Tricks, shortcuts, secrets and hacks.
Kill them all with fire!
Wait. Can it… can it be? Is this the return of grumpy Simo??
Yes! Well, no. But seriously, kill them all and leave no prisoners alive.
Yesterday, I was listening to Pieter Levels w/ Lex Fridman on my way to the weekly meeting (which I found to be cancelled but had fun chatting with people anyway after a long break away from the lab).
And one specific thing hit me hard, not only because of the nostalgia value… The guy creates a lot. Codes things daily. Not because of money, but because of the creative process.
Creative process is a form of therapy, and certainly pure joy. The same reason I love academia too: I can create what I want. Or at least there was a time I could, ha (hence, nostalgia).
But it’s been slowly turning from creating things into creating papers!
PAPER!
Yikes.
So here’s another episode of the Edge Academia newsletter, triggered by a social media post by an “academic writer influencer”… this time promising a “trick” that gets you published with near 100% certainty.
(Yes yes I know the trick. It’s not that bad (just publish in special issues). But the whole word “trick” tells a lot about an attitude way too many now have in academia.
Do what it takes to get the numbers, with work taking the back seat role.
Chasing the Paper
We all sometimes chase the paper. But we ought not to. We should chase good work, and the paper is then a document supporting the study itself, documenting the ongoing work, and ultimately just a byproduct of the great fruits of your hard labour.
That’s how it’s meant to be.
But more and more I see and at times find my own thoughts to go just to the paper. I swear I’ve seen countless academics say “My goal is to write more papers in 202X.” Think of it, I cannot possibly imagine a worse goal. I mean, it kind of works in the current academia. And that’s part of the problem.
Just like “not eating” works for weight loss. It does. But is it smart? Far cry.
Paper gives your metrics a bump, sure. But it also leads to:
- lower-quality research because you don’t focus on making the work good instead of making it look good
- cutting corners and rushing through studies because, you know, the deadline is looming
- perpetuating the already absurd and harmful cycle of academia where the height of your paper pile means more than the quality of your work
But yet so many of us keep doing it, year after year. Because of the immense pressure to publish. And I feel like it’s some kind of a weird generational trauma: The seniors, likewise in a pressure to publish, teach the juniors to chase the paper. And the juniors come to believe the paper matters more than the work. And so the cycle goes on, imposing long-term harm to careers, job satisfaction and the entire integrity of the whole academic community.
And I’m not here to point fingers. I’m writing this as much to myself as you.
Reframing our Collective Borked Mindset
Okay.
Let’s all try adopting what I like to call the “byproduct mindset” — the outright offensive, borderline revolutionary idea that publications are a natural byproduct of great work and not the other way around. Publications are sawdust.
It’s a bloody shame that now we sometimes do work to write a paper, not write papers because we did good work.
And then there is the underlying study itself. So many times we jump into building something, especially in engineering-heavy disciplines, without thinking about the study. Then we retrofit theory and study on top of the awesome shiny piece of tech we built. We do this fully knowing that well-designed studies naturally lead to good papers and tech that fits the study. Conversely, even great implementation of a tech gizmo does not naturally lead into a good paper.
And of course there’s the process of writing itself. Write the bloody paper while you work, not after you have done all the work. It’s not an afterthought. Keep learning about the subject even while conducting the research and add missing pieces and thoughts to the paper. Add pieces to discussion while the world serves ideas to you while working on the study. That’s far more natural than the “oh now let’s brute force the paper out in 2 weeks” mentality that’s so pervasive in academia.
…Not to mention the big one. Intrinsic motivation. If your motivation is to “write a paper”, you’ll have long term issues. You’ll get it done, of course. But chances are, it’ll bore you to death after a few more rounds of “writing a paper”. You have to be a fundamentally twisted individual (hey nothing wrong if you are) to find that even remotely interesting. But how about a great project that tickles you just the right way?! Tweak that to your liking, go full steam at it, and write the paper as you work on it!
So much easier. Yes, I know. You’re now thinking “but I need more papers.” So do I. But I dare to say thinking about your work will lead to MORE papers instead of less. Because you’ll do better work. And you’ll enjoy your work. And more important than more papers is more joy in your life.
But we Humans, we Drift
It’s in our nature.
Over time, we drift back to chasing the paper though…because it’s easier to chase the paper than pursue excellent work. It’s scary to aim for great work, and our brains are literally hard-wired to go back to our old safe habits where nothing bad can come to us. It’s the box where we are comfortable.
Plus chasing the paper gives us that immediate, tangible target. It’s something we can measure, something we can tick off on a checklist. “Done, wrote the paper. Good job, me.“
At what cost?
We become disconnected from the work, from the purpose, from the actual study that was supposed to matter more than anything else.
Here’s what I think can help us all staying rooted in the work, not the paper:
- Break your research topic into questions, not papers. Instead of seeing your research topic as a series of papers you need to churn out, try something else. Divide it into questions and meaningful advances that motivate you. This will also help you think way more deeply about your work than when you’re trying to fit the work in the format of a paper.
- Shift your internal dialogue aka catch your own bullshit. When you once again find yourself thinking about papers, just stop. Force yourself to think which bits of your work need finishing, not what you need to do to fill a paper’s worth of real estate in a document. It’s ridiculous how much easier your research can come with this simple shift in thinking.
- Embed writing into the research process. Again, don’t wait until everything’s done before you start writing. Write as you work. Not just the results or conclusions, but your reflections, your thought process, your challenges. Make notes in a separate document, catch fleeting thoughts that relate to your work. It all just becomes more integrated with the work, and less of an exercise of rage-writing right before the deadline.
- Connect with your long term vision. Oh, don’t have one? Time to think about it. How does this current undertaking relate to your career plans? Are you hoping to make a targeted push in some area? Care about it. Make sure you care about it. And then when you think of meaningful steps and not papers, again, it all just goes way more smoothly.
- Find support. Talk about your work. Talk to your colleagues. Talk to your supervisor. Get help! How is it possible that so many people “work on papers” but never even talk about their work? Can it be they’re not even excited about their work? The way to get excited is to think about the work you want to do, not the paper you have to write. Don’t have people? Broadcast to the great void in social media if nothing else. Not about the paper, the work! The research. This will help you focus on something else than pointless pages that need tweaking and formatting.
It’s all about perspective.
The work should always lead, and the paper should follow.
That’s how it’s meant to be.
Can we all try this?
Please?
Ok?