A shameless plug!

Inger has A Lot Going On At The Moment - and has the tshirt to prove it. Jason's been Getting Things Done, even if his fridge broke. Things have been better in OTR land, but an episode was finally recorded!

There's a lot of chat in this one because the mail bag was, as usual, excellent. 

In the work problems segment Inger plugs the new book she's written with Pat Thomson, Helen Kara and Aimee Grant... While the title is boring and the cover is ugly, she thinks the book is actually great.

Rebecca sent us in a two minute tip and it's great! You'll have to listen to the end to hear it.

Things we mentioned:

• Inger's Taylor Swift coded tshirt
• OTRT home page (to see our new logo)
• QPR conference (we're having a booth!)
• The new book "Managing your research project"
• Indyx App (Inger's wardrobe organisation app)
• Inger's expensive boots
• And her expensive leather jacket comes from Leatheron
• Inger's eBay page
• First edition of How To Fix your Academic Writing Trouble (2nd edition out November this year)
• Hazel for the Mac
• Example of a patched in ChatGPT image on Inger's Instagram
• The Boring Conference
• Sneeze Count paper

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: This is my signature word of the, you know, phrase of the year. Life is too short. 

Jason: Okay. I like it. 

Inger: It is okay. 

Jason: It, it is too short. I just like, 

Inger: yeah. So we've already established our t-shirt, like, so just for the audience, I've got a lot going on at the moment.

And you're a Newport b jj. So if you're not watching on YouTube now, you know, 

Jason: corporate bjj. I also, and you can't cut this, right? 

Okay. 

Jason: Like, so audience members, both video and audio. Mm-hmm. I'm about to do a big reveal. 

Inger: What? 

Jason: Yes. I am in Van. A big reveal. I've been keeping secrets from you. Mm. Are you ready?

Are you ready for this? I'm so excited. Not really. I'm so, no. I'm copy 

Inger: at the wrong moment. Okay. 

Jason: No, I am so excited. I'm so 

Inger: excited. All right. Publishers can't see it, so I'll have to describe. Ha. 

Jason: Right. Like little taggy things are in the way. Right. Do you know what this would be? I [00:01:00] mean, do you know what this is?

Inger: I know what 

Jason: this is. This is, hang on, I'm gonna have to take out my earbuds and everything. I'll be back. 

Inger: It'll be back. Uh, listeners who are on the pod, he just showed us a black hoodie with a pink, well, it looks like an audio kind of little signal in hot pink, which is our new 

Jason: what? Hang on. 

Inger: On the red logo.

That's 

Jason: two things, 

Inger: right? 

Jason: Hey, 

Inger: yes. That is our new logo, or as they call it in the trade, our new bug. 

Jason: Our new, 

Inger: that's the bug, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Looks good. Yeah, looks good. So it's a squiggle, uh, that squiggle took. Don't wanna know how many thousands of dollars and time spent in cafes trying to find our vibe.

It was quite the thing, wasn't it, that as a coaches 

Jason: we, we could, I would say we consulted widely with, uh. You know, the support group. Um, yes. And then, you know, you know what actually turned it over, of [00:02:00] course, was when we decided, you know what, what we need is an actual professional designer. Yeah. Just to kind of, we needed an adult in the room to hold our hands.

So, yeah. Um, so this is the first one. This is a test hoodie. This one, I just wanted to see how it would come out. This is the most expensive hoodie in the world. This, this. 

Inger: So how 

Jason: much? 'cause I went much. Is 

that 

Inger: hoodie? 

Jason: You don't wanna know. 

Inger: Don't 

Jason: tell. Okay. 

Inger: Don't tell me. 

Jason: Um, I paid for this one. So this is not company money.

This is like, this 

Inger: is, this 

Jason: is my, this on 

Inger: your personal tax. Yeah. 

Jason: Personal account. Um, the, I went highest quality hoodie. Me and Chatty G had a big, long conversation about hoodies 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: And blanks and which are good ones, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I found the highest quality one I could, and I found an Australian supplier printing place.

You put those two things together. And it's very expensive. It's comfy hoodie. 

Inger: It looks very comfy. 

Jason: Oh my god. It's so comfy. 

Inger: Okay, 

Jason: so this is premium. [00:03:00] Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is premium. Why not? Right? 

Inger: Why not? So listeners, the, the, the color of our logo was also that the designer can did all the things and then said colors.

And we are like, huh, we don't know. And then I advocated for hot future pink because it is the color that Jason is in our show notes so that we know which bit is each other's bit. So inside joke, and you are now a bit used to it. You're a bit like really pink. Yeah. 

Jason: I, 

Inger: is this what we're doing? 

Jason: So when I was writing to the designer, I'm like, um, can you suggest colors?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Look. My business partner. She wants, she wants hot pink. I'm not so sure, but like, you know, have at it and see what you come up with. Bugger me. Did she come up with some really good stuff? 

Inger: It looks great. It looks great. It looks great. It does. And she's gonna do our website, so hopefully by the time we upload this, maybe.

Jason: Mm, 

Inger: maybe not, no, not the website. Maybe the next episode we'll unveil our [00:04:00] website and you'll be able to see all the, the colors, but we'll include a link to something. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: So you might put it on the Instagrams or something. 

Jason: Something Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I've got her doing a whole bunch of stuff for us because we're gonna QPR, remember 

Inger: quality and postgraduate research conference, the biannual, meaning not twice a year, but every two years.

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: Conference of research education nerds in Australia brings people from all countries of the world. Biggest conference of its kind. So 

Jason: we've decided, we've decided to sponsor a, uh, a booth. Yep. And so I've got, Ika is the name of our designer. She's wonderful. Um, lives in Perth. Hi Rodika. Um, uh, banners, you know, the pull up banner things?

Inger: Yeah, yeah. Love it. Feeling real 

Jason: corporate. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep. Um, like a brochure, like a corporate brochure, 

Inger: like a property. 

Jason: Uh, 

Inger: not something I just knocked up on Canva. 

Jason: No, no. And, uh, business cards. I've got your business card and you'll be able to just walk [00:05:00] around, just flick 'em out. Here you go. 

Inger: Business, and as I said to you, I haven't had a business card for, I, I don't know how long. I haven't had one from a, I had one from a NU for ages, but I never used it, so I just didn't bother.

But you convinced me by giving me a fun new title. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: What's my title?

Jason: Um, 

Inger: head of Making Things 

Jason: No, chief, 

Inger: chief of Making Things. And you are, you're the 

Jason: chief of making 

Inger: your title is 

Jason: Chief of Getting Things Done. 

Inger: Yeah. I love it. I love that Our business cards are fun. 

Jason: Well, the the inside joke being of course with too many chiefs and not enough Indians, since there's only two of us, right?

Inger: Everything is an inside joke with us. Should we get on with recording this Po Tell people 

Jason: Sure. Let's 

Inger: why we're here. 

Jason: Let's, yes. Um, I think, hang on. Is it me? I haven't even got 

Inger: No, it's you. It's pink. 

Jason: I haven't even got the show notes up. 

Inger: Oh God. My, my God. Let's such a professional operation. You kind of on YouTube, you'll get the whole un How 

Jason: is this, 

Inger: you get the whole un [00:06:00] unplugged on YouTube.

'cause I can't be bothered editing it. But, uh, on, we'll cut this bit out in the pod, we make it a little bit tighter. 

Jason: All right. 

Inger: For those walking. 

Jason: But you can't cut out the logo thing. That's great. 

Inger: No, 

Jason: no. 

Inger: Um, 

Jason: here we go. Diving in 'cause it's hot pink. 

Inger: Take one. 

Jason: Welcome to On the Rec. I'm Dr. Jason Downs and I'm here with my good friend, professor Ingham Newburn from the Australian National University, but she is also better known as at Thesis Whisperer on all the socials across the internet.

And in fact, just the other day, uh, Tuesday, so today's Thursday I did a workshop for the good people at Queensland Center for Mental Health Research. Oh, yes, yeah, yes. Great bunch. Great bunch. And I put up that photo of us, like you and me and I, I always ask the question who's heard of the thesis whisperer?

And like, hands go up and I go, that's what she looks like. Right? And then like people are like, oh, it's like they've never seen, like even though your image is everywhere, right? It's like people haven't seen you before. You know, it's been 

Inger: a, and that's a good [00:07:00] picture of us by the way. Like we are fire, it's a in our fifties with that.

Jason: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Inger: Um, yes. 

Jason: And we're here, we are here you and I for another episode of On The Reg where we talk about work. But, you know, not in a boring way. We are all about practical implementable productivity hacks to help you live a more balanced life. Uh, and this week we are gonna talk all things research, project manage.

Because this is an opportunity to shamelessly Pollard the new book that Inga and her colleagues, pat Thompson, Helen Cara and Amy Grant wrote and has just been published and is live out in the world. And 

Inger: it's called, it's called Entertainingly. 

Jason: Yes. Uh, 

Inger: project Research Project. See, this is where I go all funny because it changed titles.

So many and it ended up with the most boring title ever. So I think it's just called Research Project Management. 

Jason: I can't believe you don't know. 

Inger: I know the title 

Jason: of your own project. Like what, 

Inger: is that a flex or is it just weird? Managing your research project? 

Jason: Managing your project. Research Project.

Inger: Thank 

Jason: you. I [00:08:00] had to like, I had to find the cover. You'd sent me 

a, 

Inger: because 

Jason: like photo of 

Inger: the cover, I'm like, be visible or vanished. Right. Which is the previous book in the series where we fought to have a title that you can remember. That's interesting. This time. Yeah. Didn't fight it. Hence Can't remember it.

But it's good. Can't remember it. We're happy with it. Don't, don't let the judge a book by its boring title. Yeah. Anyway, 

Jason: so, uh, so, uh, managing a research project, subheading. Yes. Underneath that subtitle, sorry. A Guide for Researchers, uh, published by Route Ledge, uh, available in all good online locations.

And probably your library, hopefully if university libraries decide to 

Inger: Oh yeah. They usually buy it 

Jason: some 

Inger: more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They usually buy the digital copy. It's, yeah. Reliably found in university libraries, I would say. 

Jason: Awesome. Um, I'm looking forward to hearing about it. 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: of course. I've heard bits of it as it was, 

Inger: yeah.

Jason: As it was being, you know, built, uh, over the last little while, 

Inger: I think you heard me complaining about it. 'cause I complain about [00:09:00] every book I write 'cause I just complain through the whole process. It's a coping strategy. You know, I, 

Jason: what I like about, what I like about your approach to book writing is that you, you invariably turn to me and say, this is it.

This is the last book I'm ever writing. Like, I just, I don't have any more in me. At all. And you get about three quarters of the way through the book that you're writing and hating. Mm-hmm. And then you go, I've just signed another book contract with another for like, I'm like, did you now really good job.

Inger: Yeah. Yeah. Um, you'll be pleased to hear I haven't signed another book contract, but, but I do have another book in the pipe coming out. But I'll, I'll about that towards the end. But I haven't signed another contract. I've stuck to my guns on that. 

Jason: All right. All right. Good job. 

Inger: Also, no one's asked. So our book's over, I don't know.

Jason: Yeah, I don't know. We could write a book. It'd be 

Inger: fun. We could Oh, we, we will. We have already. Okay. Text expander for academics. 

Jason: Yeah. Great 

Inger: book. We've written a book. Yeah, it's great. Great 

Jason: book. Um, 

Inger: um, yes, 

Jason: catch me [00:10:00] up ino. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: How have you been? 

Inger: Um, 

Jason: what's been going on? There's a lot going on, so I can see 

Inger: a lot going on at the moment.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Taylor Swift t-shirt, for those of you who know the Taylor Swift coding of this t-shirt from the Red album. Um, as I said in our previous episode, I took some carers leave. I go back to work Uhhuh next week, but part-time, just two days a week for the next five weeks, I'm still burning down some of that long service leave.

Jason: Side note, I just sent you an email to your work email address yesterday. 

Inger: Yes, 

Jason: sorry. 

Inger: I am back there. Yeah. So I looked at, I took a paper. I hadn't looked at my inbox for a while other than strategically, which I'll talk about a bit later in the arguments that I'm having with my next publisher. We are having arguments.

I'll get to that. Alright. Um, other than that, I haven't really looked and I looked and I was like, oh, there's 540 emails in there and I said very much on my return message. Like, all bets are off about whether I answer you or not, or not coming back and just spending weeks waiting through a pile of emails.

So, uh, good luck [00:11:00] with that. If you send me an email and it's not been answered resend next week, okay. 'cause likely who it is, I'm just gonna delete a shit ton of them. And so it's been a uniquely stressful time in my adult life and for the first time, Jason, since I, in living memory for me and I'm 55, I haven't read a book for three months.

Wow. Like I have, I haven't opened one. Oh, I've opened a few and gone. I've written a, I've read like a paragraph and gone. No, it's like I just bounce. I just can't, I can't, yeah. I can't read romance books, which were my go-to when my PhD was stressful. I like went from literature down to, well down to, you know, how I feel about that.

I don't think that there are a lower form of re but anyway, I went to romance arts and they've always been a kind of the source of, you know, at least I can read that, like chewing bubble gum. But I can't, I can't even read that. I can't watch tv. It's just been so, I have no emotional resources 'cause people in my life need, need me.

I have no emotional resources [00:12:00] to invest in a fictional characters trials. I just can't. I just don't care. Yeah. And then also try trying to read kind of academic books. Fuck that. Can't do that at all. So, um, I, it's been a little weird. Um, but also I now see why people don't read. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Also see why they don't read the newspaper.

I've skimmed the headlines 'cause like, and this is a, as we know that fucking guy, free zone, we're not gonna talk about all the shit that's going on. But there's a lot going on right now, A lot going on right now. And uh, you know, and I've been sort of like looking at the headlines going, Ooh, that looks bad.

I'm not gonna engage. I'm like, Ooh, this is how most people are. And actually, you know, it's kind of a sensible response. Yeah. It's stressful. The stressful. So like what I have been doing. Based on our last episode where we talked about fashion influencers, that was the start of me going down a YouTube rabbit hole.

I am obsessive YouTube watcher, and I've ended up in all these kind of YouTube subcultures, so, 

Jason: oh, good. 

Inger: One [00:13:00] thing that I didn't discover until after that episode was that I found an app to index my clothes. It's called Index with a Y, because of course it is. Okay, on YouTube, you can see, here's my phone.

Um, so I have taken photos, oh my God, of all my clothes, right? You've gotta watch the YouTube to see that. Um, but it all looks like an online shop, right? Like it's all my clothes with the background's removed. But best of all stats, 

Jason: oh, oh, 

Inger: numbers 

Jason: like a bar graph and 

Inger: usage. What, 

Jason: what is usage 

Inger: cost, her wear.

No, I've nerded, I've nerded out. I, I currently own somewhat shame, shamefully I own 228 items of clothing, but there are 10 coming from eBay, so that's gonna be more. Um, and you can also arrange them into little outfits. 

Jason: Nice. So you just 

Inger: put 'em together, your own closet. Yeah. And then you put it in a calendar and then it calculates [00:14:00] how often you've worn a thing.

And then you can go and you can look at your, you know, you can look at the composition, like how, how much I, anyway, index with A-Y-I-N-D-Y-X. I like, I'm obsessed. Okay. Obsessed. 

Jason: Wow. 

Inger: Obsessed with this app. And, um, thanks to this app. I also then, 'cause I was watching. All these YouTube influences that we using this app.

'cause I'm like, oh, how do I use this app? I just sort of look for, anyway, I had discovered a whole world of online reseller YouTube, and so I'm like looking at my wardrobe going, I've got a lot of nice clothes that I don't wear because now I know 

Jason: yes. 

Inger: What, what I actually wear and what I don't. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: right.

So optimizing productivity in the wardrobe, right? Yeah. So that dress that I, with that photo of us two together and the Yes, just on the front of the pod that, that dress was from co [00:15:00] Yeah. Okay. Love, co love minimalist. Beautiful. Um, uh, but way too big for me now with all the, all the GLP kind of slimming that's happened.

So I kind of swim in it. I'm like. I, they might sell it. So I sent that one off the other day to South Australia to a new owner. Wow. Got 40 bucks for it. Um, I've ended up selling on YouTube, $500 worth of my old clothing. 

Jason: Wow. 

Inger: And purchasing way more than $500 worth of other people's old clothing. So that's been a whole thing.

So that's what I've been doing for three months. That's a long way of saying that's how I spent the last three months in hospitals watching YouTube, buying clothes on eBay, selling clothes on eBay. And eBay rewarded me as the top seller the other day. And I'm like, but there's people who do this professionally for a living.

Like, yeah, they can't be making much money out of it because. Anyway, 

Jason: um, without, that's me, without outing you, uh, because I know Mr. Thesis Whisperer does like a [00:16:00] listen, uh, of the pod without outing you. Uh, does it, uh, calculate total cost of ownership of all of these clothes? Uh, 

Inger: yes it does. 

Jason: Would you like, were you shocked by the number, is my next question.

Inger: Uh, I actually thought I'd spent more. 

Jason: Okay. 

Inger: It's under, it's under the investment tab because it doesn't say how much you spent. It's an investment. 

Jason: Right, because, 

Inger: and I can say that it's in the tens of thousands. Dang. Yeah. So not far into the tens of thousands, but it, it is, it is in the tens of thousands.

Look, I have some expensive shoes, Jason. Okay. Like, I'm a go. Okay. Yeah, like some of my shoes are $500. I have a $500 leather jacket. Like, and I've keep things like, and turns out I'd keep things for a long time as well. That's what else I'm seeing is like, often I'll buy a thingy thing. I've had that for a while.

Look back, I've had it for 15 years. You know, like things I like, I keep, but a lot of things have just passed through. Like I'm not gonna say that I'm [00:17:00] great at that either. Like there's especially thrift store stuff comes in and goes out, you know? So 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: it's made me really think about my habits. But I wanted to swap from being a mostly bought wardrobe to a mostly Thrifted wardrobe.

So at the moment I'm 40% secondhand, 60% purchase. And I wanna flip that around because I, there's so much waste in fashion, like that's bothered me for a while and you know, that's one of my values. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this is also helping me and selling on eBay is even if I sell something, like I sold my old yoga pants, will you believe what people buy?

They bought my old sheets, my old sheets. I just threw them on the ground, took a photo of them. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: And said the lot. 60 bucks. Sold them. I mean, they were nice flax, french linen sheets. So, you know, like, 

Jason: okay. 

Inger: I later on with the YouTube selling, I'm sorry I'm getting down a rabbit hole now, but the YouTube resellers, I worked out that what [00:18:00] people actually bought my old sheets for was that is a really cheap source of really high quality linen that you can put into making clothes with.

So that's why someone bought old sheets, so. 

Jason: Right. 

Inger: You know, so there's a whole thriving kind of, um, do it yourself. Hobby, crafty, very women dominated a corner of the internet that I have been dwelling in and it's been my happy place. So, you know, maybe I'll quit my job, get a dog. Yeah, push that back to July.

By the way, in dog news by the way. Sure. That was just too much in all this time. We would've been trying to bring a puppy into this house right now. Like, no, like I'm up and back to Melbourne and I'm doing all the things, you know, so, yeah. Uh, yeah, so that I happily become an eBay reseller. I think that's my next career.

I used to say romance novelist, but now I think eBay. I think I've got a talent for it. Writing the descriptions, right? I write, I write great descriptions. I might include my handle if I do say so myself, my descriptions are fire. 'cause [00:19:00] they're, you know, because I are they, I'm writer. I enjoy that. 

Jason: Are they authentically yours or have you 

Inger: a little bit of 

Jason: sneaky chatty g going on?

Inger: No, no. I just like to tell the history of like, especially that dress I just sent off, you know, one that's in the pod thing. I'm like, you can wear this on a 12 hour flight and sleep in it and walk through the airport looking elegant and put together, you know, because that is true. I have slept in that dress.

Right the way to London before, so, you know, so I write little histories of the outfits and, and what I've used them for and stuff. So I have a, I have a great time with it. Sorry, I went way down a rabbit hole. Like this is, I'm not sure if this is what you signed up for when it came to the pod, but here we are.

We know that people, here 

Jason: we are today. 

Inger: Our audience is divided between those who love the chat and those who are like, what is with the chat. But anyway, so, um, yeah, so as I said, the only kind of work thing I've done is try to keep my eye on the ball with this, um, with this upcoming second edition of how to Fix Your Writing Trouble, which I will talk about more right at the very end in [00:20:00] the two minute tip section because I have a tip from that anyway.

Oh, you 

Jason: do? 

Inger: I do. I have a, I love that. Quite an important one actually. And you are gonna have views with a capital V. Oh, okay. I got it. Alright. But what about you Tell me, tell me what's happening. I, I, I tend to just trauma dump on people when I talk to them at the moment. So you tell me what's. 

Jason: Yeah. Okay.

So the big news, we kind of, we alluded to this at the last episode, I think, but um, I want to, I wanna call it out because I need people to visit Inga. I'm off to the uk. Yes. I've never been to the uk. Yes, you've 

Inger: never been to Europe, which I find astounding. But anyway, great. 

Jason: Yeah, no, I um, I went to Barcelona for a academic conference once, that's 

Inger: right.

Jason: Three days. But that's like, and then first academic conference I'd ever been to. Um, and, uh, I did what all rookie mistakes when it comes to academic conferences for young academics. I went to the whole thing and didn't skive off and go and visit the city, which [00:21:00] I subsequently learned is, that's generally what people do.

They go to their thing only and then spend the other four days walking around the city. And really, '

Inger: cause I'm a bit of a chu. I, I go to the whole thing like, no, I sky off. And after early afternoon, 'cause I'm jet lagged. But no, I go, no, I got, 

Jason: I got legit laughter. Right. 

Inger: Whoa. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: I think that's rude. You're there to hear other people as well, 

Jason: right?

I'm professor and I did, and I like, I had a great conference, so I learn heaps. Right. But yeah. Um, yes, professor just laughed at me. Hi Martin. How are ya? If you're listening, 

Inger: probably not. 

Jason: Um, so for the first three weeks of May I will be in the uk. And I've got some people have written to us and said, Hey, come and visit.

And I'm super keen to do that. Uh, so really keen to understand how people on the other side of the planet live. So if you would like to catch up coffee. Gimme [00:22:00] a tour of your university or you know, just tell me where I should go in your local neck of the woods so I can go and just check it out while I'm there.

Please write to us. Uh, you can write to us at pod at on the reg team.com. And if you just put something like UK trip or UK visit in the subject line I will know to have a look at that and then I'll write back to you and we can, we can hook up some some time just to kind of hang out and do stuff.

So I'm, I'm really, really, really super keen, uh, looking forward to that trip coming up. So a little bit of planning. It's getting close now, so I'm starting to actually do the actual planning and scheduling and stuff. 

Inger: Yes. And the getting from of Australia to the UK right at this very moment. Let's hope that all that a lot going on in certain places of the world that we generally fly over.

Jason: I I figured they'll just go around it, right? 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: I just. Choose a different route. I don't know. 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: it should be okay. 

Inger: Yeah. Yeah, it'd be fine. [00:23:00] 

Jason: Um, so, um, I, dang, you know, I should, in my bja I should have a collection for what did we do? What did I do since last time we spoke on the pod, like, I'm gonna write that.

I'm put that in my bojo. Um, I think that's 

Inger: a good bullet journal edition. Yes. 

Jason: Yeah, I've been, uh, doing a lot of admin. Uh, this is, although I'm busy, well, like we, we've got workshops and stuff, but it's a lot of admin stuff at the moment. I'm really trying to set up the back half of the year. Uh, and so I've been retuning my paperless setup.

Inger: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Uh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I, we've never talked 

Inger: about Paperlessness, have we? 

Jason: No. Like, 

Inger: that's a good episode that we should talk about sometime. Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. Because there's a, there's a whole bunch of automation that you can do just to make your life just a whole lot easier. Uh. And so I've redownload, Hazel.

Have we talked about Hazel? Have you got Hazel? 

Inger: We have, but I've never used. No, I've never used it. So I am, yes, I look. Let's do that episode. We'll [00:24:00] do it next time. 

Jason: Okay. Um, yeah, and it's been running automation routines for all my documents on my computer. It's been great. Um, but at the same time, I discovered that after 17 years, Inga, 

Inger: wow.

Jason: My faithful scan snap scanner. 

Inger: You've had it for 17 years. 

Jason: 17 years. 

Inger: That's like immortality in terms of devices, isn't 

Jason: it? Right. End of life. No longer works. Aged out. The device itself works, but it won't connect to like Max Sequoia or TA or any of that sort of stuff. It 

Inger: just, I always imagine like old electronic devices like that, it's like they speak old timey English.

You know, when you have those time travel movies where people go back and they can't understand people who speak English at them, I imagine that's, then they're like, I, that they're yy I imagine them sort of speaking pirate language. I dunno that maybe that's just me. I'll shut up now. That's, that's the 

Jason: only, the only way I can get it to work was [00:25:00] to hardwire it in with a USB cable.

Inger: Ooh. 

Jason: Yeah. But I like, that's not useful. 

Inger: That's not the purpose of it. 'cause it's meant to be like, go and scan things all over the place. Right, right. 17 years. That's a long time. 

Jason: 17 

Inger: years. I didn't even know that were, that they were invented back then. That's crazy. 

Jason: Yep. So I have, uh, I've had to order a new one.

Inger: Damn. 

Jason: Um, which should turn up in the next few days. I'm pretty excited about that. Um, so I've done, I've gone to the top of the range, like the latest edition of the scan snaps. I'm back in Scan Snap World again. Uh, hoping that the next one last, I don't be getting another 

Inger: 17 years out of it somehow. 

Jason: I don't know.

Right. I don't know. 

Inger: Mm-hmm. 

Jason: Made by the good people of Fuji slash Ricoh. Um, okay. Yeah. Good Japanese quality stuff, so hoping 

Inger: it'll, so, so just so people understand what we're talking about, you're talking about like a little handheld device that you use to scan, like documents and things like, so when you're doing your tax and things like that, and I'm assuming that's what you use it for, right?

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Also, you don't, don't just use [00:26:00] your phone with a long press on the notes app that activates the scanner on the phone. No, 

Jason: no. Um, I have enough paper come throughout my life and our business that, um, I do need to do actual scan scans. So what I do is I told 

this 

Inger: discussion, yes, 

Jason: I accumulated in the inbox and then.

Do it all at once. Ah, 

Inger: let's talk about that next time. Yeah, like your whole workflow around that, that'd be great. 

Jason: Speaking of things that broke 

Inger: Mm 

Jason: uh, the fridge door. Uh, so again, this one only lasted 10 years. This fridge, uh, before broke. Hang on a 

Inger: minute. I have actually interacted with your fridge and that seems like a perfectly functional door.

What 

Jason: happened? It was, I opened the door. 

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: And it literally came off in my hands. I was standing, standing there. Seriously. I was standing there. The whole thing came off, like it just like detached from the fridge 

Inger: and hang on mate. It's so like, hang on. There's a lot of stuff in the door of my fridge. 

Jason: Yep.

All. 

Were 

Inger: you just like, this is suddenly very [00:27:00] heavy. What, what's going on? 

Jason: I was standing there and I was like, help, right? Like Jack and Catherine were looking at me going like, what are you doing? And like the, the milk was in the door, the bottle, like all that stuff. And I'm just standing there holding this door just going like, what do we do?

Inger: I hope you are extremely and uncannily strong offspring. Jack is Unca. Like he's so strong for how he looks like he's got that real at the moment string bean. You know, I've grown too much for how wide I am. He's at that stage. Yeah. He moved at a coffee table the other day. I was like, what the fuck? He's like super human.

Like you imagine him lifting a car off like he does do a lot of sports, but yeah. So did he come and help you with the door? 

Jason: Yeah, I was just standing there and I'm like, what do we do with 

this? 

Inger: I think I need Jack. That's the supernaturally strong jack to actually pick. Wow. 

Jason: Yeah. Managed to reft it. What?

Crazy. But it, but it was [00:28:00] like just balancing on a thing snapped at the bottom anyway, uh, so I had to buy a new fridge. So we've now got another fridge because as it does Yeah, 

Inger: same 

Jason: fridge, 

Inger: like just 

Jason: it's uh, same, it's the same as the freezer now. So right before we had the freezer and the fridge, that was slightly different.

Yeah. Um, but now I've got, they've matching they pleasingly 

Inger: match. Right. Oh, that's 

Jason: good. I 

Inger: suppose that's 

Jason: an upgrade. The last thing that I've been doing, uh, is a little bit of community service. So Cath is a member of a running group here and, um, I've heard about the 

Inger: running group. The running group's been going for a long time.

A 

Jason: great bunch. Uh, 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. 20 years plus or something. This, this group has been running, um, and she goes down and she runs with 'em, you know, during the week or on the weekends or whenever she does. I don't know. I'm usually in bed asleep while she does this. Um, but I ran a harnessing ai, like a three hour introduction to harnessing [00:29:00] ai session with the running group.

Like just, you know, they were interested in ai. They didn't, and some of 'em sort of didn't really know much, much about it. And so I said, sure, I'll, I'll just run one. So they came around and had coffee and we did a really, really kind of condensed version of harnessing AI for the running group. Um, and they, they loved it, right?

But it what. Yeah. What what it revealed to me, of course, is that for you and I we're using AI like all the time to do stuff, but there's still a big part of the population out there who are like, I don't understand this AI stuff. I don't know how to use it. And because of that, I'm too scared to engage with it.

I was getting, um, text messages, like, thank you very much for all this sort of stuff and really, uh, yeah. And so people have been leaning in, uh, with, especially with the image generation stuff.

So take a photograph in Chatty G with your phone. Of a thing [00:30:00] and then, uh, ask, ask Chatterjee to replace something with something else. So, uh, what would a red couch look like in the corner of this lounge room? Like a red chair? Oh, I've never thought 

Inger: to use it that way. 

Jason: Give it a go. It's really, really good.

Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. I'm thinking of putting a, one of those Ikea red stands in the corner there. I have to convince Mr. Thesis whisperer that I need a new thing. This, 

Jason: this is how you do it, right? You take a photograph of your room 

Inger: and 

Jason: then you say, yeah, 

Inger: put Ikea stand number, blah, blah, blah. In there. That might work.

It 

Jason: might work. I don't know. 

Inger: It would've been ingested as a thing, but Yeah. Or you could say, put a dog in here. Yeah. Little like fluffy ones. See what my dog might look like. Amazing. 

Jason: Right? Be because it'll recreate the room perfectly, 

Inger: right 

Jason: In the next image it, and then it just puts in the thing. 

Inger: Do you know how, okay, my first job, like architecture job, maybe second job.

Third job. Um, I changed jobs a lot. I was whole property 'cause I could use [00:31:00] the computer. Right, right. And I used to get paid to like, patch buildings into, you know, and it would take me sometimes five or six days to longer to construct the building, render it out, and then patch it in. And the, the hardest part of that was actually patching it into an existing site photo.

Yeah. So imagine there's a bunch of architects now who just go, here's the picture of my building, put it in that. Oh my God. I mean I'm, this is the kind of work that I'm glad no one has to do anymore. Like, 'cause it's fucking tedious and terrible. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. We can amazing talk. We can talk a about this a little bit later, um, if you want.

Um, I know we've got a full show and maybe it's not here, maybe it is a, a later show, but, uh, I had cause to read the World Economic Forums, um, future of Work 2025 report. Um, where they discussed, uh, the imp uh, impact of AI on the workforce out to 2030, [00:32:00] um, and some of the job, and they, they listed, you know, top 10 jobs that are at risk, top 10 jobs that are gonna be hot to trot, you know, all that sort of stuff.

Architects were on the at risk list. 

Inger: Yeah. It doesn't surprise me, although I, they're always at risk.

The thing about architecture is when you go to study is that people say, don't do it. And they all write, they'll write, and I should listen because it's a, like, you get paid shit. It's shit paid. It's like the worst paid profession. Everything you think it's gonna be from the movies and stuff. It isn't.

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: almost any of those things. Yeah. And it's, it's kind of, and your job has been eaten by project managers, by outsourcing, by like, and, and computers came in. I, I was sort of past part of the first wave of computers coming in, which is why I had such a short term live, but lucrative career in putting buildings into the, and I, lots of people [00:33:00] had just left the industry.

And I, I said to, said to, um, Mr. Thesis Whisper the other day. He was sort of like, Hmm, because he's a computer coder, you know, should I take up ai? Like, he's sort of like, am I resisting it for no reason? And then I said, it's a bit like AutoCAD. Like those, you are one of those old people. Like, I like you can pick it up and learn it like it's easy.

Um, but do you want to, and have you got other things to offer? 'cause a lot of those people just became like wise people in the corner that you'd ask how to do a detail and no one knew that stuff anymore. And when they left, no one knew it after that. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Right. So anyway, that's, I could, I have a lot of feel opinions about architecture.

Don't get me started. I could trauma more on that. Okay. I'm just noticing the time not to strike the bus or anything. Yes. 

Jason: No, from the, 

Inger: no, we're probably testing audience patients. 

Jason: Thank you for staying. We appreciate you. Um, let's move on to the mailbag. 

Inger: I'm so excited about the mailbag. I actually got a chance to read them and like, [00:34:00] they're great.

They're great. 

Jason: And the first one's for you, but let me read it in first. Yes. Um, this section is called our mailbag section. Um, we love hearing from you all. It is our chance to share some interesting things that our listeners share with us. And the way they do that is they write to us at pod at on the reg team.com, and I make sure that it makes it to the next episode or the episode after.

If you have a look, or I've already put the show notes up for episodes 86, and I've started to populate mailbag for that one. 

Inger: Hmm. 

Jason: Um, but yes, if you write to us, we'll include it in this segment and we'll read them out. And if they're written in black, which this one is, Inga will read it out. And if it's written in hot pink, which is our hot logo now.

Hot pink. Yes. Hot pink. I will read it out. So the first one is for you, Inga. 

Inger: I'm so excited. I saw that Lynn, I'm not sure if it was on YouTube or something. I think it was on YouTube or LinkedIn. Lynn said, oh, I went to the Boring conference. I was like, oh my God, please write to us. I think I said that if I didn't say it, I [00:35:00] thought it.

So thank you Lynn Lynn Murphy for writing to us about that. You actually went to the Boring conference. Let me read it. So friend of the pod, a long time listener, you've headed it. Lynn Murphy. Yeah. Of University of Sussex. Lynn writes 

Jason: Professor Lynn Murphy. 

Inger: Professor Lynn Murphy writes,. Since Inga asked on LinkedIn for me to send an email that could be read out. Here's an email that's too long to read out. It's not too long. Lynn like, challenge accepted. Uh, please. Snippety Doda. Not gunna. One thing I've realized while writing this email is how much I professionally gained from the conference.

The boring conference. Yes. I spoke at the Boring Conference, boring six to be precise, which is rendered in Roman numerals, which I particularly like that touch, um, because that's a boring way to write numbers. Um, is. Which is the one in Organizer Jane Ward's Wikipedia page photo. So she, there's a photo if you want it.

We'll include the link. Um, so if you wanna see the photo from the conference that Lynn went to, the Boring [00:36:00] Conference, um, it's on Wikipedia. A bit of history, um, in quotes. In 2010, after learning that the interesting conference the Day of Talks put on by wired writer Russell Davies was canceled. He tweeted jokingly that he ought to put on a boring conference.

So that's how the Boring conference started. Boring six was the best day in caps. It was held in the lovely Conway Hall London, the home of the Conway Hall Ethical Society. I've not heard of it, but now I need to look it up. No, everyone, I love this so much, Lynn. Everyone got a goodie bag, which included a notebook with a cover photo of the Croton car park.

You haven't been to London. I've been to London. Uh, my friends Nick and James once contemplated buying a house in Croton, they couldn't bring themselves to do it because Croydon is so boring. I grew up in Croydon, in Croydon, in the outer east of, and I thought it was the most boring place in the world. So it's not by the way, but like a photo of the Croydon car Park is just hilarious and two badges with the [00:37:00] word still and boring and various other stationary.

I love this. Throughout the day, Ward was in the corner of the stage doing a jigsaw puzzle. It was livestreamed him doing the jigsaw puzzle, which has, to me, the most boring livestream except for the famous coffee drip one, which, you know, started the whole livestream thing. During the lunch break, Roger Marsden from Scri Polity played Eric SAT's Vexations, which repeats for 18 hours.

So we didn't get to hear the whole thing. Oh my God.

I, I've got such conference FOMO right now with Eric SAT's work. It is a complicated and kind interesting, but also kind of boring. I learned things like link continues dsaw puzzles, not having the exact number of pieces says on the box street furniture, the brick making industry. Side note, I've been to a brick making factory.

Stands out as the best excursion I went on during my whole architecture. Uh, education was a brick, actually. Interesting, but can see how it would be boring. [00:38:00] Um, Ling continues the carpets of roadside pub chains. This one she says in brackets was really moving and she says, I think you'd love it. I would do like, I, how is that moving now?

I need to know now. I'm never gonna look at Pub Cup. It's the same way. Ly talked about the word the, oh, Lynn, what a great, a great thing to talk about. And the whole thing inspired my current book project, which is on hold so she can serve the dreaded ref condolences, Lynn, which starts with a chapter called Flo Floor Bird.

No Flower Birds. Flower. Flower, birds. Flower. Flower, birds, flower Ward. Flower, which is just about the word of rough translation of flower, bird. Anything that gets more interesting if you look at it long enough, which is true, I mean, famous novelist, I'm assuming. Okay, Lynn continues. I first learned about the Boring Conference when James Ward, the organizer, spoke at Sunday Assembly Brighton, which is often called the Atheist Church, but it's more subtle than [00:39:00] that.

Familiar with the format, Lynn, his talk, flew along for 15 minutes and had something like 90 slides all visual, which inspired me to rethink my use of PowerPoint, particularly for the for the public talks added. He talked about his favorite boring conference talk. Okay, this is great. So the organizer at the Borings Conference, favorite conference talk was about a man who documented the timing intensity and quality of his sneezes from 2007 to 2018.

There's a we link sneeze count joy.com. Lynn says, it was probably the best talk I've ever seen and I seen give a lot of these 50 minutes hype, so I can imagine. Okay. She, she, to, to, uh, to wrap it up, she says the boring conference would sell out as soon as the tickets were made available, which just goes to show how into it people are, but it's all COVID.

Perhaps due to underlying conditions. The [00:40:00] BBC Radio four program that developed from it was fine, but could not bring the level of joy that came from being in the room with so much enthusiastic ndom brought boring conference. RIP. Um, Lynn said it was nice to write about this just after being in another Zoom meeting about another set of redundancies.

I'm sorry, Lynn. I've been hearing about the UK redundancies, uh, solidarity hanging on Lynn. Two kisses Lynn, we love you. I've got nothing to say other than this is, this kind of letter makes every bit of pod back production worthwhile because it's a lot, like, it's a lot, it's a lot of hours. I'm not gonna lie.

Like it's a lot. Yeah. And, um, thank you Lynn. We would never have known you, we would never have known about the Boring conference. We wouldn't have heard about the sneezing paper. I'm just, and what is it? With pub carpets, I'm now gonna start taking photos of every pub I go to and the carpet 

right 

Inger: in my Instagram, because I wanna know as well.

Amazing, amazing, 

Jason: um, [00:41:00] side adjacent, um, knowledge. Uh, I, when I was first outta uni, I was a property valuer for and for commercial industrial doing large scale superannuation insurance, that sort of stuff, right? Like not houses, like big stuff. Um, and one of the jobs that we had to do was Federal Airports Corporation.

So we valued all of the airports for the Australian government all around Australia. And so, 

Inger: get out. Really? 

Jason: Yeah. It was good fun, right? Like, so one of, uh, so one of the things that I learned was that at the time that the carpets. Denote the lease holdings for the airlines in the, in the airports.

Yeah. So in particular, I'm thinking about Alice Springs Airport. So big ones like Melbourne, you know, you've got the whole Qantas arm and you've got the whole virgin arm and, and they don't kind of meet. But in the smaller regional ones where it's just like one airport and planes come in and planes go out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:42:00] So you know, the Qantas bit where they leased that part of the airport would've one kind of carpet and then the Virgin Australia, or Ansett or whoever it was at the time would have the, the lease on the other bit and they would have a different kind of park carpet. And it would be like this line down the middle of no as you're walking, walking on.

Right, right. 

Inger: Wild carpet. So 

Jason: carpets, 

Inger: oh my God. Knew carpets. I'm now obsessed. I'm now obsessed. Usually obsessed. Okay. Like sometimes like when I doubt whether I'm neurodivergent, I just have to have a moment like that where I'm like, what, what, what that? No. 

Jason: Uh, good stuff. Anyway. Amazing. Uh, we got more.

We've 

Inger: got more though. We've got more. They're all great. They're all great. 

Jason: This what comes from Kevin O. Sullivan. Thanks Kevin. Uh, and he writes, hi Gram and Jason. I listened to your last pod with great interest. Ah. Bless. Thank you. Love that. Thank you, uh, and agreed wholeheartedly with your comments. Well placed rant on the anti [00:43:00] AI vitriol in academia.

It's real, like many. It's real. Like many, I might not go as far as you both do and how you utilize ai, but I certainly don't think it's in any way useful to demonize large language models and their uses in the way that many academics do. Um, offline. Inga, I do need to talk to you about a particular academic who is doing that a lot.

Um, which I think, Hmm. Um, yep. I, I thought of your pod today as I read the responses on Blue Sky to the American Historical Association's, new guidelines for AI in history in the classroom. I mean, it's one thing to disagree with something, but the nature of the response here seems to be all out of proportion to a genuine attempt to set some ground rules and parameters for use.

Have a look if you can stomach it and there's, 

Inger: I had a look. There's a li I had a look on blue sky, which I must admit I don't go to 'cause it's so preachy and I'm like, oh, this is why I don't go to Blue Sky. 

Jason: Right. I had a look too. I mean, like they came at it, right? Yeah. 

Inger: Wow. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: Flying [00:44:00] squadrons. 

Jason: Yes. 

Inger: Wild.

Yeah. 

Jason: Kevin continues. It made me think of something that another historian, Neils Gilman wrote about large language models and the historic profession that much of the criticism mistakes the users for the tools. As Neils points out, we will ultimately always need the skills of the human in the. That is the critical eye of the historian and their ability to analyze, contextualize, and synthesize sources.

But large language models will change how we relate to those sources. His comparison of large language models with the arrival of JSOR is quite appropriate. Uh, opposite. Sorry. I think 

Inger: that's 

Jason: produced the word 

Inger: opposite, by the way. Hard words used in a sentence. The word opposite. Yeah. Hard word to use in a sentence.

Excellent use of it there. Kevin. Yes, repe. Mad respect. I haven't had a chance to read that yet, but thank you. We'll include the link to that Substack. Yeah, yeah. 

Jason: Anyway, it's now so bad in my discipline that I'm wondering if I should ask you to withhold my name. Oh, dang. Wow. Fulfill backlash. 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: [00:45:00] but that would be but that would be stupid.

He said. 

Inger: Brave. Kevin. Brave 

Jason: on you, Kevin. Um, thanks forever for all the great work I've signed up for Lo-fi Cofi Cofi. Um, I hope it helps. All the best it does, Kevin. It does bloody help. 

Inger: It does bloody help, Kevin. Um, just mad respect. Yeah. Basically, you know, we've gotta keep our heads in these times. Like, there's a lot of hysteria on both sides of this.

Yeah. Like, and it's really hard to just be the one going, well, it's useful for some stuff, and then get your head bitten off. Like, and you just get to the point where you don't wanna say anything. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And that, that sort of breeds resentment within communities really, doesn't it? Yeah. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: You, you don't wanna talk anymore about the person that you are noticing?

Um, if it's the person I'm thinking of. Yeah, 

Jason: I'm sure it is. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, the, uh, I'm finding the historical comparisons of mid last century to our current times, you know, by actual [00:46:00] historians who are like, Hey, we've seen this before, people. Mm-hmm. Like, really, this is what it kind of looks like. Mm-hmm. Um. Just slightly terrifying at the moment.

Uh uh, so, mad respect for the historians. They're like scientists with climate change. They're trying to, they're trying to warn us. Don't look 

up. 

Inger: Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I, I think too, like not to wanna bring in and we try to create a safe zone here where we don't talk about the troubles in the world.

Yes. But I did notice that something that happened the other day was a drone attack on a, a data center that took the data center down in Dubai so that people couldn't pay for things with their car. 

Jason: Oh. 

Inger: And you briefly couldn't buy any of my books from Amazon. 

Jason: Oh, 

Inger: yeah. And, uh, books outside, published outside of the US on non-US stores went down.

That's what I heard. I didn't verify this to myself, but, you know, 'cause bullshit flies around on the internet, so I'm not sure that's true. But it is the sort of thing that can happen when data centers are [00:47:00] taken down. And it really made me think, you know, about the Luddite, it's going and smashing the looms.

Back, you know, in the day. Um, 

Jason: yeah. 

Inger: And the smashing of printing presses and like, you know, we're, we are sleepwalking into a future like that where, you know, and I looked at, I read something about our, our favorite friend Mr. Mask, opening Colossus two, an enormous data center somewhere in the east coast, I think of America in an area where already the air pollution is so bad that they've, they're quite actively kind of trying to take steps 'cause it's causing cancer.

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: I mean, get fucked. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And so they're actively trying to get, take steps to kind of, and he's just installing, he installed these gas turbines without any kind of regulation. Just like put in massive gas turbines. So like, we're alive to all of that, aren't we? And I, I actually was listening to a totally unrelated podcast the other day and they had some rando, like was the focus group podcast by [00:48:00] Sarah Longwell, where she plays snippets of just random Americans talking about their own politics, which is like an eye opener.

And one of them said ai, like a surprisingly wise thing to say, I thought amongst all the stupid things I was saying about crypto and stuff was um, that AI is kind of like a tractor in agriculture. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: And you know, before the tractor we had a lot of people pulling plows and stuff. Yeah. And all those people no longer pull plows, so horses.

Right? 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like, and then I thought, isn't it, is AI kind of attractor in my work life? I'm like, yeah, it's actually probably one of the better analogies. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: Does a lot of tractor work? 

Jason: Yeah, I, my thinking around AI has changed over time. Mm-hmm. Um, I, it's gone from, Hey, look at this cool thing that it can do.

Wow. And like, I still have those moments, right? Like push back from the Sure. Yeah. The jump back from the 

Inger: keyboard. Yeah. Yeah. Mm-hmm. 

Jason: You go, Ooh, that's pretty cool. Yeah. Um, to thinking about it conceptually in terms of, uh, scale and speed, [00:49:00] like they're the two things that this brings to whatever it is that you, whatever it is that you want to do.

Like, I've gone from, I used to write this report and it used to take me six hours to, I now write the report and it takes me 40 minutes. Like, but, and how cool is that? But it's not just that. It's like it'll multiply that across multiple things that you do. Right? And, and then on top of that, like you can get lots of people to do it in the same kind of way.

And you have this kind of scale and, and speed. Element to it. So like, very much like your tractor in agriculture, right? Like you just 

Inger: mm-hmm. 

Jason: It's like a power, um, a power up in a game, right? Like in a video game. Like 

Inger: a force multiplier, right? Yeah. Like a force multiplier. Yeah. But are we producing, we definitely producing more words than we wanna read already.

So like, we're, you know, it's like, yeah, it is so interesting. But you can have interesting conversations like the one we are having when you don't sort of [00:50:00] jump to one corner or the other. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. 

Inger: Which is, I think Kevin's point, right? Like if you jumping into one corner or the other and into this binary thinking, it rapidly gets boring and not in a good, boring way.

Like pub carpets. 

Jason: Yes. Yeah. I, I, yeah, I, the other element of it is that, um, I'm trying to imagine what the argument, the counter argument is gonna be and how that will eventuate. Um, and I think it's gonna be so incredibly narrow. It's gonna be. Like it's all bad because of this one narrow really kind of element of it all and wave the hands at everything else.

And, but you know, this bit of, it's so bad so we shouldn't engage with any of it. Like, I, that's my prediction anyway. We'll see. 

Inger: Yeah. And because like, it is, like the autonomous weapons targeting discussion is like, we've seen Terminator, like, come on. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like, I'm sorry. Like, uh, anyway, [00:51:00] okay. Yeah, we could go on.

Thank you Kevin, though. Uh, solidarity in the, sitting with the difficult gray nuanced discussion rather than retreating to opposite corners. 'cause being a booster un unapologetic booster is also nauseating. I find that all terrible. Anyway. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Um, we've got one more, don't we? Is, am I reading this one out?

Jason: It's in black. 

Inger: Yeah. Uh, and the next one is from friend and longtime listener, Ben Archer. Hi Ben. Thanks for listening. Um, Ben write, hi, Ingrid. Jason loving the show, and I'm still waiting for the inevitable four hour long episodes that I could listen to on my drives to and from Sydney. Look, Ben, like this one's shaping up to be that.

So let's see if we can bring it into, um, normal parameters. You look worried there. 

Jason: Sorry, son. Uh, number one son is just, um, sending me text messages. Uh, sorry folks. I just need to deal with this. 

Inger: Right. 

Jason: Um, but carry on. Keep reading Ben, keep reading. [00:52:00] Ben, while you do that, I Oh, 

Inger: oh yeah, because you've read it.

You know what Ben's 

Jason: I know, I know what Ben's saying. 

Inger: Okay. Um, you may wanna mute your mic colleague. Uh, you've muted your mic. Okay. It's just me. Hello listeners. He's distracted. I could say anything I want to at this point. He's laughing, but he's still just distracted. Okay. Ben writes, hi Ingram and Jason loving the show.

Still waiting for, I read that bit already. Okay. Um, this one could be four hours long, Ben just, uh, dial in. Lock in as the Gen Z. Say Ben writes, I wanted to get your perspective on something I've been grappling with lately around digital hygiene and maintaining focus. I currently have one do everything work device, which has been convenient, but is becoming a major distraction issue.

Every time I sit down to write my machine automatically opens teams, discord, outlook and our university's LMS. By the time I close everything down, I've inevitably checked on all these platforms and often fallen down a rabbit hole that rails my writing flow entirely. You're well familiar with that, and there's not a lot you can do, Ben, [00:53:00] when you've got a managed machine and it just does it, you sometimes can't turn those settings off.

So sympathies, Ben writes, I'm considering a potential solution, but I wanted to run you. Both by it first, investing in a separate dedicated writing device. The idea would be to keep my current set up as my main work machine, but use the writing device purely for focus work. I'm also thinking about splitting my AI tool usage, keeping clawed as my writing companion on the dedicated device while using chat GBT or copilot for general tasks on my main machine.

While I really enjoy working with Claude, I've noticed that other AI tools sometimes have broader capabilities for certain tasks. So this division might actually optimize my workflow across different types of work. What are your thoughts on this approach? Have either of you experimented with dedicated devices for specific tasks?

Eager to hear your thoughts. Thanks Ben. Are you back in here colleague? 

Jason: I am.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, sorry for that folks. Ben.

Let me tell you, I have played with the, do we centralize or decentralize our tools [00:54:00] for probably the last 20 years? Um, trying to figure out what the best way is around these sorts of things. Um, I, I, I think I'm gonna come down on right tool for the job, separate tools for separate jobs there. I say that kind of advisedly because there's enough in our work, like as an academics where we don't necessarily just turn off our job, you know, when we kind of walk out the door and there's enough there of that kind of crossover that bleeds into one another that makes this whole thing really, really frustrating.

Yeah. Um, as an, my most recent experiment with this is keeping chat, GPT and clawed separate. It, so doing different things in those two different ais. Uh, and that kind of worked pretty well. But I mean, each, each AI's slightly different. They have different affordances and so you kind of want [00:55:00] you, like, there's that kind of, I sometimes take from chat two PT and then put it into Claude to do stuff.

Yeah, 

Inger: yeah. 

Jason: Um, the, uh, but I ultimately am a fan of, okay, let's kind of gird our loins for the next hour or so. I'm just gonna do writing, so I'm going to clear my desk of everything else. Have just the writing tools in front of me and just do the writing bit. Once that's done, close it all down. Okay.

Now what's the next thing that I have to do? And then kind of reopen that the first time I came across this approach was when my first real job as a property valuer. There was a person who was handling the accounts for the company that I was working for. Hi Sarah, if you're listening, I bet she's not.

But anyway, um, and Sarah used, and that's where I first saw it. Sarah used to literally, she had a clean desk. She was the most tidy person I've ever met. And she would, for each task, she would have [00:56:00] an open, like she would open up the task and all of the stuff, and then she would have a shut down ritual for that task.

Mm-hmm. Put everything away and then do the next bit. And so she was like really, really regimented about it, whereas I was just like a chaotic hot mess and, you know, couldn't juggle and do all that sort of stuff. So, um, that's a very long winded way of saying I think there's benefit in. Having that kind of beginning and end process of, I'm gonna write now, so, and I'm only gonna use this particular device to do it and that sort of thing.

But the reality of my life is that, that there is that bleed crossover that I can't just quite completely separate the two. 

Inger: Right. I think I'm coming down on the opposite side of this and being a fiercely in after years and years of blending the two and having one device. Finally accepting my university, finally letting my university give me a device.

'cause I'd resisted that for 10 [00:57:00] years. And having separation. So I've, you can't see. But I've got a computer on each side of me. I've got my own machine, which is owned by the company actually now. And I've got a work machine and I, I, I'm happily able to separate out work and non-work stuff because I have to.

Now, now that we've got the company and it's like more than just a sort of side puddling around gig, I have to be more careful about not using university equipment for generating profit in the company. So I'm very regimented. The, the one part, this, the one part where the blur is real and I think even solidifies my two machines hypothesis, is your writing projects.

'cause your writing continues about whether or not you're in that job or the next one, or the next one. Like you are a writer. That's your identity. Your writing is your ip. Right. And you're writing, and you, you can use it inside ai, you can, you know, or you can republish it, you can use it on your next job.[00:58:00] 

So I think all your writing, your academic writing should sit on your own machine. And I see my own machine as being like my handbag. I wouldn't give it to my university to manage my handbag. Like they don't know that I need to have, you know, um, hay fever pills next to a comb, next to, I'm trying to think what's in my bag.

You know, like, um, moisturizing, sunscreen, uh, five pairs of glasses or whatever. Like, I wouldn't trust them. Peptides, peptides, pep peptides, peptides. They wouldn't know that I need to have that so they wouldn't pack or manage my handbag correctly. Therefore, I need to have my own computer with my own stuff.

And I would always keep my, my books, my blog. Any creative writing of any sort even academic papers I keep on my own machine because as far as I'm concerned, I can give this machine back to my employer. Walk away, have it, I don't care. Yeah, take it. And you can, people have been marched outta places like I'm hoping.

That never happens to me. [00:59:00] Obviously I don't want it to happen to me. But also if someone comes in forensically looking for something, you've gotta be transparent and be able to give them a machine. And so, I mean, I don't really have a dog in the fight about Claude or, um, chat GBT, although I am considering getting rid of chat GPT over their stance over this Pentagon issue.

And Claude actually taking some sort of anthropic actually taking some sort of moral stance has really made me think, do I just get rid of my chat, GPT the way that I'm getting rid of HBO and Disney and a whole lot of other things, like I don't wanna be part of the Billionaire Boy Club. I have to be right.

But where, where you choose to engage with it. So maybe I'm coming back to Claude for ethical reasons. It'll hurt. But copilot by the way, also does mundane things pretty well. And if your university supplies it, why pay for? Why pay for chat GPT and fun fact, I think chat, GPT, the reason they're entering into this Pentagon arrangement is that they are gonna die if the government doesn't bail them out.

Fun facts. Yeah. So I don't, [01:00:00] one day we're gonna try and open chat. GPT, it's gonna be gone. Same may Alaw, the thing that will remain standing is copilot. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: So, so like all I'm saying is I think you'd, like, you've gotta protect your own IP and you've gotta think about where your stuff is and what's the walkaway proposition.

That's more than even the distraction argument. I think having your own machine for writing is just sensible. Yeah. Tax deductible. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: You know, and then also you can, you can keep stuff you don't want your university to see. Like, I don't want them to see my union correspondent. Yeah. Memos and stuff that I write for the union.

I have a separate email address. I don't want that on my machine. Yeah. I don't want them to be able to see it. And all my files on this work machine sit in the cloud, so everything I make they've got a copy of. Right. Yeah. So I don't want them to have the copies of my union memos, so, you know. Anyway. Good, good talk.

Thank you Ben. 

Jason: Yeah, thanks 

Inger: Ben. I think great. Great. And a lot of people will be struggling with similar, so [01:01:00] interested Right. To us. What do you think? How have you managed this uh, divide? 'cause it is blurry, like you say. It's hard. Yeah, 

Jason: yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, speak pipes, INO. None. Do you have any? None. None, none.

Inger: Please send us some speak pipes. By the way, can I say you don't have to use the speak pipe, you can just like record on your phone while you are walking the dog and shoot it off to our address pod at, on the re team.com. 

Jason: Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: And, and we will get it. So yeah. Yeah. So that's our mailbag. Good mailbag.

Excellent mailbag. 

Jason: Excellent. I can actually guarantee that we'll get it. Now because I spent a little bit of time yesterday two minute tip writing out my, uh, daily startup protocol Oh. Um, for the, for the business. Because I realized what I've, 'cause I realize what I often will do if I haven't been dedicated enough to kind of the night before, sit down and write out what my tasks are for the next day.

I'll just do whatever bright and shiny thing comes up. 

Inger: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jason: [01:02:00] And I like, and that will sometimes mean that I don't do things like look at the pod email address, and so I don't get to see emails and you know, that sort of stuff. Anyway, I've streamlined that now and so I have a startup every day. I just get up and I just follow, like, I do this and then do this, then do this, and then do this, and then do this other.

So you just 

Inger: one way through what Ben's saying here, like, you know, like if he's got a startup routine that says, do not get distracted. Go to this, look at this, do this there, then, you know, so if you go to your email only deal with things you can deal with in two minutes, send the rest to your task manager like that, that kind of routine that you write into your startup routine, then you go the next step.

That's methodical. I think that's a good answer. If you don't wanna 

Jason: answer 

Inger: machines. Yeah, 

Jason: yeah, yeah. And, and you, you can. Uh, you know, I just saw in the news Apple have released a new or about to release or did release a new machine. Like a very cheap Yeah, I've saw that student thing. Yeah, I'd like call them Neo or something.

I don't know. I haven't looked 

Inger: pco, I don't know. [01:03:00] 

Jason: I dunno. I'm not 

Inger: let dialed in, but Yeah. 

Jason: But that looks like fun. But Ben, that might be, that might be the solution if it's like super cheap but powerful enough to be able to do what you need to do if you don't have to do video and all that sort of stuff.

Maybe that's your way in. You could have your own, like Inga does. You could have your own, uh, machine that sits off to the side where you do the stuff. 

Inger: And if you do that, can I put in an argument for having two laptop stands so they don't sit on the desk? I know you've got your Star Trek panels set up, but you know it's important to have desk space so you can put things under them, right?

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Like I sit my board journal under my computer, you know, like it just makes, you know. Neat. 

Jason: Yeah, 

Inger: I like a neat 

Jason: disc. You can, you can tell, uh, Mr. Thesis whisperer also, um, that, uh, I've come around to the idea of the one big curved screen. 

Inger: Oh, okay. 

Jason: Yes, yes. He'll spec that 

Inger: up for you, by the way. Like he, 

Jason: I I, he loves to 

Inger: spec a thing.

Yeah, 

Jason: I know, I know. [01:04:00] I, I wanna see how we do end the financial year. Yeah. But whether or not, but yes, I'm, I'm getting there. Okay. The next bit is our work problems section. Where we talk about any problems that we have solved since the last time we spoke about work problems,

um, we focus on one aspect of work and well really just nerd out on it. We sometimes tackle problems we've had at work or discussed a theme suggested by a listener. We always try to be practical, sharing our own tips, hacks, feel opinions, feelings and opinions mushed together, they're valid. Mm-hmm. Um, and this week our topic is a shameless plug on ER's new book, Inga and Helen Karara and Pat Thompson and Amy Grant put together a book called Managing Your Research Project, A Guide for Researchers, um, insider Guides to Success in Academia, published by Rat Lich, part of that series, there's a link in the show notes.

Um, and Inga is gonna talk about this because. She wrote it. So why would I talk about the book? Yes, yes. Um, I [01:05:00] also note that you haven't sent me a, uh, author's free copy. Um, and 

Inger: go, I haven't got any author's free copy hobbies. Oh, really? Oh my God knows. What's something about, um, bear with me. I'm sharing the screen for YouTube listeners.

Jason: Oh, fancy. 

Inger: They'll be able to see. Should you want to, because I, I, and see in our red show notes, which is where we, it's just a note for us to do. I've said we take a moment to jointly admire how astoundingly ugly the cover of this book is, and we have a brief discussion about 1990s Club of Fashion. I'm sure I had a bucket hat in this material.

So do you wanna describe for the pod listeners? 

Jason: Wow. Um, 

Inger: what you're seeing here with this, 

Jason: it, it's a, this color, it, it's a combination of, so it's bright blue, kind of neni, blue, green, yellow, um, colors. Uh, and if I, it's. Kind of like, um, a mixture between liquid metal, [01:06:00] terminator style cartography. 

Inger: Yes. 

Jason: And um, like ripples on a, on a lack type thing.

Yeah. And they're all kind of, all of these colors merged together in a way that is maybe not all that pleasing to the eye eye. It's 

Inger: just ugly. It's ugly to, to top it off, you've got a big bug of the routage down in the bottom corner, um, and you've got on top of it a ludicrously large panel to put the, like you could have had more of the back image is all I'm saying.

There's a lot of negative space on the panel that says managing a research project. All centered type. Yeah. A guide for researchers and then our names. But that big black right in the middle of the cover. Yeah. Yeah. You think prime real estate for a book? There is nothing. Do think it's just a black panel?

Jason: Do you think that though maybe it was a double, triple suck back maneuver and that actually the publishers are quite clever because what? Well, like, look at what's happening. We're talking about it now. There's like promotion. Oh, okay. Yeah. So like, 

Inger: no, I don't think it's 

Jason: that clever, but 

Inger: Sure. [01:07:00] 

Jason: You know, there's a, there's a, a publisher title, page maker dude somewhere.

Right. And they're like, you know what, you know what'll get people to buy this book? An astoundingly ugly book cover with like, 

Inger: and just awkward, bad, 

Jason: ridiculous, blank space 

Inger: on 

Jason: it. 

Inger: And then just have the author talk about how much he hates it. I hate it. Okay. I've learned long ago to disassociate myself from book covers because they always disappoint me.

Almost inevitably. The, yeah. The next one won't actually, the next one's great. This one. Okay. And so they, we had initially, so this, they're doing this series on the cheapest rally to always do. And so they've got a limited range of like, this is proprietary art. Like, okay, they paid for this. 

Jason: Yep. 

Inger: Okay. Yeah.

And so they, they gave us a set of swirly whirly, mixy, uppy, technical vomit pitches. Yeah. Like she's one between the all these equally ugly. And there was one in that initial set that looked like a sort of [01:08:00] smoke like going up and I'm like, oh, that's got something. Yeah. Now let's have the smoke one. And then like five minutes before production, like, oh, actually that one was mistakenly put there.

You can have one of these four. And they were all just excruciating. You know what I did? I picked the ugliest one. I'm like, I just picked that because I'm like, at this point a giant fuck you to the like 

Jason: lean in. 

Inger: I mean, I could do a better job in Canberra Routage. Lift you. Okay. Like the last one was bad.

This one is really terrible. And like I say, there's a nineties club fashion kind of. I'm sure I had a t-shirt. Did you? 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. I think we figured out we, we used to go to the same club in Gravel street in Melbourne. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Joy Revolver. Did we, did you used to go to Revolver to Joy and Revolver? Sure. Yeah.

And we'd wear the bucket hats and we'd do the thing and we had the soda and the, and the and Mullo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, that, that time of our life flashbacks anyway, 

Jason: don't remember. 

Inger: So, yeah. Um, there's a reason. So if, if [01:09:00] we haven't motivated the non YouTube people to go and have a look at the link, we will provide.

Please have a look and, um, please feel free to comment. Um, so, um, 

Jason: like the color of your book is the same color as My Green Hulk Cordial here. 

Inger: Yeah. Your Hulk cordial. Your hydration of choice for the pod. So healthy. Um, I'm sure it's healthy. Okay, so just a little bit about this book, because I was not the original generator of this book.

This project existed and I was pulled on. Helen Cara and Pat Thompson have now together edited 20 books in the insider series. So, uh, the other book that I've got in the series is be Visible or Vanish, which I wrote with Simon Clues. So, um, they're dynamic publishing duo and if you've worked with 'em on this series, you will know that they are like very active.

They're not like the kind of editors that go, yeah, write the thing and then, yeah, that's great. No, they'll read it and they'll tell you what they want and you will do it. So like, they, they are like really good editors [01:10:00] and, um. I don't say that just because they're my friends. I actually introduced them.

I'm gonna take credit. I, ah, I was the matchmaker in this beautiful relationship that's gone on. So You welcome world. Um, yeah. Uh, because these books are great. So they'd already been talking with Helen Cara's collaborator, Amy Grant, who I've never met in person. We've had like, I don't know, four Zoom calls.

And the rest of our relationship is email. But I'm having a great time with Amy. I feel like Amy's my friend, even though that's all we've done together. And so , I went to visit Helen and Helen kindly put me up overnight. And if anyone ever has a chance to stay with Helen Carra, can I highly recommend, um, one of the best host.

You know, she's just great. Anyway, she had a dressing gown for me. We sat and watched tv, we had a great time. Um, and she was telling me about this book and I got that nerdish enthusiasm. 'cause you know, I love me some project management work of my heart, love teaching it because I feel like it's the kind of transformative thing you and I teach it.

I don't, in my [01:11:00] view, we don't get asked to do it enough. Like, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: this should be the one that people ask us for. But they always want it riding under pressure, which we love to deliver. But this one is just like, this is transformational, this stuff with people. 'cause they're like, suddenly they feel like they come out under a pile of things that they didn't know how to manage.

And suddenly they feel, and I get people writing to me years later from. Yeah, these sort of workshops about, um, and I, so I'm very enthusiastic about it. And so I nerded out enthusiastically to hell and I said, oh, well I hope you've got blah, blah, blah, and then blah, blah, blah. And then are you talking about agile world four?

Are you talking about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Because originally an architect, I actually got trained in project management. I, I, I feel like the skills I took from my architecture degree into academia, my secret source, um, they didn't translate exactly because they're very different types of context, but just time is money planning to get to an end point.

Progress tracking all of those things. So important in archite slack architecture because that's where you get the money, [01:12:00] right? 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: You get the money along the way, so you have to account for what you've done, ask for money, account for, you've done ask for money. So like I got trained very well in that and she looked at me blankly.

Um, and she said, wow, Inga, you know a lot about this. I'm like, yeah, I, architecture training. She was like, I think we need you on this book. And I'm like, oh yeah, why not Another book, you know, this is how it happens Jason. 

Jason: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. 

Inger: And before, you know, it's not 

Jason: your fault, Inga 

Inger: give you note from the author order that I ended up being first author.

Although the idea from that book is that this is how much I dominated, right? I went in, I'm like, but I, I hope that my, my fellow authors see me dom my domination as enthusiasm rather than just know it allness. Because I really learned a lot from all of them during this book. 'cause they brought so many different perspectives.

'cause Helen is an independent researcher, so she had that point of view of being the kind of gunfire Pat Thompson, legendary Pat Thompson from the Pata blog. You all know her. If you don't know her, you should. I'll put some links. [01:13:00] Um, she's just, uh, pat's in a. She must be in her late sixties, early seventies.

Now she's seen everything done. Everything amazing feminist, incredible. Um, so, so she'd done managed large kind of, um, creative projects, education projects. And Amy, um, works in the health space. So she's done that kind of like high risk, very regimented sort of paperwork projects that you have to, you know, get agreement from hospitals and all sorts of things.

So we had very different perspectives. And of course I'd done commercialization research, which I, I think I've brought that perspective mostly. Um, but I ended up project managing this book about project management. And can I just say, I say this with love that we didn't always eat our own cooking, 

Jason: right?

Yes. 

Inger: And towards the end I'm like, maybe we should start to eat our own cooking. 'cause this version control is. Outta control. And so I kind of took over and at that point they were like, Inga your number one author, because I managed this full through the publication process, did all the [01:14:00] copy editing with thank you church T um, it was at times quite rocky and I had to grip my teeth through getting to the end of this book.

'cause the actual writing part of it was a joy. It was the kind of production element, which we don't talk about enough in my view, but it is like quite a lot of work. Okay, so So they already had a, yeah, 

Jason: sorry. In inside baseball, was it Word Documents? Multiple versions. Final. Final. Final. Do final com. Yeah, it 

Inger: was final.

Yeah. It was that, yeah. In fact, I think I sent you a screen grab at one point and I was like, oh 

Jason: my gosh. Were you using different versions? Were each of you using different versions of words? So that didn't write kind of every time you opened it on a different machine, all the formatting got slightly skew.

Every 

problem. 

Inger: That way you can imagine Jason happened in this. In that respect. But the one thing that didn't happen is none of us, like precious little flower, you can't touch my words. Like, like really professional writers are like this. Like, we don't care. We just wanna get the job done. And that was an absolute joy.

So that was the [01:15:00] fun part. And they'd also written a really strong outline that didn't change very much. I think we, we changed the order of the chapters, but they already had it. And they, more importantly, they had a philosophy going into it, which. They call an ethics of care and it has papers and all that sort of stuff, and it's talked about in the book, but it's very much our vibe at, on the reg team, right?

Like, so you know, the point of view is your overwork and your disorganization affects other people, so fucking stop it. And project management can bring order and routine and stuff to people's lives. And that this is a caring, an act of caring. So I like strongly agreed with that and that this isn't boring and it doesn't stifle creativity.

It actually enables it. And and so the book, I think the key different from other project management books that I've read and what I haven't read anywhere is this is bone deep in it, like it's feminist, it's, it's centering acts of care and it's like, and it puts that ethics front and center. So one thing that doesn't appear in the book pretty much at [01:16:00] all, except talked about in a kind of risk way is ai.

So I thought we could briefly, and we don't have a lot of time for this 'cause we've natted on so much, but. Um, this is what we are here for. This is what you come here for. I thought we'd go through the chapter just briefly and we could talk about where we would've put ai. Maybe we can do that.

I thought we could just riff on where I AI could have fitted in this and where. A lot of the bones of this I use in my work, in our workshop. So when I, as chief maker of things in our company, I bring in, you know, I, I put workshop decks together and design. Yeah, yeah. You know, well it's collaborative, but I do a lot of the driving seat stuff with that.

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: So we, we put a lot of the bones of this is in our workshops, but we add the AI spice, which you won't find in this book. So, um, if you want that, hire us for our workshops. You know, and I thought about whether we include it as like pop out boxes, and I'm like, you know what, it's a moving target.

It changes so much. And also the team have very varying ethical stances on ai and I didn't wanna bring that into discussion. So it just left it [01:17:00] out other than discussing it as a risk. So it's got 10 chapters, although the conclusions just a, you know, what was in this book, so it's not really a chapter up.

Yep. Um, we've got, and the introductions just like setting up our, you know. You know, the introductions, like bios and all that stuff. It's like a fun little read of why we wrote the book and stuff. And we thought I can 

Jason: I, can I just interject with a production meeting? Um, yes. Just briefly. Yeah. At one o'clock I have a call with a potential client.

Oh, shit. 

Inger: I didn't realize what the time was. 

Jason: Yeah, yeah. Oh, this was 

Inger: at the clock at the top. 

Jason: So I'm loving it. I'm loving it. But we're on a, we're on a, we're on a tight schedule. I, I know I have to, I need five minutes before to get changed and stuff. 

Inger: Yeah. And I actually have things I meant to have done here, um, which I haven't done.

Okay. Um, 

Jason: so introduction, 

Inger: introduction is I, I'll just talk, I'll just talk briefly through the chapters then maybe [01:18:00] we won't have time for much of an AI discussion, but, um, you can 

Jason: bring it back next, next episode. 

Inger: Oh, yeah, that's true. Um, so the, the approaches to project management is the first sort of substantial chapter, and we talk about the difference between standard project management advice and the advice that we offer.

And the key difference is that. We talk about the discovery mode of projects. Yeah. Right. That you dunno what's gonna happen at the end. Therefore, planning sequentially and doing things like waterfall, where you just map out Gantt charts and say, I'm gonna spend this long on this and this long on this and this long on this.

We talk about why that kind of doesn't work and why you always find yourself falling behind or feeling like you're not making your milestones. And you can often blame yourself for that, when really it's the nature of the beast. 'cause the end point is changing, you know, it, it evolves as it unfolds. And so, um, so therefore the standard advice and actually the administration that often sits around project management assumes that standard advice.

So it'll have a milestone. You meant to have completed a certain amount of stuff and you're not meant to have changed what you're gonna do. And in fact you often do. So we talk [01:19:00] about all that and, um, and the difference between our advice and other advice. In the second chapter about tools it's really about, you know, how do you manage something like getting things done or waterfall or agile?

What are these tools? We talked about it as a kind of a roll your own. Kind of special. Yeah. Take a bit from all the thing approaches that suit you. Um, but we weren't allowed to use Roll your own in the final book. 

Jason: Be like, Bruce Lee, take, take what is useful, discard the rest. 

Inger: Right, right. That's right. So we call it pick and mix.

You know, like you pick what you want and you mix it up. The ethics chapter, um, was quite interesting. It's not about writing an ethics approval, so Okay. Go to other books for that. Yeah. Um, it's actually about ethics. You know, like how to actually work ethically in the gray that we often find ourselves in.

Yeah. It could have been a whole book in itself. Almost the weakness of that chapter is it opens so many boxes that you go, oh, that, well, tell me more about that. But you can't, yeah, you haven't got the space. So it is a good sort of primer for that kind of discussion, and I think will be [01:20:00] helpful for supervisors, particularly talking with students, I think.

Jason: Uh, so from that, from that particular chapter, just one, which would you look, which box did you open that you found the most interesting or the one that you probably wanted to write more about? Like which one stands out for you? 

Inger: Cul cultural intercultural communication and doing work in different countries.

So there's a story there about, um, a researcher who works for another researcher in a country where, um, the, the, the worker was pregnant, um, and visibly pregnant. And the, the person who was managing her. You know, sort of like, is anyone gonna talk about this pregnancy and tries to bring it up, gets spattered away.

Um, and because in this culture you don't talk about the baby 'cause you know that's bad luck. Right. You just don't talk about it. You wait until the baby's born, then you celebrate the baby. 'cause anything can happen. Yeah. Which I totally understand as a full miscarriage person myself. Totally get that sensible actually in some ways less traumatizing.

Um, but [01:21:00] it meant that they didn't organize the maternity leave 'cause it didn't get asked for. 

Jason: Oh right, 

Inger: right. Because there's a western cultural assumption that you organize maternity leave 'cause everyone talks about it. So it's a intercultural communication around ethics when you're working in different contexts is really Yeah.

A huge topic. And it's Helen's main bag. So I found that really, I learned a lot. Um, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: I just edit. I edited the whole book, so I learned a lot from editing that I didn't contribute in any substantial way except to ask dumb questions, um, which is sometimes useful. Yeah. Time management is like the more of the us part of the book.

If we were writing the book, it would've been just all this stuff. So I find it quite brief, too brief, um, but it's like it touches on everything you need to know. The only thing I really added to Amy did this chapter, the initial draft, and I, I just added stuff around pert um, yeah. Calculations. Um, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: which if, yeah.

Which we've talked about in the past. But, um, then there's a one on managing relationships. It's sort of about teamwork and, um, managing teams and [01:22:00] HR inside universities. Um, again, there was so much you could say, you could write a whole book on this, but Pat drafted this and she's the oldest, wisest managed the most people took the lead, but we all added really different.

Perspectives to that. And I thought that that really benefited from the multi-author approach, as did the next chapter on money administration, where Pat as the person who managed the most actual dollars in grants, um, over her years, took the lead. But it ended up being like this really group effort. Um, she, although Pat, pat could talk so well to, uh, that kind of why the university takes money from your budget to manage your money.

Yeah. And in fact I knew that, but I, I understood it more thoroughly after Pat's description of that and, and actually building in that con cost too, and not having the embarrassing situation that I've had where suddenly you have to go back to the client and say, we can't do that job. 'cause actually I didn't calculate in that my university wants 30%.

And I'm like, huh, what are [01:23:00] they taking 30% for? And then Pat points out all the things that they do for you. Um, but also then paying other contractors, um, yeah, commercialization money. I brought that to that. So that ended up being really interesting. Much more interesting than you think. And it's also an area that people shy away from because.

Money is boring and complicated and difficult to talk about. So if you've ever been really confused by money in a project, it's great. I think that's a really, I learned a lot and I think it's really good to have it out in the world. I wrote the chapter ONM Raising Profile 'cause I'm your social media poster girl, and I was like, don't do social media.

So that was my main message there. It's a waste of time. I talk about websites, but also talk about managing up, managing your manager, um, doing internal PR to keep the kind of, uh, keep preserving the time that you've got to do this project and listing other people. Stakeholder engagement stuff that we talk about a lot, except we didn't use the word stakeholder in this book.

Interested people. 'cause that was part of the [01:24:00] ethics of this book that, you know, it's all that stuff. Um, and then, uh, managing safety and risks, which actually ended up being really interesting again. Um, that's the only one place where I talked about AI, explicitly about talking about backups, data managing, um, sharing data, managing the sensitivities around that again, but talking about it in a management frame rather than the, you know, what you have to do.

Um, it's like all the problems you encounter, trying to kind of, and the safety of people as well. Um, and there's some, a few heroine stories in there. And we did start off, um, originally in the original outline of the book, they wanted to do these sort of fake stories where they kind of bring the concepts to life.

I'm assuming that's young Jack again, um, beeping at you. Yeah. Um, whereas, um, in, in this book we actually, I convinced the others that we just should write about our experiences. So every now and then we break into a story like when Inga was doing the post act project, this and this and this happens. Yeah.

[01:25:00] So we used that. So I really like that. Um, I love this book. Um, 

Jason: despite 

Inger: its cover, the cover's the so bad and I say that because everything inside the cover is, it's actually great. Like I started off like, I was a bit skeptical of it at times as you are about your own writing and your own stuff. And because I had to edit it multiple times, you know, um, it's, I think there's just some great stuff in here.

And I say that not to toot my own horn, but to just like, my collaborators are so fantastic and the joint years of experience, just a great project to be involved with. So we won't talk about AI and what we would've written 'cause we don't have time. Yeah. Um, but. Uh, hopefully some of you'll think to pick it up and give it a read.

And I, it's really, it's designed for people doing their PhD but also for anyone working on research projects anywhere. People who have to teach it and supervisors, uh, to help other people manage things. But if you didn't even go near a student, you're just a working academic and you only [01:26:00] work research projects or even if you're doing teaching, I think that there's just little tools and concepts in here will really help bring that.

Like, why do I always seem so bad at managing projects? 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Yeah. Why do I always feel behind? Why do I feel like I've never got this? It'll explain why you always feel like that. It won't necessarily stop you feeling like that. It'll give you lots of strategies like we do in our work, but it'll also contextualize all that advice.

'cause there is this kind of, there is a kind of project management literature which we went into and read for the book and it's a bit, I don't wanna call it project management bros. But it is a bit project management pros like it, it sort of treats project management as somehow devoid of actual people and conflict and um, and all that kind of stuff.

Whereas we just go straight for that and I think it's a stronger book for it. So that's my pitch. It really ended up being a shameless bug. There you go. It wasn't a word problems, it was a shameless bug. 

Jason: Um, [01:27:00] I just recalling, I mean, everyone's gonna have their own stories about their own projects and where they go off the rails, but looking at the titles of each of the chapters here, there's a interesting, um, of course I, I'm a big tool fan.

I like to use tools. I think they're useful if for no other reason than they sometimes, um, make visible the invisible work of projects. Exactly. 

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: we talked about that. Yeah. So tools for project management and then managing relationships. Were of the two. Uh, topics in that list. Um, I remember a, a project where I was invited into the project to help, uh, and I took control of the project management part of it, and I tried to introduce the other project people to a tool called Basecamp.

Do you from Oh 

Inger: yeah. Sophie's base camp actually in political organizing. Yeah. 

Jason: Right. So great tool, really helpful, [01:28:00] like great for communication, all that sort of stuff. Do you know what Just fell apart because, and the single most reason that it fell apart is because the other people didn't wanna learn a new tool.

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: And we talk about that. And so what they did is that they stuck to their old approach to doing work, which was. Even though they had this great tool that would've kind of streamlined everything, kept everybody on the same page, you know, made people aware of what was happening, all of that sort of stuff, they just would not pick it up.

And it was like, I don't have time to do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so we did it, the, the, the op like the way by email and bumping into people in the corridor. Yeah. And you know, like, oh my 

Inger: God. Yeah. I do know. Yeah, I do know. And we talk about that in the book. Like we are like, this is a key problem in project management.

Is like, and so we talk about how yes, you can invest in a system, but you've gotta get everyone on board to use it. Yeah. Or else it's a giant waste of time and you'll be the end. I [01:29:00] being the person managing it, I think of our Clickup system, right? Like, 

Jason: yeah, 

Inger: I'm, I'm invested in that because I understand that.

But if I came into that cold and I wasn't invested, it wasn't my company. It's a lot, it's kind of confronting, it's visually a lot of clutter. It's a whole new thing to learn and Yeah. And, and that there's that well known phenomenon of shadow systems that people hack to follow finances and all that. So we talk about all of that.

So we really, I think what really distinguishes this book is it's real talk. It's not abstractly project management. It's like, here's what's really fucked about it. And like, and if, if nothing else, you'll feel seen. Reading it. That's 

Jason: so, that's so on brand for us, right? Like it's 

Inger: like, isn't it? I know, like you and I Yeah.

By way. But if you and I the read this book, it would've been totally different. It would've been all sort of tools focused, right? Yeah. And so, so I, I still feel like that book remains to be written. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: That's tool focused. I feel like that chapter is too short, but, [01:30:00] um, but anyway, hopefully people will like it.

We're gonna skip our book section. I'm assuming I haven't read a book, as I've already said. I bought some. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: Great. So I aim to read them by next time 

Jason: to be read. I'm, um. Uh, picking up, I, I think I've told you the Jack Reacher series. 

Inger: Yes. Yes. 

Jason: Um, of books. Yeah. So I am into the next one now and, uh, I went home to see my folks and opened up the book case, which is actually behind in a Cupboard, so you can't see it.

Not like yours, which is like, here are all the books. Let's pick one off the shelf. It's like you have to go into a wardrobe to find it, but bugger me. My dad has been reaching reading the Jack Richer series as well, so, and he's like, I said to him, oh, can I take this book back with me back to Melbourne?

And he's like, yeah, I'm just, I'm rereading everything in there and once I've read it, I'm throwing the book away. 

Inger: So you're just gonna inherit them? 

Jason: No, like, he's like, just reads the book, chucks it in the bin. [01:31:00] 

Inger: No, get out. 

Jason: Yeah. He's not hardcore my old man. Right 

Inger: dude. 

Jason: Dude, 

Inger: I've so many thoughts and feelings, but we don't have time to unpack '

Jason: em.

I've re I've rescued one Jack Reacher book, um, from the, from the Trashcan. 

Inger: Just get him to send them to you in the post. Come 

Jason: on. Yeah. Know 

Inger: it's gonna be a nice father son bonding. Okay. Two 

Jason: minute tips. Alright, we'll talk two, two minute tips. We'll talk about books next time. Um, our two minute tips section is the segments in honor of David Allen and his classic Getting Things Done book.

I am the Chief of getting things done in our little business. Yes, I have a business card to prove it. Yeah. Um, Allen argues that if a task will take less than two minutes to complete, you should do it then and there because it'll take longer than two minutes to capture it in your task management thing.

Um, to do it mark to complete blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But really this section is where we get the chance to nerd out about a hack or an idea that we've had that we think will help you lead a more balanced life in your work and non-work lives. Other podcasts would do [01:32:00] this right at the front. Right off the top.

Inga 

Inger: Falls 

Jason: fool. I, but no, we'd leave it right at, we don't, the end. We as a treat delicious yogurt, as Nigel would would call it. Nigel would say, delicious yogurt. Yeah. Nigel would say delicious yogurt. Yeah. Um, and we leave it right at the end. So anyway, here's my two minute tip for the episode. Um, and this, uh, at the, uh, like I've, I've, oh, I've done trouble with color here.

Is this you, 

Inger: I've written in a bit that I had a two minute tip. 

Jason: Right. You've come in over the top. I had this 

Inger: I know, but I had like, we had this whole Yeah. Glide path. 

Jason: Okay. Anyway, you've got a two minute tip 

Inger: and I'll take one minute. 

Jason: Right. 

Inger: We talk a lot in our workshops about AI and transparency and about keeping logs of your ai.

Should, you need to be transparent later on for your university for a publisher and I have run into this exact situation. Okay, [01:33:00] and Jason, I'm here to report to you that I fucked up. 

Jason: Uh oh. 

Inger: So you know how we talk a lot about keeping all the logs of your chats so that you can always account, keep the record for blah, blah, blah.

Yep. I do that, right? Yep. Never delete a log. Yep. Do I organize those logs? No. Did I have the lawyer for the publisher for how to fix your academic writing trouble? Get on my back about exactly how many words ended up in the new edition. Okay. Side note, the old edition had a lot of JK rallying examples.

Professor Snape, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. You know, we use these examples in, in our text examples, right? Mm-hmm. Jk rallying. Well-known trans phobe, both of us, me and Catherine, who are now the main authors like Transphobes can like not here for it. Yeah. So I wanna take JK railing out and replace it with Lord of the Wings references because Sean, our original co-author, had a [01:34:00] few Lord of the Rings examples.

I thought we'll just make them all consistent. Not a huge Lord of the Rings fan. You know, who knows a lot about Lord of the Rings Chet T lawyer. 

Jason: Oh right. I don't, I thought, 

Inger: thought 

Jason: you were gonna say 

Inger: the lawyer even vast reams of of, of Lord of the Ring stuff. So when I wanted an example of this left and right branching syntax using Elvish something or other, it would do this like dumb made up example that they're fun, right?

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: I, the lawyer wanted me to locate all the prompts that I used. And the exact text that came out of the prompts. Now look, this lawyer had obviously never fucking used. Sorry, I'm like dropping the F1 because it just fucking annoyed me. Never used AI in their life. So they're like, I want the prompts and the output.

I'm like, have you used it though? Do you know that you talked to it? Do you know that you add things to it? Do you know they can have multiple conversations? I sent them a conversation, said, where is the prompt in here? Yeah. That [01:35:00] you want me to? And they're like, oh. And I'm like, how many prompts would you like me to include?

Because this is a, like if you print it out, it might be 50 pages of conversation. Would you like all 50 pages to be published? 'cause they wanted to publish all the prompts in the book. Like I'm here for the transparency. Yeah. But that is ridiculous. Yeah. Like you clearly don't, and then I had this whole snippy, like the lawyers clearly never used ai just making work for themselves.

While, anyway, I was snippy and I obviously caused a whole bomb to go off inside the publishing house because I got read into a few of the, anyway, its whole thing. But in the end I was like, okay, I will show you the log of every chat that I had with it. I will describe what happened in the log and I'll show you how many words ended up in the main book.

Fun fact through the whole like 60,000 word books, 700 words. Like, come at Me, bro. Also, by the way, Chatt PT ate my blog. Yeah. A million words of my work. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: I have proof that it ate it. Yeah. So whose copyright is, who's like, [01:36:00] why are we even here doing this? Anyway, this is to say my two minute tip being if you are writing a book and you are using tattoo, BT make a project.

Yeah, do all your chats within that project. Yeah. Don't go down to the side and try and find every chat you had. Yeah. That way lies, madness, and many hours. Hours. That's all be, that's all I've done work-wise in the last couple of months and it has been killing me. Make a project. Okay. That's my two minute tip.

Jason: Okay. It's a good 

Inger: one. I've got one. Now this is, by the way, is this consenting by listener and this is a whole new thing for our two minute tips where we could start outsourcing them because that is genius. 

Jason: Right. Um, I have got, we have got six minutes before I have to pull the plug. Yes. So I'm gonna race through this super quick.

Yeah. Um, my two minute tip is, has been sent into us by Rebecca Stevens. I love this. I did. Please send us the 

Inger: two minute tips. This is a 

Jason: whole Please send them. Please send it in. Send them. Please send it. Because this is the hardest bit our podcast does is right. Whatever. [01:37:00] Doing. 

Inger: Okay. Read that out. Read it out.

Read it out. 

Jason: So Rebecca writes. Good morning. I have a two minute tip to share with a smiley emoji. Yay. We love this. A few months ago I started a fabulous new job in government. I was wallowing in self-pity because although the job is perfect in many ways, my computer is locked down and cannot install text expander.

Exactly. I use a lot, lot of repetitive snippets in this job and had to, and had resorted to a word document from which I could copy and paste like a, like a bloody savage, Rebecca. That is, I know. Living like 

Inger: an animal, living 

Jason: like an animal. Text expander. We love it. Yeah. By the way, side note, we've written a book about text expander.

Should you want to buy it in the show notes? Head over to the thesis, whisper blogging. You can find a link there, maybe even. Yeah, it's in the show. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

Inger: Click through. 

Jason: Rebecca writes, last week I had a revelation. The system we used is web-based and Chrome is not locked down, so I can install the text expander Chrome plugin.

Out my golly gosh. It works. [01:38:00] It works so well. I am back to using Text Expander for all the good stuff and I've built out a new snippet library. Oh, amazing. I have have started accessing web-based word and Outlook as well, which means I'm back to using text expander for everything. I'm super, very happy.

Yes, and so very efficient. So if your employer has locked down your computer, do not despair. There is an alternative. 

Inger: Why? 

Jason: While on the subject of two minute Tips, the last episode reminded me of the newsletter. I was sure I'd signed up but have not received anything in a long time. I cannot find the show notes to link to.

Resubscribe, could you please post the dummy version so I can get my quick shot of delicious yogurt? Treat, uh, love the pod, continue to be a dedicated listener. Even though I left academia during COVID. The discussion and tips are just as relevant on the outside. 

Inger: Thank you, 

Jason: Rebecca. Thank you Rebecca so 

Inger: much.

And regarding the newsletter, I will refer you to my t-shirt. It's, 

Jason: you have a lot going on at the moment. 

Inger: I have a lot going on at the moment. Um, and it's, you are out. One of the things that's fallen sadly between the cracks. But I will, [01:39:00] you've, you've, you've reinvigorated me to do it, so thank you. Rebecca, please send in your two minute tips.

This is genius. I think this should be alternate mailbag. I'm here for it. I'd step out the two minute tip space. Yeah. 

Jason: Because of Rebecca's, um, two minute tip. I went to Chrome and then installed the, um, text expander chrome 

Inger: extender. Oh, bloody hell. I can see how that'd be useful for forms and stuff. 

Jason: Right?

Really good. So, yeah. Can, uh, can recommend would eat here again. Five stars. Great. Thank you, Rebecca. 

Inger: Genius. Yeah. Okay. Outright. 

Jason: Let's do it. That's, that's us. Like we're out. Thanks for listening. Yeah. We love reviews. Uh, Inga was gonna read out some old reviews, but next time maybe going online, if you leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Inga has finally figured out how to, um, find them and we promised to read it out.

Inger: Yeah, 

Jason: we do. Uh, just scroll down to your podcast player and get typing. While you're in there, give us a res, a review. Five stars only, please. [01:40:00] We don't like anything less than that. Thank you. 

Inger: Yes, 

Jason: uh, appreciate 

Inger: And by the way, on YouTube, you can hype us. I hear that helps if you leave a comment, if you like, if you subscribe, makes a big difference to our YouTube channel.

'cause I've been watching a lot of YouTube and everyone says that, so I'm saying it. 

Jason: Okay, great. Thank you. 

Inger: Yeah. 

Jason: Um, excellent. If you want your question featured on the show mailbag, you can leave us a voice message at www.speakpipe.com/slash thesis whisperer. Or you can email us at pod at on the reg team.com.

Um, I'm having a break from the socials, uh, but you can still find, uh, Inga as at Thesis Whisperer pretty much everywhere. Um, except for X, definitely not on X. Uh, and of course you can find her@thesiswhisperer.com as well. 

Inger: And also you run our LinkedIn account, though. We should amend that. So if you want I 

Jason: do.

We have a link page on the LinkedIn? She 

Inger: does the LinkedIn, yeah. 

Jason: When you can see, when you can see our little, like our little logo. Yeah. If you're not 

Inger: looking YouTube, you can see a picture of 

Jason: us. Yeah, I've updated it. [01:41:00] Um, uh, it costs us about a grand a year. Uh, I know because I am now seeing all the bills and paying all of the bills.

Yeah. Um, to produce this podcast, if you wanna support our work, you can sign up to the Riding the Bus membership, uh, on Cofi, that's KO dash F fi. Uh, there's a link in the show notes, uh, for about, uh, just for a minimum, two bucks a month. Uh, love it. Thank you. And thank you. It does make a huge difference, um, because every month, Riverside, they just take the money.

Um, they do as do a few others as well. Really, thank you so much. Loan 

Inger: is a thousand dollars, so, you know, it's actually more. 

Jason: Yeah. 

Inger: You know, it's, yeah. I don't feel happy about it. 

Jason: No, 

Inger: by the way, 

Jason: thank you so much. Um, all of that really helps. We love it, uh, when you write to us and put speed pipes in. Uh, more please.

Uh, and with that I've gotta go 'cause I've got a meeting in two and a half minutes. Goodbye. 

Inger: See 

Jason: you later. Bye. See I. [01:42:00] Bye 

Inger: bye. Bye-bye.