Being Young For Your Career Stage

I've spent much of my adult career in roles where I was on the younger side what is "typical": this has led to a range of interesting experiences, learnings and insights.

In this Hacking Academia video, I run through four key concepts relating to the experience of being relatively young for your career stage:

✳ Systems and work culture are not set up for people who are substantially younger than expected

✳ The need to develop an appropriate attitude towards early age success

✳ Burning bright but not burning out

✳ You can’t genuinely fast track cumulative life experience

Check it out on YouTube, or via this podcast.

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🕒 Timestamps are as follows:

📌 (0:00) Introduction to Ideation in a Research Context
📌 (0:53) Research Ideation is an Ongoing Process
📌 (1:27) Ideas Can Pop Up at Anytime
📌 (1:51) Jotting Down Ideas For Later Consideration
📌 (2:39) Consider a More Detailed Ideas Log As Well
📌 (2:51) What Makes For a Good Idea?
📌 (3:02) The Need for Some Type of Benefit
📌 (3:11) Three Benefit Examples in a Computer Science Context
📌 (3:49) Separate Benefit Articulation from Chance of Success
📌 (4:05) Benefit Can Be Immediate and Stand Alone or Long Term and Integrative
📌 (4:18) Being Able to Articulate the Potential Benefit is Key
📌 (4:35) Specificity Can Help Refine Your Ideas
📌 (5:07) Specificity Example: Computational Advantage
📌 (6:23) Benefits are Very Rarely Evenly Spread
📌 (6:45) Ideas and Novelty
📌 (7:14) Not Everything Has to be Novel!
📌 (7:26) When Learning to Ideate, Don’t Obsess Over Novelty
📌 (8:08) Ideation Stimuli: Approach Versus End-User Problem
📌 (8:24) Research Approach Example: A New Machine Learning Technique
📌 (8:35) End-User Example Problem
📌 (8:54) Choosing Between an Approach versus Problem Perspective
📌 (9:12) Sharing Ideas with Peers: Pros and Cons
📌 (9:38) Ideation in Your Area of Expertise is Usually More Efficient
📌 (10:22) Ideation Driven by Areas of Interest
📌 (10:40) Remember Interest and Capability Don’t Overlap Exactly
📌 (10:55) Ideation with a Specific Outcome in Mind
📌 (11:13) Balancing Opportunity with Your Capability Fit
📌 (11:50) Ideation is Useful for Many Career Types and Stages
📌 (12:19) Having Some Ideas Helps Generate More Ideas!
📌 (12:34) The Joy and Excitement of Ideation