bloody hell. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Like it's even got kind of. Colors, proper colors for, you know, like, um, colorblind color kind [01:31:00] of color thing.

You know, like, 

Jason: um, um, did you send that back to your stats person to verify? 

Inger: Yes. So, so I sent her the table and said, this is what chat GPT said is chat GPT. Right? And she's like, yeah, like, couldn't you read that Inga? 'cause to her it was very simple, right? Like Right. Yeah. I wasn't asking it about complex statistics.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And actually, I know we say chatty's adorable bad at maths, but it's not that bad at maths anymore. Like they've worked on that a lot. Yeah. And when it comes to statistics, you can give it a spreadsheet and we'll do a pretty bang up job like of eval student evaluation data or whatever. Yeah. And it will draw you graphs like this accurately.

Both: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: Like, come on, at this point that, why would I say no to that kind of help? That graph would've taken me hour maybe. 

Jason: No, it wouldn't have, it would've taken a research assistant an hour. 

Inger: I know, but I don't have one 

Jason: for this. Yeah, right. And yeah. And [01:32:00] so that's part of, like, if we step back for a second, that's part of the problem.

Inger: Mm, exactly. That's part 

Jason: of the problem. Because you would've hired a PhD student to do that for you? Probably. 

Inger: Well, I never would because I've never had any budget, so Oh, okay. Not, not this particular project. No. Like I'm not in this case using it to replace human labor at all. 'cause I don't have any money.

I'm doing this for freezes. Yeah. Like on, on the workplace dime, basically. Yeah. 

Jason: But you can see how, you can see how others though, would be going, you know, well, I don't need that. I don't need that spend there on those humans anymore to do Yeah. That kind of work. How are gonna learn, work me learn how to do that, Greg, how are they gonna learn?

Inger: Yeah, no, it's a, it's a very important question to ask ourselves for sure. 

Both: Mm. 

Inger: Because there was much less stress than getting someone to do it for me. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Because it just did it and it did it properly. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: So rather than creating knowledge with tools, you're designing systems that create knowledge. And I think that's kind of what I've done here. It's design system. Yeah. A hundred percent agree. That creates [01:33:00] knowledge. Yeah. So what's my job in that setting then? I, I set the research agenda, right? 

Both: Yep. 

Inger: I design and build and manage the AI workflows.

And you're seeing me do that here? Yeah. I'm doing oversighting interventions. See, I did the art small hand coding and I just decided I was gonna crunch down and do that bit so that I could be Sure, yeah. I could have just let the machines do it. 

Both: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: It would've found something slightly different to me than me if I had just done that.

But to be honest with you, it wouldn't have been, I don't know how much value I really added. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Other than I made myself sure that I knew it was right, and I didn't wanna embarrass myself, and you've only got one reputation to lose. Right. And it's ethics, right? Yeah. Like, that's the only thing that made me do it.

Yeah. And I don't know, if I was, look it, it was slightly more flavor, and I think it was a bit more interesting when I did it. Yeah. Like, I added a few more interesting things, but nothing that, like, anyway, basics were there. Yeah. And, and this question about evaluating the quality and [01:34:00] reliability. Well, that took longer than doing it, than doing it for me Totally.

So much longer. Yeah. Anyway, but a step that I made myself take and a less diligent, less ethical person would not 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And I don't wanna say there's less diligent and ethical people than me out there, but there must be. Yeah. It's just human nature, right? 

Jason: Uh, I mean, there's, yeah, there's a curve, but also the evidence is really clear, right?

Papers are being published with AI prompts still left in them. And and they're supposed to be, not only is the work supposed to be the original work of the author, but then the peer reviewers are not doing a very good job of that either when they're missing those AI prompts and stuff that are still sitting within the text.

Right. So there are, I know, like, 

Inger: who's even reading it? Are you reading it? The 

Jason: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So the people who are supposed to be policing the, the quality of this sort of stuff are maybe not as. Diligent or ethical as, as you think either. 

Inger: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And then the last [01:35:00] thing I, I'm gonna put in there in a little bit is one of the things I hate, hate, hate, hate about, okay.

So I produce the first draft of the paper with Claude entirely. Yep. Like, I like from rough notes, the way that we teach in our writing under pressure workshop, we teach a method of writing. Yep. I wrote it like that. You know that method? Yep. And then I said, clean it up. 

Both: Yep. 

Inger: And it did, and it produced the first draft.

I didn't ask it to structure it. I did it paragraph by paragraph. I knew what each paragraph was gonna be about. Yeah. I just gave it a bunch of dirty notes, dirty notes, Jason, dirty notes. And then, uh, and then I went in and I, I, I put ref question mark, ref question mark, ref question mark. And I left them in there through all the drafting process.

And then I went out and tried to find both those quotes and those references at the end. And, uh, this is where I was hating pasting. 'cause I always do that. I always put that work off. 'cause I fucking hate it. So, you know what I did? I went into chat. GPTI cut and paste the sentence. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And I'm [01:36:00] like, I gave it all my references and I cut and paste the sentence and said, where would I have got this idea from?

And it told me which paper, which page I verified. I got it to format the reference for me. Sometimes I'd left the reference in and Miss Sculp the name or put the wrong year. Yeah. So I can't paste the sentence and it goes, oh no, you mean Hayden? Yeah. And some of these references that didn't even have in the reference list that I gave it.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Okay. So I gave it my reference list. Still 

Jason: found them. 

Inger: Not the PDFs, just the reference list. Yeah. 

Jason: That was gonna be my next question. Was it DOIs? 

Inger: Yeah, just the, the references. Oh, okay. 

Jason: Yeah. Just, 

Inger: and that all had DOIs. So it would go out, it would search the web. Yeah. And it would look at the papers and it would come back and it would tell me which paper.

So I have variations of that. So sometimes I had the name, sometimes I didn't, sometimes I didn't even know who I was quoting. Sometimes I knew I wanted to talk about Ali Hosh Child's, um, emotional labor. Right. Really important paper. And I knew, like, I just asked her, [01:37:00] which paper should I use of hers? And it remind me which ones they've got and it goes, oh, this one.

And then I like looked at it and went, oh yeah, that's the paper. I mean, you know, 

Both: like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It just 

Inger: is like fucking bumped through all that stuff, which is stuff I hate. 45 minutes. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Cleaned it up and it, like, I will often put off submitting a paper for weeks 'cause I don't want to do that work weeks.

Jason: And now it's, now it's one latte worth of work. 

Inger: It's why just sit like, just like it's going away, searching. Like, it was just extraordinary. And like, I know people say, oh, makes up references and stuff, but use this way. It's not right. Like it's, yeah. It's working from grounded truth and Yeah, like, like I can't even describe to you what a burden that lists for me.

Both: Yeah. And 

Inger: again, that's not a job I would give to a research. Well it is a job I'd give to a research assistant. It's a shitty job. I'd give it to a research assistant for sure. And you would, you know, expect in a, a journal that they check that [01:38:00] they never really do in my experience, check it properly. But, but it's there now why do, why do that?

There's no way I'm ever doing that for myself again. 

Both: Yeah, 

Inger: without a machine assist if I can. So that's the workflow. And then I wrote a I wrote a disclaimer, yeah. I wrote a disclaimer about about how I used it. I named all the tools and the disclaimer is quite intense.

Like it's a whole paragraph. And it was like clawed 3.4 point, you know what I mean? Like, I was very transparent 'cause I'm just like, put it all on the table. I, I wrote it, but I didn't, it wrote it, it wrote it. Really? Yeah. From my rough thoughts, it it, and did a completely banger. I gave it an old paper of mine and said, you know, just like, this is a good, um, example of how I like to write.

Here's my tone, here's my flare, it's got a bit of my flare, my habit of asking rhetorical questions, that kind of thing. So I did a bit of that, um, and my favorite bit of it, it's this line in it is like, it's hard to know what AI is, [01:39:00] digital huckster or savior of humanity. And I'm like, yeah, I gotta leave that in.

It came up with that, like, that was an Inga flare. Like I said, you know, I do these, I pointed at bits of papers where I do a bit of that kind of like, you know, showmanship. So it just did a bit of that and then it suggested that I use, um, AI entered the chat and I, so I use that line, you know? Yeah. 

Jason: Nice. 

Inger: It was riffing on my style, I guess.

And so that's the other thing, if you've got an established style, this, this stuff becomes a lot easier. Yeah, because you can get it to mimic you pretty well. And everyone I've showed it to has really enjoyed it. Yeah. Said it was an enjoyable read. 

Jason: Oh, that's good. 

Inger: And it's a tight read, like, anyway, so that's the AI augmented workflow and some thoughts about it.

And I know people have been asking us for this kind of thing. So there you go. 

Jason: I've got a couple of slides. The, um, I put together for the university Bristol stuff that, um, I will send you away that [01:40:00] may they, they would slot in you, change 'em a little bit. But the, the ideas that sit within that presentation would be useful, I think.

Because there's, it talks through through this approach of structured dial dialectical inquiry. 

Both: Oh. 

Jason: Which is, uh, that's fancy. Yeah, I know, right? Which is like, that's how do you talk, how do you talk to ai? Right. That's what it means, right? It's like I'm chatting with ai, how do I do that? And that they, there's a slide there, two slides there that I'll, I'll send through to you that you might, um.

Might spark some ideas or you just use 'em or something. I don't know. Useful's useful. Yeah. That's what we do, is that 

Inger: we just chuck stuff at each other. Like, you might be able to use a bit of this. That's why we have our bundles. I just looked at the time that went on and on. I'm gonna have to see you Dar again.

Jason: Fucking interesting though. Oh, sorry. Exploitive. Oh, I try not to swear on the pod. 

Inger: I know you don't. I don't, I I just let it all hang out. I love it when you let [01:41:00] one rip. 

Jason: Dang. You're gonna have to put the EAG on that episode now. It's like, like extra warning. Jason Swo. Um, I know it's, um, quarter past one here in sunny Melbourne, which is not very sunny.

It's raining. I've got some, I've got some executive editorial decision making to do. Yeah. Maybe we can do this together. Mm-hmm. I would rather not talk about what we've been reading. 

Both: Mm-hmm. Again, yeah. 

Jason: Again, mainly because I'm not finished, I do wanna talk about this book. Tiny Experiments. Yeah. Okay.

How to live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World. Can 

Inger: we do it? Is this book Bullshit episode? Maybe? 

Jason: Yeah. 'cause I've got thoughts. 

Inger: Yeah. Okay, cool. Um, I'd love that. 

Jason: And they're not that far away from my thoughts around Cal Newport sometimes, so. Oh, 

Inger: yeah, 

Jason: yeah. I know, right? I wanna hear that. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: I don't know.

I'm still formulating what, how I feel about this. So I, I I do, I would love to [01:42:00] finish this book first before, before we talk about it. So let's hold that one over. Two minute tips. 

Inger: Yeah, I've got one. Do you have a two minute 

Jason: tip? Yeah. Alright, cool. Let's do two minute tips and then I'll, I'll read us out.

Inger: Okay. As part of that AI enhanced workflow that I shared my last step, which I started yesterday, was to take the journal instructions to authors, make yourself Aude from that. Yes. Put your paper in that. Yes. And it creates a checklist for you. Yes. Tells you what you've done, what you haven't done.

Add this bit, add that bit. Editorial assistant. Yes. Bang. And then it writes the cover letter to the editor. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: Brilliant. 

Jason: Did I not have I not taught you this? No, we've, I've got a, I've got a journal acceptance bot. Oh yes, it does exactly that. It's like you laid up, well, maybe you need 

Inger: to share your yours.

So I see where the mines like needs some because you do better prompting than me. 

Jason: Yeah, no, that's a great idea. It's it, and it's so useful. It's just, it handles all of the hygiene. [01:43:00] Right? Totally. So, you know, so the, when you've used the wrong formatting system or something like that, it goes, Hey, no, they're not gonna accept it because you've used Harvard referencing system and this journal calls for Chicago or some shit, right?

Inger: Yeah. And it takes, it takes this, like the three criteria against which they judge the paper. Go, you'll get a desk reject if you don't Yeah. Fulfill these. And it does those three criteria and does an analysis of it and goes t it gives you a T or a cross. Yeah. And that's a perfect way to write the letter to the editor.

Jason: It's a, it's perfect. It's such a great idea. It really is. And you have 

Inger: one for every journal. Like you make them really specific. Yeah. 

Jason: Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the, that's the beauty about these bots is that you can have, and they can just sit there forever. Yeah. So if you publish in the journal at the start of your career, and then towards the end of your career, you circle all the way back, you know, in a nice loop closure.

If we still have called or 

Inger: chatty and they haven't gone broke because their business models don't work, I just have to, every now and then again, [01:44:00] I think AI business models do not, they rely on huge piles of cash being burned in them. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: What happens when the cash runs out? 

Jason: Well, that's, um, what a Claude for now, and the top tier plan is, what, 20 

Inger: bucks a month or so, even if we all paid that, even if we all paid that, Jason.

Jason: Yeah. It's done enough. 

Inger: It's not enough. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like how, how we are living through a golden age of accessibility to these tools. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's the, it's, it's the, it's the shiny end of the in acidification process. That's right. The only 

Inger: reason, the only reason they're shoveling those wa of cash into the machines is that they think it'll take all of our jobs.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And they're prepared to make that investment upfront to see if they can make it happen. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And we are probably helping them. Yes. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: By you explaining 

Jason: how exactly to do this. Yes. Yeah. [01:45:00] 

Inger: Anyway, just like leave. Yeah. Anyway, yes, your tip. 

Jason: So, my two minute tip, which is for listeners who have joined us for the first time, we kinda skipped past this.

Sorry. That was my fault. Our two minute tip section is in our segment, which is in honor of David Allen and his classic book Getting Things Done. Alan argues that if a task will take less than two minutes to complete, you should do it then and there because it'll take longer than two minutes to capture it in your task system.

Schedule. Time to do it, market is complete, yada, yada, yada. But really, this is just our chance to share a hack or an idea. We think that helps. Other podcasts, losers, I'm, I'm, they're still doing a Inga. They're still doing this shit at the start of their podcast, not at the end, where it comes as delicious.

Yoga as a treat, Inga a treat. It does for people who have listened two hours to us, that's bang on about this stuff. Yeah. 

Inger: And we just clocked over two hours again. Maybe it'll be shorter. I don't know. I, um, 

Jason: I don't know. Pretty, it's a fairly lean 

Inger: episode anyway. Yeah, go on. It's pretty [01:46:00] tight, 

Jason: right? Yeah, yeah.

We put this at the end as a delicious treat. So ER's already told us our two minute tip, her two minute tip about a journal acceptance bot, which I think is fucking brilliant. And perfect use of that technology. Mine is, I stumbled across a new app for your Mac. 

Both: Hmm. Um, 

Jason: this little Mac app is called Amphetamine.

It keeps your mac awake even if you close its lid. Great. For things like ensuring that your Mac doesn't go to sleep. If you're uploading, downloading large video files Yes. Or large online databases. Yes. Or cough. Uploading a podcast recording to Riverside End cost. I don't 

Inger: think that's Riverside's fault.

I think that's your Internet's fault. 

Jason: Okay. I'm blaming Riverside. I can't. I 

Inger: know, but it's pretty shit. It's pretty shit. It's, it's taking us like, we have to leave it open for what? An hour. Like I'm gonna have lunch, so you, 

Jason: yeah. Yeah. I like two hours last, the last episode last night. Yeah. I, it's ridiculous.

I now, I now, [01:47:00] because we record when we record, I now, I just let it do its thing and I, I have an analog afternoon planned, you know, in the Bojo pretty much. Wow. Get, get stuff done now. So. Yeah. Damn. So I had to move a bunch of stuff from drop into Dropbox. From that was sitting on my hard drive.

It was gonna take ages for it to upload. I wanted to go to bed at night. I didn't want it to all stop during the night. Amphetamine just ensures that my Mac doesn't go to sleep. 

Both: That's the upload. What a great is really good. It's great. What a great, 

Jason: it's a little pill that the, the icon is like a little Yeah.

Um, you can get it on. It's fully customizable. Great little piece of software. It's tiny in, um, yeah, it, you can get it on the Mac app store if you want to go there. Or you can go direct to the developer, either or. Bloody hell. It's downloading free 

Inger: soon. Oh no, really? 

Jason: Yep. For free. That's, 

Inger: that's crazy. It's, 

Jason: it's a cracker.

Inger: That's crazy. 

Jason: So if you've got reasons for you don't want your Mac to go to sleep. [01:48:00] 

Inger: And there's always plenty reasons. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic. Okay, so that's us. Thanks for listening. We love reviews. ING's desperately racing off to see whether or, I know we've got any review, any reviews right now.

I'm 

Inger: Yeah, yeah, 

Both: yeah. If you leave 

Jason: a review on Apple Podcast, we promise to read it out. 

Both: Mm, we do. Um, just 

Jason: scroll all the way down to the bottom of your podcast player and get typing. And while you're there, give us a review. Five stars only please people, five stars only. I've got a 4.97 on my Uber score Stars on my Uber score.

Inga 4.97. It's so bloody close to like, do you know how much it's killing me that I don't have a five on that thing? Just because someone didn't like something. I don't know. I dunno. But don't be that person. Give us five stars. 

Inger: Yeah, we got 4.9. That's pretty good. 4.9 out of five. It's about the best you can get.

Jason: Yeah, it was that one guy right? Who said that we were washed up academics or something. Yeah. I love that. Thanks very much. Thanks for nothing. Um. [01:49:00] If you want your question featured on the mailbag, send us a, uh, send us a email to pod at on the reg team.com. I will get that and I'll put it into the next episode, although we might have to hold it over to the one after that.

If, um, recent experiences, anything to go by or you can go to www.speakpipe.com/thesis whisperer and you can leave us a voicemail I think up to three minutes and we will play it on the pod and respond to that as well. Inga, how do we go? Have we got any more reviews? 

Inger: Uh, no, we haven't, but also I just just a note.

Yeah. 

Jason: Um, have 

Inger: we spprt the newsletter in this segment before this, the newsletter Spruce here, because we've been sending out a two minute tips newsletter. We've got quite a few subscribers, but I think we're missing a trick here. I know it's in our footer of our just, uh, bear with us on our production meeting folks.[01:50:00] 

Jason: I'll change the text expander show notes template. Well, we have, we've 

Inger: got a newsletter. It's in the footer. 

Jason: We do have a newsletter. So if you look at the footer of this, um, and it 

Inger: may or may not be called, that writes the newsletter from the transcript of the pod. 

Jason: Well, part of, it's part of the, you know, the collective, right?

Yeah. Yeah. We do have a newsletter. It comes out every two weeks. Inga puts it together with Claude. Mm. Uh, and it comes out and it's really super short. It's just got a few little ideas, some from the pod, um, about things that you can do. So if you want the not to hour long version of us nattering away, but, 

Inger: you know, and if, if it's, if you've got a friend who crazily doesn't like podcasts, and then you say it's two hours long, and they're like, fuck no.

Then the, the newsletter is, is the digest form. So it starts with a two minute tip. Yeah. And then you get two things to read. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Which will be hard for the court to do in this episode, but it'll somehow find them, it'll find when you mention a book, it's pretty good at that. Yeah. And then, then we've got two [01:51:00] things to think, some things to think about, things to do, and then Yeah.

Yeah. Like it gets a good open rate. Bloody hell, yeah. Thank you. For those people who subscribe, I think we've got like 200 people ish on that mailing lease now. But we don't, we don't give it a very good spook 

Jason: no. Again, 

Inger: we're doing this right at the end when everyone's already turned off. 'cause they're about to go onto the next podcast.

So, you know. 

Jason: I will I'll put it in. It costs us about a thousand bucks a year to produce this podcast. You can support us directly with that if you would like you can sign up and to be a riding the bus member for just two bucks a month via our, on the Reg Cofi site. Link is in notes and send, send us messages, show notes, send 

Inger: and send us messages there too.

You can send us messages like Emily did. Yes. 

Jason: From the UK earlier. 

Inger: And have you inserted the names of the people who followed us on Cofi. See, we're so bad at this. 

Jason: Jonathan at this 

Inger: point is laughing at us. 

Jason: He is. He's like, he's, he's like cackling away in the distance there in the background. But yeah, [01:52:00] I was in, I was at Cofi this morning.

Oh look. Every morning I look at Cofi. 

Inger: Well, Jason appreciates it. That's all we are saying. 

Jason: Um, and, and I 

Inger: am 

Jason: just, I am just, I'm not on the socials even though I appreciate these things. I am not on the socials at all. But Inga is, yes, you can find Inga pretty much everywhere as the thesis whisperer. Um, and I'm, you may digitally 

Inger: promiscuous on LinkedIn.

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: I say yes to everybody. I've never met I 5,000 people now on LinkedIn. I've never, I haven't met you. I don't care. We're friends now. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: you can mess. I, 

Jason: I care. I 

Inger: just have no boundaries. No boundaries.

Jason: Yeah. I'd like, you can occasionally see me on Instagram if you want, but like, I delete it every week and then open it on the weekends and kind of scroll through to see [01:53:00] what other people are doing and then I delete it by, usually by Saturday night again, like I'm done. Yeah. 

Inger: I, I hang out a bit on threads just for like the bin Fire of Politics and I, I'm there on Blue Sky, so like the best place to talk to me though actually is probably message in LinkedIn, so, you know.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. It's weird. Weirdly boring vanilla place to hang out, but there you are. 

Jason: There you go. It's useful. Thank you so much. Um, thanks. We, we have had chat ball. Alright. And it's, thanks. 

Inger: That'll be a little shorter maybe. Let's see. Okay. Okay. Like, and so you're gonna turn on the amphetamine pill, but um, I am gonna 

Jason: do that right now because it has to up, 

Inger: up to upload.

But, um, but thanks everyone. It's been great. See you next time. 

Jason: And Inga, I'll see you on Friday. 

Inger: Yes. Saturday, Friday. Saturday, 

Jason: Saturday, Saturday. Saturday. Even Saturday. 

Inger: Saturday you pick you up the airport. I'll pick you up. 

Jason: Don't you worry. See ya. 

Inger: See everyone. 

Jason: Bye.