The Collector's Fallacy

There’s a tendency in all of us to gather useful stuff and feel good about it. To collect is a reward in itself. As knowledge workers, we’re inclined to look for the next groundbreaking thought, for intellectual stimulation: we pile up promising books and articles, and we store half the internet as bookmarks, just so we get the feeling of being on the cutting edge. Let’s call this “The Collector’s Fallacy”. Why fallacy? Because ‘to know about something’ isn’t the same as �...

 Research Subjects Expand Naturally on Their Own

John Washbrook, who was himself a senior academic in the department, took me under his wing and he told me something that very important. He said, "Just start something, no matter how humble." This is not recall; about programming, this is about research. But no matter how humble and unoriginal and unimportant it may seem, start something and write a paper ab about it So that's what I did. it turned out to be a very significant piece of advice. I've told that to every research student I've e...