Tag: ideas

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creative thinking quick thought

Heuristic Ideation Technique

I’ve had a little time off from working on my second book on the viva (coming soon!), and this has given me some time to check through my records. I’ve been a skills trainer since September 2008, and have accumulated a lot of stuff – some of it is worth keeping and refreshing myself on – some of it I’ve been happy to chuck into the recycling bin in the last few weeks.

I recently found my notes from a workshop that I ran for Vitae a couple of years ago. The session was on blogging and social media, but the idea that jumped back to the forefront for me was the icebreaker for the day’s workshop, which we used as a way to get people thinking of ideas for blog posts. The process is called Heuristic Ideation Technique:

Heuristic Ideation Technique, which I saw first in Gamestorming.
Heuristic Ideation Technique, which I saw first in Gamestorming.
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quick thought

Nathan’s News

Once again the blog becomes a one-day-per-week affair. Apologies. My mind has been on other pieces of writing of late, as well as related aspects of them. As of Tuesday I finished the second draft of my second book – which may or may not be titled Frequently Asked Questions About The PhD Viva – and am now at the stage of looking for or designing a cover. I made the cover for Fail Your Viva myself, and while I’ve never been unhappy with it per se, I’ve always wanted something a little snazzier. I have found myself looking at the pre-made covers at Go On Write a lot in the last few months (spoiler alert: I’ve bought one or two already for future projects!). I don’t have one yet for this new book.

A new episode of the Viva Survivors Podcast went live on Monday! It was great to talk with Dr Eljee Javier about her research and viva; I met Eljee when she had just started her PhD several years ago, and it only seemed like a few months. Time flies, eh? It was great to hear how things had gone for her, and also hear about some really interesting research. There will be a new episode on Monday 23rd February too – it seems like a new pattern for the podcast might be that it updates on the last two Mondays of a month… I’ll see what I can do about that.

I’ve had a week of working from home, so don’t have any workshop news – I could tell you about my daughter’s latest accomplishments with the Megablox, but that might be less interesting to you than it is to me! In the coming weeks I’m back out on the road, delivering Viva Survivor and other workshops. If you’re reading this and want any details of these workshops then please get in touch and I’ll help in any way I can.

Until next week! Thanks for reading.

Nathan (@DrRyder and @VivaSurvivors)

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news

Catch Up, 26th January 2015

Previously in this sort-of link round-up slot I’ve had some kind of format where I talk about things in certain orders and so on. But after having spent a lot of time writing out to a clear structure lately (he says, conversationally referencing his next book) I thought I would write as things occur in this post.

Work

I spent some time away last week at my first KESS Grad School of the year; it was great to work with a group of MRes scholars, hear about their research and look at some interesting case studies. Very happy that I have some more of these in the coming six months. This week I’m away in Bangor for a couple of days, talking to staff and PhD candidates about vivas, and on Friday morning I’m at LJMU to talk about viva prep there too. Busy times!

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creative thinking

Creativity Post Round-Up

While I get to work putting my next book together, I thought it might be a good time to create a few posts summarising some of the regular series that I shared towards the end of 2014. I created a total of seven posts in my little series on creative thinking; I think that after my new book on the viva is finished I’ll return to sharing some more on creativity, it’s a topic I enjoy a lot!

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creative thinking

Creative Thinking Tuesday, 9th December 2014

This is my last Creative Thinking Tuesday post for 2014, and I thought it might be good to do something short, simple and hopefully helpful. In October I shared two posts of questions for PGRs, and when I was thinking of ideas for this today’s post it struck me that this might be a neat framework for this post. So: Ten Questions To Help With Creative Thinking!

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news

Catch Up, 8th December 2014

Hello! How are you doing? This is the last catch up post for this year, although on 31st December I plan to share a “year in review” post that will summarise what I’ve done this year, some of the most-read posts I’ve written and other projects I’ve been involved with. And on the 1st of January I currently plan to talk about my goals and big projects for the year ahead!

The last few weeks have been good, a mix of working from home – which is lovely because I get to play with my daughter more – and workshops in Sheffield. I’m at Liverpool for most of this week, and starting to plan ahead for January’s workshops. I’ve also been doing a fair bit of writing too!

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creative thinking

Creative Thinking Tuesday, 2nd December 2014

There are lots of tools and tips and techniques for creativity. There are many helpful things that you can have in your environment and behaviours that could aid you. In these posts so far I’ve shared a few things that I find really helpful, and if you look online there are many posts like these. In today’s post, I want to share four sayings or quotes that have shaped how I think about creative thinking.

Sturgeon’s Law

“90% of everything is crud.” First coined by sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon, this was used in specific response to criticisms of science fiction. You might think that this is a really unhelpful quote to keep in mind, but actually I find that it keeps me motivated: if 90% of everything is rubbish then one has to work hard to find innovative ideas. It sets a personal expectation for creative work. I don’t think it means that one has to reduce the number of ideas one has, and aim just try to have good ideas. Far from it actually…

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creative thinking

Creative Thinking Tuesday, 25th November 2014

In previous posts in this little series I’ve thought about tools and inspiration. I think that these are pretty important, and I love it when I come across new sources of both. I think that there is something really great about finding things that support creativity and creative thinking – but at the same time, I think it’s also really useful to look at what things might hinder creative thinking. No sense in putting your foot down on the accelerator while the brake is on!

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news

Catch Up, 24th November 2014

Is it that time already? Seems like only yesterday that I was writing one of these posts, where does the time go… It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, delivering more than a few workshops and keeping a few plates spinning. I was very happy to facilitate on a KESS Grad School recently; I’ve been involved with the programme for a number of years now, and it’s great that that’s continued on. Long train journeys to get to south Wales though, but perfect for lots of reading!

On This Blog

Almost two weeks ago I shared a favourite idea generation process of mine, which resulted in me coming up with some more Christmas presents for my wife! I reviewed The Path Of A Doer, and answered a common question about the viva (“what’s the worst question they can ask?“), before sharing a series of posts that started with me thinking about to do lists. I shared some experiments that I’ve run on myself to try to find things that work for me. In fact this week I’m doing another, capturing things in three columns on a big sheet of paper. Column headings are Tasks, Short and Emails (Short is for the little tasks that are not urgent but need doing at some point OR need doing soon but are not important). It’s just another little test to see what works. What works for you?

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series

To-Do Lists: Odds and Ends

So far this week I’ve shared some thoughts on to do lists, why they didn’t work for me, some experiments that did work for me and how I have tried to keep organised. Today’s post is a sort of collection of related points and ideas. As you can probably tell, I’m still thinking my way through a lot of things like this. Experiments to see what works for me are the key – so I have to keep experimenting and finding what is effective.

Effective and Efficient

I like Tim Ferriss‘ distinction between actions and behaviours that are effective and those that are efficient. The definitions of these – as he gives them – are totally objective, but their applications to individual circumstances could be subjective. Effective actions are actions that deliver results for a goal better than other actions that are aiming at that goal (and the award for bad paraphrasing goes to…); efficient actions are just that, they do things well – but crucially with no thought as to whether or not the actions need to be done at all.

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