Short post: why I share (and share often)

If you follow my social media activities I am sure by now that you know me as a compulsive share-addict. Over the past four years I have gradually increased both the amount of incoming and outgoing information I attempt to integrate on a daily basis. I start every day with a now routine ritual of scanning new publications from 60+ journals and blogs using my firehose RSS feed, as well as integrating new links from various Science sub-reddits, my curated twitter cogneuro list, my friends and colleagues on Facebook, and email lists. I then in turn curate the best, most relevant to my interests, or in some cases the most outrageous of these links and share them back to twitter, facebook, reddit, and colleagues.

Of course in doing so, a frequent response from (particularly more senior) colleagues is: why?! Why do I choose to spend the time to both take in all that information and to share it back to the world? The answer is quite simple- in sharing this stuff I get critical feedback from an ever-growing network of peers and collaborators. I can’t even count the number of times someone has pointed out something (for better or worse) that I would have otherwise missed in an article or idea. That’s right, I share it so I can see what you think of it!  In this way I have been able to not only stay up to date with the latest research and concepts, but to receive constant invaluable feedback from all of you lovely brains :). In some sense I literally distribute my cognition throughout my network – thanks for the extra neurons!

From the beginning, I have been able not only to assess the impact of this stuff, but also gain deeper and more varied insights into its meaning. When I began my PhD I had the moderate statistical training of a BSc in psychology with little direct knowledge of neuroimaging methods or theory. Frankly it was bewildering. Just figuring out which methods to pay attention to, or what problems to look out for, was a headache-inducing nightmare. But I had to start somewhere and so I started by sharing, and sharing often. As a result almost every day I get amazing feedback pointing out critical insights or flaws in the things I share that I would have otherwise missed. In this way the entire world has become my interactive classroom! It is difficult to overstate the degree to which this interaction has enriched my abilities as a scientists and thinker.

It is only natural however for more senior investigators to worry about how much time one might spend on all this. I admit in the early days of my PhD I may have spent a bit too long lingering amongst the RSS trees and twitter swarms. But then again, it is difficult to place a price on the knowledge and know-how I garnered in this process (not to mention the invaluable social capital generated in building such a network!). I am a firm believer in “power procrastination”, which is just the process of regularly switching from more difficult but higher priority to more interesting but lower priority tasks. I believe that by spending my downtime taking in and sharing information, I’m letting my ‘default mode’ take a much needed rest, while still feeding it with inputs that will actually make the hard tasks easier.

In all, on a good day I’d say I spend about 20 minutes each morning taking in inputs and another 20 minutes throughout the day sharing them. Of course some days (looking at you Fridays) I don’t always adhere to that and there are those times when I have to ‘just say no’ and wait until the evening to get into that workflow. Productivity apps like Pomodoro have helped make sure I respect the balance when particularly difficult tasks arise. All in all however, the time I spend sharing is paid back tenfold in new knowledge and deeper understanding.

Really I should be thanking all of you, the invaluable peers, friends, colleagues, followers, and readers who give me the feedback that is so totally essential to my cognitive evolution. So long as you keep reading- I’ll keep sharing! Thanks!!

Notes: I haven’t even touched on the value of blogging and post-publication peer review, which of course sums with the benefits mentioned here, but also has vastly improved my writing and comprehension skills! But that’s a topic for another post!

( don’t worry, the skim-share cycle is no replacement for deep individual learning, which I also spend plenty of time doing!)

“you are a von economo neuron!” – Francesca :)

Fun fact – I read the excellent scifi novel Accelerando just prior to beginning my PhD. In the novel the main character is an info-addict who integrates so much information he gains a “5 second” prescience on events as they unfold. He then shares these insights for free with anyone who wants them, generating billion dollar companies (of which he owns no part in) and gradually manipulating global events to bring about a technological singularity. I guess you could say I found this to be a pretty neat character :) In a serious vein though, I am a firm believer in free and open science, self-publication, and sharing-based economies. Information deserves to be free!

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