Alert Me to Anything New in My Area

This is a followup to the previous post about hearing about new scientific
articles in your area as they appear through an RSS feed or email alerts.
What gives me even more of a thrilling feeling of omniscience than alerts
for new issues of journals in my field, is a feature in ScienceDirect
called Search Alerts. If you create an alert for a text string signifying
your sub-specialities, any time *anyone* publishes an article on them in
any of the 2500 journals on sciencedirect, you will get an email. It's
like being a bigtime crime boss with ears and eyes everywhere.

Trollope on the Daily Task

I was looking up that great "spasmodic hercules" quotation, and found this
wonderful passage around it, in Anthony Trollope's autobiography. It
describes how he wrote a bunch of novels despite having a more than
fulltime job as postmaster general. Because I am fascinated with details
of how any successful creative person works, and love this passage for how
it confirms that a good system will cleverly take into account your
emotions, I reproduce a huge chunk of it, at the cost of the pithiness
that should be the virtue of the blogger over other writers:

--

There was no day on which it was my positive duty to write for the
publishers, as it was my duty to write reports for the Post Office. I was
free to be idle if I pleased. But as I had made up my mind to undertake
this second profession, I found it to be expedient to bind myself by
certain self-imposed laws. When I have commenced a new book, I have
always prepared a diary, divided into weeks, and carried it on for the
period which I have allowed myself for the completion of the work. In
this I have entered, day by day, the number of pages I have written, so
that if at any time I have slipped into idleness for a day or two, the
record of that idleness has been there, staring me in the face, and
demanding of me increased labour, so that the deficiency might be
supplied. According to the circumstances of the time,--whether my other
business might be then heavy or light, or whether the book which I was
writing was or was not wanted with speed,--I have allotted myself so many
pages a week. The average number has been about 40. It has been placed as
low as 20, and has risen to 112. And as a page is an ambiguous term, my
page has been made to contain 250 words; and as words, if not watched,
will have a tendency to straggle, I have had every word counted as I
went. In the bargains I have made with publishers I have,--not, of
course, with their knowledge, but in my own mind,--undertaken always to
supply them with so many words, and I have never put a book out of hand
short of the number by a single word. I may also say that the excess has
been very small. I have prided myself on completing my work exactly
within the proposed dimensions. But I have prided myself especially in
completing it within the proposed time,--and I have always done so. There
has ever been the record before me, and a week passed with an
insufficient number of pages has been a blister to my eye, and a month so
disgraced would have been a sorrow to my heart.

I have been told that such appliances are beneath the notice of a man of
genius. I have never fancied myself to be a man of genius, but had I been
so I think I might well have subjected myself to these trammels. Nothing
surely is so potent as a law that may not be disobeyed. It has the force
of the water drop that hollows the stone. A small daily task, If it be
really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules. It is the
tortoise which always catches the hare. The hare has no chance. He loses
more time in glorifying himself for a quick spurt than suffices for the
tortoise to make half his journey.

I have known authors whose lives have always been troublesome and painful
because their tasks have never been done in time. They have ever been as
boys struggling to learn their lessons as they entered the school gates.
Publishers have distrusted them, and they have failed to write their best
because they have seldom written at ease. I have done double their
work--though burdened with another profession,--and have done it almost
without an effort. I have not once, through all my literary career, felt
myself even in danger of being late with my task. I have known no anxiety
as to "copy." The needed pages far ahead--very far ahead--have almost
always been in the drawer beside me. And that little diary, with its dates
and ruled spaces, its record that must be seen, its daily, weekly demand
upon my industry, has done all that for me.

There are those who would be ashamed to subject themselves to such a
taskmaster, and who think that the man who works with his imagination
should allow himself to wait till--inspiration moves him. When I have
heard such doctrine preached, I have hardly been able to repress my scorn.

Don't Break the Chain!

Jerry Seinfeld, at least in certain periods, wrote comedy in a disciplined
way every day. He allegedly uses this technique which I read about here:
http://lifehacker.com/software/motivation/jerry-seinfelds-productivity-secret-281626.php
Every day when he completed his writing quota he would cross off that day
on the calendar. If he felt like skipping it one day, he would tell
himself, "don't break the chain!" meaning don't make gaps in the sequence
of marks on the calendar, and keep growing those chains as much as
possible.

So far I'm just repeating another blog, but what got me excited about this
technique when I read it is that it is something I've been looking for for
a while, a perfectly balanced motivator. Reward and punishment systems (at
least when self-administered) don't work for me, because I already feel
crappy when I let myself down and can't bear to actually exact the
punishment or deny the reward on top of it. The seinfeld technique
combines a very mild punishment and a very mild reward, which in fact are
just reminders of my own resolution to myself.

You don't need to buy a calendar for this; if you start a new document in
Word, there's an option to download templates off the web, and if you do
a search for "calendar" there are files with pages for the months of the
year that you can print off and put, along with a pen, in a place where
you can reach it from the place you'll be doing this thing.

Tonight I really didn't want to do my 1 hour nonrequired reading that I
have resolved to do every evening; but by repeating to myself, "don't
break the chain", and also something that Anthony Trollope apparently
said, "A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of
a spasmodic Hercules," I made it.

Using RSS to Stay Hyper-Current on the Literature

Another tip from Liz, who writes that it has "allowed me to be almost more
on top of the literature than my supervisor (in terms of finding articles,
anyway)" :

"Ok, so the first step is to turn on your RSS feed reader of choice (I use
google reader, because I check it obsessively for non-academic reasons).
Then, you can do a little bit of research and most journals that publish
online have feeds of the articles that come out as soon as they're
available online.

For example, Journal of Vision (which I believe is online-only) has a feed
link on their website. Vision Research I had to get through ScienceDirect.
I have four journals on my list (JOV, VR, IEEE: PAMI, and JOSA) and I get
2-4 new articles to check out per day. Usually this means skimming the
title and deciding I don't care/don't understand any of the words (I'm
looking at you, JOSA). However, I have found several gems and it's fun to
get them hot off the presses, so to speak. If the abstract (delivered to
my feed reader) is promising, I just download the pdf and enter into my
extremely efficient reference management system.

If you find some way to automate the reading part, let me know :P.

PRO TIP: If you don't already, use your feed reader to subscribe to
something fun like a comic (or five). That will keep you checking it on a
regular basis and comics won't derail you for long."

A good one! I experimented with using google reader for this for a while,
but I tend to use it exclusively for fun stuff - so I can avoid getting
into the habit of checking it during work time. Instead I have been using
email journal alerts, which also works really well, and there's one for
almost every journal (ScienceDirect can cover a few, and then others send
out their own). Whenever a new issue comes out I instantly get an email
with the table of contents, and like Liz I quickly scan it and only read
the abstract of a few, and then add even fewer to my Someday/Maybe reading
list. However at the moment I have a little backlog of those emails in my
Deferred folder (more about my email system in a future posting) so maybe
it's worth considering Liz's method, and interspersing the casual blog
entries with the science headlines.

By the way, if you read any blogs whatsoever regularly, google reader is a
must. It's one of those things that a friend said, "oh my god, you're not
using it?" and I was initially irritated and skeptical but then had to
admit he was right.

How to Sell Yourself in a Letter

This is something I have agonized a lot over in the past, so I was glad to
run across two pieces bearing on it in the last little while. They're both
inspired by looking through real letters that people sent, hoping to sell
themselves to the writer, so this is based on something.

Screenwriter Alex Epstein (Bon Cop, Bad Cop) wrote about emails he got
from people applying to be his intern:
http://complicationsensue.blogspot.com/2008/12/job-applications.html
"First, the most effective letters focused on how you can help me. I want
this to be a good fit for you, but my primary focus is on what qualifies
you to do the job well. What are your qualifications? What are your
skills?

Second, the best letters tended to be shorter. I know this is your shot at
the job, so you want to put it all in there. But a really well crafted,
well-thought out half page impresses more than a page with everything in
it. Anyone who's looking to hire you wants to know that you can
prioritize. What's the most important thing you have to say?

Third, the most effective letters were unapologetically positive. Never
diss your lack of experience or the quality of your work or talk about
your doubts. Almost any letter you write to a stranger is partially a
sales letter. Sell yourself to the person you're writing to. Why give me
reasons to doubt you?"

This second article is by some prominent screenwriters (behind Disney's
Aladdin among other things), about how to write a query letter, which is a
letter you send trying to entice people to read your script and turn it
into a movie.

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp38.Breaking.the.Ice.html

They write about the many mistakes you can make when writing a query
letter, but I find it more efficient to start by looking at someone
who has best practices (that was the one piece of advice my brain managed
to retain from a personal talk by Jeff Bezos we got as amazon.com intern)
He writes about the subtext that's present in even a short query letter,
and how often letters have the wrong subtext.

"The subtext we most hope to find -- beyond that great film idea in the
text, of course -- is:

'Here I am. I'm serious. I'm capable. I'm talented. I know the
business, and I'm ready to do this job.' "

Then they give a real example of such a letter (that manages to be "warm,
easygoing, straightforward, professional, funny, present the image of a
person that we'd like to meet and work with, all while staying on topic,
and be short, yet compelling"). Some excerpts, with their comments in
square brackets:

"I have very much enjoyed reading your Follywood columns and would like to
take you up on your kind offer to help promote a great script."

[This is a good start. A clear declaration of intent. It's
been personalized a bit -- the writer has read the Wordplay articles from
back in the old days on America Online.]

After the plot description:

"This is not my first stab at writing. A previous screenplay -- OK but
not great -- is currently under option by The Kaufman Company, Citadel
Entertainment (HBO) and another screenplay was a finalist in the Writer's
Film Project run by the Chesterfield Film Company."

[A nice bit of humility here, with the 'OK but not great' line. Subtext:
"I'm a nice guy. I'm not a nutcase." That subtext needs to be there, and
he's found a good way to do it.]

"Sun Dogs is by far the best thing I have ever written. I would like to
get it made -- and made as well as possible."

[This is a nice way to show confidence. Not a claim that the script is the
best script in the world, just the best thing he's ever done.]

(Jane Espenson has similar counterintuitive advice on her blog at one
point: "I'm big believer in high expectations. Tell people that what
they're about to read/see/taste will be wonderful and they'll tend to
perceive what they expect to perceive. This is why, every time I turn in a
script I proudly announce it's the best thing I've ever written.")

And the ending:

"In this spirit, I am searching for an agent to represent it. Any help
you can give me would be very much appreciated."

[A nice send off -- he's just someone who has a great idea and wants some
help, any help, in bringing the idea to life...Overall, there's a
no-nonsense professional feel to this letter.]

Finally, he signs it with the informal "Cheers", though it has the proper
formal letter stuff at the top and bottom.

You can read the whole query letter here
http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp38-xtras/wp38x.Sun.Dogs.html

From these essays, I conclude that these things are important in a letter
selling yourself:

- Signs that you know who it is you're writing to and are selling yourself
on the basis of their self-interest
- Prose that is concise and polished
- Avoids phrases that read awkwardly stiff or formal
- Communicates a bit about where you're coming from and a select few of
your most impressive concrete credentials
- No negativity (unless it's important for showing you're not a nutcase)
- Besides that, a general air of realistic confidence, expressing
the sense that you really believe in what you are selling and expect
that others, if not them, will want to snap it up.
- Crisp and polite openings and closings, not lengthy or grovelling.

Never Wait

A condensed version of this article from a website about screenwriting,
and written by Terry Rossio (behind the scripts for movies such as Aladdin
and Pirates of the Carribbean).

http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp44.Never.Wait.html

You shouldn't wait.
Not for anything.
Ever.
Commit these two words to heart, now:
Never wait.
Not only is life short, windows of opportunity are shorter.
What can you do about it?
Never wait.
Not only is life short, it's actually getting shorter.
Never wait.
Successful people don't wait. They don't get stalled on one step, one
issue, one project. They continuously go about the problem of creating
value. They're not interested in struggling and waiting, they're focused
on doing.

Waiting less isn't about becoming more intense, or rushed; it's about
finding an optimum flow. Look at the sky. That thing up there is a
continuously changing spectacular work of art, and it just doesn't get
enough attention. You're not waiting when you stop to smell the roses.

Waiting -- the innocent little sucker is a tiny little bundle of death.

Please don't be one of those writers who 'hope.'

Fuck hope.

I don't ever want to be a hopeful, I want to be a professional.

To have a career is like running a series of marathons end to end. You
can't thrill or despair every few yards; another few minutes and the
entire landscape will change completely, anyway.
Don't live on hope.
Hoping is way too much like waiting -- and you know the rule on that.

How to Take the Mystique out of Published Writing

Here's a trick to inspire you in writing: take some piece of writing that
looks impressive, such as a Nature article, use the text select tool
(assuming it's a pdf) and copy it into a Word document. Format it Times
New Roman double-spaced, 12 point. Suddenly your own prose doesn't sound
so far away from what the published professionals are writing. And it's
a good way to start the work of dissecting and reverse engineering a style
of article published in a specific publication so you can get in there
yourself.

I first figured this out when I started writing articles for the arts
section of the student newspaper. I would email them in, and then I'd be
startled to see how authoritative they looked when beautifully set out in
Quark XPress and printed on newsprint. I remember shortly thereafter
reading a Globe and Mail arts article, I believe it was a review of Stuart
Little 2, and mentally transposing it back into an email from its neat 1
1/2 inch column. It was some badly written, weak-ass crap! I was greatly
encouraged.

The Minimum You Need to Know about Negotiation

I recently sold my old iPod shuffle online, and when I went to meet the
purchaser I was all set to show her the unit and discuss price, but she
met me with an outstretch hand containing the money. I was prepared to
negotiate, so I was surprised and thought this was a tactical error on her
part. But I think I understand.

Of course there are lots of reasons why she might not have wanted to get
into it. But one reason is that she might have thought like I used to
think about negotiation: that it is some kind of begging, or
favour-asking. Since I read this book, The Mind and Heart of the
Negotiator by Leigh L. Thompson - the book which may turn out at the end
of my life to have benefitted me in measurable, monetary terms more than
any other book - I now know that negotiation is just rightful exercise of
your real power. And that is the power to walk away. (if you absolutely
can't walk away, if you *have* to make a deal right then and there no
matter how bad it is for you, then it's not a negotiation, and all you've
got is begging or asking for a favour)

A negotiation actually benefits both partners, because a failed
negotiation means both people lose out. If she had held out for a lower
price money, I would have either had to go with it or walk all the way
back to my office with no more money and maybe wait another few months for
someone else to respond to my ad. Much better to have the money in hand.
So that's power that she had.

The major way to increase your power in a negotiation is with information,
in particular negotiation about alternatives to making this agreement.
Nowadays with the internet this is very easy. So I sold it to her for $35
- I did a quick search on apple store and found you can buy a brand new
second-gen iPod shuffle for $55 directly from them, under warranty,
shipping in 1-2 days. She could have pulled out that fact to explain why
she needed a lower price from me to make it worth her while. That's what I
did, successfully, when negotiating for my replacement to that iPod
Shuffle (though I was foiled, as I talk about later) Doing that kind of
research is called finding a Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement
(BATNA).

Also thinking about the other person's BATNA could help. She must have
noticed I'd been listing it for over 6 months. At this point my
alternatives were to keep it for myself as an inadequate backup in case my
nano ever broke, or giving it to a lower-tech friend for free as a
present. So I might have been willing to go down as low as $15. But it was
important that she not know that.

That value of $15 was what is known as my reservation price, the price
below which it makes sense for me to walk away. As you can see it comes
directly out of my BATNA. So these are the theoretical dynamics of
negotiation: Both parties have a reservation price, which is unknown to
the other. They go back and forth making offers until the price falls
within the zone between their reservation prices, at which point they make
a deal (if there is no zone like that, the deal fails). Both parties
benefit, no one is being exploited. The game consists of trying to pick a
price that is in that acceptable range, but as close to the other person's
reservation price as possible. That's why you should never reveal your
reservation price, the absolute most you're willing to pay for something
or least you're willing to give it away for. My buyer made that mistake
when she wrote in her email, "I can pay $35, I can't go any higher!!"
Assuming that really was her reservation price, I was happy to have it. So
figure out your own reservation price going into it, but don't reveal it.

Making offers and counteroffers is the only real move in a negotiation;
the rest should probably be ignored. For instance people may whine and
moan about how much they paid for the thing they are selling - that
doesn't matter unless they make a counteroffer. Also saying "that's my
final offer" should probably be taken lightly, just go ahead and make your
counter offer. Never make a concession, a second offer, until the other
person has responded to your most recent offer. The Thompson book says
that studies have concluded that the person who makes the first offer does
not have any consistent advantage - unless the other person makes the
mistake of using that as their primary information about how much it's
worth. I think that's what happened with my buyer: I just checked my
facebook listing, and it was for $50, which was even more optimistic than
I realized. She thought knocking off $15 was a good deal, whereas I
probably would have gone for knocking off $35 (though I wouldn't have been
happy about it). Go for the absolute price, not how much off (though of
course I make that mistake all the time at the supermarket)

Something you can do to increase your power in a negotiation is to improve
your Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement. Besides finding out more
information, you can also start discussions with other people about how
much they're willing to give you. That's why you sometimes hear about
actors lining up offers for movies they don't really intend to do, just to
get into a better negotiating position to demand more money for the movie
they really want to do.

Another way to help your negotiation, for both parties, is to throw in as
many extra issues as possible, especially ones that matter more to one
party than to the other. For instance, if she was having trouble making up
her mind about a particular price, I was prepared to bring out the iPod
protective cover I had and add it to the deal. It would be almost
worthless to me no longer owning the iPod, but potentially valuable to
her. So if she then went for it, we would both win. The book uses the
example of negotiating for a salary, throwing in as many things as you
can. For instance vacation time might be something that is not too costly
to the company, but very valuable to you. Be creative in brainstorm as
many extra dimensions to the deal as possible.

You're probably thinking about how there are ways you can be dishonest in
your negotiation, particularly with regard to your reservation price,
pretending it's lower or higher than it is and not accepting an offer in
that zone of acceptability. And this was my other big misconception about
negotiation, that it was all about trickery and outsmarting the other
person. Almost every single negotiation I've seen in a movie or on tv
falls into that category. But in practice almost all of the thousands of
negotiations that happen each day are in good faith. The book explicitly
cautions you against trying to be sneaky, saying that it very often
backfires and you should concentrate on properly exercising your real
power.

The number one thing Ilearned through trial and error after I read this
book and was fired up about negotiating was *never negotiate unless the
other person is in a position to make a binding agreement*. Not a verbal
agreement. In practice, that means either negotiating right at the point
of making the exchange, or where some kind of legally enforceable contract
can be authenticated. I learned this when I was negotiating for an iPod
nano via facebook messaging. The seller bitched and complained but agreed
to the price. Then I never heard back from him. This happened again when I
negotiated for a whiteboard for the lab over the phone with what turned
out to be the teenage daughter of the owner of the laundromat, who refused
to give it to me for that price when I turned up to claim it. Another
important lesson: never make the mistake of negotiating with someone who
doesn't have the decision-making power. All this doesn't mean you
shouldn't communicate with the person before you start the real
negotiation - in fact depending on how big a one it is, it's a great idea
to build rapport and learn as much about them as possible. The important
thing is to not make any concessions before the negotiation begins, and
try not reveal anything that could help them guess about your own
reservation price. Which can take many tricky forms, but in particular
avoid revealing: how bad you want it, time limitations, what your
alternatives consist of. (of couse all the better if you can find out that
information about them) Best to be opaque and general when the
conversation verges on the deal itself, though enthusiastic about the
prospect of the deal.

Since it is not at all inherently dishonest, I think it always makes sense
to try to negotiate, unless there's a strict rule against it. Especially
for things that you're inclined not to buy because they seem overpriced.
You can always say, honestly, it's not worth it for me at that price, but
I'll give you X dollars right now for it. Now I'm surprised when people
aren't willing to negotiate: did you really list as your first offer your
final offer? Don't you have any optimism that people might pay more than
the absolute minimum price you're willing to sell it for? (have you
noticed that in this country, explicit negotiation is mostly only part of the
daily lives of people on the very low end of the socioeconomic status scale, drug dealers and other underground economies, and the very high end, CEOs and movie stars and
government ministers? Could it be that disdain for negotiation,
considering it not respectable, is a uniquely middle class phenomenon?)

Of course there are going to be cases where for whatever reason you don't
negotiate as hard as you could, that is, you refrain from exercising all
the power you have. One last tip I heard which makes a lot of sense: if
you can possibly get someone else to negotiate on your behalf (i.e. an
agent), that's better. Even though you're perfectly within your rights,
you could imagine some lingering frustration from them over not getting
the price they first wanted, and I can see how that would be best directed
at someone else if you're going to keep working with that party.

Mark B. Kristal's Suggestions for a Basic Research Career

It's rare that I encounter advice that's pitched at exactly the right
level for where I'm at in my life/career. This is such advice, and struck
me as excellent.
http://www.psychology.buffalo.edu/essay.shtml

Here are the best bits that I took away from it, in case this is taken
down:

--

* Establish an independent line of research as early in your career as
possible. If you can, do so even as a graduate student. Avoid the graduate
student's trap of thinking up experiments in other researchers' programs
that the other researcher has missed. Of course these are useful studies,
but do not form the basis of one's own independent line of research.
* Be problem-oriented, not technique-oriented. Use a variety of
techniques,
methods, and orientations -- whichever are necessary to solve the problems
at hand. Remember, technology comes and goes, but the underlying
questions are the meat of research. It is depressing to go to poster
sessions at the big conferences year after year and see the same questions
being asked over and over with different, more .cutting edge. techniques,
presented by people enamored of the techniques rather than the research
problems. If technology is so costly, in terms of equipment, learning
time, and other resources, how does one avoid the trap of becoming
technique oriented? The answer: collaborate.
* Think beyond the next publication, or even the next grant proposal. Take
the long view; look at the big picture. In other words, bite off a piece
of question that may take a decade, or even a career to answer. There is a
major difference between the scientist that wonders how to break the
question into appropriate sized grant proposals, and one who wonders how
to expand the question into a grant proposal. Furthermore, commit yourself
to your question; given the time and energy it takes to answer an
appropriate sized research question, pursuing a series of unrelated
research questions in parallel rather than in series is often a sign of
dilettantism.
* If you do basic research, keep your eyes open for applications of your
findings.
* Don't expect answers; expect more questions. Daniel Lehrman used to tell
us that a good experiment will raise more questions than it answers.
Perhaps non-scientists find this aspect of science strangely frustrating.
However, the lack of a final solution distinguishes the scientist's quest
from the engineer's.
* Never stop asking questions.
* Choose a problem that excites you. It should excite you so much that you
can't sleep. It should excite you so much that when someone asks you the
time, you blurt out your research topic.
* Strive for elegance in research. The elegance of an experiment is in
the quality of the thinking and the cleverness of the approach to
answering the research question, not in the complexity of the design or
the sophistication of the methods. Often, the most elegant experiments are
simple, low-tech attacks at the heart of the problem. Study classic
research in your field and appreciate the logic and thought that went into
it. All too often students nowadays ignore older research because it isn't
available online, or dismiss it for using old-fashioned techniques. There
is much wisdom and cleverness in some of those old papers. Reading them,
learning from them, and citing them, is real scholarship.

Work Break Programs

I have trouble remembering to take breaks and adjust my posture etc while
I'm working on the computer. Fortunately there are lots of programs that
can help with that. I'm currently using a simple, free, unobtrusive one in
the office called Big Stretch:

http://www.download.com/Big-Stretch-Reminder-Program/3000-2129_4-10844515.html

but there are many, many options for PC, both commercial and not. As usual
the options are a little more limited for the mac, but I found a nice one
called Coffee Break Pro X, which is both easy to use and full of smart
features and customization options - for instance it can actually lock
down your screen for a period of time to force you to take a break.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/16684

It costs $20 to buy it, but I found it to be worth it.

More Lessons from Barack Obama

A few quotes I found enlightening from a NY Times piece, "Barack Obama,
Forever Sizing Up":
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/weekinreview/26kantor.html?ref=politics&pagewanted=all

On how he's run meetings since he worked at the Harvard Review:
"Everyone contributes; silent lurkers will be interrogated. (He wants to
'suck the room of every idea,' said Valerie Jarrett, a close adviser.)
Mention a theory and Mr. Obama asks how it translates on the ground. He
orchestrates debate, playing participants off each other -- and then
highlights their areas of agreement. He constantly restates others'
contributions in his own invariably more eloquent words."
(it goes on to say he then goes away and decides, with the decision
sometimes a surprise to the people at the meeting)

On time to think:
"As a community organizer, he spent his evenings filling journals, trying
to sort out the day's confusion. During his seven years as a state
senator, he used the time driving between Springfield and Chicago for
contemplation; when staffers suggested that a candidate for the United
States Senate should have a driver, Mr. Obama resisted, saying the driver
might intrude. Hence Mr. Obama's fluster when he misses his daily gym
time. 'That's when he can get his mind straight,' said Jim Cauley, his
campaign manager in the United States Senate race."

On how he uses planning:
"Mr. Obama resists making quick judgments or responding to day-to-day
fluctuations, aides say. Instead he follows a familiar set of steps:
Perform copious research. Solicit expertise. (What delighted Mr. Obama
most about becoming a United States senator, he told an old boss, was his
access to top scholars: he was a kid in the Princeton and Stanford candy
shops.) Project all likely scenarios. Devise a plan. Anticipate
objections. Adjust the plan, and once it's in place, stick with it. In
part, this approach explains how Mr. Obama won in the primaries: he
exploited the electoral calendar and arcane differences in voting methods,
and while Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton continually tried out new
messages, Mr. Obama modified his only slightly, even when some supporters
urged more dramatic change."

Don't ask yourself "what's my passion?"

This is one of the most important posts I've ever read, and I may look
back some day to find it has changed my life. I'm excerpting it here so I
don't lose it.

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2008/10/why-it-might-no.html

----

I'm paraphrasing, but in part Dan Pink answered, "I never ask myself
'What's my passion?' That question is too huge. It's not helpful."

I think that's absolutely correct. One of my happiness-project resolutions
is to "Think big," but sometimes you can paralyze yourself by asking big,
unanswerable questions.

When someone asks me for career advice (and I've been known to volunteer
this advice, even unasked!), I say, "Do what you DO. What do you do
already, in your free time? Try to do that as your job." In my case,
although as a Supreme Court clerk I surely had one of the most fascinating
jobs for a lawyer, on the weekends, I was writing a book. This was a
helpful clue as to a profession I might enjoy. I have a friend who always
felt guilty in law school, because he was wasting so much time playing
video games; after graduation, he gave up a prestigious clerkship to work
for a - you guessed it - video game company.

A friend told me that she was going to try to get a job as an editor of a
women's magazine like Vogue. "Do you read those magazines?" I asked in
surprise. I'd never seen her read anything like that. "Nope," she said. I
didn't say anything, but I wondered - would she be good at helping to
create those magazines, if she never chose to spend her time reading them?

It can be hard to identify your "passion," but you can identify what you
did last Sunday afternoon. "Do what you do" is useful because it directs
you to look at your behavior, rather than to your ideas - which can be a
clearer guide to preferences. It's not possible for everyone, but to have
work that is play, and play that is work, is a very, very happy state.

How to Choose a Thesis Topic (according to Joan Bolker)

Author of "Writing your dissertation in fifteen minutes a day" (notice
that her opinion of the importance of topic choice contradicts the other
two authors):

* "Writing a dissertation is very much like being in a long-term
relationship: there are likely to be some very good times and some
perfectly dreadful ones, and it's a big help if you like what you've
chosen...If you choose your topic wholeheartedly, the writing process can
be a wonderful opportunity for pleasure"
* Choose a topic that's really going to matter to you: "follow your
curiosity, and, if you're lucky, your passion"
* Think and write about all the projects you've been involved with so
far, remember which were most fun. Do they have something in common?
"which sort of undertaking best suits how you like to work" Also what kind
of research you find most interesting to read.
* Find a model of a doable thesis for you
* Use advisor as a sounding board, especialyl about eventual job
search strategy in a topic
* One way to help choose a topic after you've done a fair bit of
groundwork: "Imagine finishing your dissertation and holding it in your
hand. Try naming it; play with titles that are clearly too outrageous, and
see which one most delights you." write them down
* Be writing every day all the way along, about ideas, what you've
read, problems, etc

How to Choose a Thesis Topic (according to David Steinberg)

From the author of ""How to complete and survive a doctoral dissertation".

* Excitement about the topic not that big of a factor in success,
since all dissertations run into similar sets of difficulties
* Essential questions:

Is it researchable?

* "One must be virtually certain that the data for the dissertation
will be available and accessible when the candidate comes around to the
collection phase of his project."

Especially timing is important, eg staff turnover rescinding access to a
population

Does it make a contribution to the field?

* "dissertation-as-too-little" or "dissertation-as-magnum-opus"
syndromes (magnus opus will come in 20 years)
* Just have to think & write about it, as well as talk to everyone

Is it original?

* What you should be looking for is daylight: after studying the
literature, and scope and ambition of other recent theses, "do I find a
hole, a gap, a missing link that my topic can contribute to plugging,
bridging or forging?"
* Again, talk to all faculty, like a travelling salesman
* Don't worry very much about being "scooped"
* Topics rarely come by chance for real: "topics almost always come
out of extensive soaking in the literature and prior research of one's
field, and are traceable consequences of that immersion"
* Expansion of a master's thesis from a dissertation not really an
easier option
* Never pick a topic with the assumption that a particular faculty
member is going to be there all the way through! It must stand on its own
* As much as possible, discuss dissertations that appeal to you with
their authors. They're almost always willing to share their time and
dissertation experience, esp within the first couple of years (often
noticeably more helpful than faculty)
* Be cautious of opportunities to use spin-off data - what if the
grant is cancelled or the faculty member leaves?

How to Choose a Thesis Topic (according to Robert L Peters)

It's that time now to return focus to my thesis. Hence it's helpful to get
a little perspective. Here's my notes from "Getting What You Came For: the
smart student's guide to earning a master's or phd"

---

* Don.t just worry about it, .ideas are generated by intellectual
cross-fertilization and the process of problem-solving. To find a topic
you must dive into research, discuss the ideas that interest you with as
many people as possible, and write about the subjects as much as you can..
* Start as soon as possible, you never know when a hint in a class etc
will come your way. Ask professors for suggestions, examine course
reading. Whenever you come across anything interesting ask yourself,
.could this be a dissertation?.
* PhD at least is original research which means to do at least one of:

1. uncover new facts or principles
2. suggest relationships that were previously unrecognized
3. challenge existing truths or assumptions
4. afford new insights into little-understood phenomena
5. suggest new interpretations of known facts that alter our view of
the world around us

* Think thesis question. A question intriguing enough to take a year
to answer. Begin with a major question, develop subordinate questions that
help you answer it, and plan and refine along the way research to answer
these questions.
* There are thousands upon thousands of thesis topics that will work
great for you, so it.s easy to find one if you search actively.
* Think of yourself as an apprentice - .At this stage, you aren.t a
great master who will find the secret of the universe. Originality does
not have to be spectacular, but can expand on existing research. People
hiring probably looking for dependable specialists who are well trained by
good mentors.
* If your advisor chooses the project, check it out by the criteria
below. But many advantages if you are working on the same overall endeavor
as your advisor

Don.t worry if nothing interest you

* .interest develops from immersion and activity. Luckily, people have
an amazing ability to become interested in almost anything once they are
working on it

Get perspective by reading theses and articles

* Use the best as models. Note aspects of. Go to other universities
theses.
* Start reading through journals in your field for possible topics

Phone research

* Speaking briefly to the top people in the area, asking to recommend
names. [Is this polite now? What is the best way to contact people in the
area?]

Start a research project

* best way to generate ideas is to be involved in an ongoing research
project

Use your professors

* Ask all of them

1. What are the hot areas in the firld?
2. What were the best theses written during the past few years?
3. Do they have projects associated with their research that could be
good theses?

Start a topic file

* Throw all ideas into one folder, then after a while start to have
folders for each possible topic as you flesh them out. Thoughts, notes
taken on discusssions with professors, relevant journal articles. Review a
few minutes each week so the search stays in the forefront of your mind.

Crteria for evaluating potential thesis topics
Does sufficient background information exists?

* do a lot of research on this (phone, computer)

Is the topic narrow enough?

* Be as specific as you can, easier to broaden a narrow topic

Has it been done already?
Is it tractable?

* Will it work in terms of the practicalities? Make sure every part is
possibile.
* Consult a statistical expert (power issues).
* How long will it take?
* Is it fundable? A good idea to do preliminary research to show that
it.s possible...
* Is it hot? find out this by talking to profs and reading current
journals.
* Avoid fields full of theoretical controversy.

Criteria that might affect your chances of getting a job.

1. Allow you to show off your background knowledge of the field
2. Focus on a narrow enough topic so that you can become the expert
3. Provide a springboard for future research

Start Writing immediately.

* "Writing is the best way to initiate, organize, and extend ideas."
* Start by doing a adetailed evalutation of each topic for

1. financial support
2. interest to you
3. extendability after completion
4. controversy
5. time to complete
6. "hotness"
7. advisor's enthusiasm
8. Closeness of topic to advisor's research
9. depth of existing research
10. duplication or uniqueness
11. narrow focus
12. tractability, including availability of research subjects or
materials, existence of preplanned experimental methods, degree of
methodological difficulty, and simiplicity of statistical design.

* For each topic under serious consideration, write an outline thesis
proposal: ask the major research questions, outline experimental or
reserach steps. This is good for showing to advisor and other for
comments, since it's specific.
* Live and breathe your topic to the point of being annoying. Talk to
everyone. Get immersed in planning. Draw in reserachers outside your own
university.

Maybe Events

When deciding whether you can do something on a given day, you have to
look at not just what you have to do, but what you might want to do that's
going on that day. This is tricky if you adopt, as I have, the GTD notion
that your calendar should be used only to block off time that you're
actually committed to, like for meetings and classes etc, thus defining
hard edges to the landscape of your flexible time (that is available to be
managed). I discovered creating "no time" calendar events on the days
where something is going on is really useful for this. I prefix these
"Maybe Events" with an "ii" (the easiest letters to enter on a palm
pilot). That's to distinguish them from other no time notes, like when I
have library books due. Now when I see a poster or get a facebook invite
to something coming up, like a concert or talk or party I'm not sure
about, I add it to that day as a maybe event, making sure to include the
address, time, and cost - all factors that could influence whether I
decide to go for it. To plan my weekday or weekend, I look at the entry
for that day, with all the maybe events stacked up at the top (7 for this
weekend alone) and sort it out.

Advice to a Young Scientist by Ron Weisman

I recently benefitted from the best "how to be a scientist" talk I've
heard since I hit graduate school (and started trying to be a scientist),
from the colourful, distinguished animal behaviour researcher Ron Weisman,
who I'd met before but never had much contact with. The advice that
follows is very specific to science, and some of it only applicable within
psych. To start, here are my notes and key excerpts from the paper he
published on the subject,

Weisman, R. G. (2008). Advice to young behavioral and cognitive
scientists. Behavioural Processes, 77(2), 142-148.

(he's working on a book)

- The most desirable approach is to begin with extensive observation of a
behavior in nature, move ahead to laboratory research, and then return to
nature to ensure that you have it right.
- My advice is to use as many tools as necessary to discover and explore
nature's secrets. [but think collaborators]
-You should not design your observations and experiments to test only one
hypothesis at a time. You should be testing as many alternative hypotheses
as there are ways for your experiments to come out. Think ahead about what
an experiment's possible outcomes might mean. If an experiment has only
two possible outcomes, one that renders it interesting and publishable and
one that renders it problematic and unpublishable, you have not designed a
good experiment. Anticipate the possible outcomes of an experiment and
tinker with the design until each of at least three possible outcomes has
a distinct and orderly explanation.
- Reviewers like to ask direct questions, such as, "Why did you do your
study in the way you describe?" For example, if your groups differed in
both pretreatment and treatment phases, a reviewer is very likely to ask
why you attribute the effect to the treatment phase. Reviewers also like
to ask about alternative explanations of your results. At the design
stage, you need to consider and sketch out possible outcomes so that you
can anticipate even an astute reviewer's alternative hypotheses about your
results. To conduct first-class research, you must consider and handle all
or at least most of the reviewers' possible questions well before
conducting the research.
- If you have waited eight or more weeks, you need to write the editor
politely requesting an action letter. Some authors have waited a year or
even two - don't join them. After 12 weeks, inform the first editor that
you are withdrawing your manuscript and submit your article to a second
journal.
- Once you have the editor's action letter and the reviews, read them
quickly, then put them away for a couple of days to let the heat go out of
them. No one likes criticism, and reviewers are critics, so the heat you
feel is unavoidable. However, don't wait more than a couple of days to get
back to your article as you have a lot of time and sweat in the
submission. The revision should be the highest priority item on your list.
Get the article and the reviews back out on your desk and begin to
organize the reviewers' comments under the topics the editor asked about.
Print out copies of the action letter and reviews, and work from the
copies to make an outline of your revisions and your cover letter for the
editor.
- Respond to reviewers' comments incisively and succinctly....Try to
answer in just a few words or at most in a sentence tucked into the
paragraph from which the comments arise. Beware of protesting too much:
never insert a paragraph, or worse yet an entire page, into an article to
answer a reviewer's comment. Sometimes it is best to paraphrase a
reviewer's comment, then either agree that it is an issue for further
research or point out how your research has already handled it - all this
in a line or two. If you must directly disagree with a reviewer, make it
as tactful and convincing as possible. Editors are rightfully biased in favor
of their reviewers. Bury your disagreements with reviewers deep in the
cover letter well after many instances of willing change.
- Every resubmitted article needs a cover letter; it should be highly
organized, carefully written, and keyed directly to the text of the
article by page and line number.
- Never make uninvited changes to your article
- You must be prepared to handle objections and I counsel you again to
give in as often as possible.

And some non-overlapping notes from the talk he gave, unfortunately not
capturing any of his very entertaining delivery. Love his approach to
drafting papers!

- Success in science requires a combination of luck and fire in the belly.
(if you can do a whole experiment without once looking at your data, you
might not have the fire)
- Not only must you have luck, but you must know when you've been lucky.
- Causation questions:
Proximate - mechanism
Phylogeny
Ontogeny
Ultimate - functional adaptation
You should be constantly thinking about all of them.
- Don't compare everything with everything. Base tests on the designs,
otherwise lose power.
- Stats secrets: if unequal variance, you can do two separate analyses. If
you can get invariance of p values over tranformations (e.g. to rank
order) you don't need normality.
- In-school proposals are for chumps and robots (robotic committees). Do
the shittiest job possible. The person who knows what to do well enough to
write a well-detailed proposal has already done the research. Proposals
for money are a different matter.
- Positive controls are critical: they let you falsify.
- Get and keep your participants' attention: prompts, rewards, whatever.
- How to write a paper: in this order: 1) methods, 2) figures, 3) results
to explain the figures or table, also at least outline the discussion. 4)
Intro (never use proposal intro) 5) finish discussion. Then revise the
whole article with linking and concluding sentences.
- Stick questions and summaries about your results in another file on
another monitor as you write, which becomes the discussion.
- Intro prepares the reader for the methods, results and discussion.
Prepare the reader all the way along for the conclusion.
- The writing scientists do is like brick laying, it's not like carving
marble.
- Memorize about 20 pages of Strunk & White.
- Make strong claims (not "it seems") - you will still get cited even if
you're wrong.
- Suck up to editors and reviewers at meetings and elsewhere. Helps if
they can put a smiling face to a name
- Pick a journal that publishes work like what you've done. Also pay
attention to impact factor. If rejected, try sending it to a better
journal.
- You must respond quickly and forcefully to the invitation to revise and
resubmit. Don't wait more than a couple of days to get back to your
article. Top priority.
- Revise & resubmit means they'll porbably take it.
- Cover letter to editor: "Reviewer 1 asked us to relate our work to
Jones's 2008 article, we now do so on line xx, page xx." Nothing more.
- Write a thesis as 3 or 4 papers stapled together.
- For postdoc, pick the best universities and the best supervisors, in
that order (for name recognition). Begin early and suck up big time. Write
professors directly and ask about their work. But think through your
questions and keep them simple. Get your supervisor to help. Remember:
it's impossible to overflatter academics.
- You go where the good job is (even the gates of hell)
- When you're hired, always bargain for more money.

How to Memorize a Poem

Last year, just a little too late for the fall, I took up the task of
memorizing John Keats To Autumn. Why? I don't know. But I love the poem,
and I love having it memorized. Now I am endeavoring to learn a turgid
piece of prose for the Andrina McCulloch Public Speaking Competition, and
I am reminded of some of what I learned in that process. Here's some steps
and principles that were very effective for my brain:

- First, break it into chunks to learn separately, by general topic or
gist. I copied the poem into a word file, and added a double paragraph
break every time I felt a slight change of topic. This could happen after
several lines, or in the middle of a line.

- Next, make sure you understand the literal meaning of every word, and
every sentence, in the text. This gave me lots of unexpected rewards for
To Autumn, and made me realize I hadn't ever listened to it that closely.
For instance the line "where small gnats mourn among the river sallows", I
realized I had mentally interpolated "river shallows", like the shallow,
muddy part of the river. When in fact "sallow" is an old word for willow
tree! That makes a totally different image, which I find prettier.

- Beyond just the literal meaning, strive to get a vivid, specific mental
image of what each part is referring too. Google images is really useful
to this. For instance "barred clouds":
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2368/2327983768_194f6c7692.jpg?v=0
and until I found an image, I couldn't picture fruit hanging on "vines
that round the thatch-eves run" Of course it doesn't need to be an
accurate image, in fact it's probably better if it's an absurd one. The
important thing is to make a decision about what it means. I even drew a
little map for the second verse, deciding where I thought the granary was,
the half-reaped furrow, the brook, and the cider press. It should be an
extremely clear and complete picture, as striking as
possible, and accounting for every single non-abstract noun. Think not
just vision, but sound, touch, taste, and smell. I really don't take the time
to form mental images while I'm reading usually, but it's so
important for remembering.

- The whole basis of my learning it was to assume that no word was there
by accident, each word was absolutely essential and changed the meaning a
lot. So that played a part in the images I constructed. I tried to
exaggerate it so that every adjective and verb choice would seem even more
necessary, like "to swell the gourd", I pictured a squash inflating like a
balloon. (it reminds me a bit of "Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote":
this approach to memorization is almost like setting you up to feel like
you are writing the poem yourself from scratch, and each word that comes
next is just the most obvious to capture your meaning) Try to get yourself
into the emotional headspace of the poem at each point, and greatly
exaggerate that too.

- Beside every chunk I wrote a couple of words trying to capture what that
part was about. For instance "sunset clouds" beside the chunk "where
barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day and touch the stubble plains with
rosy hue". The idea is to always be adding more and more funky structure
and meaning to the poem.

- If you have trouble remembering the order of the chunks, the ancient
"method of loci" works amazingly well. I know because I used it to
memorize the order of the 10 verses in bob dylan's desolation row. You
take your route to school, or some other route you know incredibly well,
and you attach each chunk subsequently to a landmark along that route.
While I was learning Desolation Row I literally taped verses to trees,
lampposts, and garbage cans. Then you can mentally trace the route, and it
will give you the order with perfect ease and certainty. It's even easy to
recite the chunks backwards: just mentally walk the route in reverse!

- Finally, there doesn't seem to be any substitute for drilling: going as
far as you can, or as good as you can, before referencing the source paper
again. After awhile I could drill myself without the piece of paper, just
saying it to myself, out loud or silently.

It takes a surprisingly long time to get every word right, but it's not
particularly hard work, and it's already brought me a lot of pleasure.
Once in a while I'll just recite it to myself while I'm washing my face or
riding my bike, like a mantra, enjoying making the mouth-shapes for the
words. I'm glad I have it this autumn, and hope I didn't learn it too old
to not have it for every autumn from now on.

Keep Your Exhaust Pipes Clear

I just emptied my office garbage and recycling, as I do every single
friday. I think this is one of the most important things to help with
having a tidy, organized environment: always having your garbage and
recycling within arms reach, and almost all the time less than 50% full.
If they're more full than that, my brain starts to generate subconscious
resistance to putting things in there; if I have to force it down onto the
heap, I am more likely to absent-mindedly put my kleenex or whatever on my
desk (getting up and emptying it as needed would be even worse, for the
large disruption of flow) If there's not a regular, well-defined set of
processes taking garbage and recycling from your hand to out of the house
or office, crap will build up at the different stages, ultimately leading
to clutter and paralysis right where you don't want it, like sewage
backing up. When it's working good on the other hand, in the middle of a
work flow you can just reach over and instantly eliminate some piece of
clutter from your space and your mind, forever. So even when other
cleaning jobs fall by the wayside, I empty those wastepaper baskets like
clockwork!

A Few More Quotations about Feedback

Giving your opinion of their opinion extends the conversation, makes them
too invested in putting their mark on the script, and it commits you
mentally to changes you may later realize aren't really what you want. You
should be in receive mode, not implement mode, at this point. Flip the
switch back from "listen" to "do" after the conversation, and after you've
had time to let it all sink in. - Jane Espenson

Don't confuse asking for your friends and colleagues' advice with
listening to unsolicited advice. Input from fellow artists is always
great, and it never dilutes your vision, because you only need to listen
to the helpful stuff. - Patton Oswalt

Cleaning Cycles, or, Filth Wizard No More

Ok so I haven't fully tried this one out, but I'm excited about the
idea and so I want to get it down.

I am a slob, but I want to fake not being one. My plan is to use my own
likes and quirks, well documented on this blog, to make sure all those
cleaning jobs get done, and regularly. And to do that with hardly using
any willpower at all - I need 99% of that for my work. And not guilt
either.

Basically how it's going to work is that I made a master list of jobs, and
I've divided them into categories by how often I need to do them. So in
the end each job has its own period, in days and weeks. I will program a
reminder into my palm pilot to repeat at that period, and whenever one
pops up it's going to become a top priority todo item until I actually do
it.

The other important part is that I am writing out *exactly* what each job
involves, in as many steps as it takes, just like the cleanup sign I saw
posted behind the counter at the Tim Hortons. Lazy and easily defeated, I
like to know when a job will be done; exactly what it will require; and to
have very simple concrete steps I can follow. Here's an example of one:

Washing the Floor
NEED
All-purpose cleaner

SUGGESTED TIME
Just after tidy, sweep-up. Monday evening.

STEPS
- Fill up bucket of water in bathtub halfway, with suggested amount of
all-purpose cleaner
- All chairs and other objects in bedroom onto bed
- Put everything onto couch, in bedroom or in hall (or bathroom). Shoes
onto table, move table.
- Mop livingroom and kitchen
- Spot clean any kitchen bits that weren't gotten with paper towels or
washcloth
- Empty bucket and refill, with detergent
- Mop bedroom
- Let dry for 1 hour, dump out bucket
- Put everything back

ESTIMATED TIME 30 mins + 1 hour to dry + 10 minutes returning objects

NOT
under bed
Too far under desk

ALTERNATIVE TECHNIQUES
None (yet)

And so on, for all the jobs.

Further decisions I made to make this system work:

* Cleaning is separate from tidying. Too often my ambitions start to
snowball, and then I will abruptly lose energy in the middle, which is why
I've had a tesselation of clothes on my bedroom floor (that used to be in
my closet, which I was cleaning out) for the last 5 days. So I can e.g.
wash the floor without actually tidying up, by putting everything into a
huge pile. And then even redistributing it on the floor afterwards if I
wish.

* I will stagger the first time I am doing each of these jobs, so as they
repeat they will tend not to pop up in the same weeks.

* If I do a job earlier than expected, I don't reset the counter, but get
to wait till the next scheduled time, so a bit of a break from that job.

* I am not telling you the length of the cycles, because some of them may
be embarassing. The purpose is to start out with easy, long cycles, and
then tighten up as I find I can actually do it. Even so all the
frequencies are much, much higher than my old, shame-based system.

* I will decide on some things that I won't clean, ever, until I move out
or there is a royal visit. This is mostly a list of things that I won't
clean underneath or behind.

* Also, I don't have to do any cleaning that's not on the list.

* I won't sweat it if things don't get perfectly clean, as long as I carry
out the steps. I hate how there are a few little particles even after I
mop (at least the way I mop), but it's still a big improvement over non
mopping.

* All these records I'm keeping in electronic form, so I can continually
modify them with experience. In particular tricky cleaning jobs like the
stove drip pans, I might try one method one time and switch to another
another time, until I find one that works for me. The knowledge is
cumulative and stored not in my head, so I don't ever have to think about
cleaning supplies when I'm not doing the job.

If this works out, I will still be the guy who, at any given time, can't
be sure that his t-shirt is jam free, but whose apartment is fit for
company - with a 15 minute head start, and a certain amount of
closet-cramming.

Steps for Creating Publication-Quality Figures Using Matlab 7 and PowerPoint (2003 edition)

As with the Excel method, my objective here is to be able to make changes
to the data or the presentation of the data without redoing huge amounts
of fiddly work or presenting figures which are no longer accurate
representations of the data. My particular goal is to never again find
myself shifting around the spacing of axis ticks and tick labels in a
graphics program by hand.

First, in Matlab:
- Get the figure looking as close to how I want it as possible. Since
Matlab figures are generated once and not linked to their data, it is best
to generate every aspect of the figure, down to fonts etc, from a script.
Ideally going all the way from the raw data spit out by your experiment
program to the nicely formatted end result. There's a command File ->
Generate M-file that could probably speed up the process of making these
scripts.

- Sizing in the ballpark of what you want in the end. Again the things
that are easily to do in powerpoint:
* Extra bits of text
* Extra graphics applied to it
* Any other tricky modifications or overlays
* Combining different figures (though if arranged in a strict grid, use of
subplot may be easier)

- Copy the figure to the clipboard in Enhanced Metafile format. Normally
Edit -> Copy Figure would do that automatically. But in most cases you
will not want to do that. As I discovered, although it is stored in a
vector format on the clipboard, the default command discards some of the
data in your figure. Specifically any more data than is needed to draw the
data at screen resolution. So if you have smoothly changing lines in your
figure that you want to print nicely, use instead this command:

print -dmeta -r600

It's exactly the same as doing Copy Figure, but only discards data below
the 600 dpi resolution. (note that exporting directly to an EMF file and
then importing seems to have this exact same problem)

Then in PowerPoint, follow most of the same steps as pasting an Excel
figure:
- Make a slideshow with 8 1/2 x 11-shaped slides, and dotted lines
indicated the maximum width for the figures

- For each figure, go to Paste Special, and choose Picture (Enhanced
Metafile). This seems to make a difference. Place the figure approximately
where it should go.

- Ungroup each (saying yes to converting to a microsoft office drawing
object), then ungroup again. For figures with multiple axes, you may have
to ungroup a third time.

- To resize the graph (while keeping all the axis ticks and tick labels in
place), select just the data area and the axis tick labels, not the axis
titles or legend, and group, then resize. I sometimes had to move around
the axis titles a bit, and for the matlab imports, sometimes the axis
tick labels.

Finally, on a test print two issues came up with both matlab and excel
generation of plots: both had lines making up the axes that were too thin,
so don't forget to change that (possibly in the source), and there was
also a hairline drawn around the entire figure (for some goddamn reason)
so make sure to ungroup and delete that box.

Steps for Creating Publication-Quality Figures using Excel and Powerpoint (2003 edition)

This is of fringe interest, and soon to be invalidated technology
probably, but I'm damned if I'm going to figure this out again.

First, in Excel:
- Autogenerate the figures in Excel based on my data. (use a previous
figure I made as a template if there's one that applies, that

- Important: Right click the middle of the chart, go to Format Chart Area
-> Font, and uncheck Auto scale. That way I can choose the font once,
and it won't change every time you resize the chart!

- Get it looking exactly the way I want, with the exception of:
* Extra bits of text
* Extra graphics applied to it
* Any other tricky modifications or overlays
* Sizing only in the ballpark of what it needs be. It looks like it's
actually easier to match the sizes of multiple plots to each other in
powerpoint, because you can enter in the dimensions of objects numerically.

Now in Powerpoint:
- Make a slideshow with 8 1/2 x 11-shaped slides, and dotted lines
indicated the maximum width for the figures (I'm submitting to Perception,
which uses 1.675 inch margins for figures, including all the text
associated with them.) Easiest if I put the dotted lines into a master
slide, so it automatically shows up in any new slides I create. Also a
good idea to turn on Snap objects to grid (which you can define the
spacing of), and Display grid on screen, in View -> Grid and Guides.

- Copy each figure to a separate slide from Excel, placing it
approximately where it should go

- Ungroup each (saying yes to converting to a microsoft office drawing
object), then ungroup again. This gives me the ability to fiddle with each
element of the figure individually. Moving multiple at once, and the Align
object commands are particularly handy at this point.

- To resize the graph to fit the area, select just the data area and the
axis tick labels, not the axis titles or legend, and group, then resize.
I sometimes had to move around the axis titles a bit.

Complicated! But fast once I got the hang of it, and allows for the most
important aspect of all: small changes, to the data or the formatting of
the graph, without doing everything all over again.

Your Home From Home

I got back from a conference in London this week, where my shabby little
dorm room let me try out a principle I thought up the last time I was
staying away from home. At that time I noticed my bed & breakfast room was
a horrible mess, after only 2 days, and I was having trouble finding
stuff. I realized there's only one solution to that for me - the same
exact solution as for me at home. And that's attention to flow, and
processes. I realized I should set up a mini version of my home system
whereever I am, *even if only for one night*. I already know how to use
it, and so it's just a matter of setting up each of the components. And
here is that minimal set:

* A place for clean clothes
* A place fpr dirty clothes
* A clothes chair for the ones that don't fit either category (see the
limbo laundry entry)
* An inbox (for when I come home from a day at the conference and want to
just dump stuff - in this case it was just the corner of my desk)
* A garbage and/or recycling within easy reach.
* An out box - a location I put stuff that I want to remember to take the
next day.
* A "going home" out box. This is the only element that is special to the
away from home scenario. Here I put stuff I don't need to think about till
it's time to go home.
* A "temporary support" location, for things that I will need to make use
of for short-term projects.

These show that I'm now definitely leaning towards the "take everything
out of your suitcase right away" side of the issue. In about 15 minutes,
once all those things were in place, my UWO dorm apartment was a
functioning helpful organism, just like my home and office (well they are
that some of the time)

One additional thought I just had: if you're remembering various things
you want to pack a few days before a trip, why not toss them in your open
suitcase? It's taking up space anyway, might as well use it as a bin -
then the distance to move the stuff before you repack will be particularly
short.

Colour Coding to Help Intense Reading

A great contribution from friend and fellow grad student Liz Arsenault:
--
Our lab holds small journal club meetings once a week where one member
leads a discussion on an article of interest. Everyone reads the article,
but only the presenter has any obligation to be very familiar with it.
When I am preparing to present an article, I like to underline the points
of discussion in colour-coded felt-tip pen and highlighter.

The procedure is way too intensive and time consuming for articles that
just need to be skimmed, but I've found it very helpful when I need to
know an article inside and out.

1) I colour code premises, methods, results, people, terms, and
definitions*. This allows me to quickly locate the answers to things that
can slow down discussion like misunderstandings on the finer points of the
methods, clarify terms/acronyms, etc.

2) Colourful felt tip pens are something I find motivating. It's fun to
do, and it's fun to look at.

3) It makes the amount of work you've done obvious to your supervisor ;).
Anyone can underline anything that looks like a declarative statement in
pencil. When it's in a lot of colours, it's clear you've done your
homework.

4) Reading looking for these sorts of information makes me approach an
article in an appropriately analytical frame of mind. Unfortunately, I
can't read science as easily as a novel.

5) Tracking people (authors, big citations) makes it possible to build an
understanding of which people work together championing which sorts of
ideas, and reminds me to look at author webpages to look for other papers
I might find relevant.

6) I'm trying to work out how to go through all my term and definition
highlighting to build a personal glossary of my area of study, and this
should also help me to detect when people use same terms to indicate
different things or when they use different terms to indicate the same
things (the latter happens a LOT between psychology vision papers and
computer vision papers).**

Granted, there are major headings for results, methods, conclusions in
most articles, but often some of these things are phrased most succinctly
in the abstract or results in the discussion, etc.. Plus, when you're
flipping through several pages (as long as you aren't colour blind),
looking for pink pen is a lot quicker than skimming looking for the
"methods" heading.

I will let you know of my other brilliant processes as they develop ;).

Take care, Liz

* Order of importance:
1) terms
2) premises
3) results
4) methods
5) people
6) definitions
... the lower priority elements get dropped depending on how quickly I
want to process the article.

** A psychological benefit of doing this is seeing yourself highlight
fewer and fewer terms as you become more proficient in an area of study.

How Obama Used Feedback

From a fascinating New York Times profile a few days ago:
(one question: what does "favoring a hand on the shoulder" mean?)

--

"You don't go from being a community organizer to running for president in
15 years unless you have a lot of ambition," said Paula Wolff, a Chicago
Republican and a mentor. "He likes to listen carefully, and naturally you
assume that's very smart of him."

If there is an art to seeking advice, Mr. Obama holds a master's degree.
He favors a hand on the shoulder, a whisper in the ear. In 1996, when he
pondered a race for the Illinois Legislature, Jean Rudd, a mentor in the
foundation world, took him to lunch with a prominent lobbyist. The
appetizers had no sooner arrived than the lobbyist framed the question:
Why would a Harvard-educated lawyer want to step into a hellhole like
that? You'll leave your wife behind, you.ll be in the minority party,
you.ll be treated like dirt. Mr. Obama chuckled and asked questions. The
lobbyist later became an adviser.

Abner J. Mikva, the former judge, asked Mr. Obama, fresh out of Harvard,
to apply as his clerk. Mr. Obama declined, preferring to labor as a
community organizer. But, characteristically, he later befriended the
older man.

The judge recognized his talents, but oh that speaking style. Too many ers
and uhs, too Harvard and not enough South Side. Mr. Obama did not argue
the point; he began paying attention in church. [to learn public speaking]

--

By contrast, in a jawdropping interview on Fresh Air Scott McLelland
revealed that Bush hates to have opposing viewpoints from his own
represented in his advisory groups, and never reads opinion pieces he
doesn't agree with.

Life Advice from the Last Lecture

"Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic
cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a
packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, 'Really Achieving Your
Childhood Dreams,' Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice
to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo
(it's about 1 hour and 15 minutes, and enormously engaging and moving)

Much more than the time management lecture, these notes are no substitute
for watching him. Partly that's because what might seem like flat
aphorisms are just the punchline to rich stories from his career. And
partly because what really strikes me is the metadata: the context, the
manner of speaking, the life itself. My reaction was, this is a nerd made
good. Unlike some of us analytically-minded guys who are attracted to
computer science like he was, he reached outside himself, to find what are
the really important things that make up a life. And over and over he
defines it in terms of human relationships - technology is a secondary
(though important) player. There are three major things he shows off, that
I am currently trying really hard to incorporate into myself, and wish I
had started long ago: Appreciating people, being positive, and defining
and expressing who you are so strongly. Right at this moment, would I be
able to express so strongly who I am and what I'm about, what my story is,
if I suddenly had my own opportunity to give a Last Lecture? What an
inspiration.

---

Brick walls are there for a reason: they let us prove how badly we want
things. They're there to stop the *other* people

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals. You've got to get the
fundamentals down, or else the fancy stuff won't work.

When you screw up and no one's bothering to correct you anymore, that
means they've given up.

When you do something young enough and train for it, it just becomes a
part of you.

Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted.

It's very important to know when you're in a pissing match. And it's very
important to get out as quickly as possible.

That's one of the reasons you should all become professors: It's because
you can have your cake and eat it too.

Course called building virtual worlds: 50 students from all different
departments. (art, design, drama, and CS) Randomly chosen 4 person team,
change every project ("three new playmates"), two week projects, 5 per
semester.

What to do when they completely blow you away on the first project? "That
was pretty good, but I know you can do better." You don't really know
where the bar is, and you're doing them a disservice by placing it
anywhere.

ETC curriculum: "5 small projects followed by 3 big projects. All of your
time is spent in small teams, makin' stuff."

Project-based curriculum
Intense, fun student experience
Field trips!

Alice: "Millions of kids having fun while learning something hard. And
that's pretty cool. I can deal with that as a legacy."

He painted stuff all over his bedroom walls. To anybody out there who's a
parent, if your kids want to paint their bedroom, let them do it.

"Randy, it's such a shame that people perceive you as so arrogant. Because
it's going to limit what you're going to be able to accomplish in life."
What a hell of a good way to word "you're being a jerk."

Particularly with middle school girls, if you present it as a storytelling
activity they're perfectly willing to learn to program computer software.

Decide if you're tigger or eeyore
Never lose childlike wonder
Help others

How to get people to help you
- Tell the truth
- Be earnest (I'll take an earnest person over a hip person any day,
because hip is short term but earnest is long term)
- Apologize when you screw up
- Focus on others, not yourself

Get a feedback loop, and listen to it. When people give you feedback,
cherish it and use it.
Show gratitude.
Don't complain, just work harder
Be good at something, it makes you valuable
Find the best in everybody. It might take years, but people will show you
their good side.

[the lecture is ] not about how to achieve your dreams - it's about how to
lead your life.

Wonka :: "Do you know what happened to the boy who got everything he ever
wanted?"
Charlie :: "No, what?"
Wonka :: "He lived happily ever after."

--

Finally, from his equally moving (and much shorter) commencement address
at Carnegie Mellon this May:

You will need to find your passion. Many of you have done it, many of you
will later, many of you will take until your 30s and 40s. But don't give
up on finding it. Because then all you're doing is waiting for the reaper.
Find your passion, and follow it, and if there's anything I've learned in
this life, it's that *you will not find your passion in things.* And you
will not find that passion in money. Because the more things and the more
money you have the more you will just look around and use that as the
metric, and there will always be someone with more. So your passion must
come from the things that fuel you from the inside... that passion will be
grounded in people. It will be grounded in relationships with people, and
in what they think of you when your time comes.

My Citation Management System: Refinements

Unlike the system I talk about in the 3 previous blog postings on citation
management, these are things that are out there on the fringes of my
system, stuff I'm still tinkering with.

--

* My someday/maybe reading list was getting too long and intimidating, so
I started putting in a fake entry at the end of every month to divide it
into manageable monthly chunks. So may just passed, I created a new blank
reference in there with the title "2008 MAY" so all references I added
between the start of may (designated by "2008 APRIL") are nicely
delineated.

* My physical paper management system, which predates my general filing
system, was breaking down. I keep papers in hanging files by topic area.
If I were starting all over again I might use Jim's system of putting them
in manila folders by first author name in alphabetical order, but it's
nice to be able to scoop up a whole handful of a particular type of paper,
and hanging folders are much more sturdy. That's the problem though,
some are bulging. (though like with my manila folders, I make sure to have
plenty of empty ones within arms reach, so I can create a new one on the
spot) A couple of embarassing incidents of not being able to find a paper
made it clear I need to do better in indexing my printed-out papers.

I created a new field called Filed under, where I enter in the heading on
the tab for the hanging file it's in. What really makes this work, makes
it quite practical to (eventually) go through all my hanging files and
enter the Filed under in the corresponding citation entry in my Read
database, is a neat feature of endnote called Term lists. With just a
few minutes poking around in help and menu items, I figured out how to
make it so I would only have to type the first letter of a hanging file
name, and the rest of it would pop up in the field, just like it works for
author names in endnote.

So now whenever I have a few minutes when I have absolutely nothing else I
could be doing, I grab a couple of my hanging files and make sure all the
papers have entries in my databases and have their Filed unders filled in.
I also sort the papers in each hanging file by first author. So now (for
the ones I've done anyway), it's a snap to go from the citation entry to
the physical paper.

* Sometimes in doing a lit search I run across papers that are completely
irrelevant to my research but have too good titles to let slip away
forever: "A triangular theory of love" "Does Aerobic Exercise Decrease
Brain Activation?" I can stop myself from reading them on the spot by
throwing them into a new database I made called Interesting.

* By painful experience, I can easily read a paper and then have
absolutely no recollection of it just a couple of months later. Therefore
though it's cumbersome, I *must* keep notes on the papers I read, at least
if I'm ever going to go back to them. I tried many different ways to do
it, some electronic, some paper, but the best thing so far involves using
endnote again. In the Research Notes field, I type in what I call the
Gist. This is as few words as I can type to encompass everything I would
want to refer to this paper for. Sometimes that's a lot, including lots of
experiment details. Sometimes it's one sentence. However it almost never
looks anything like the abstract: first of all its in my own language
("...therefore, they say, feature integration theory is whack.") and
second it's what I got from the paper that was new and semi-surprising,
not everything that was in there. So it's customized to me and my
interests.

This takes effort for each paper that I read (though it doesn't mean I
have to read at the computer: I tend to jot brief notes at the bottom of
pages with a pen that I can then mindlessly transcribe into the system
later) but ultimately it saves a great deal of tiresome effort. Recently I
had to review an area (rapid visual categorization) and I was almost shed
tears of gratitude realizing I had filled in the gists for all 3 of the
key papers, and so would not have to even glance at the originals, let
alone read them through. A job that could have taken 2 hours (assuming
total amnesia, which is far from impossible) instead took 15 minutes.

Of course this means my endnote Read database is even more precious and
needing of being backed up.

* Somethign that goes great with entering gists in EndNote is creating
custom output styles to help generate neat reports on groups of papers.
It's easy to make a bibliographic list in APA format, just by selecting
multiple citations and choosing Copy formatted. But now imagine the power
of being able to create an output file with all those citations *plus
their abstracts*. This is easy to do: just make a copy of say APA 5th
style, go to Output styles -> open reference manager (this is all EndNote
X specific), click to edit your style, go to Layout under Bibliography,
and in "End each reference with" click Insert Field and add the Abstract.

I created another one based on APA 5th called Gist Output, which lets me
see the gist info that I've entered. It's particularly great for seeing
output in the preview pane when I select a reference in the window. Rather
than using the Layout mechanism, I changed the Bibliography templates
directly. So it looks like (this is for the Journal Article entry)

Author. (Year). Title. Journal.

Research Notes

(with title in boldface, and journal in italics) The disadvantage is that
you have to repeat those changes for all the different reference types you
might want to use.

Hacking output styles is great, because it lets you quickly and easily
output sheets of info, including gists/abstracts, for any subset of papers
you want. You could print out pages with all the abstracts from Trends in
Cognitive Science for a year, a great way to skim the literature. You
could choose two or 3 to have in gist form for an important meeting. Etc.

Time Management from a Professor with Three Months to Live

I've been tremendously inspired recently by a lecture by the
computer science professor Randy Pausch called the Last Lecture - which it
almost literally is, since he is dying of pancreatic cancer. But before
putting up some of his life advice from that, even more core to the
purporse of this blog is a wonderful talk he gave about time
management, also after he was diagnosed (skip the first 8 minutes of
introductions):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758&hl=en

Here are my notes from watching this, mostly to jog my own memory, but if
you don't have time to watch the whole talk you might be able to get some
ideas out of it. But I just wrote down a few of the items of maximum
surprise to me - you will probably pull different things out of it, so its
well worth watching, and fun too. One gratifying aspect is that he's
obviously absorbed Getting Things Done - its telltale signature shows up
in a couple of places.

---

If you're going to have to run with people who are faster than you, you
are going to have to find the right ways to optimize the skills you do
have.

I think it's very dangerous to focus on doing things right. It's more
important to think about doing the right things. If you do the right
things adequately, that's much more important than doing the wrong things
beautifully.

You can always change your plan, but only once you *have one*!

On a to-do list, do the ugliest one first.

Do the important/due soon items first - but then, instead of doing the
unimportant/due soon items next, do the important/not due soon items next.

Touch each piece of paper once.

Have multiple monitors. "I could go from 3 to 2, but I could not go back
to 1." (compares to working on a airplane foldout tray) Left monitor is
todo list, middle is email inbox, right monitor is calendar. Then just one
project on the desk.

Use a speakerphone for when you're placed on hold.

Stand during phone calls (so that they will be brisk). Start by announcing
goals for the call. "I have 3 things I want to talk to you about." Trick
for getting off the phone: "I'd love to keep talking, but I have some
students waiting." Don't call people when you have work you're avoiding;
for the same reason, call people before lunch and at the end of the day so
they have a motivation not to chat for a long time. Headsets are a good
idea too so you can do other things.

Write physical thank-you notes, not just for obvious things like gifts.
Put a stack from the dollar store on your desk.

I can't live without post-it notes.

Don't put comfy chairs in your office, except for yourself. He put folding
chairs in his office against the wall, so conversations would be standing
unless he graciously opened one.

Gentle "no"s: "If nobody else steps forward, I will do this for you"
Moving: "Hmm, that sounds like an 8 person job. If you give me the names
of 7 other people, I'll do this for you."

Find your creative time and defend it ruthlessly. Spend it alone, at home
if you have to. Find your dead time, schedule meetings, exercise, stuff
where you don't need to be at your best.

Find ways to make interruptions shorter and less frequent: emails rather
than phonecalls. His phone routes to a message that says "please send me
email" When someone interrupts you, say first of all "I'm in the middle
of something right now." or "I only have 5 minutes" (followed by "Well I
said at the beginning I only had 5 minutes and I really have to go now")
For people who don't leave, you get up, you walk to the door, you
compliment them, you thank them, and you shake their hand. If they still
don't get the hint, just go through that doorway yourself. Clock on the
wall, so you're not checking your watch.

Time journals. Monitor yourself in 15 minute increments for between 3 days
and two weeks. Update every 1/2 hour, not at end of day. Categories on
graph paper, make ticks. What am I doing that I could delegate, what don't
I need to do, what could I do more efficiently, how am I wasting someone
elses time.

For time that is hard to deal with, like a 1 hour block between classes,
make up a fake class: Go to a specific place in the library with your
books.

The time to aim for is right before the deadline; right at the deadline
has a lot of unnecessary costs (e.g. fedexing it). Make up a fake
deadline. Two reasons for procrastination: I'm afraid I'm going to be
embarassed because I don't do it well, and I'm afraid I'm going to fail at
it.

The right way to delegate: give them authority with responsibility. Give
them everything they're going to need: budget, time, etc, so they don't
have to keep coming back. Always do the ugliest job yourself. SPECIFIC
thing to do, SPECIFIC date *and* time, and a SPECIFIC penalty or reward,
for THEM. Delegate until they complain. Underdelegation is a bigger
problem. Followup meetings with two-line emails restating stuff (like
agreements). Give them objectives, not procedures. Tell people the
relative importance of various tasks. Dodge upward delegation: don't learn
how to do selected things.

Meetings should have an agenda (if there's not an agenda I won't attend),
never more than 1 hour. Someone designated the scribe, in one minute write
down what was decided and delegated, and email it out to everyone ("one
minute minutes")

If the person hasn't responded to email in 48 hours, it's ok to nag them.

When on vacation, have a message that says either "call this guy to get
your problem solved" or "call me back when I get back." It's not a
vacation if you're reading email.

Turn money into time at every opportunity. Hire people to do things.

Never break a promise, but renegotiate if necessary (before the deadline).

Most things are pass/fail. It doesn't have to be that good.

How to Ask for, and Listen to, Feedback

"If you recall, my basic advice on this topic is to listen to notes
without reacting negatively in the moment and to think about the ideas
underlying the notes. When you approach your rewrite, you'll find ways to
supply what the reader found lacking or correct what they found
out-of-tune that you will never find if you bristle and bridle when you
first hear their reaction, or if you react to the 'letter' of what they're
saying without making sure you understand the 'spirit' of it."
- Jane Espenson, screenwriter on Buffy, Firefly, Gilmore Girls, The O.C.,
and Battlestr Galactica

Unaided experience is a poor teacher, I heard that somewhere and it's
true. What is the most important kind of aid I need in shaping myself into
the scientist I want to be? Feedback. If you have any personal ambitions
to get good at something, you have an enormous hunger for feedback. Here
are some tips for obtaining the kind you need, of maximum helpfulness.

* Wording. Here are some ways you could word a request for feedback, in
ascending order of your likelihood of getting it: "Pretty good, huh?" "Did
you like it?" "What did you think of it?" "What were the good and bad
things about it?" "What's something that worked for you, and what's
something that didn't work so well?" "I'm thinking of making some changes.
What are some things I could change to make it better?"

* Facial expression. Keep your face mostly relaxed and intent, maybe
nodding once in a while. Don't smile in response to things you like,
because then it will be obvious when you don't like things by the lack of
smile.

* Make it clear you are looking for *feedback*, not encouragement. Convey
that you're not going to get discouraged, you're going to keep going with
the project, no matter what they say. It can't touch your ego, one way or
another.

* *Under no circumstance* argue or make excuses - people will see that as
a sure sign you're not taking it as feedback but as judgment, since you're
arguing your case. Of course you might be sitting there thinking "this
feedback is idiotic." But don't let on.

* Ask questions (again not looking for reassurance) to clarify and to show
you're taking it seriously. Ask about specific parts you want feedback
for. Ask either/or questions, trying not to bias them towards one side or
the other in your wording: like "Did you want to see more of this
character or less?"

* Teach the difference between feedback and judgment. I
don't care what you thought of it overall, if you thought it was good or
bad: just tell me your reactions to different parts, and any ideas for how
to change it to make it better.

* At the same time, don't necessarily ask them for solutions (definitely
don't complain about how hard those problems will be to solve).
Their thoughtful reactions are what is most useful. In tv writing
terminology, people might say that some aspect of the script "bumps" them
- gives them a bad reaction, even if they can't articulate why. Here's
Alex Epstein, another successful screenwriter whose blog I love:
"All feedback is useful, if you know how to use it. If someone has a
problem, there is probably something wrong with your script, though it's
not always what they think is the problem. But most people's suggestions
on how to fix your script are crap."
The only people who can really help with how to fix it most of the time
are people who are good at the exact task you are toiling at. Those people
are gold.

* Tell them what level of feedback you want. If a friend is kind enough to
read a piece of writing and give notes, I'll be frustrated if they're
proposing sweeping changes to the theme and structure when it's well past
the point where that's possible. Conversely, if they're picking up on
typos when it's an early proof-of-concept type draft, that's also
annoying. So let them know your expectations.

* Finished stuff is more fun to read than something really messy and
preliminary, something to think about.

* Remind them to also mention things they reacted positively to, if
they're the type to zero in on the problems and just jump all over them
the whole time. Hearing what worked is useful, and it definitely helps me
to (secretly) feel better afterwards. (in toastmasters, where I learned
most of this stuff, we sometimes use a formula for feedback called the
"sandwich technique": start with specific positive points, put in a few
(not too many) points of improvement, then finish with some more specific
positive points)

* Coach them to talk in terms of specifics rather than generalities.

* Ultimately the best feedback you will get are from relationships you
will build over a period of years. It takes time to make people believe
that serious feedback of a particular nature is really what you want, that
you're not thin-skinned. And also that it will be worth their while, both
by seeing that they have a tangible effect on the final product (maybe),
and by showing that they are earning the right to your own high quality,
sensitive, kindly, thorough feedback. So it becomes an escalating ladder
of trust, going back and forth between you and these most valued of all
peers. (as a side note, giving unsolicited feedback is usually a bad idea,
risks being rude and condescending. So solicit feedback!)

* Say thanks!