The purpose of academic research is to produce validated ideas, not polished products.
Kindle Clippings
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Some aspects of the Ph.D. experience were very fun: Coming up with new ideas was fun; sketching out software designs on the whiteboard was fun; having coffee with colleagues to chat about ideas was fun; hanging out with interesting people at conferences was fun; giving talks and inciting animated discussions was fun; receiving enthusiastic emails from CDE users around the world was fun. But I probably spent only a few hundred hours on those activities throughout the past six years, which was less than five percent of my total work time. In contrast, I spent about ten thousand hours grinding alone in front of my computer—programming, debugging, running experiments, wrestling with software tools, finding relevant information, and writing, editing, and rewriting research papers. Anyone who has done creative work knows that the day-to-day grind is rarely fun: It requires intense focus, rigorous discipline, keen attention to detail, high pain tolerance, and an obsessive desire to produce great work.
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one of the most effective ways for me to “sell” my ideas and projects was to get influential people (e.g., famous professors such as Margo) excited enough to promote them on my behalf.
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For example, my six years of Ph.D. training have made me wiser, savvier, grittier, and more steely, focused, creative, eloquent, perceptive, and professionally effective than I was as a fresh college graduate.
