AcademicalNerd @academicalnerd@qoto.org
People are more important than wires.
Joined Jan 2021
The transition is very interesting. I went to sleep in my own bed in a peaceful country and woke up in a war without moving an inch. Frightening.
Yeah, this was a proof of concept to make sure that things actually run.
The psi4 os open-source and partially written on C, python is mostly API.
Do you work in ab initio solid physics? I would like to ask a few questions in the future if it's okay.
Psi4 in python, visualized in Vesta.
My new hobby -- ab initio quantum computations. This one shows sodium alginate molecular orbitals.
So I put together a quick article on giving a talk. Inspired by my experience last Friday.
https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/on-public-speaking.html
That's quite an interesting approach! I have a whiteboard myself for brainstorming and physics, and it is indeed superior to digital format in certain aspects.
For me saving and freferencing journal pages is more important, but I can definitely see the appeal of the whiteboard.
I switched to journalling and planning on paper this year. Been loving it so far.
https://academicalnerd.blogspot.com/2022/01/analogue-note-taking-digital-mess-we.html
The D’Artagnan remark got me a good laugh, thanks.
There is more than enough dice rolling and dark water right now, so I don't worry about it. But the quote you mention sounds good, I'll save it somewhere to reflect upon later. It it yours or from somewhere else?
Well, I used this process a few times and it seems to work just fine. I learned (an retained) more than ever last year, for example.
Life is chaotic and I prefer to have at least some goal, an ambitious one to stretch my limits.
The long-term planning boils down to a simple algorithm:
1) Identify end goal, feasible for your capabilities and the timeframe, a year in this case.
2) Break it down into smaller milestones, assuming linear progress (for the sake of simplicity). Quaters work well.
3) Break the milestones into steps, in this case I use monthly goals as an outline.
4) Consider the processes that are likely to bring you to the end goal and design them.
5) Keep going back to the initial plan and readjusting based on the experience.
It is a difficult process to tacle, in part because it is frustrating to face the uncertainty. But the rewards, I believe, are worth it.
I am now in the process of annual review and planning. This will take me a few days on and off to finish, as there are some 300 daily notes and two small notebooks.
The review will include notable events and parties, some key ideas and lessons, and a list of accomplishments.
The planning part will take longer, as I plan on redoing my entire setup to lean towards analogue note-taking and minimalistic digital workflow, that would link together all or almost all of my work as a scientist, writer, teacher and - lately - game developer. I'll post a few updates on this as I go.
This may become an accurate prophecy.
2021-12-24
The annual review turned out to be a surprisingly pleasant thing to do. I didn't reach all my goals but did some significant progress and even managed to do some stuff outside of my initial intentions.
However, I have no slightest idea where will the next year take me. It will be an interesting adventure.
Turns out I am greedy. Not for money, as I usually have enough thanks to my parents and workaholism.
I am greedy for new hobbies, projects and ideas. Once there is an opening in my schedule, I'll immideatly try to fill it with something, whether it be a coding project, lab work or new piece of writing.
Yesterday there was a moment where I caught myself and gor an upper hand: instead of putting "outline new article" on a todo list, I left the line blank. A small yet important victory and a step towards a more sustainable life.
I knew this in theory, but hoped sincerely that I won't have to exert myself to such degree. The time has come, I didn't like it but now I know more about myself.
And in a few days, when there won't be a lesson or a zoom call in the evening, I'll get myself a chill bottle of cider :D
Update 3: side-hustles.
I've been teaching a couple of students on and off, and this was a nice experience. Now I managed to get into copywriting for a job search platform which I won't name for now. They publish guest posts on various blogs to advertise themselves. It is not the best writing I could do, but I can hone my writing, especially in English as I'm still not native speaker.
Update 2: life.
How in the world do my parents cope with all the shit they have tyo cope with? The question I asked some time ago. The answer quickly came to me: they don't. Smoking, wine, sleeping in and burying themselves in work and household chores to not think about the situation.
Now the shit piled up on my plate as well, with stress from work and family life. And I seem to somehow have far more resources than I anticipated. As long as there is some time to rest and process the events of the week (Saturday is off-limits for this reason), everything is more or less okay.
Reading about psychology and philosophy helps a lot, especially stoicism. For some reason I find it quite calming to read.
Update 1: work.
My scientific advisor fucked up the communication and as a result I had a month of work with tight deadline, actually the tightest I ever had relative to amount of work.
This led to a pile of messy code I'll have to sort out at some point, but it's okay because now everything is in source control and I won't irreversibly break anything. Which happened a few times before. Shame I wasnt using git before. Better late than never, I guess.
Now I'll need to submit literature review draft by January, duh. A lot of work but at least I know what to do and a third of it I did in advance back in September.
Ugh. Alright, this semester is tough. The past month was a chaotic turmoil of deadlines and other bullshit, but I managed to do some important things and get back into the writing habit. So here we are.
I'll post a few updates here once today's work is done.
