How can you be productive when work accumulates, the need for scheduling meetings continues, plus some additional formation you’re asked to take, classes, thesis supervision, projects, family commitments and the list continues. You begin to list what to do, and soon realize you’re lost in what remains to do. You could procrastinate, and that is […]
A few days ago, I received an email for Wiley Publishers pointing to a document containing 10 Essential writing tips for engineers. Some of those tips concern other aspects of a researcher’s presentation of his work – conferences, keynotes, tips for the slides, etc. -, which does not involve writing. However, there are three writing […]
Do you know the experience of having a presentation the next day and constantly dream about it? Do you succeed in your dreams or fail? I woke up today experiencing this. And I cannot tell whether I succeeded or failed. I only know that such experience is one of vulnerability. I usually deal with vulnerability […]
“What gets scheduled gets done.” – I love this sentence by Michael Hyatt because it synthesizes well the purpose of planning: getting things done. But have you ever experienced planning things and, afterward, it seems every day has a life of its own, stopping you from reaching your goals? I often experience this and started […]
In science, there is a famous saying about the need of putting your work out through scientific publications. Publish or perish. Otherwise, you won’t get promoted or given any other responsibilities which help you grow in your scientific career. This need of publishing is quite a challenge because producing scientific work that matters […]
It’s almost a crime if you don’t share with the world the knowledge you develop through scientific writing. But most of us feel the pressure of time to think through all the results and explain them, and the tendency to procrastinate becomes enormous. We should forget the most important thing: My first paper was for […]
If people who write their goals are accomplishing significantly more than those who don’t (says research), how does this works for researchers? The same. Writing goals might be more important than you think to achieve them. As a researcher and professor, I know my goals, but I’m not used to writing them. However, when you start supervising […]
Recently, I received a review of a scientific article suggesting that I corrected grammatical errors such as “we observed” and “we evaluated”. First I thought these expressions were in the same sentence, but no. And no credible software pointed those expressions as grammatical errors. Why did the reviewer think of them as errors? And then […]
The pace of technological innovation is fast. Technology has literally changed our habits, thoughts and lifestyles. In the last decades, we assisted the rise of social media, and again, with a profound impact in our lives. A digital life emerged. However, have you ever looked at people in the subway or airport lounge? Everyone has […]
What does it mean for a researcher to be open-minded? Doing research is not knowing what the outcome will be, but work only on some intuition. The result of every scientific investigation may challenge our perception of reality, and we limit the creative process unless we cultivate an open mind. At the beginning of my […]