Productivity & Learning
CDPR — Frontlab
Being productive, learning, and doing all of it in a good mood and without stress is possible — as long as you follow a few rules and stay aware of a few things.
1Learn to dissociate
It is hard, but try to stay as conscious as possible of the difference between:
- where you can produce value, and
- where you still have to learn — the part where it is not reasonable to expect yourself to produce value yet.
This distinction is essential to break down your time and your tasks correctly.
2Take a step back before diving in
Before getting nose-deep in your project, ask yourself these questions about the work in the CDPR team.
A. What types of data do you work on?
Datatype schemas — to be added.
B. What types of processes do you apply, and what skills do they require?
Process schema — acquisition, preprocessing, and analysis stages with the associated tools at each step.
Keep in mind that, in the end, everything comes down to:
- querying data (easy once it is in BIDS and well formatted),
- processing data,
- visualizing and summarizing data.
C. If you don't have a skill yourself, how do you get it?
Within the team? Outside the team?
3Keep perspective
Academia is a highly selective environment. Work with passion — but stay grounded.
- No ego. You are (very) brilliant, that is certain — but you are also certainly not the best.