Ten tips for a better concentration
One of my New Year's resolutions was that I would be working hard towards a better concentration and focus. My attention span is extremely short, and I have never been able to stretch it longer. I am not sure if…
Building a Successful Career in Scientific Research by Phil Dee – Book review
It's been more than half a year since I read this book, but the main plus of this book is that it is written in such an entertaining and funny way. The material from this book just stayed better in…
7 ways to motivate yourself
Do you find it hard to meet your self-imposed deadlines and work on your personal goals? Well then, this post is for you and covers my way of meeting my own deadlines and goals.I've become really good at meeting my…
Literature review – The sequel
I previously wrote about my method of tackling the giant mountain of papers I want to read for my literature review.As suggested in the comments, I changed my way of organizing the printed copies of the papers. Instead of having…
How to handle a large amount of literature
These days, I am less busy in the lab (my setup needs to be changed so I won't be carrying out experiments for about a month), so I've totally dived into my literature review again. Since I am trying to…
Mindfulness – your thoughts as leaves on a stream
I've practiced the leaves on a stream guided mindfulness exercise today to keep up my new year's resolution.Even though I'm far from getting completely into a mindful and focused state of mind, I found the exercise very interesting. The goal…
The riddle of shear failure
Long ago, when I was an engineering student at Vrije Universiteit Brussel, I did not even realize that my research topic (of which I think I probably could spend a lifetime in researching it) was actually an unanswered question.I remember…
The silent creativity killer: lack of sleep
I was reading this article today: Silent Career Killer: Sleep and I was simply astonished to read the numbers (150 billions dollars of revenue loss per year due to the effects of sleep deprivation).For someone like me, who's life is…
A PhD defense at TU Delft
Yesterday, I attended a PhD defense for the very first time in Delft. One of my colleagues graduated, and so I was able to see how this goes and works in the Netherlands.The defense started at 2:30pm with a presentation.…
A few thoughts on the video “Mindfulness with Jon Kabat-Zinn”
I just had a relaxing time following this presentation on mindfulness.What struck me in this presentation is at the end, during the questions, Dr. Kabat-Zinn points out that there is a part of yourself which is aware: it is that…