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On self-indulgence and funnels

A while ago I watched a video of Jack Conte about creativity. There are two things that stood out.


The first one is about writing for pleasure vs writing to publish. That one really resonated with me because I create stories in my head but I don't write them down. Self-indulgence. It would be cool to write it all down but that takes a lot of work.


So this is the thing that I've been thinking about--having the right vocabulary. I've been having this conflict with myself and now that I saw that video I finally have terms that I can use to express this conflict.

It's the same with math research, I think. I have some idea of what the result is but not having the right terms and notations to describe it is challenging. When I stumbled upon that 2015 paper by Araujo, et.al, everything opened up for me.


Another thing is about funnels. The first connection that I can think of is about collaboration. I've been thinking about my sandwich program for a while now. And honestly I'm hesitant to email the authors that I'm interested in because I feel that I don't know enough. But to be successful in landing a good program, I should send as many emails as I can. Funnels.

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