Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, I recommend that and his other book.
What's the other book?
Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
71–80 of 189 posts
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#72As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
As academic with the tenure job, I don't think it gets easier with the tenure -- you'll have to do more non-research stuff, admin, teaching, supervisions, grading, grant writing etc. (some people like it, but I just prefer research) I do have burn-out certainly that appeared after I had a faculty job for a few years. That mostly has affected my overtime research work, which previously would take most of my free-time,…
Yeah I’m not sure I’d go the tenure route anyway. I’d rather do research than manage people doing research on my half-baked ideas. Fortunately, in my field, there’s options to publish as an industry research. Unfortunately, those jobs dried up last year along with all the other tech jobs when I was searching.
I guess the tricky thing (maybe it suggests it’s not burnout but some other source of depression) is that I haven’t been motivated by my hobbies either. It’s been hard to find much joy in anything as of late.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in a similar position. At the end of my PhD I feel like I want to drop out. I do ML research and I just lost faith in the academic system. Research is my absolute favorite thing to do but everything else surrounding it I just absolutely hate and it feels draining and worthless. Ideas get dismissed without explanations (even after asking), publication process is incredibly noisy and when you get a nonsensical revi…
Sounds like we are in a similar boat :-/
I'm really sorry to hear that. It's fucking rough. But I'd encourage you to speak up if you do agree about the systematic issues. I think the existing momentum is strong and because there is enough success most people do not feel the need to improve the system and failures (like me) blame it on themselves (like me). But I think I can be a failure AND the system can be bad too.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the other book?
The other book is, "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" https://www.amazon.com/What-Care-Other-People-Think/dp/03933... I particularly liked it for the in depth discussion of how Appendix F came to be written. https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm
Yeah, the Feynman in this book is more human, more vulnerable.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#75I can just imagine this in his voice (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYg6jzotiAc ) Feynman is my favourite physicist. Of course you could pick someone else, you could argue about the relative importance of each person's contribution to scientific knowledge, but it was his aimiability, playfulness and curiousity, combined with the fact that he _did_ break new frontiers in quantum physics that make him so inspiri…
He's one of the scientists being recruited from a university (they address him by name).
He also says something about building a cyclotron when they are constructing Los Alamos.
And he sits behind a window of a car or truck during the atomic test blast.
That's all I spotted
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#76As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
> First, there’s not really other jobs I’d rather do. I suspect there are many jobs you would do, but you have to allow yourself to let go of the dreams, the ambitions, the identity you have built in academia. A few years ago, almost seven, I decided to leave academia, after a PhD and many years as a post doc, more than 50 journal papers published, awards and recognition in my field. I loved doing research, writing p…
This is true for a surprisingly large number of people. It's very easy to lose time in a post doc that's not either fun science or advancing your career in a high ROI way. Many post docs don't have the experience and diversity of perspective required to recognize this trap, and nobody around them is incentivized to help. This is true whether you're planning to stay in academia or not.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#77Based on his biographies, I think that Feynman had ADHD. He never demonstrated an ability to do things because he thought he should do them. And, as this story shows, trying just resulted in a demotivated and unproductive Feynman. On the other hand he accomplished great results when pulled by desire. Especially in the form of play.
Surely You Must Be Joking does a great job of showing how he kept coming back to play throughout his life. Everything from lock picking at Los Alamos, to playing the bongo drums.
What Do You Care What Other People Think has an extended description of the creation of Appendix F about the shuttle disaster. See https://history.nasa.gov/rogersrep/v2appf.htm for that. As someone who has been in the state, it is clear that he was in a state of hyperfocus. I've never matched what Feynman could do, but it comes as no surprise to me that he'd realize that he could get away with learning about a topic others didn't want him to learn, because he could do so quickly enough that they wouldn't believe that he'd possibly have learned it.
I highly recommend both books, Appendix F, and of course, https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm. (If psychologists had followed up what he said 50 years ago, the Replication Crisis would have been discovered 40 years earlier than it was. Oh well, missed opportunities.)
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#78As a researcher, I’ve felt largely the same way lately. It’s been hard for me to even wrap up a project I was so excited about when I started it that I missed sleep because I was that engaged. Unfortunately, I don’t have a cozy tenure position at a major research institution to ride out the burnout until I feel inspired again. I’m just a lowly postdoc. I’ve thought about leaving the research life for a regular job, b…
You could try going on an adventure, ideally a real one that is a little bit dangerous.
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#79I have a similar approach to side projects. I have a day job (that is fun btw) and then I spend nights and weekends "playing" with code with no expectations. This has worked well for me and I LOVE this setup!
The alternative would be to raise VC and work full-time on a half-baked idea. :cringe:
Re: Feynman: I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything (1985)
#80Incidentally, the faucet problem is neat! You can solve it with high-school level physics and analytical geometry ("pre-calculus").