Adapting to Changed Circumstances

About this episode

The episode discusses how academics often fail to consciously adapt their behaviors and priorities in response to changing circumstances, illustrated through the example of a PhD student's instinctive reaction to free food.

🍕 Free leftover food in the kitchen – first come, first served! As a PhD student, those emails were great - I’d drop everything and sprint to the tea room. Free food - what's not to love! Two decades later, I still have that instinctive reaction - despite the circumstances (and need for) free food being very different. It’s a somewhat frivolous example, but it captures something that happens a lot in academia: we don't always consciously change our behaviour, activities and priorities when...

People in this episode

Host: Michael

Topics covered

• academic behavior
• PhD experience
• food culture in academia
• changing priorities
• adaptation

Keywords

• PhD
• academia
• behavior change
• free food
• adaptation
• priorities
• tea room

More episodes of Hacking Academia

• Dealing with Difficult Situations · April 29, 2026 · 9 min
• On Expertise · April 24, 2026 · 18 min
• Do You Ever Sleep? The ins and outs of how many hours people work · December 9, 2025 · 15 min
• Separating Process from Outcome · August 16, 2025 · 13 min
• The Four Combinations of Student Supervisor Meetings · June 3, 2025 · 8 min
• Fakes Frauds and Fallacies · May 30, 2025 · 12 min