Most breakthroughs in your thinking happen when you’re not “doing research” at all — they show up when you’re painting a wall or scrubbing the kitchen. When you stop actively focusing on a problem and switch to something simple and physical, your brain shifts from focused work into what neuroscientists call the default mode network. This network kicks in when you’re doing low-demand tasks: showering, walking, gardening… or painting a room. In that state, your mind quietly replays ideas, makes unexpected connections, and spots patterns you missed at your desk. What looks like “not working” is actually your brain running a background computation on your research questions. For researchers, this is gold. You spend hours reading, coding, analysing data, writing — that’s loading your mental “buffer” with information. But consolidation and genuine insight often require off-line processing, where the system is free from the pressure to perform. If you never step away, you’re constantly stuffing more in without giving your mind time to organise it, which leads to the familiar feeling of staring at a problem and going nowhere. In my own work on carbon capture and process engineering, many of the cleanest model tweaks or paper angles have come to me while doing something completely unrelated, like DIY, walking, or tidying the house after a long day at the office. Most researchers respond to feeling stuck by forcing more screen time. But the real career impact often comes from trusting these “non‑academic” moments enough to step away and let your subconscious do its job. How about you? When you step away from your desk, what’s the one activity (like your painting) where good ideas quietly show up? Drop your answer below 👇

I’m spending some time in my home town this week. I haven’t travelled here for a while so decided to make the most of it. This morning sat, I down on the bench near the main square and did nothing for a good 30-40 mins. I don’t remember when was the last time I did something like this. We’re always chasing something - papers, projects, deadlines. But we’re sacrificing our health and wellbeing. I’m here to tell you that it’s fine to take time off. The world isn’t going to end!

Good news this week - I have just been invited to join the GPTZero ambassador programme and will be running a professional development session on ethical use of AI. Would you be interested in attending? P.S. GPTZero is one of the tools that we use to identify if text was created by AI or human - it's pretty advanced to the extent it can track which elements of the document were pasted and which were written.

I’m about to finalise the training programme for this community - this is your last chance to share your input. Tell me what aspects of academic publishing and building your expert profile would you like to develop.

Many of you are here to network but we don’t often know who is doing what - let’s change this: In a few words, please explain what is your core research area. Enjoy!