On the reg

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The OTR team have been travelling around the country, and around the world, delivering workshop goodness.

Jason was temporarily at the Canberra Branch of OTR Team on the way back from a Sydney gig, so Inger set up a podcast studio from the kitchen table to hear about his glamorous post-Latrobe life, complete with $10 cups of coffee in Hong Kong.

The team discuss the usual, you know AI in project management, writing and all that. ChattieG (ChatGPT) helped us with the work problems segment. Chattie had some thoughts why some people have a hard time doing the low key writing exercises Inger has in her workshops. Turns out, the perfectionism is real. 

This one is off the hook people. We were constantly interrupted by meetings, Thesiswhisperer family members making coffee and the dishwasher being on in the next room.

Despite all this, the sound was... not too bad! 

Things we mentioned
Rich Academic / Poor Academic

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason is living his best life, free of Latrobe - but Inger has immediately put him to work! On The Reg Team, their new consulting company, is struggling to life through multiple stages of paperwork. More to come...

The team talk about various doings, including Doen's Jnr's laundry skills, Inger's campaign to get a Puppy and getting caught up in the Blue Screen of Death global IT meltdown!

There's a full mailbag with some side dashes of Claude before the team embark on the central question: how can you be a less crap manager in academia? God knows, we need them - we have many Thoughts.

Reading hasn't been high on the agenda, but there's still a two minute tip or two at the end!

Stuff we mentioned:
Inger's blog post on how AI is saving her 12 hours a week
Alison Hardy's podcast
@thehulry on Threads
Open AI is Testing Its Powers of Persuasion - Wired Magazine

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

The On The Reg team have been busy with All The Things. In Jason's case, making salami and in Inger's case, possibly signing up to one too many book projects.

In the mailbag we marvel over dashboards for packing lists and cool new AI tools recommended by listeners.

This week Inger read Cal Newports's latest book 'Slow Productivity: the lost art of accomplishment without burnout' where Cal (maybe?) discovers the point of unions and even name checks Marx. The team segue onto an article about workplace burnout, which is a good pastry course accompaniment.

There's some two minute tip action at the end where Inger confesses that she's now in a love triangle with ChattieG and Claude.

Hey - we teach workshops now! If you want us to come to your uni, check out what we do!

Stuff we mentioned:
Boring headshots
Level up your essays
Chipolo
The Helmut Rosa book Daniel recommended was 'Social Acceleration'
Expanso
Alternativeto.net
Consensus
Teachable
Slow Professor
Bristol Stool Chart
Cal Newport's podcast
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance
The Extended Mind
Inger's survey of academic work
Slow professor review on Thesis Whisperer
5 ways to deal with burn out at work

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason has consciously uncoupled from his employer. Inger's getting a Volvo. There is clearly a lot to discuss in the first half an hour, including the survey that Inger finally has out (participate here!)

Jason's had some time to wrangle the mailbag, so he's cleaned up Inger's mess and made a spreadsheet. People have a lot to say about our travel episode and we are ready to hear it!

In work problems, Jason brings Inger up to speed about Apple Intelligence and we have a chat about AI, privacy and the fact that Inger seems to be saving 12 hours a week by outsourcing to Claude...

Jason had to go to coffee, so there was no time for mailbag, but if you have kids, stick around for a top tip about AI study buddies!

Stuff we mentioned:
Kaitlin Salze's omni focus website
Trippit
Apple intelligence video
Blue Ribbon Foundation
Style: 10 lessons in clarity and grace (so expensive! Library I reckon)
(Inger's survey on academic work)

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason is having some time off work to get his health back in order. Inger takes the opportunity to share the whole story of her burn out episode. Be warned, this one gets a bit heavy...

We lighten it up in the middle by responding to Ben's question about travelling with a laundry list of suggestions and hacks. Inger confesses her bag and spare cord obsession and Jason reveals his genius hack for making a personalised guide book. There's a lot of love for AirTags.

In this show we also launch our new email address! See the footer for more information - non stop excitement here at On The Reg HQ!

Stuff:
Slide deck of Inger's teams's employability research
Doing doctoral research at a distance
Inger's bookshelves on Insta
Inger's Crumpler bag
Muji Packing cubes
Anylist App
Chipolo cards
The Dip by Seth Godin
Developing theory through qualitative Inquiry
Cindy Dee's books on Romance Tropes
Cyclic Sighing: Balban, MY, Neri, E, Kogon, MM, Weed, L, Nouriani, B, Jo, B, Holl, G, Zeitzer, JM, Spiegel, D & Huberman, AD 2023, ‘Brief structured respiration practices enhance mood and reduce physiological arousal’, Cell Reports Medicine, vol. 4, no. 1, p. 100895.

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Inger and Jason convene for the long awaited mailbag episode! (but first there's a bit of old-person whinging about health and other stuff).  Inger explains how she and Narelle wrote a 36000 word book in a single weekend with Claude.

The mail bag is full to overflowing! There's gold in there - which prompts a very wide ranging conversation about Bujo, task managers, screen capture software,  politics and - well, the usual stuff. The speak pipes failed after the first one... (which is also a bit quiet for reasons Inger can't work out), so we'll have to bring you these next time. Enjoy!

Stuff we mentioned:

Rich Aademic / Poor Academic book
A blog post explaining what Rich Academic / Poor Academic is about
Narelle Lemon's Explore and Create Co website
Alternative to (software information site)
So. Many. Feelings sticker book for bujo
Kaitlin Salzke Omnifocus plug ins
Omnivore book marking app
Kindle highlights plug in for obsidian
Obsidian web clipper
Taskade
Quit by Annie Duke
Co-intelligence by ethan mollick
First rule of mastery - stop worrying what other people think of you by Michael Gervais

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

It's been quite the month.  Jason was pulled over in the Tinny (again),  Inger had a mole taken off her foot. We skipped the mailbag in favour of a deep nerd chat about Obsidian starting at 32:51. The discussion gets waylaid part way through by a mutual existential freakout about Claude Opus. It's... a lot. Enjoy!

Things we mentioned:
Kangaroo time - Winner of the Dance Your PhD competition
Be visible or vanish - the book Inger wrote with her colleague Simon Clews
PostAc (on Inger's research page)
Quit by Annie Duke
Mac Sparky Field Guides
Building a second brain and PARA from Tiago Forte (and his post on Tags)
Markdown explainer
An article Inger wrote about Claude
One useful thing blog from Ethan Mollick
Inger's sample 'coffee Vault' (down these files from Dropbox and point Obsidian at it to open)
Marie Kondo's life changing magic of tidying up
YAML explainer
Marked2 (markdown text convertor)
Scrivener
Elicit
Connected Papers
literature review matrix explainer
Zotero

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Jason had pneumonia when he recorded this very long pod with Inger.

It's a testament to his brainy-ness (and Inger's sound engineering skills) that it turned out as well as it did, given he coughed and sweated his way through it.

Warning: in the chat section at the top there's a lot of talk about TEQSA. If you're confused, here's their webpage. Jason was too sick to do mailbag, but please keep sending in your letters and speak pipes!

At we switch to our work problems section (26:04)  Large Language Models (LLMs) - we recommend you have a look at our Discussion Guide as we talk, or after you get back from your walk/gardening/gym/cooking or what every you are doing. You can read the briefing note that Inger wrote for her boss here.

We skip the reading section and  coast out with some two minute tips (1:38:22)  for planning large complex tasks and reading all the instructions before you start doing a thing.

The good news is that Jason did not die of his pneumonia and is back on his feet again - phew!

Things we mentioned:

On the Reg discussion guide for this episode (free to share)
The briefing paper Inger wrote for her boss on how researchers are using ChattieG
Timothy Snyder On Tyranny Book
Manchester Phrase Bank
Randy Olsen 'and but therefore' writing tip is in 'Houston, We have a Narrative'
Team Human podcast

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Inger and Jason are at the end of the holidays. For Jason this meant going to a hash den in Thailand (it's a long story) and for Inger it meant organising all her rococo style porcelain figurines (yes, really).

The mailbag (18:53) is full of interesting letters and provokes only one moment of feminist rage from Inger. Ok, maybe two.

In the Work Problems segment (56:35) Jason gives us an alternative way to think about the year ahead with the VRIO model from Jay Barney and there's  quite a lot of talk about late stage capitalism.

Reading time (1:24) Inger's been reading romance books about audio p*rn stars (you read that right), while Jason has been reading about how to be younger. In the Two minute tips  (1:38) Inger shares her library thing project and Jason talks about his State Of Mind.

Then the first episode of season 5 was in the can- can you believe it?!

Stuff we mentioned

Thesiswhisperer on Instagram
Why so slow, on the advancement of women
Invisible women: exposing data bias in a world designed for men
Tiago Forte's PARA book
McSparky's new productivity field guide
Plain English Podcast episode with Oliver Burkeman that enraged Inger
Counter Productive by Mel Gregg
Mind the gap in the literature blog post on Thesis Whisperer
Fated Mates podcast
Can I tell you something? (romance novel)
The productivity Project by Chris Bailey
The man who invented Hitler
Younger next year
Library Thing 

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site

Can't be bothered with email or speak pipe? Text us!

Inger and Jason recorded an episode at 9pm at night on the 15th of November, before Inger took off for the UK. Inger was meant to edit and post this sometime in December, while travelling in the UK, but due to the vagaries of wifi and Christmas shopping, she ended up doing it at Heathrow airport on Christmas eve.

So look, it's a little bit ... unplugged?

But at least it's short (well, for us) and there's some good stuff in here - including a surprisingly long digression on KanBan boards. We figure there's got to be some dishwashing or gardening to do over the Christmas break when you can enjoy this nerd out. Happy Christmas to all who celebrate (and we hope the rest of you get a well earned break too).

We'll be back sometime in January :-)

Things we mentioned

Article Kevin sent us about leaders and managers
Personal Kanban: mapping work, navigating life
Mind the gap in the literature
Capacities app
Obsidian Field guide by mcsparky

Leave us a message on www.speakpipe.com/thesiswhisperer.
Email us:

Jason is having a break from the Socials, but you can still find Inger as @thesiswhisperer pretty much everywhere. You can read Inger's stuff on www.thesiswhisperer.com.

It costs us about $1000 a year to produce this podcast. If you want to support our work, you can sign up to be a'Riding the Bus' member for just $2 a month, via our On The Reg Ko-Fi site