How much do you read in a day? How much do you remember? As a scientist, one of my main jobs is reading papers. This is to learn about new work in my field, understanding the methods of others, and getting ideas for my own work. I also love reading fiction, which I do every...

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More is more. Not better and not progress. More is more. It’s an easy default to act on instead of asking subjective and difficult questions such as: Am I spending my time doing the things I care about? Am I searching for more because I don’t know what else to do? Why do I feel...

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If you’re like me, you have a lot of projects going on. I currently have multiple research projects for my PhD, my webcomic Handwaving, my monthly essays here, and some other personal projects in the works. Not only that, but a few of these are open-ended. They don’t have a completion date. And even when...

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One of the truly sad parts about academia and science is that as you go deeper and deeper into a subject, the circle of people who speak your default language shrinks. Academic siloes are real, and they prevent many scientists from taking a broader perspective of their work and communicating to those without a research...

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How do you contribute to science? My instinctual answer for so long was: become an academic and publish cutting-edge research, pushing humanity’s knowledge forward. This seemed pretty obvious. My reasoning was that scientists are the ones who do the science, so of course that’s the way to contribute. It was part of why I continued...

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I think one of the main mistakes I’ve made in the past is discounting the role of people in how much I will enjoy an experience. Whether I was trying a new activity, thinking about work I wanted to do, or pondering which topic I should study, I would focus on the thing itself, and...

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When I was an undergraduate first getting into research, I focused on hiding my lack of knowledge over growing from my confusion. I would often nod along while my supervisor said things I didn’t understand1. I would fool myself into thinking that I could figure it out from context. I didn’t, since these were technical...

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Working on cutting-edge science is fun, but it’s even better when you can do it with a bunch of enthusiastic scientists who push each other to their potential. Having a group of scientists working on a single goal means its easier to move past barriers that might have blocked a scientist working on their own....

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When I was a budding graduate student looking for a supervisor and a research direction to pursue, I had little idea of the scientific landscape. I had a bit of research experience as an undergraduate, but not much. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I began by looking at the websites of several researchers, trying to see if anything excited me. I spoke to some of them about how I was thinking about joining…

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The best way to speed up your code is to figure out which parts are running the slowest. If you spend two hours halving the speed of part A in your code, but part A only takes up two seconds of a minute computation, you’ve shaved off one second. On the other hand, if you spend a few hours halving part B which contributes to the other fifty-eight seconds, then your computation time is only…

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