14th Anniversary

It has been 14 years since I've started this blog and as per tradition, I write a blog post reflecting on stuff. It's a loose tradition since some years I didn't write anything. When I do write, it's usually about something new I've learned and/or started practising since the last anniversary post.

Recently, I've been spending more time reading and thinking about working more efficiently. This involves learning about project management, (software) engineering principles, and how to be more disciplined. Through all this, I have really started to appreciate (and love) articles like Ten simple rules for quick and dirty scientific programming and Ten Simple Rules for Effective Computational Research. I think everyone realises the importance of best practices in software engineering for bioinformatics; it's just that we are incentivised to generate results, write manuscripts, and publish, so we don't get around to learning and using Git or writing tests for our code.

This bring me to the main topic I wanted to write about, which was something I discovered while reading Clean Architecture by Robert C. Martin. It's about how to prioritise work using something called Eisenhower's matrix (also known as The Eisenhower Method). It looks like this:

Important
Urgent
Important
Not urgent
Unimportant
Urgent
Unimportant
Not urgent

Of this matrix, Eisenhower said:

I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.

For a researcher the most urgent task is probably getting a grant and/or fellowship. Nothing else really matters because without those, you'll be out of a job (and out of money). And the key to grants and fellowships is publishing. Teaching, mentoring, and reviewing manuscripts are all important but they are not urgent because they don't play such a big part in whether you'll have a job or not.

Then we get to blogging, which is probably not important and not urgent for most people. A long time ago, I wanted to write Ten Simple Rule for bioinformatics blogging but in the end thought it was a bad idea since blogging probably isn't going to get you anywhere, so I shouldn't recommend it. But I've kept at it for 14 years now simply because it's rewarding for me to be able to help someone else out. It is also a great way for me to learn because in order to explain something, I really need to understand it. And a lot of the times my blog really is a reference for myself.

I don't think I'm going to stop blogging now. A couple of years ago I might have given up but with the rise of LLMs I would like to see more content that's not just some regurgitation of uncredited work. I would like to read something that has a nice personal touch to it. I would like to read something original. And maybe if I keep blogging it might inspire others to do it too, even though it's probably not going to get you ahead in life.




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