P2P No. 3 — Share what you understand
Luctor et emergo — There are things we do because they are hard, not because they are easy.
Share what you understand
This newsletter (and my de facto dead blog) illustrates how measuring progress and setting goals by quantity can be counterproductive. When I started, I set the unwritten rule for myself to share my thoughts every week. Alas, I failed in week three.
Compared to one year before, when I was rushing my last few blog posts to keep up with my weekly schedule, this year I acknowledged that sometimes life intervenes, and the best thing I can do is to wait.
I always compare myself to others and fear that I am behind others by not producing something every day, week, or month. Thus, I need to contradict Heraclitus: you can fall into the same trap even if your shoes do not get wet.
How does this relate to a Ph.D.? The equivalent of Damocles's Sword for academics is the publish or perish narrative, which repeatedly nudged me towards putting out my work prematurely, especially if I started comparing myself to other Ph.D. students - which I was advised against on multiple counts. Every career path is different; e.g., some people continue their master’s thesis, whereas others start to work in a new discipline as I did.
Luckily, I was stopped (kudos to my supervisors and coauthors). It could have happened that someone scooped my idea and published it first, but if I consider the amount of tinkering my papers needed to get the story straight and consistent, I am glad I was convinced to wait.
There is something I believe trumps speed: namely, a coherent, easy-to-read, simple-to-follow story where pompous words are omitted and the passive voice is discriminated against. So nothing like the previous sentence.
On the other hand, we need to answer why (and when) do we publish?
I am sharing my thoughts to organize and distill my opinion and give some marginally useful advice for those who feel a bit lost on the academic path. But first and foremost, I would like to learn in the process.
Regarding my research, I have recently revised my strategy from racing to be the first to ensure that I can explain my work and not deceive myself into believing to know as a deadline approaches. If results look promising or even better compared to others, that should be treated as the signpost but not as the destination. We need to ask ourselves:
without understanding, is anything really worth sharing?
No one would accept "proceed as I said because I said so" as an answer in life, so why would you do differently in research? At least this is the gold standard I aspire to measure myself against, though the pressure to publish can distort such intents since we feel we need to hit our quota.
Preferring the longer term is advisable, not just for papers: when I talk to students junior to me, the first advice I give is to avoid the biggest mistake I made during my studies: I took on too many obligations, which had a price on understanding. Ambition and perseverance are not bad character traits, though we need to be careful what to persevere about.
Struggling to get to the top of the wrong mountain indulges us with an outlook of a landfill.
We need to consider whether we follow the publish or perish mentality or devote ourselves to the struggle put into curating our thoughts and telling coherent research "stories" Pragmatically, the latter can have a higher impact because people can actually understand.