I was surprised to find that reading this instilled a sense of hope, optimism, and excitement in me. I expected to broadly agree with the grant decisions and think the projects sound good in expectation, but was surprised that I had a moderate emotional reaction accompanying that.
I think this wasnāt exactly because these grants seem much better than expected, but more because I got a sense like āOh, there are actually a bunch of people who want to focus intensely on a specific project that someone should be doing, and who are well-suited to doing it, and who may continue to cover similar things indefinitely, gradually becoming more capable and specialised. The gaps are actually gradually getting filledāthe needs are gradually getting ācoveredā in a way thatās more professional and focused and less haphazard and some-small-number-of-excellent-generalists-are-stretched-across-everything.ā
I often feel slightly buried under just how much there is that should be getting done, that isnāt getting done, and that I in theory could do a decent job of if I focused on it (but I of course donāt have time to do all the things, nor would I necessarily do the excellent job that these things deserve).[1] I already knew āweāre heading in the right directionā with regards to that, but this report made that more salient, or something, which was nice.
[1] Obviously I know that thatās not all āon meā, that there are also many other people who could in theory do a decent or better job of these things, etc. But itās still the case that those things arenāt getting done and that I could switch to doing them, and in some minority of cases I actually should switch to doing them (i.e., Iāve sometimes changed my priorities or jobs in a way that I still endorse in retrospect, and before that time these were cases like this where Iām doing one useful thing but could switch to another useful thing).
Thanks for this writeup!
I was surprised to find that reading this instilled a sense of hope, optimism, and excitement in me. I expected to broadly agree with the grant decisions and think the projects sound good in expectation, but was surprised that I had a moderate emotional reaction accompanying that.
I think this wasnāt exactly because these grants seem much better than expected, but more because I got a sense like āOh, there are actually a bunch of people who want to focus intensely on a specific project that someone should be doing, and who are well-suited to doing it, and who may continue to cover similar things indefinitely, gradually becoming more capable and specialised. The gaps are actually gradually getting filledāthe needs are gradually getting ācoveredā in a way thatās more professional and focused and less haphazard and some-small-number-of-excellent-generalists-are-stretched-across-everything.ā
I often feel slightly buried under just how much there is that should be getting done, that isnāt getting done, and that I in theory could do a decent job of if I focused on it (but I of course donāt have time to do all the things, nor would I necessarily do the excellent job that these things deserve).[1] I already knew āweāre heading in the right directionā with regards to that, but this report made that more salient, or something, which was nice.
[1] Obviously I know that thatās not all āon meā, that there are also many other people who could in theory do a decent or better job of these things, etc. But itās still the case that those things arenāt getting done and that I could switch to doing them, and in some minority of cases I actually should switch to doing them (i.e., Iāve sometimes changed my priorities or jobs in a way that I still endorse in retrospect, and before that time these were cases like this where Iām doing one useful thing but could switch to another useful thing).