Tiny Experiments (and larger rants)

In the depths of Canberra winter, no one can hear you scream about AI... except for Jason, who had to hear ALL of Inger's feelings. 

Come for the promise of a 'Is this Book Bullshit?' style review of 'Tiny Experiments' by Jason, stay for the Big Rant about how Inger's anti-AI academic friends now think she is a Republican... it's a lot.

Things we mention:

• Pop Canberra (for the stickers)
• Fated Mates romance podcast stickers
• Indigenous Knowledge Systems Lab
• OmniFocus
• On The Reg Mind Sweep Bot
• Getting Things Done (book)
• Ben Kraal's OTR episode with Inger
• How to Make Notes and Write (book)
• Literary Theory for Robots (book)
• The Utopia of Rules (book)
• Evelyn Frost books 
• Analogue Productivity (book)
• Rethinking Repair (paper)
• On the reg Structured Dialogical Inquiry Bot
• Tiny Experiments (book)
• Listen Later (app)
• On The Reg on Linkedin

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] Hey, Kat said I was entertaining. She said to me, you are quite funny. Inga. Like, she was surprised. Yes. Yes. 

Jason: It's, it. Bless her. When she's working downstairs in the kitchen or something, she'll sing out to Siri to play a podcast.

And she doesn't care which one, right? Like just on a random podcast, but for whatever reason it keeps defaulting to on the rig. And so, so she's listened to more on the rig in the last few months than I think of like ever 

Inger: otherwise, when she just got forced, forced on her in the car. Like sometimes I'll take my husband for a drive just to say I need to check whether the levels are okay.

The number of times he does listen though. He's a good husband like that. He's a wife guy. Yeah. 

Jason: Good. 

Inger: All right. We started good because I've got a meeting to go to. Yeah. Cool. Sadly, welcome to On the Reg. I'm Professor Uba from the Australian National [00:01:00] University, but I'm better known as Thesis Whisperer on the internet.

And I'm here with my good friend and business partner, Dr. Jason Downs, for another episode of On the Reg, uh, where we talk about work. But you know, not in a boring way. Practical implementable productivity hacks to help you live a more balanced life. Now, in this episode, I'm foreshadowing 'cause we don't have our foreshadow section.

I'm just like casting into the darkness. To say that this episode's gonna be an, is that book bullshit about a book that Jason just read and was complaining to me just before that. He can't really remember what he read, but I said to him, just do the good bits. Yeah. So we're gonna talk about tiny experiments by someone Lako.

Jason: Yes. And Law Lako. 

Inger: So we're gonna do, we're gonna give it the, the is this book Bullshit Treatment, but the, these bits I remember of it that were good or not so good. 

Jason: Yes. I think, is that right? I think. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Look, the, I mean, I don't wanna, I don't wanna [00:02:00] over foreshadow here. I had issues Yes.

But I was also impressed. Um, so, okay. So 

Inger: we'll, we'll cover all that Ground, the ground between Yeah. Impressed and had issues. That's great. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. Great. So there you go. There's the foreshadowing part done. We're so professional. How you been since we last caught up? 

Jason: It's been good. You know, relatively great, really.

And not to some small impact of going home and seeing my parents. I managed to spend a week or so at home and that was on the back of some jobs that we've been doing. We've been doing some, running some workshops, uh, on behalf of the national industry PhD program.

The fancy folk at, look at us being fancy, look at us being fancy good folks at campus plus have engaged us to go and do all that. Um, and that's been really good. So I've been to Brisbane, Adelaide and so for those who dunno, my folks still live in South Australia. I'm an export from good Old South Australia to Victoria.[00:03:00] 

They still live there. Adelaide. So I went to Adelaide. We did some work at Flinder's Uni there, and then I went and spent a couple of weeks with my folks which was really, really good, you know, the ability to be able to work. Can you tell the 

Inger: audience about the geography, the geography that you dealt with there?

Because although your parents live some small number of kilometers from Adelaide because of the nature of the geography. Yeah, it's some large number of kilometers that you have to drive. It's, it's a 

Jason: straight shot across the Gulf, so, um, into it. And like how many kilometers 

Inger: as the crow flies? 

Jason: Oh, I don't know.

Like, it's not many. Right, right. Maybe, maybe 50, I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Like even then, I don't even think it's that far. But to get to it by land, you have to go up one side of the gulf over the top and then down the middle of the peninsula. So my, um, my parents live on the York Peninsula.

My folks live in a small country town right in the middle of that and have [00:04:00] done pretty much my whole entire life.

So what am I now? 50 something. So yeah, at least 58 years they've been living there. They're locals as you would like to think now, and I still love it, which is great. And yeah, I gotta go back. So I left cath and Jack here at home, um, and took the opportunity to go and work off the kitchen table at my childhood home managed to squeeze in a couple of days of fishing, which was good fishing. It was like, like two days worth fishing where the weather was good. I mean, we come from a long line of fisher people. Um, my, I did not know this about you all 

Inger: these years. Did you not? I'm just looking at this like, I just looked at glanced at the show notes center and went what?

I didn't know that. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So my grandfather was a professional fisherman down at Beach Port, he was one of the founding people of Safco, you know, the, which is South Austral Fisheries. C Why, why 

Inger: aren't you, why aren't you and Nepo baby kind of just spawning around, [00:05:00] like that's a huge going concern South Co.

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Isn't it? So the, the story is these guys were fishing down in Southeast South Australia, and the only markets you could sell your fish at were the Adelaide markets. And so what that meant was that there was only one place you could sell. , They had to be price takers from the markets.

Um Right. And yeah. Which, which means that they were getting screwed by the people in the markets. So what they did Sure. Is they formed this, this cooperative, this South Australian Fisheries Cooperative Limited, where they all kind of bandied together and then because all of a sudden they had big impact 'cause they were suppliers, like large suppliers, they had, um, price negotiation efforts.

So I think my grandfather 

Inger: business unionization, that's it. I mean, they don't call it union. I think my grandfather 

Jason: was like the first president of it or something like that. I'm a little bit So your grandfather was 

Inger: kind of like, was kind of like a union organizer, like, [00:06:00] fuck the bosses we're gonna get our monies.

Where That's amazing. Yeah, 

Jason: apparently it was really, oh mate. Like it gets better. So apparently it was even more. Like feral than that. There was big pushback from all of the people at the Adelaide markets or something. I don't know. Anyway, they um, at one point my grandfather threatened to, as the ships were going, as the fishing boats were going past, tie a big, long piece of steel cable to the back of his boat and just drag it out there.

Yeah. So that, so that the, when these boats were trying to block the fisheries or do anything like that, they would entangle the bottom of their no boats with these. He was like, yeah, yeah, yeah. It was like, wow. Wow. Pirate stuff on the high seas, really? So I'm not a hundred percent sure looking, this is a proud, a proud 

Inger: tradition that you come from 

Jason: then.

Yeah, 

Inger: yeah. Like, 

Jason: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, um, ah, to be clear, and we should keep this in the, in the [00:07:00] podcast, like I'm not a hundred percent sure how true any of these stories are coming from a long line of fishermen. They could be all boat. Yeah. There would be a 

Inger: lot of artisanal bullshit art, artisanal bullshit, right?

The original og, 

Jason: yes, I caught the biggest fish, but he got away. You know, like there could be a bit of that going, I 

Both: dunno. 

Jason: Um, I love that story. So, yeah. So dad, dad grew up on fishing boat. Um, you know, kind of while he was gonna school and that sort of stuff. And so I've always had boats. I grew up fishing and diving and like, I got 

Inger: like, I, I thought you were just a boat person because you went, 

Jason: went eight. 

Inger: I just thought you were a fisher, like a, not a fisher person, but like you were a, you were a sea boaty kind of person.

Just 'cause you lived in Williamstown. I didn't realize that this was actually a soul deep connection with the waterways. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Generations of it. 

Jason: Yeah. I, I'd be the most, yeah, I, I, I think I'm probably the most disappointing of the Downs clan, um, because my boat is the smallest, [00:08:00] like the grandfather had a really big one.

My dad's bigger, we're smaller, and now I've got a tinny. Right. 

Inger: I, you know, but on the reg team, could one day, you never know your luck, we could, you know, have a super yacht. We could be on below deck. You never know. Like that could be a direction we go. Yeah. 

Jason: Okay. 

Inger: You never know. 

Jason: Alright. , Oh, and the other thing, I came to Canberra just last week. Yeah, yeah. Real 

Inger: briefly. Like I went to you, you came to me like we were like, see you next week. 'cause I was in Melbourne for the weekend again. Yeah. Like another Melbourne trip. Yeah. Quick drop into RMIT.

That was fun. That was good to go back to the old stamping ground, you know where we met? Yeah. RMIT University. Yeah. Yeah. I went to Pearson and Murphy's at a coffee Ooh. At Pearson and Murphy's and everything, which is where the original shut up and Right. Crew met up. And then you came up here, was it, 

Jason: was it still the same?

Pearson and Murphy's? 

Inger: Yes. Yes. Still got the same decorations and everything. It's all freak years yet, probably 15 years 

Jason: now. Right. 

Inger: Oh man. A long [00:09:00] time. 

Both: Yeah, 

Inger: A long time. Yeah. It actually looked pretty good for how old it is, I gotta say, like 

Both: mm-hmm. 

Inger: They keep a business, a cafe business, going that long and still be quite good.

It's pretty amazing. Yeah. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And then you came up here and it was cold. 

Jason: It was cold minus five the morning. That I was up in Canberra. Yeah. Which was a, yeah. You know, that was a bracing start to the day 

Inger: It was, wasn't it? Yeah. 

Jason: And I gave a presentation to the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation. 

Inger: And I got to sit there because I wasn't, I was originally not able to come to that and then my calendar cleared up.

So I came along. You are funny. I enjoyed it. I enjoyed being in the audience. 

Jason: I was gonna enter, like, I, I just wanna say for the record, I was gonna enter Yeah. The water at one o'clock, right? I know. Like in terms of finishing on time, by that, 

Inger: listen, listeners, yes. We mean like double backward, flip off the high diving board and land on your feet is how we describe if you managed to land the teaching in the time that you contracted to do it.[00:10:00] 

It's actually an arc. Yeah. Isn't it? 

Jason: It is. And I don't wanna finish. I stopped you, didn't 

Inger: I? 

Jason: You don't wanna finish too early 'cause you look like you've got nothing to say, but you don't wanna go too long either because people expect you to finish at one o'clock. Correct. And I was gonna, I have, you know, I was going to, at 1:00 PM it was gonna be a smooth entry into the water, like no splash.

Mm-hmm. Right? Like it was gonna be Yep. Mm-hmm. 10 by all the judges. And then you started answering questions. I, yeah, 

Inger: I know. But people said it was a whole room for all of a, a u students asking me questions. I was like, this is my chance to answer them. I was like, feed the chooks right now, Ingram, and then you won't get a dozen emails after this event.

So I didn't, I only got three 

Jason: I. Oh, that's pretty good. I um, I was impressed that you put yourself between all those hungry brains and lunch. Right. I know. They, they want to go away. Taking 

Inger: a risk. Taking a risk. Taking a risk. Oh, dear. Um, yeah, so that's been me. What about you? Mm, [00:11:00] I'm not fired. Well, that's, so that's good.

Positive. Yeah. There's people being fired. We don't call it being fired, do we? We call it restructure and refreshing and renewing and all those words don't mean sacked redundancy, separations. We've got lovely kind of soft language around the fact that people are being fired. I think I've survived again, I haven't got one of those emails inviting me in for those meetings.

Condolences, solidarity to all my A NU colleagues. It's shit. 

Both: Yeah. What's happening? 

Inger: It's shit. And it's, there's no other words. And I know a lot of you listen, so just like shouting out, gimme a call, want a coffee? Yeah. You wanna complain? I, I hold space for that because it's really shit. Yeah.

So I've already done it. I don't know, four or five people yesterday. I was a bit teary yesterday because people, especially for people who didn't expect it to happen, are now going, what the [00:12:00] fuck do I do? Right. Yeah. Um, I I, I always expect the university to sack me like I'm prepared at every moment. In fact, you know, my book, how to Be an Academic, actually it's back there 'cause I, I haven't got a hanger to hanger, like it's sitting behind me.

Yeah, yeah. A framed poster of my first book, how to Be an Academic. And I say at the start of that, university's like a bad boyfriend. Yeah, 

Both: yeah. 

Inger: It just, it'll just leave you standing by the side of the road in the rain, said it was gonna pick you up, didn't do it. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: And we've got a lot of bad boyfriend university and people who thought it wasn't a bad boyfriend and are finding out that it is and it's shit.

Jason: Yeah, we, I mean, I think we've talked about this a bit, right? Like, and it doesn't matter how you approach it, that conversation that, you know, names go on spreadsheets, and then spreadsheets are depersonalized, and then it's just a case of, okay, how many rows of the spreadsheet do we, yeah, turn red? 

Inger: [00:13:00] How far down are you on the rows?

Um, yeah. Went to a party on Saturday night and someone was telling me, oh yeah, they sacked all the E's. This in a different university. They sacked all the D's and E's and the C's thought they weren't. This is, you know, for non-A Australian listeners, this is like e is the top. Paid for. I'm a, I'm an E, right?

Mm-hmm. Um, and then D D's and E'S got cut and then the C'S thought they were safe and then the C's were cut and they were like, yeah, I was gonna apply for promotion, but I'm not gonna now because I'm safe to level B. And then we discussed how shit that was. 'cause you felt like, well, I'll just sit here on my lower pay.

Yeah. Perform above that role. But like, I don't wanna put the head above the parapet and be one of the people who's cut because I cost too much. It's just pretty shit. Anyway. Well, my not only, not only, 

Jason: not only that the role of professor, like there's senior academic roles, done well. They. Help produce a productive academy, right?

Like, done. Well, you think so? And like, [00:14:00] I I say that, I say that not in the advisor and work harder. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Work harder. Yeah. If you want to get promoted, you have to kind of spend all your weekends writing papers and doing all that sort stuff. Like Yeah. You know, good, good colleagues can help people through, through this.

I mean, that, it's not a great, it's not a great working environment. Um, no. And like, if you get rid of all of those people with all that experience at that top level you've got no one to mentor the people underneath coming through. So, Nope. You know, I'm, I, hopefully that means that the people lower down can apply for promotion and get promoted quickly and then just bring a new way of working with them as part of that.

Inger: Well, I've been saying to a few of these people, you've seen how you don't want it to be. Here. Yeah. And you're gonna be in charge before you know it. Like, you know what does in charge mean though? Like I always thought when I was younger. Oh yeah. When I'm in my generation in charge, it's gonna be [00:15:00] better.

And I think we are pretty cooked so far as generation X. I'm not, I, I don't think we're doing a great job. Look at who's in power around the world. Anyway, but my kid announced to me, Jason, that, um, this is his last semester of uni, which, uh, feels quite strange. It's been a long journey. 

Jason: Hang on. So of, um, two questions.

Inger: Oh, 

Jason: I've got a question. It's his actual last semester as in like there's no more or mm-hmm. Screw this, this is my last semester and he's still doing a couple No, 

Inger: there's no, no there. I will walk out of here with a degree in my hand at the end Oh, wow. Of the semester is what he said to me. So he started in 2020, which is just slightly before this podcast started actually.

And the first two years were pretty bumpy. You know, there was a lot of starting and then quitting and then going and it, and eventually sort of found a rhythm. He got a job in a pet store as you know, the training of the puppies. And, and he basically works four days a week and does uni. [00:16:00] Um, and in the sort of rest of it, so he is been part-time.

Both: Mm. 

Inger: So it's ended up taking him five years. That was sort of panic, um, pandemic disruption. Um, so I was sort of slightly surprised because it felt like it was just gonna go on forever. But it's a really big moment when your kid finishes. Like, you know, you start, you take them to school when they're, you know, you take them to preschool even, and then you take them to school.

And I must say like the quality of their education has been a steady downhill from like, the best educators in the world are early educators. I will not take meetings on this. They are the best. Yeah. Yeah. Social, emotional, learning, all that foundational stuff. Incredible Um, teaching. And then primary school you're like, oh, this is a bit of a downgrade.

And then in high school, you like couldn't get worse. And then uni. Oh my God. Some of it's been good, but a lot of it hasn't and he hasn't loved it. And he's like, what's the point in this? I'm like, just finish it. This is what we do in the middle class son. Anyway, so you did it. [00:17:00] Not sure what happens after this, but um, yeah, that's, that's a weird feeling.

It kind of, yeah, it's a very weird feeling. I dunno how I feel about it. But anyway, so that's happening and, um, 

Jason: I remem I remember my last semester as an undergrad, like going into my last semester as an undergrad, and then having this thought as I'm walking to class one day. Mm-hmm. Um, fuck, hang on, this is my last semester.

What do I do after this? Right. Like. Now what you would've thought that this would've been maybe a little bit more in front of me and like You're gonna Planning was not my strong set set at that particular point time. I was like, holy shit. I like, I gotta, because I was living on university residences.

Right? 

Inger: Oh, right, okay. You had that full experience. They right. They're gonna kick, they're gonna kick me off. Yeah. I won't have anywhere to live. Where am I gonna live? Who's gonna cook me food? We had the [00:18:00] most different come from experience. So it's, it's so funny, it's so funny how like, unintentionally Brendan's experience has echoed my own, which is sort of fractured and in and out and do I really want this?

And like, it took me eight years. So he seems like a high achiever to take five to me. Right? 'cause I, you know, first in family didn't have any money. It was a recession. My parents lost their house. I, you know, so I was living in share houses and I was working in architecture way before I graduated. In fact, I didn't, I had, I told you this story, I didn't really properly graduate because I had a couple of subjects left and someone told me there's a little loophole.

You just, you just go in and you fill in a piece of paperwork and say, look, I've been working as an architect, can you just comp me? Yes. The rest of my courses. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't, I didn't really have that. Finishing experience. So yeah, it's weird. Anyway, he doesn't know what he wants to do. He still doesn't know.

And you know what? Because of everything that's happened and how fractured the experience was and how most of his learning has been online, has not made a single [00:19:00] friend at uni. Ah, yeah. Like he met, he met people here and there, but there was not enough glue to connect anyone. And then he got outta sync with all his classmates.

And then, you know, in the end I think he just gave up and he's just like, I just go there and I do this thing and my life is elsewhere. You know? Yeah. Um, and it's like he's had this quite social job or else, you know, he'd be very disconnected from people otherwise, I think, um, anyway, you're not gonna time not gonna make friends 

Jason: in group work, are you?

Right? 

Inger: No. You don't make friends actually. But aren't you and China friends from group work? 

Jason: Yeah. I know, right? Like, we like one of your best friends, outliers. Yeah. Yeah, 

Inger: yeah. Because you were both in the group project, the only ones doing the work in the group project. Yeah. I made friends in group work.

Yeah. But he has not. No, he has not. Yeah. Um, I think he's like got people's, I think he's got a little bit, like a bit of light connection with some people, but not like it didn't make Friends of the Heart. Do you know what I mean? Like 

Both: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: While he was there. So that's a bit [00:20:00] disappointing. But anyway, that's just how it went.

I suppose Pandemic just blew a hole in the side of his experience and it never really recovered. It's what it is. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. I mean, it was, it's terrible that for the, all of that online learning element. 

Inger: Oh, he hated it. He hated it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and uh, yesterday, like in more mundane news, I broke into a new bojo.

Break, new ground, new bojo. It's always a good day when you start a new bojo. You are like, I've got to the end of this Bojo. I feel satisfied that this bullet journal, for those of you who are new here, hello, welcome. Um, bullet journal, one of favorite system of ours, you know, and there's, there's a whole ritual with wrapping up a bullet journal because you know, I have an index of all my bullet journal indexes.

So when I retire a bullet journal, I transcribe by hand the index into my index book, and then I put a little sticker on it and I put it on the shelf and then I can go back and find things in my previous bojo. [00:21:00] So now I've got, just got a count. Actually, why don't you, I don't, I don't know that people, this is Bojo number seven.

This is bojo number seven. 

Jason: Yeah. I don't, I don't think the people who are not bojo people, um, really. Understand or appreciate the just sheer genius of that brilliant indexing system. No, right? Yeah. Like it's so simple and elegant. 

Inger: Oh yeah. Just genius. Yeah. Um, uh, and I, I, I did, I've got a new sticker 'cause of course it's new bojo, new sticker.

So this one of course, um, last one was decorated with my favorite podcast, my romance podcast, faded mates. When I joined their community, they sent a bunch of stickers lesson to ask Jason, we should be sending stickers to people when they join our various communities. Like we should have some stickers made.

Anyway, they sent me a sticker pack and that was my last BuJo. So it had things like danger, bang, and romance reasons. And I had all these like love hearts and big [00:22:00] pink things and like, you know, put headphones in, which is when they're talking about sex scenes on the radio and your kids are in the car, they go headphones in, right?

So, yeah. Anyway, so I had all these stickers and now, now this one has got Taylor Swift, so I've got, oh 

Jason: good. 

Inger: I've got, you know, cruel summer. I've got meet me at midnight. And on the front I thought I'd go with this solitary one sticker here, which says all the best people in life are free on a cassette tape right in the middle.

Oh, I'm, I'm enjoying this new Bojo already. Um, but uh, I put it on LinkedIn 'cause you know, this is where, this is in 2025 burning trash fire on social media. Now the most fun space to hang out is LinkedIn. Who if you told, if you told 2013 Inga that that was the case, she would've been like, what the fuck has happened to the world?

And I would've answered a lot. Um, but Rachel Brown, who's my colleague at a NU, pointed out, she's like, where do you get your good stickers? And I said, well, I get some from Etsy. Jason had some chilies made. I've run outta [00:23:00] chilies, by the way. I need some more chilies. You do some more. I've got chilies. Yeah.

Yeah. And sometimes I get them from Pop Canberra, which is a store in Canberra that has just Canberra things. Yeah. Like my Canberra thinks you are boring too. Sticker is from Pop Canberra, um, and sometimes from Etsy. Um, anyway, but Rachel said genius move that she just has much smaller bojo. Right. Like thinner, smaller ones.

So she gets the new bojo feeling more often. Oh. Yes. I thought that was quite a good, I like, mine are quite thick, like they're like 150 pages. So last one took me like six months or something. Yeah, I thought that might be what I do next. Have smaller ones so that I get to enjoy this new bojo experience more often.

Good idea, Rachel? 

Jason: Uh, yeah, I just, the, because I do mine, like I don't go with the Preformatted Bo Joss, as we all know, I look down my nose at people who use those preformatted ones. I know you judge me, 

Inger: I know you judge me. It's fine. 

Jason: [00:24:00] It's just me looking down my nose share. Yeah, 

Inger: I can feel it. I don't even need to see you to know that that's happening.

Jason: Um, artisanal handwritten page numbers at the bottom of each of my pages. So, having lots of them and having to transfer all of those indexes across more frequently. I just can't. One of mine, 400 pages, uh, my Oh, wow, okay. Expanded versions.

Okay. Yeah. 

Inger: Um, yeah. Well, there you go. I, I might go to small ones. I don't know. Like, I might do whatever I want. I'm gonna move on because I've got a meeting after this and and I probably have to, I don't know, prepare for it or something thinking about it. Um, right. Why would you do such a thing?

Why would you, why would I do such a thing? This is mailbag. We're doing mailbag. We love hearing from you all. Correct. And this is our chance to share interesting things our listeners share with us. We've, of course, I don't think I'm gonna call this email address new anymore because we seem to have successfully transitioned that people are now emailing us on [00:25:00] pod at, on the reg team.com.

And we make sure your email makes into next episode or the one five episodes from now because we didn't get around to it on the last, so we're gonna, like, we're gonna smash through them this time. And the first one we've got is a speak pipe. 

Jason: Oh, okay. Yep. 

Inger: Yes. 'cause I snuck that one in there. 'cause every time I put this speak pipe at the end of the last month or so, two months, it has dropped off the list.

So I'm gonna go with Alexandra Sherlock. Okay. The speak pipe. Let's play it. Where is it? Come on. Okay. Are you going? Oh, come on. 

Caller: Hello, GRA and Jason. Um, thank you so much for your wonderful podcast. Is it working? I'm long time listener. Listen to every episode so far. I was very interested in episode 77 to hear you mention Lynn Kelly's work memory code.

Um, and wondered if you, you'd encountered her book Memory Craft, which converts some of those findings from her PhD [00:26:00] research into actual techniques from a memorization of information. This is a topic I've engaged a little bit with, um, in the Times Higher Education Campus blog for. Uh, understanding whether indigenous knowledge systems can help mitigate the risks of, uh, the risks to knowledge work through sort of AI and increasing digitization.

Anyway, I'd be really interested to hear whether you think perhaps this book is bullshit or whether it is actually, um, really useful for developing learning and teaching methodologies, um, that can help address some of the issues we face today. I'd also like to highlight, um, the Indigenous Knowledge Systems lab.

As you can probably tell, I'm British. Um, and they have got some wonderful resources for thinking about how to engage with these things appropriately and sensitively, um, and offer some protocols. Thank you. 

Inger: Thanks Alexandra. I've read the memory code, but I haven't read the next book along.

Um, but that [00:27:00] is incentive to do so really, I think it's really interesting. 

Jason: I may have set myself up for trouble a little bit. 

Both: Mm 

Jason: mm 

Both: Um, 

Jason: I announced on Instagram a few weeks ago now that for the rest of the year, every time I did a return trip for work, got on a plane, flew somewhere and came home again, that I would buy an Air Port book, bookshop book.

And that I would then read those books and then discuss them at the, on the reg provide Yeah. Reviews on the, on the reg. Yeah. And so as soon as I did that, I then looked at the front of my bojo on my, where is Jason Page and looked at the number of flights I've got coming up. And I'm, that's a lot of books in trouble.

Yeah. So, um, this one, I might be, this one, we'll have to go down the list a little bit. Yes, yes. Because there's a few you might have to read ahead on the 

Inger: list, and I think you've got another indigenous knowledge kind of books. Was it Paul, [00:28:00] uncle Someone Ta Callahan? Yeah, just 

Jason: it's, yeah. Hang 

Inger: on. 

Jason: It's just next to my bed.

I'll go and grab it. Hang on. Yeah, yeah. Talk amongst yourselves. 

Inger: I, I'll just talk to the audience while Jason goes. Jason's house is very nice, by the way. Those people who are watching on video might see that he's got a lovely cathedral ceiling there behind him, and I can attest to the fact that the snoring room is very comfortable.

Comfortable. Yes. You're back. 

Jason: Hmm? I'm back. So, I'm reading Hidden Potential by Adam Grant. I'm about a third of the way through that one. So that was the first one. Decent. 

Inger: Decent. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. I'm enjoying it. And I've seen a few people have reached out to me and said that they really loved it.

Okay. Um, and then it's changed their practice and their teaching and learning practice and a few other bits and pieces, which is great. So from our Canberra trip I picked up the Dreaming Path. The 

Inger: Dreaming 

Jason: Path, indigenous Thinking to Change Your Life. Paul Callahan and Uncle Paul Gordon. Um, [00:29:00] I'm looking forward to reading that one.

Talks about time to reconnect with your story, conversations, exercises, dreaming stories and key messages, dreaming path. Share knowledge that reveals the power of Aboriginal spirituality is a profound source of contentment and wellbeing for anyone willing to listen. Looking forward to that one. But then also while we were at the Ro Roland Wilson.

Roland Wilson. 

Inger: Yes. Yes. 

Jason: We bumped into Holly. Holly, yes. Holly Noble. 

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: Hi, Holly. Holly Nobel and Blue Fishing. Holly was kind enough to g to give me to gift me a book called Blue Fishing, which is, which Holly didn't know 

Inger: your whole history of Fisher Fisher people. No. Right. So she, like I told you, Holly gave me a book, which is an amazing romance book.

Well chosen romance book, which I will review. Yes. But like, but she also chose you. I'm just saying. Holly has deep gift giving. No. Like, she's good. That's all I'm saying. 

Jason: She's very, she's very, very good. [00:30:00] So I, what we should do is we should do a Holly episode where you read your romance book, because I'm not gonna read it.

Well, I've read it, 

Inger: but yes. Yeah. Are you sure though? It's a good one. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. I'll ca I'll catch up on blue fishing and then we can talk about 'em. But like I said, twist, there's a list. It's the 

Inger: first romance I've read that's got a virgin hero. Very interesting. A whole new thing. Ooh. Normally I don't, normally, I don't go for romances that have any sort of virgin element to it.

I find that all a bit icky, like, okay. Often the power relations, like, I know we're way off topic, 

Both: but 

Inger: like, particularly for women, the power relations, they're a bit like arks, you know? Yeah. Like it's hard to write Well, is all I'm saying. Yeah. Unless you're setting hi, historically, but Right. This one Good.

Like hand handle, extraordinarily sensitivity. Well, I thought, wow. So yes, there's a whole episode in that Holly, where we will do the two books together. But coming back to Alexandra's question, I mean the answer is no, I haven't read it, but she [00:31:00] did very well outta that book. And I think like Lynn's a very good example of like, that's the third book that she wrote from her PhD, right?

Like, and she, the fancy one from Cambridge University Press, you know, all the fancy, and then she did the like bestselling one memory code and then she's done the like practical version of it. I think she's just an inspiration for all US authors out there that there's many different ways to cut through that knowledge thing that you do.

So, , we'll search up and put a link to your indigenous knowledge labs for those who are interested as well. 'cause that sounds fascinating. Thank you for writing to us. Okay. Uh, we have Mark from the University of Sussex. Yes. 

Jason: He wrote to us and he supported us on Cofi and he goes, Hey, ING and Jason.

Thank you, mark. Hey, anger. And Jason. I thought I'd signed up on Cofi a while back, but it turns out I hadn't. Anyway. Oh, better luck than never. Thank you for all you do and keep up the good work. Mark from the University of Sussex in the uk. I left it just heat up [00:32:00] short and sweet. I left that one in there as a reminder.

Yes, that you can support us on, on Cofi if you would like to. And thank you Mark, for doing that. It helps to keep the wheels of the bus turning really appreciate. Yes, 

Inger: because this is a super lean operation even though we're busy. The margins, the margins on our business and keeping keeping Jason in the styles, which he's almost accustomed, which is not the style that he used to be.

Accustomed to, you know, no, like there's been a style adjustment. It runs of the smell of an oily, that's all I'm saying. The smell of an oily rake we're very efficient. But you know, like every little bit helps. So thank you so much. Yeah. And also thank you for the praise. Like, I don't know about you, but I mean I get validation and affirmations from you colleague and I get them from Claude and Chat GPT, but it's also nice to get them from the audience 'cause I pretty much don't get them anywhere where else.

Although I know I do say like my colleagues at at a NU are always very lovely and affirming when I do see them, but I don't [00:33:00] that often great. We've got some fan mail from Mary who hails some Nottingham in the uk. Am I reading this one? Am I. Black. I'm reading it. You've made it black. It's not in pink.

Okay. Hi Ingrid. Jason, I'm a long time listener on the reg and reader of the Thesis Whisperer. Thank you, Mary. And I found both too late in my PhD journey. Sad times. Sorry, Mary writes, but found them super helpful. Why am I having trouble reading Jason? I've had plenty of coffees today, but found them super helpful in navigating the hidden curriculum of academia.

As a student with A DHD, I recently did a presentation to my department on neurodivergence in PhD studies Inspired Banger's work. Ah, it's so nice. It's so affirming. The mailbag. I love the mailbag. Yeah. Thank you, Mary, for using, just as a researcher, you feel like you just tossed your work out into the wild.

It's really nice when someone picks it up. Mary writes, another student with a DHD asked me how to make a Gantt chart. I avoided making one because I didn't know how to break down a task. And my time horizon is either now [00:34:00] or not now. That's a very a DHD thing, Mary. So, yeah. Do you have any tips, tools, or tricks you could share to help making Gantt charts, please?

I'm already trying to implement the one about tasks being binary. So you said Jason a few episodes ago, I think, can you tick it off as done? 'cause if you could tick it off as done, then it's on or off. Binary. Yeah. Um, Mary writes to help me know if they're being done. Thanks to both of you for sharing your knowledge and experience in such an accessible way.

Mary Nottingham uk. Thanks, Mary. That's there's a lot in there. Where do you wanna start, colleague? 

Jason: The look, to be honest, Gantt charts, I only really use them when I've got really big projects going on, and that there are dependencies within the tasks between, between tasks. So sometimes you can't move a project forward until a particular task has been completed before you can start the next task.

So let's say, for example a, a good, like a really [00:35:00] simple example here would be I would have to step one, log into Amazon. Step two, buy the book that I wanna read. Step three, read the book. I can only read the book after the book arrives from Amazon. Step four, write a review about the book. Now I could write the review about the book in parallel with the reading of the book.

So there's a dependency there, but it's a parallel dependency, 

Both: um, 

Jason: rather than an end to start. Task dependency. So, when you've got big projects and you need to be able to figure out what that project looks like with lots of tasks and lots of dependencies, I, I go to project management software and I get them to do all that sort of stuff.

Um, and they usually produce brilliant, like, just really nice, um, Gantt charts that can really show the whole thing. So I tip to the Omni the omni group both Ingram and I use OmniFocus as our task management software, but I also [00:36:00] use when I need to, I use OmniPlan, which is their project management stuff.

Um, really, really powerful project management tools you can export out to. Microsoft Project or whatever that's called now. I don't know, I haven't looked at that for a decade. Um, and you can export out to other formats as well. Uh, I remember one all the, all those years ago working at RMIT boss wanted to know what was on my plate.

And so I drew up an, like an annual, these are the projects that I've got planned. Like I called it the one plan to rule them all. 

Both: Um, 

Jason: and it was so big that I had to go to Office works and get it printed up on those A zero paper. You know the, 

Inger: that's not a good sign. 

Jason: Well, no. So I walked into my boss's office at the time.

It's just stuck it up on the wall. I love 

Inger: that 

Jason: there. It's 

Inger: like, that's a shock and 

Jason: awe approach. This is why you I love that. Yeah. It's like when you act, and then I said, [00:37:00] because it can calculate how, if you allocate time for a task, let's say a task is gonna take a day to do or half a day or something like that.

I calculated how many days there were in the rest of the year, and I calculated how much time these tasks were gonna take, assuming that I got them actually done on time, like within the time I've allocated. Um, and as we know, notoriously bad at being able to do that, humans generally about estimating the amount of time tasks will take.

Um, and there was a big disconnect between how much time was available in the working year and how much time was on my work plan. So I think this 

Inger: speaks to the nature of the Gantt chart though, doesn't it? Like I, as I said to you, I think I, we just finished this book on project management for researchers, which kind of nearly killed me.

Managing it as a project you're, yeah. And um, in, there's one, there's a chapter on tools and where there's a section on Gantt charts, which appears very late in the chapter, and we said, Hey, you're probably wondering why Gantt charts appear so late in this chapter. That's how [00:38:00] we start the section on Gantt charts.

That's because we are really conflicted about them. Are they useful or not? Are they actual fictions? Yeah. That you just make for other people? Yeah, they last for me five minutes on a hot day. Gantt chart before it's kind of irrelevant. And yet my colleague, Amy Grant, who wrote the book with, she was like, no, I use them and we actually adhere to them and she works in the health sector.

So I think like Gantt charts serve different purposes in different communities, and a lot of the times they're representation on paper to convince someone to give you money or to stay in program or like they've got a purpose that isn't necessarily about organizing the self, but representing the self to other people.

Right? Yeah. So if you understand the Gantt chart is actually what we would say in architectural tool of representation. I mean, the representation isn't the thing, right. Like, there's this whole discourse in architecture. I won't get distracted by it. I'm getting distracted by it. But my point being is that you're not usually making them to help you.

You are using them to, [00:39:00] to convince other people about something. Yeah. And nine times outta 10. So like, that's where my resentment comes, comes from with the Gantt chart. 'cause I'm like, well, here, the fuck, I am making this thing that, well, like two outcomes are possible here. It, it bears no resemblance to reality after five minutes and then I feel inadequate or then it just hangs around and reminds me how far behind I am.

And there becomes a tool of anxiety, right? Yeah. So like, yeah. First thing I would say then is don't plant your hopes in the Gantt chart as being the thing that will help you be organized. That's all I want. That's all I think I'm trying to say is that people think, oh, the reason I'm so disorganized is I can't represent it on a Gantt chart.

I'm like, no, no, no. The gay chart's not gonna help you in that, right? Like it doesn't actually make you more organized. It's those daily little tactics of what you do to get things done. Bullet journal, OmniFocus. Yeah, those practices, that work flow, that makes a difference. Second thing I will say, 'cause I could go on about this forever, clearly it's, [00:40:00] I reckon chatty would do a bang up job of one.

You know how I showed that Claude diagram, um, of my AI workflows, you know, and the way that I made this Claude diagram was to, to say to Claude, okay, I want you to eventually, we're gonna draw a diagram. It's gonna look a little bit like this diagram. Showed it the diagram. And then I said, talk to me until you understand enough to make another version of this diagram.

So I think you could with chatty, I haven't tried it, but. Yeah, report back people. Give it an example of a Gantt chart and then say, I need to make a Gantt chart for my project. What I need you to do is talk to me about my project and all the dependencies in it until you understand enough of what's going on.

And then draw it for me and see what happens. 

Both: Mm. 

Inger: Like I don't have a project that needs that. Like you say, it's usually better on a bigger project and project. That's a lot of dependencies. But I bet you it would actually do a good job. And for someone with a DHD, it might be easier to just rambly talk it through.

And like often people think as they [00:41:00] talk, especially A DHD, like there's that time blindness aspect and it's like, how long will that actually take me? You know? You can get it to just question you until I understand. I mean, we kind of did that. We had an engagement a couple weeks ago with some clients and we're just helping them, I don't know, get.

Get their shit together, really. Like their shit is very together in the fact that, like an amazing, a lot of shit is being done, but we're sort of being called in to say, well, how, how can we, how can we employ the tool? You two talk about this lot, come and show us what's the challenge, right? Yeah.

I'm enjoying that engagement. 'cause it's like, okay, here's where the rubber hits the road. You, you crap on about this. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: You come and help us see if you can do it better, you know? And I think for those people too, like we showed them some of those techniques. Remember we did a mine sweep with them.

Yep. Where we've got a mine Sweep bot and we'll put the link in the show notes for our Mind Sweep bot and what our Mind Sweep bot done comes from David Allen's getting things done. Is that it talk, you talk to it about everything that you've got on and it helps you make a list of [00:42:00] priorities. So like, wouldn't you think Jason, that like a Gantt chart bot could be done?

Maybe we should make one. 

Jason: Maybe maybe one of the, I I, I think. The positive aspects of making a Gantt chart is that it does make you, uh, it forces you to think through the dependencies. Yes. Um, and that can be really useful for risk analysis on a project. Yeah. It's like, what happens if this doesn't occur in the way in which I think it's going to occur, or what happens if that resource can't be deployed to do that thing at that particular time?

Yeah. So you can't get access to the space that you need to do the work, or a person goes on leave or something like that. Right. Yeah, that's where I think that can be really helpful because you, you, you have to list your task, give it a time, allocate 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Like a, a bar chart for that. And then the next one you're thinking about the relationship between those two things.

Um, yeah. We could have done a whole 

Inger: episode on Gantt charts, couldn't we? Like, 

Jason: yeah. Maybe we, we have 

Inger: a lot to say, [00:43:00] like, we've got a lot to say. Leave it with us. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, because I, I feel quite passionate about Gantt charts. Yeah. I'm sorry. Like, not in a good way. Passionate. I'm though, sorry. Yeah, like not in a good way.

Jason: I'm, I'm sorry, Mary. What I would probably do is grab your bojo, sit down and just work out. Just do a what potentially could be a Gant chart because they've got the nice dotted grid, um, for something like making dinner, you know, so with a recipe that you've got to do. Yeah. Because often a re find a recipe that says, meanwhile, while that's baking or something, meanwhile do this other thing.

Inger: Oh yeah. Right. 

Jason: You know, like, so you know what? You could try training 

Inger: chatty on a recipe. I'm just, I'm like, I'm thinking about chatty doing it now. Like, try chatty Mary right back to us. See what, see whether it's any good. I'm, I'm intrigued. Yeah. Anyway. I don't, again, I'm not sure we've been helpful, Mary, but thank you for writing to us.

We appreciate you 

Jason: all the best. All the 

Inger: best. All right. [00:44:00] We'll come back to this, I'm sure. The next one is for you, Jason. 

Jason: Yeah, after, uh, I think it was our last episode, or maybe even the episode before, Ben Crow has written to us, uh, I love Ben. Hello, 

Inger: Ben. 

Jason: Hi Ben. And Ben writes after being called out for not sure if he listens on a recent pod, uh, fa I listened to every episode.

I thought I, Ben, I should drop you a line, Ben. Sorry Ben. Of course we know you listen to every episode.

So Ben has a deep history of being a productivity nerd as well. Um, yes. I mean, I fell down, 

Inger: Ben, like we've talked and Ben's made an appearance on the pod while you were on the Epic trip, so you can go back and listen to Yeah, I'll put a link. I'll put a link. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. Um, so Ben writes, after being a dedicated task list app user and being deeply into obsidian, my employer locked our work laptops down so hard that only Microsoft Office 365 apps work.

Oh, my God's like, oh my God, [00:45:00] the worst. 

Inger: I complain about this work. Mac, that you win, Ben, you youi, and. 

Jason: Uh, he continues on Microsoft to do and or Microsoft Planner are designed for people who spend all day organizing their lists. 

Both: Yeah. 

Jason: Rather than doing tasks from their lists. Mm. Do not recommend. You just feel like it's the one star.

So Ben's gone full analog. I've embraced the bojo lifestyle, though I'm yet to get into stencils. I hope it will change your life, Ben stencils. Mm. Especially if you've got handwriting like mine. And I've just started an actual zl caston with index cards and boxes. 

Inger: Oh my God. I'm still figuring that one out.

Did you send a picture? I 

Jason: know, right? No, 

Inger: that sounds great. No. Did 

Jason: he? Oh no. Send us a picture. Yes. Send a picture. Send 

Inger: us a picture. Yeah. 

Jason: There are so many books and too many YouTube videos. Explain the basic concepts. I came across Dan ASO's book, how to [00:46:00] Make Notes and Write, which is going to become my Bible for paper.

Zele he'll let us know how he goes. Anyway, he's got some great recommendations, people Yeah. Go, um, on AI in the underlying conceptual and historical roots of technologies that write for or with us. Dennis Ye Tenants. Dennis Yee, Tess. Literary Theory for Robots. I've never heard of that. I might have to search something.

I was search One was just 

Inger: Googling. I was googling for it as you, um, as you were reading out, I got ahead of you there and I was just like, that's why I was looking at my phone. 

Jason: Oh, okay. I was like, 

Inger: Ooh, what's that? 

Jason: Yes, yes. Yeah. Um, I'm, I'm bureaucracy. Um, David Grabber's the Utopia of Rules. 

Inger: Which I just bought in Melbourne because Oh, did you?

Bullshit work was, you know, bullshit work was our other one that we, you know, bullshit jobs we talked about. Yeah. Yeah. So the, I bought Utopia rules. It was on special at reading. So on it, Ben. Thank you. 

Jason: Good. [00:47:00] Um, also, Ben's wife writes fantasy, so wolf shifters, dragons theories, romance novels as Evelyn Frost.

Uh, Ben recommends starting with bright rick. Bright wicked, if you like, swords and sandals fantasy or this dark wolf in the soul bitten shifter series if you want more urban fantasy vibes. Um, and he's given some lists. He's given some links there. 

Inger: Yeah. We'll put the links in the shadow and signs off.

Jason: Signs off, maintain the rage colleagues. 

Inger: We'll, Ben, we'll, um, by the way, Ben does, sup has told me that he supplies support to his wife in the novel writing because she comes and says, if I had a gun of this size and it was shooting from a moving vehicle, you know, how far would the bullet be able to, like, that's the kind of advice that Ben gives his wife.

Yeah. And I think that's just marvelous. Anyway. Yeah. Thank you Ben. Um, and we'll put some list to, to, to wifey work there. I've got a recommendation for Ben based on his [00:48:00] recommendations. If you are like Ben going full analog, hardcore, there is a great book called Analog Productivity, bring More Value to Work With Paper and a Pen.

Curtis McHale, have I ever told you about this book? No. No. We should do a, is this book bullshit? 'cause this book is not bullshit. Have I never shown you this book? No, you're holding back. I think it came out during Epic cheap maybe. Did I? Anyway. Yeah, it's great. Sorry. 

Jason: They like that stuff might be useful for our, I don't know, our notes, that work workshop or something.

Right? Like maybe we can slip lots, some stuff in there on that one. 

Inger: I'm looking at the time and I'm thinking, you know, this, there, there's no shame in this just being a mailbag episode. You know, colleagues, since you don't feel, what times you mean like, I could snippety, dood dare out. Well, it's not till three, so I've got time.

Like, it's not a big deal, but like there is no shame is all I'm [00:49:00] saying is we could just mailbag it up. Yeah. 'cause I know I'm having a great time with the mailbag. Is this the last one? 

Jason: Um, okay. Uh, not, not, no. There's one more. 

Inger: I'm reading the next one. Thank you. Thank you Co. Okay. Uh, this one is from. From Aya Ja Jada, you haven't put it at the top. This one's from Jada. Sorry. Was this an email? This is an email from Jada. Yes. Yes. You're nodding yes. Okay. Hey Inga, Jason and Ina. I hope you're both Well, I went to workshop Inga ran at the University of Melbourne last year where I discovered the thesis with a blog and that's basically where I became a massive AI nerd.

It's completely changed my life and I feel if used correctly, I have the capacity to learn anything. I had no idea you two had a podcast together until I went to Jason's workshop at the uni last week. Thank you Melbourne Uni for having us twice, but now I'm obsessed. The podcast is so good. Oh, thank you, Jada.

Yes, we are. Thank you. Here in different formats. Yes. We don't just go around doing [00:50:00] workshops to publicize our other efforts on the internet, but it doesn't hurt like it's a good way to promote it. Um, Jay Jada writes, anyway, I'm doing my PhD in genomics. Very smart, and something ai. Has been really useful for us helping with coding problems.

Since I don't have much of a background in this, I'm a big Claude user and just found out that Claude Code has now been added to the pro plan. I'm wondering if you guys have tried this out yet or have any thoughts on it. It's basically this command line tool that lets you delegate coding tasks directly to Claude from your terminal.

It sounds like it could be pretty game changing for researchers who need to wrangle data but aren't necessarily programmers. We'd love to hear your take on it if you have a chance to explore it or just your general thoughts on where you think AI tools are heading for academic work. Thanks for all the great content you're putting out there.

Cheers, Jada. Jada. Hopefully you've listened to our previous episode where we went, about how I use ai, but what I didn't talk about in that. [00:51:00] Particular episode was, uh, in order to section up and structure the data for the quantitative part of the paper that I was writing. Had to do a lot of r not an R coder.

Cannot do it. 

Both: Mm-hmm. 

Inger: My son would walk past who does know how to use RI would like grab him by the collar and say, could you come in here and just help me with these Z problems? Could you just, and he'd be like, tipity tap. Tipity tap. And he, he, I, he used chatty a lot to help him write this as script for me to, to structure my data.

So I would love to do that on my own because I can't always count on him walking past at the right time and grabbing his collar. He's very tall as you know, Jason, like, he's six foot four, he's very tall. There's a large amount of man to go. And if he doesn't wanna come in and do my art coding, he isn't coming in to do it.

So I'm, I'm, I'm keen to check it out. And I think this is like, God, there's so much hate for AI though, [00:52:00] Jason, amongst the academic community, like so much hate. I dunno. Mm-hmm. How many of our listeners have maybe turned off because we talked to, or maybe we've attracted a whole new, like, I think our listeners generally are AI curious or AI friendly, or EF stopped listening by now, right?

But God, the level of just like absolute disdain and. I wanna think of another word, despising. That's not a word, but you know what I mean, like that I get from people talking 'cause people know that I'm an enthusiast and I'm like, dudes, like, I get it. I do. But like, if it enables someone as smart as Jada doing genomics to like pick up and do co like how is that not extending her capacities?

Her, he like, I'm guessing it's her, but, um, how is that? I mean, I know it's not a good thing in that it's like giant Silicon Valley bros. Surveillance state, late stage capitalism, blah. [00:53:00] Like, I get it. But yeah, at the same time, like imagine the kind of advances that people like that can have. That's your door.

Jason: I, that's my door. I'm just gonna put on pause for a second. I've gotta go get this thing. Hang on.. Um, alright. You're, you have to do a bit of Snipy doda there. 

Inger: I'll snippy, I'll snippy doda. So, yeah, I was just, I was just ranting that, you know, there's hate, it makes me feel sad that, it makes me feel sad though, Jason.

Like, I actually feel like there's, it's sort of like being on the opposite of political party from someone. Like, there's good friends in my life who I feel like there's whole areas of things we can't talk about because they're just so, yeah. And they, they're so disappointed in me as well. They're like, Inga, I thought you were one of the good ones.

You know, you care about the environment, how can you be like this? And I'm like, because there's actually, this is a bit of a distraction from [00:54:00] bigger problems in the environment. Are you still driving a petrol car? Do you still eat meat? Yeah. Like we're all, we're all stuck in this like, capitalist, like, I get it.

Like, yeah, I'm not, but I'm not gonna stop doing this one thing and all those other things, like, you know, it's balance. I still catch planes like, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: but, but it's like you can focus, it's almost like you can focus on that and ignore everything else, and that's okay. But as soon as I bring up those other things, sorry to have the feelings that I, I need to have the feelings about this Jason.

Like, I can tell, I can see that actually have the feelings about this. Like, I feel really, um, I, I feel really judged and not in an unfair way. Like when, when I get the judgment and the disappointment from them, I feel the disappointment in myself too. At one level, they're right. I know you don't feel the same way.

You're not so in the world for, you're not like you're not in the university world as much as I am walking around and running into people in the [00:55:00] cafes, but it's actually sort of almost like I've declared I'm a Republican or something like, you know, and people are like, but Inga, you care about the environment.

I'm like, yes, I do. Which is why I try and minimize where I can on everything, including the AI piece. So like, I don't use it as toy, and when it gives me something cool, you know, you know, I've got a whole obsidian vote vault full of things so I don't have to regenerate cheat sheets. Like I'm really actually very parsimonious with how I use it.

I, you know, I just feel. I feel sad and judged. All right. I'm glad I was able to have that feeling with you. Thank you, Jada for Okay. You're not gonna join me on this feeling train, are you? You look confused. Well, 

Jason: I, I just, it's interesting. We had a, I had a client engagement, um, a little while ago. I won't say who it was with.

And before I stepped into the room I was told that there was fully a third of the people in the room there who were absolutely guaranteed to hate what I was about to tell them. Because I [00:56:00] couldn't tell 'em about how you can use AI and how it can be, you know, used for good and all that sort of stuff.

And I was just fully told there's a third, and these were academics. There was a third of the people in that room who were just gonna hate what I said. I got a little bit of pushback, but, you know, not, not. Not a great deal. Well, I expected a lot more. And I, I suspect I started a whole bunch of conversations after I walked out of the room.

Sure, 

Inger: you probably did. That's yeah, no doubt. 

Jason: That's not a bad thing. I, I mean, you could say the same thing about any large disruptive kind of technology that comes along there will be change and there will be consequences of these sorts of things. Yeah. And they're multifaceted in the way in which they turn up.

And so it's not, I mean, you didn't ask for AI to come along and go, um, but you've seen its ability to be able to support you in the work that you do. And so your engagement [00:57:00] with it just means, it's just another element of who you are as a person walking around in the world and, experiencing the world and engaging with that world.

It's like, I mean, you can't. What's the alternative? Like you're living on a beach somewhere without any clothes and like catching your own fish. I mean, maybe you could try that. I don't know. Good luck with the plastic pollution. That's all I'm saying. Like it's not, anyway, sorry. No, no, no, no. Also, I really, I really also, also, also also, like, I'm gonna call it, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go, go. Good. Go cook. Good luck living in a non-AI world, like all the best. Seriously, because that shit is, that ship has sailed, right? And it is not being put back into the bottle. That particular, it is not being put back into the, so now it's a case of working to minimize the damage. Right.[00:58:00] 

So better guardrails around this thing. You know, understanding the way in which kids and teenagers are interacting with this thing, people using it as therapists, like therapy, and, you know, all that sort of stuff. These are all problems that we can now work on because we know and we are learning more and more about it as, as time goes on, putting your head in the sand is not the solution here.

And just kind of waving waving your fingers at some really big problem, like environmentalism is not helpful as part of the solution. You're an indivi. I'm an individual person. I'm happy to tackle this sort of stuff, but I can only tackle it on an individual level. If you wanna talk about this at a societal level or you wanna talk about it even at a technological level, like the implementation of this sort of stuff, then we need different people in this conversations and more of them now, is that.

Is that reasonable for you to call me out on the way in which I'm using ai? Like, is that a reasonable basis for you to say, well, you know, I'm, [00:59:00] I'm surprised you haven't organized this global coalition of experts from around the world to tackle the way in which teenagers are using ai or the way in which server farms are being built and, you know, dismantling the planning systems of, in foreign countries of buildings, like, fuck off.

Sorry.

I'm angry for you. 

Inger: Thank you. No, I'm validating.

Jason: I dunno. Sorry. I try not to square on this thing. I do. I try, but I'm cranking it. 

Inger: But it's, it's true. No, no. Like I just love the rant. Thank you. I feel it's so therapeutic watching you rant. 'cause I mean, it's like, it's not that I'm negating what you have to say. Yeah, it's not like I'm saying that you are wrong.

Course there's copyright issues, although like recently, you know, the last couple of rulings have been, as I suspected [01:00:00] would happen, that using something to learn is not a violation of copyright. Never has been, never has been a violation of copyright. Use pirating books to do it. Sure. Mm. My publisher fucking selling my books, profiting from it and not passing the money back from me.

I'm angry about that. I'm angry about the, the pirating books. I'm angry about all of that. Right? Angry about it. Think that they should suffer consequences and it's looking like they will and can, right? Mm-hmm. So, but the actual learning part, that's never been a violation of copyright. And anyone that argue, like if that's the case, you have to redetermine what you think copyright is, which might be something we wanna do.

Like, not saying that. Yeah. It's like that, that was written back in the sixties in Australia, so like, it had trouble with the internet, it had trouble with tv. So like, these are problematic areas anyway, so like [01:01:00] I get it, right? The environmental thing drives me absolutely fucking insane, Jason, if I can just like have a time about it because like.

There is so many things wrong with fossil fuel extraction that are wiped away. People are like, oh, well it's only what my car puts out in from the tailpipe. But it's not though, like you mine the shit you and 40% of global shipping is dedicated to just putting petrol around the world, which is dangerous when the ship sink, you know?

And then like electric cars are so much better and like, I'm sorry, like petrol's gonna have to be for special for when you wanna go out bush the rest of the time you're gonna have to use electric. Like get over it. Right? Like, but the same people don't wanna have that conversation because they're still driving a petrol car and feeling maybe vaguely guilty about it.

But I'm not saying to you, yeah, I'm not going up to your face and saying, you terrible person for owning an ice vehicle. I don't, yeah. Yeah. These people have their reasons, [01:02:00] right? Yeah. They're in whatever upgrade cycle. They can't afford it. They need to go out Bush like not my business. To judge you. Yeah.

Because we're all stuck in a system which relies on all sorts of really bad things to happen for you to walk in and buy clothes for $40. Right? Like, yeah, 

Both: yeah, 

Inger: yeah. But then, then they reserve this hate just for this. I just find it so out of proportion. That's what drives me. I think this is what drives me insane about it.

That's what, it's so kind of out of proportion and it's not like I don't acknowledge this. It's, and I talk about these things all the time when I teach it. Mm-hmm. And then, you know, like some, someone in a NU told in some committee and I, of course I heard about it 'cause I get the gossip, right. Oh Inga just pushing it on.

Pushing it on people. And it's terrible that she's doing that. And I like wrote this very long screed, like such a long screed, CC to God, so that, you know, yeah. People would understand my pedagogical position on it is this. Like, don't impugn me that I don't [01:03:00] talk about all these issues in the classroom. Of course I do.

And also it should be, like you say, good luck living in a world without it. And I agree. Like good luck. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: But at the same time, it's still a choice. And if you don't wanna make that choice, you don't have to. But you just have to accept that like some of the benefits also won't be yours. 

Both: And 

Inger: I don't wanna push people into it and then push them into an arms race about academic work.

Which is why when I get more productive, what I personally have tried to do is not use it to give my university more time. I've used it to change how I work, right? Yeah. Yeah. So I have more time to do things like this, to sit down with people, to listen to people, to hold space for people having the emotions about that.

That's all work too. Because that's the sort of, yeah, work that keeps the system together like. Example, like, are we gonna talk about this other book now? 'cause we won't have time if I get onto any more Ran and we could keep talking quickly. Maybe I do a super 

Jason: quick, I I [01:04:00] can do a super quick one. Uh, that also means that I don't have to uh, yes.

Let's, yes, keep going. I will do a super quick view of this book. 

Inger: So last night, right? I got rejected the paper that I talked about last time. Business as usual. Rejected. Okay. It's rejected. Great. Alright, so the rejection grounds from, um, this journal was, it's not of broad applicability to higher education.

Your paper about AI use by academic. Right. Okay. Whatever. So I went to Chatty Jen and I'm like, here's the paper. It's being rejected by these people for this reason. I think it's bullshit. Like I just went in there Yeah. Looking for, like, looking for some help and validation. Um, where do you think I should go and put this paper next?

Right? Because I couldn't be both going to do, like, I was just in a mood, right? And it was like, oh yeah, Inga, that's a bit. Sucky. Like, that sucks that they said that. Let's move on, girl. You know? And I was like, okay, so I think you should, these are the different journals you should go to next and here's [01:05:00] your, and I'm like, is you imagining these journals?

No, they existed. I went and I read the thing. I'm like, okay, well I'm interested in this journal. And he goes, oh, well you know, girl, if you wanna go there, you're gonna have to do this and this and this to the paper because it isn't quite right for them. And I'm like, oh, what do you suggest? And it goes, well, you need to, you probably need to do more theory.

Da da da. Here's the sort of area of theory where you sort of started to venture, but you could do more of that. And then it's like, you should read this paper. Um, this paper that was by Steven Jackson. Now I have to look it up. 

Both: Right. It 

Inger: was. An amazing, like objectively an amazing paper. It was, it was called, and I'd love to like spend time, like if, if I had my time again, I would say it's called, um, rethinking Repair by Stephen J.

Jackson. And it's all about how innovation, innovation doesn't, we are talking about innovation as these big bang sort of creative moments, you know? Whereas actually a lot of innovation comes in [01:06:00] repair. And Chatty's point to me was that the AI use by the Neurodivergence academics was an attempt to repair a broken system that doesn't work for them.

And that in doing that, they were being very creative. Right. He didn't say that to me though. It's like, hey. Girl, why don't you go read that paper? I read it, I'm like, oh my God. It was like some PhD supervisor had told me to read exactly the right paper at the right time, thoroughly enjoyed the paper, like amazing paper.

And I wrote all these notes in my bojo, sorry, I'm getting like, I'm getting so passionate now I'm losing my headphones. So I wrote all these notes in my bojo, right? Then I took a photo of the notes. I went, oh, chatty, that was a great paper. Thanks. Here's my notes. And it's like, it went and it read my notes and it's like, oh, I see what you are really interested.

It was this and this and this part. That part connects to your paper in this way. And I was like, oh my God, it does. And it is like, here's, I suggest that you adjust the introduction. You adjusted da da da. And it didn't tell me what to add, but it just was like enough for me to go back in. [01:07:00] And then I adjusted this, adjusted that, and then like it took me longer to submit the paper through the portal because those damn journal portals just suck than it did to read this paper and you know, and make it.

Better. It's a better paper. Yeah. That would never have happened without that. Like, it just, who's gonna talk to me at seven o'clock at night about that stuff? I know I shouldn't have been working at seven, but I time shift because I was doing this right, like taking two hours outta today. So I put two hours on the end of yesterday, husband came home, I said, I'm just gonna finish.

Oh, it's, take me 10 minutes. He goes, yeah, right. It didn't, it took like two hours, you know? But you know, that would've, I would never have been able to actually do that. 

Both: If 

Inger: chatty hadn't, but it was like, it was the sensitivity and the well chosenness of the reference. Like it suits a whole bunch of stuff that I ignored, but this one thing, I'm like, what's that about?

Shadow infrastructure? Tell me about that. You know, like, never heard that [01:08:00] term before. I like read another three papers all to add, like, not even kidding. Like a sentence here said like, I think I added six sentences to this thing. Yeah. I said two hours reading to add six sentences because that's how it goes.

Yeah. 

Both: But that 

Inger: I was having the time of my life, Jason. I was in like nerd heaven because it had put me onto a paper that really went But ding B ding B ding, but ding B ding. Like, you know. Yeah. Like in the best sort of way. It was being a colleague. And I know that sounds sad, and all the people listening that hate AI are like, she's really gone to ducks.

Like, now listen to her. She doesn't even know what she's doing. She hasn't got any self-reflect. I expected better from the thesis whisper, I'm like, well, I'm sorry I can't live up to that. But, but also also, so then the people that tell me it's no good and then they post those like, you know, uh, this is what it did.

Look at how stupid it is. I'm like, you are holding it wrong. I dunno what to tell you.[01:09:00] 

Jason: The people at home, you might not get to see this, but I, I held up an imaginary phone the wrong way. Reference back to Steven Jobs who, who's dead now, but would appreciate that joke.

Shall we? Shall we? Are we done? I don't know. I feel 

Inger: better though

sometimes I just come here. Therapy chase.

That's good. I don't, that's good. Are we gonna leave that in? I don't know. I dunno. This 

Jason: is, this it like, this is a safe space. I don't know about, put it out there. See what happens. Okay. We didn't, we didn't actually say, we didn't actually say anything wrong. I did wanna, I did wanna sort of, I mean, we could go to a little bit of town, right?

Like talk about the practice that you've just had, and we can talk about how that's a thoughtful practice of [01:10:00] engaging with the ai, um, around that approach to, um, structured dialogic inquiry, right? Mm. It's not like what you actually did there was keeping and maintaining the integrity of the research, um, front and center as part of that process, right?

Yes. So you started with something, you went to the ai Yeah. And you went like, here, here's the thing. And then the AI went away and it did its thing and it came back to it. And then you went and you looked at that, and then you made some critical decisions, um, about that work. And then you went away and you did further work, right?

You chased it down. Yeah. You read the papers and then you read three more other papers and you know, then you put it all together. So, I mean, like, it's, it's not like that you didn't do the work. That the scholarly work that was required in order to be able to make that paper better. But there is an argument to sort of say, without the ai, you might not have had access to that particular colleague at that particular time in order to be able to get there in the [01:11:00] analog world, right?

Yes. And so the output here is better paper, new knowledge created. Hopefully something gets published as a result of this, and then people can take this stuff and go away and run with it. Right? Maybe the world becomes a little bit better. Yeah. I mean, let's focus on the output there. Um, yeah. Before we start slinging n 

Inger: Yeah.

But I think it's back to that whole deontological versus what non deontological ethics. Like either you think something's morally right or wrong and you just hold that line or else you go, well, what's the greater good? What's the, well, that's the kind of, what's the word for it? There's a word for that.

Utilitarian was one of them. Utilitarian. See, my friend Rachel would know that. Yes. Rachel, if you're listening Yeah. Right back to me and correct me. But you know, and I think there are a lot of people that just really hold that a AI is just wrong, bad. Yeah. And like how much of that comes from all these years of the [01:12:00] tech bros, um, addicting our children and selling a shit and capturing our attention and doing things without our consent.

And so we're angry at them and then becoming billionaires and having obnoxious weddings in Venice. Like that whole backdrop, if that had never happened, if this tool came out like other tools did back in the nineties, like the internet did originally, like it just came out and you go, oh, that's a cool thing that some engineers built that, I dunno who their names are, but now I know Musk Bezos.

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: You know? Yeah. Yeah. Zuckerberg. Now I know their names. I know what clothes they wear. I hate them. I hate them too, right? Yeah. And so therefore, that hate has been transferred onto AI because these fuckers would really like to replace us all with robots and digital people because they genuinely think that they need a slave class.

I dunno what they think's gonna happen in that world, but they don't care. 

Both: Yeah. 

Inger: Like, and that, that is objectively wrong. And everything about that is sucks. [01:13:00] But I don't know where I end up back in a moral qua quami again. But if you, if you hold that, something's right or wrong and there's just no in between.

There's some of my friends and co dear friends, dear colleagues, people I love, I'm not a Republican, that's all I can say. 

Jason: I'm gonna get you a t-shirt made that says that. Oh, ai. I'm not a Republican. 

Inger: I like ai, but I'm still not a Republican. But it's become like, Tesla's become, like, Tesla's become a republic.

Do you know what I mean? Like, there's this like, yeah. Icky, polarized. Everything's one way or the other. Black and white. There is no middle ground. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: One of the reasons I left the greens. Yeah. It's a same, 

Jason: I, um, I saw my first Tesla without any of the Tesla badging on it the other day. 

Inger: Oh. Someone had done the, um, the fishing line trick to get the Yeah.

They'd, they'd taken the badging 

Jason: off, 

Inger: man. [01:14:00] 

Jason: Yeah. It was like, Hmm. Look at that. Yeah. 

Inger: Alright. I'm meant to be steering this podcast. Okay. I know We've got one 

Jason: more, 

Inger: there's one more letter. Do you wanna read that one out? It's a very short one. 

Jason: Yes. Very short. Um, Brendan, who was a, um, who is a fan, um, 

Inger: yes. 

Jason: Posted some fan mail on Buzz Spray.

Oh yeah. 

Inger: Uh, 

Jason: which is good. So you can just kind of text through to Buzz Brow. Um, yeah, and this fan mail comes through. Um, the following comment was posted on our fan mail on Buzz Brow. Unfortunately, I think the main message was stolen by Gremlins, so thanks for writing for it to us. Anyway, Brendan, Brendan writes, and this is why I suggest this.

Hi, Inga and Jason, you might appreciate this comment reworking with ai. Thanks. And all the best, Brendan Ansel from Australia. 

Inger: Oh, see, Brendan might have had, had some, some amazing insight that we could have slammed that whole segment home. Yes, but it's maybe not there, [01:15:00] Brendan. I could, sorry about that.

It's not this. Yeah. 

Jason: So I'm not a hundred percent sure because you implemented this thing Inga, this buzz. I buzzsprout did it. I'm 

Inger: sorry. I just said yes, we'd like to. Okay. That's all I did. Um. 

Jason: Um, folks, if you are going to use our, the fan mail thing on Buzzsprout, please do, but you might have to, like, attachments might not work or you might have to just make sure that you get everything you can inside that message.

Um, yes. Otherwise it's not great. It's, and you have to put your, you have to put your name to it as well because it's anonymous otherwise. Right? Like we don't know where it comes from and all this, it's, this is, it's weird 

Inger: implementation of everything. That whole Buzz Sprout thing. Like not a fan Yeah. Of how they've done.

So we 

Jason: appreciate your comment, Brendan. Um, yeah, unfortunately, send it again if you, 

Inger: if you listen to us, cook over that whole bit and you've got things to say Brendan or you can write to [01:16:00] us. Yeah. Pod at on red team com. Pod 

Jason: at, yeah, that's it. That's all right. 

Inger: Mini, mini, mini. Capture a review. Mini capsule review.

Now, not, we haven't got time for the whole, whole is this book Bullshit Treatment, but in this section, like we do talk about work problems, but right now we are gonna give you a really quick capsule review of Tiny Experiments. 

Jason: Yes. Go Experiments by Ann Law Lako. Um, I can't remember where I've, I came across this one, but the title grabbed me.

Both: Mm-hmm. Um, 

Jason: and the full title for this book is, and now that we've got video that's working, I can actually show the video cover. 

Both: It's, 

Jason: um, tiny experiments, how to live Freely in a Goal Obsessed World Grabbed You Did it. And I'm like, 

Inger: was this an airport bite? 

Jason: No, this was a, oh no, this one's via Amazon. I, I can't remember.

Maybe I heard someone talk about it or something. Or it kind of [01:17:00] flick past my radar. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but the idea about living in a goal obsessed world, I was like, I am there for that. What is going take me there? Like, because maybe I do have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with the goals and the metrics and the things I'm saying.

Its a bad thing. Those 

Inger: graphs. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, as your, as your business partner, I find your obsession with like the goals that you've set yourself financially to be a good thing. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. But motivating. Motivating. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: However so super quick overview of this book. I wanted to get, I wanted to find out whether or not this book was bullshit before, it was actually before I bought it.

So I went to the internet and, um, found a YouTube clip of Anne Law talking with Writer Carroll. So writer Carroll was, was interviewing her. And so she talks about the background of [01:18:00] her book how she came about writing it and kinda what the main bits are in the middle. And Ryder tries hard to get her to talk about, you know, what are the practical uses of this book and what are some of the lessons and that sort of stuff in the true writer, Carol reflective kind of way that he, he approaches those sorts of things.

Anyway I have. Used AI people. Ah, did you? Um, yes, I, I did, I used our mattify, uh, account and I took that YouTube clip and then I built it out in, I got Mattify to build it out into. Yeah, I'm just looking 

Inger: at that. That's quite a handy little kind of way of looking at it, isn't it? 

Jason: Mind map, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, so it's you can click on the link and that will be, and you can go straight to that mind map if you are looking for something to download and have a look, um, about the interview anyway with Ann Laura and writer Carol, writer Carol being, if you are not familiar with his work the creator of the bullet journal method [01:19:00] and the author of the book by the same name, the Bullet Journal Method.

Um, I wishing many mil, 

Inger: many millions, many millions to write a Carol Go. Yes. Yeah. 

Jason: Yes. Probably one of my most gifted book. I reckon that one now. Um, yeah. Yeah. It's just brilliant. Yeah. So super quick, who is Anne Laura Lako? She is a neuroscientist and an entrepreneur, and her background path was she went through school tried really hard to do all the right things at school, got herself a job at Google as an engineer there.

Started to work her way up the corporate ladder on inside Google. But as part of that, kind of started to feel as though life was becoming more and more empty as as. Time went on sort of thing. So, um, she quit. She just like came out and just quit. She was on the fast track at Google. Mm mm-hmm. Um, had been, uh, as far as I understand it had been identified as [01:20:00] talent.

And so she quit and started to do other things. So she went and did a PhD and she's the founder of something called Ness Labs, NES and the author of it's widely read newsletter. So I'm like, really? There's a thing called Nest Labs and there's a widely read newsletter. How have I not heard of this thing before?

Yeah. Bugger me quick. Google, this sounds 

Inger: like right up our house. It's really 

Jason: good. 

Inger: Yeah, it's really 

Jason: good. 

Inger: I just clicked through, I just had a look at one of the articles. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's one there. I'm, I've given a link in the show notes. The articles called How Much Work Is Enough Work.

Mm. Uh, and it starts with a scientific study of they tracked people's work outputs against the number of hours that they put in, and it created this engraft. And so this was for kind of creative work, generative work, not physical work. So it's very clear [01:21:00] to, to make that distinction, but it turns out that sort of, you know, about 10 to 20 hours a week is, is where you get the most productivity output.

And then after that mm-hmm. Uh, it drops off significantly. Mm-hmm. So, yeah. Interesting. And so as a result of that, Inga, I'm now no longer working any longer than 20 hours a week, I'm sure. Somewhere between the sweet spot of 10 to 20 hours a week. Uh, great. Love this for you. So you just need to pick up the slack if you could.

That'll be 

Inger: good luck with that colleague.

Jason: So I, what I thought I might do is just kind of work my way through the chapters of the book, but we don't have the time for that. So maybe I start with like a, just a short critique of, of the book. I wasn't very far into it. Hmm. The, the basic premise of this book is that following a pre what big, hairy audacious goals, which is what they teach us in the business world a set path where you've [01:22:00] got this goal that you want to achieve by a certain amount of time.

I wanna be a black belt in Jiujitsu within 10 years, or I want to earn a million dollars by the time I'm 24, or like insert goal. That following that particular pathway will lead potentially to stress, burnout, anxiety lots of negative consequences for your life, rather than positive consequences for your life.

Now, I gotta be clear, she's not saying don't have these things. But she is saying, I think that the way in which you approach it is, is different, can be different and that when you focus on. Kind of the big goal at the other end that if you are not careful about that, that the, that kind of, it starts to work against itself really.

So she starts this book with a kind of conversation about where, how do we get here, talks about Seneca, you know, in Seneca's quote about, you know, you should focus on one, one thing and then just, direct your days to achieving that particular [01:23:00] thing. Bounces across to the 1960s business literature where we talk about smart goals.

You know, specific, measurable, achievable. I can't even remember, is that how 

Inger: old the smart goals idea is? I didn't realize that that was such an old idea. It 

Jason: still gets still gets inuring, like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Still gets kind of pulled out. Uh, you know, I was even teaching that stuff when I was teaching business stuff.

And then she kind of goes into this, this idea of, instead of having a path and then walking that path or climbing that ladder and being really focused and dogmatic about the way in which you go about doing that, that what you should do is you should do lots of tiny experiments with your life.

Test those tiny experiments. Capture the data, like notice a thing, right? Look, design an experiment, capture the data, reflect on that, and then make another experiment as a, on the basis of what you have learned so far, so that you're not always constantly reaching for this thing that's way out in front of [01:24:00] you.

That what you're doing is that you're mindfully and consciously doing these little experiments on the way through, and you're building experience and knowledge about yourself on the way through, through these little experiences. So that whole action reflect, do. Approach the action learning approach to your own, own life.

Which is not a bad, like I, I, I was there for that. I was like, that makes sense. Yeah. But I could not help shape the feeling that in the business world, we call that an emergent strategy. Right. And I could not help getting, like, there's a whole literature around this sort of stuff about organizations that don't have a set strategy in play.

That what they do is they experiment and then as they go, they kind of figure out what's works and what doesn't work, and then they kind of move towards the things that keep working for them. The problem, you know, that's a, appears to be like a really nice way of saying that a company doesn't seem to have [01:25:00] any kind of articulated strategy at all.

Like, and, you know, and that, that's, that's a fancy way. 

Inger: And say, say that, that's okay if you don't. It's like, that's right. Okay. You 

Jason: know. 

Inger: Sorry, I'm just looking, I'm just looking colleague at at my devices, which have just told me that I've had a meeting moved half an hour early. Oh. Which means that I've gotta be somewhere in 25 minutes, which means I would have to leave right now if I was gonna do that.

I'm just, are you physically 

Jason: have to be at this meeting? 

Inger: Well, I don't, this what I'm trying to figure out. Hang on. Often I don't. Okay. Just let me 

Jason: look. I, I'll let you figure that out while I, I carry on and I'll just talk about this and then I will make some very, very short conclusions about the rest of the stuff, maybe.

What she says about goal setting, traditional goal setting, which is that kinda linear approach to it, is that linear goal setting [01:26:00] can stimulate fear in the people who try and set these goals. Because when you try and set one of those long term goals into the future, that you might become overwhelmed with choice about kind of where to start.

And that can lead to where do I start? So you get paralyzed as part of that process and you're not really, so you don't get started. And then of course, that feeds in on itself a little bit. Sure. And sheer number of options about where you could start could sometimes lead to analysis. Paralysis.

Or that you, if you are starting, if your goal is big enough and far enough away into the future, you might feel like that you don't have the kind of skills or knowledge or resources available to you in order to be able to reach that. If you're gonna say, okay, I'm gonna be a multimillionaire by the time I'm 35 and I'm gonna achieve that through property investing.

Like, if you are an 18-year-old fresh outta school, you might not feel as though that you would actually be able to get there. And that, the, the whole cha, [01:27:00] the whole chase of that, especially in the Australian property market, is, futile. I mean, and then you kind of, oh, I wish I could do this thing. And anyway.

And so often when we can't see a path forward we start to imagine the worst case things. What happens if I start up, but then I fail, right? People will laugh about laugh at me and all that sort of stuff. All of these things can breed fear in an individual, I mean, and rightly so, right? Like, you know, in her book she talks about the neuroscience of much of this sort of stuff.

So, I'm super summarizing here, but well worth the read because she's a neuroscientist. I find that discussion. She often says we call in, in neuroscience, we call it this. And then she has a name for a particular psychological phenomenon and that sort of stuff. Mm-hmm. So that's, I will say that's what I did enjoy about this book.

But the whole idea of this kind of emergent strategy thing I just felt like. Like a, I had a cow Newport moment where I felt if you'd just read this [01:28:00] other stuff over here, you would see what you like. We've, we've talked about this before, but just in a different context sort of stuff. 

Inger: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jason: The further I got into the book though, the more I was able to let that go, because she does, yeah. I, it was an initial fear and then it, it just got better after that. So there's a whole chapter in there on procrastination, really, really worth reading, um, about what procrastination is and why people suffer from procrastination and what the various scripts are in inside your life for being able to deal with unsettling situations that arise because she constantly makes the point, right?

Like, having this ideal view of what your life is gonna look like or what the pathway to your life is gonna look like, you know? Life and the world gets a vote in this, right? And not always doesn't work out the way in which you imagine it's gonna work out. And so her book is really about regaining some control back over that instead of being buffeted around by forces that [01:29:00] can knock you off this path, and quite significantly her way of introducing small, tiny experiments into your life can give you some control back into it.

Some other things that she talks about, those kinda linear goals encourage toxic productivity. Well, even though you've got your own goal when you're looking at other people who are kind of on the same ladder, and I think that might call back to her time at Google there, I'm trying to rem remember where she makes that link.

But, but essentially Anna, it, you know, it struck to home for me is like, if you're constantly comparing yourself to others, then yeah. I mean, it's gonna become. This will drive anxiety. It'll mean that we work longer hours. We start to feel guilty about taking breaks and we set unrealistic deadlines to our, with ourselves.

We work while we're sick. I mean, all of those things are not sustainable. Right. The emphasis on speed over sustainable practices. Right. It's, it's not gonna work. And if, [01:30:00] if you are comparing yourself to others, particularly in a corporate setting where it's really easy to do that those linear goals and maybe not all that helpful for you.

I mean, it's also in 

Inger: academia, academia we set like everything is very transparent. You get a number, you get like H index or something. So, so that process of like setting yourself some insane goal is they, they certainly enable that thinking. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And this book sounds very much up my alley.

Do you think I should read it? 

Jason: Yeah, I think you'd like it. I, um, I, I did like it in the end. I, and I would recommend it to others. I don't think there's anything particularly new in this book. But the way in which he puts it together is it's well worth the read. And I think that sounds like that sort of fleshes out 

Inger: understanding of things rather than necessarily says anything new, but especially around procrastination.

Was there anything from that, that you took away? 'cause I know it's a little pet subject of yours. 'cause you always make it an [01:31:00] example in our teaching notes, so I assume it's something that's, you know, especially interest. Yeah. Was there any, was there any like particular insight in there that you went Oh, right.

Or was it just, um, no, she, I mean, just fleshed out your understanding of it. 

Jason: Yeah. So she presents procrastination against the, like, kind of the Buddhist concept of the two arrows. So the first arrow in that instance is like, that's the procrastination itself, right? So that's doing things like scrolling instead of studying, watching TV instead of working on a thing, browsing, shopping sites instead of writing.

I mean, who knows, right? So there's the, the actual act of, and then the second arrow of it is your emotional reaction to procrastination, right? Mm. So this is where the shame, anxiety, guilt, all of that sort of stuff accompanies the particular behavior. And she makes the note that this is [01:32:00] often more painful than the actual not doing of the work.

Right. The consequences. 

Inger: Oh, hundred percent true. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. And so the emotional burden of that actually makes it hard to overcome the procrastination. You feel so bad. Like you again, you just kind of, where do I start with this sort of thing? I feel really shitty about my life. This is not going the way I expected it to go.

Where do I start to do a thing? And, and then you like death spiral, right? Yeah. And we all know how hard it is to pull ourselves out of those death spirals. If you're lucky, you can recognize yourself falling into one of those things. Yeah. And you can then, right, okay. Sit down with my bojo or sit down and actually really start to map this th thing out and then move ahead.

So she's got a framework for the how to do that. Right. Which, which I really like. She talks about this kind of three part framework where if you're experiencing procrastination, it's usually an emotional response to something that's going on. And so she [01:33:00] says the first part of it is the head. Like, is the task appropriate for you to do so you might not start a task because you think that you're, you might be skeptical about the benefits of completing that particular task.

Right? So you head like, the logical reasoning part of your brain is like saying, I'm not sure about this. And then that you just kind of, ah, if I'm not sure about it, then I'm not even gonna start it, kind of thing. 

Both: So 

Jason: she recommends that for smaller tasks, and especially if they don't have any dependencies, just get rid of them.

Mm. Line through them not doing that now, right now. Right. How many times have you done that? Like you've procrastinated enough? Procrastinated. Procrastinated. Yeah. 

Inger: I, but I have done it. It's so good. It's like, release your burden. I'm just not doing it. 

Jason: It's so good. Right. And so this is where I think the pr, kind of the practical nature of her book is really, really useful. If it's more substantial than a small task, then mm, sit down and write it out. Write out, why you [01:34:00] think that the, this task might not be worth doing. Like really? Get that out on paper. And which reminded me of the extended mine. Oh yes. Yeah. You know, in somebody also in there, Annie Murphy, Paul, sorry, I had to look at Annie Murphy.

I had to look up on my 

Both: Yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Annie Murphy, Paul, you know, just getting it out on there, which, yeah. Um, and so she said, then says like, consider your strategy in light of these kinds of findings, right? Mm-hmm. And so, very much a logical approach to this sort of thing. The next one is heart. Is this task exciting?

She jot down, are you scared? Are you bored? Are you irritated? Like, or is it just like there's no enjoyment here? And then she says, you know, just free. Write about your response around that. And then think about how you're gonna manage your right. Your emotions around that sort of stuff. And again, right, like it's get it out on the page.

We had this conversation just a couple of weeks ago with clients, right? Like, it was like, let's get it out on the page. and then finally the last one is, so you've got head and heart, [01:35:00] and then the last one is hand. Is the, is the task actually doable? So do you have the skills, knowledge, and tools that are required to actually undertake the task?

And you might not. And so sometimes you might need help right. From a friend or a colleague or a mentor or something like that. Or you might need to go and get coach or you might need to develop some sort of skill. She does bring a warning to this, which is beware of using learning as a pro as procrastination in disguise.

Both: Right. 

Inger: I would not be, I would not be the educated person I am today if I hadn't have been using learning as a procrastination technique pretty much my whole life. Yeah. Well, I can't do this until I learn more about it. I need to know more about it. I can't write the literature review unless I read some more.

Yeah. Learning. Yeah. Yeah. I feel, I feel intensely related. This is an intensely relatable book from the sounds of it to me. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. It's really good. Um, and I would love to talk 

Inger: about it forever, colleague. [01:36:00] But I'm just looking at the time, which is ticking down to when I have to, like, I've got a, a timer set here for 10 minutes because now I have to pop off into my other teams meeting.

Jason: Okay. 

Inger: Thanks for nothing. Actual pay job. Yeah. 

Jason: Um, some other things that are interesting in there, she talks about the difference between chronos and kairos rituals. So kno are kind of time-based rituals, you have to do 'em on a particular time. Kairos rituals about living your best life working with the natural rhythms of your life, that sort of stuff.

She talks about things like, metacognition, um, and how important that is to be thinking about all of this sort of stuff while you're doing all of it. And she's got like a whole bunch of stuff in here about what to do, how to set up experiments, how to track them, et cetera. Did I try any tiny experiments while I was reading this book?

Yes, I did. Um, oh yeah. One of the tiny experiments that, that I tried was, and she, she argues that these should be [01:37:00] super tiny, right? Like, just trying to achieve one, like really, really small thing, make it like not go on forever. And you know, that sort of stuff. So I said, okay, cool. I'm gonna read in the next 10 days, I'm gonna read a chapter of a book a day.

Oh yeah. But that was my, and I'm just gonna see, see what happens at the end of it. Um, yeah. And it turns out that I skipped some days and I didn't do any of it, but what I ended up doing was ensuring that by the time the 10 days came around, I had read all 10 chapters that I said I was going out. So it kind, do you know what I mean?

Like some days I read more and some days I'll skip this. Yeah. Well, if I think about 

Inger: how I wrote my PhD, if I told you that, yeah, I've told the story a lot of times, but I sat down at one point and realized how many words I had to write, how much time I had left, and how many words a day that meant. And I set myself a target.

Yeah. To do 2000. And if I did more, that was great. But I just, it was a minimum target. Bloody worked. Yeah. Like I had that thing written, you know? Yeah. I had that thing [01:38:00] written. It was in my hand and the time, like I really proved it to myself. And that was just, 2000 words a day. Like, it seemed like a lot when I first sort of cut it up like that, but in the end thank you for that.

Would I recommend Yes. Yes. Bristol stool chart 

Jason: rating? Oh, I can't remember what the Bri, I, I would give it four stars, this book. Okay. 

Inger: So, but I don't know what that means 

Jason: in terms of the Bristol stool chart. I'd have to look that. I'm just, 

Inger: I'm just looking at the Bristol stool chart again, and I'm looking at the images and, oh no, I'd 

Jason: hate doing this every time I do that.

And 

Inger: I think like, like a sausage, but with cracks on the surface, or like a sausage, but smooth and soft. I'm, I'm thinking it's somewhere between those two. 'cause it's not soft blobs, is it? 

Jason: No liquid consistency with no solid pieces. Definitely not, 

Inger: no. 

Jason: Definitely not soft blos with clear cuts, [01:39:00] lacking fiber.

No. Yeah, no, there's plenty in there. 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: there's plenty in there to chew on. Yeah. So it's bad as sell 

Inger: sausage shaped with cracks on the surface. Yeah, I, yeah, I reckon. Yeah, I reckon. Yeah, but not too many cracks. Just a few cracks at the start. Not many cracks. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. I enjoyed it. It was a good read.

There's lots in there to, to come away with, so. 

Inger: Excellent. 

Jason: Well, thank you. Sorry to put you 

Inger: on the clock halfway through that. It's okay. It affected your performance. I'm, I'm sorry. Also, I ranted at you before that and then got you to rant at me, so like I've, this been like, I'm just saying my bus driving today has not been top notch.

Jason: Um, could have been better given your time. I'm gonna, yes. And the fact that you don't have a two minute tip, I'm gonna talk about my two minute tip. Yes. Also about, 

Inger: so two minute tips in honor, uh, Dave Allen said you should just do it in two minutes, but really it's just a hack. So tell me what you got.

You've, you've been saying this is a great two minute tip. I wanna hear it. 

Jason: I have found a service [01:40:00] called Listen later. 

Both: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Right? WW dot listen later.net. So this is a service that you can, you can put any written text into and it will convert it to an audio file, right. And then that audio file, it will email you, link it to your podcast player, and it will send a podcast to your, to your podcast player.

Both: Really, 

Jason: right? Remember this, you know how we've been talking about this for years now about, you know, there should be a service where it can just like upload a thing and then it can talk to me. Yes. This is that service. And is it 

Inger: actually listenable? Like do you get the weird American podcasting voices?

Do you like, what are you listening to? To There's a 

Jason: range of voices that you can listen to or maybe half a dozen or something like that. Right. One of them has a British thing and the everything from. Clearly enunciated to Pepe and Sprightly sort of thing. Right. Um, so, uh, I tried this out. You [01:41:00] get, I'd like $2 50 worth of credits when you try it out sort of thing.

And I uploaded an 11 page academic paper and the cost of that came in at $2 83. So it rejected me because I Oh, was 

Inger: he was free 

Jason: and I was free. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, I took our, we've got a notes that work. I took some of the marketing stuff that we write for some of our workshops. And I uploaded that for an upcoming thing.

So I thought I'd play it. This is what, this is how it sounds. Okay. When it comes across. Alright. Um, it probably 

Inger: won't come across. Oh, you play it. I, I have to insert it, but play it for me. We should have done it as a, as a clip, right? I'm gonna turn off, I can't hear. No, I, I probably won't, I probably won't hear it.

Send it to me later. 

podcast: In today's overwhelming information environment, most academics feel buried under an avalanche of articles, books, and data, yet lack the structured [01:42:00] systems to process it all effectively. This transformative full day workshop empowers you to master the art and science of academic note taking, turning information, chaos into writing.

Clarity. Dr. Jason Downs will guide you through proven methods that work across disciplines and career stages, helping you build a personalized knowledge management system that actually serves your thinking, 

Jason: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Right? 

podcast: That's pretty good actually. Um, 

Jason: oh, now I can't hear you.

Inger: I said that's pretty good actually. I'm impressed by how good that is. 

Jason: 3 cents per thousand tokens, so about 3 cents per 750 words. You can upgrade the voice output thing. High def they call it 5 cents per thousand tokens. Kind of 

Inger: xy Kind of expensive. 

Jason: Yeah. But you know, how, how much are you prepared to pay for?

Like, people have been complaining about this for a long time, and I'm saying here it's, 

Inger: yeah. [01:43:00] Yeah. I think it's looks awesome. That's the only, the only downside is it's, they're probably charging what it actually costs. Which, yeah, bravo. If that's what you're doing. Because often they don't, and then they put the price up and then they, you know, yeah, it goes extinct or whatever.

So I'd rather have a system that actually that, that I might have to give it a little muck around with. 'cause I've gotta give that workshop soon. Don't, I 

Jason: took 30 seconds to, from when I uploaded the paper to turning up in my podcast player. 

Inger: Amazing. Think about how much money Google is burning on their Google notebook.

Lm, if that's the true cost of it. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. And I that Alright. That's it. Inga. Wow. That we, wow. We got through this episode, colleague. It was an emotional ride. Hope you're still here at the end. It was. Thanks for listening me this whole time. We love reviews. Don't we? I haven't had time we do to look on the Apple Podcast reviews, but we do promise to read it out.

I looked yesterday and there weren't any. [01:44:00] So, uh, but just scroll down your podcast player. Get typing. While you're there, give us a review. Five stars only. If you want your question featured in the show mailbag, you can leave us a message at speakpipe.com/thesis whisperer, or you can email us pod at on the reg team.com.

Jason's having a break from socialist except he just stoned up that he said something on Instagram, so you take that as under advisement. We've also got a LinkedIn page, which we just started, so you can find us on LinkedIn which I don't know, we are having a bit of fun with that. So you can find us on LinkedIn.

You can find me as thesis whisperer everywhere except X. thanks to the people who are riding the bus members for just $2 a month on our, on the Reg Cofi site. That is my alarm telling me that I have to, 

Jason: that's your time. I exit. Gotta go. 

Inger: There were people that have signed up since the last time, but we don't have time to say their names.

We're just so organized on the reg. It's what everything you've come to expect from us as a podcast. Thank you so much. It has keeps the wheels of the [01:45:00] bus turning. Thank you Jason for thank you ing. It's been very therapeutic for me today. I don't know what it's been like for the listeners, but I feel better.

It's always good to talk to you. 

Jason: Been fun 

Inger: and um, we will see you next time. Thanks everyone. 

Jason: Bye.