On the reg
Inger and Jason talk about work, but you know - not in a boring way. Practical, implementable productivity hacks to help you live a more balanced life. Find us at ontheregteam.com
The bullet journal episode you've all been asking for!
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What would a bullet journal look like if you designed it specifically for doing a PhD?In this episode, Inger and Jason crack open a brand-new bullet journal and build one from scratch.
Jason tries to narrate as we go, but this one is probably a lot more enjoyable on Youtube, where you can see what we are doing... watch it here
They cover the basics — daily logs, monthly spreads, collections, indexing and threading — then start adding tools specifically for r...
The P in PhD doesn't stand for 'prompt'
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We’re back! Sort of. Monthly-ish. Regular-ish. With a puppy.
In this episode of On the Reg, Inger introduces Latte Sipping Socialist, her new desk dog and emerging productivity expert. Meanwhile Jason has actually been working and explains how ClickUp has become his work gravity well.
Then we open the mailbag to discuss:
• building a note-taking system when ADHD and object permanence are working against you
• combining bullet journals with Zotero, Obsidian and NotebookLM
• managing complex or collaborative research projects...
A shameless plug!
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Inger has A Lot Going On At The Moment - and has the tshirt to prove it. Jason's been Getting Things Done, even if his fridge broke. Things have been better in OTR land, but an episode was finally recorded!
There's a lot of chat in this one because the mail bag was, as usual, excellent.
In the work problems segment Inger plugs the new book she's written with Pat Thomson, Helen Kara and Aimee Grant... While the title is boring and the c...
Planning for 2026, fashion influencer style!
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We're on YouTube! Watch this episode here
Vote on Jason's wardrobe edit here
(If you want to see Jason's beard, Inger's Pinterest boards and the AI video Inger made to demonstrate Jason's fashion style, jump over there and have a look!)
In this episode we discuss Inger's fascination with fashion youtube influencers and what we can learn for planning out the academic / researcher / enterprenerd year.
Things we mentioned
Inger uses the MiGoals...AI SEO - how does ChatGPT talk about you behind your back?
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Hey! Jason will be in the UK in Late April. If you'd like to chat to him about the trip and possibly having him visit you, email us on enquiries@ontheregteam.com
Watch this episode on YouTube
The banter section of this episode is lost to history because Jason forgot to hit record! After a short intro by Inger, the team go straight into the mail bag. Let's face it, this is the good stuff anyway - who needs Tinny and...
Is boredom your academic superpower?
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Welcome to the first Youtube video version of the pod!
Watch it here
Sorry for the sound quality for the first 10 minutes - promise it gets better when we remembered to turn the mics on! The filming/recording took ages, through many interruptions, and bad technical decisions... so much effort in fact, that we are not sure if we will do it again. Let us know if you like it and we might persist!
In this episode we talk about Boredom a...
If AI is the hammer, do we have the right nails?
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Jason has been living his best life, travelling NZ (where he did not touch boiling mud, as much as he was tempted to) and having excuses to eat pepper steak pies. Meanwhile Inger has been having a shit time at work and waiting for her puppy to arrive.
After a confession during the mailbag segment, we hear all about Jason's star keynote at the ASPIRE conference, which led to... well, a bit of a rant on Inger's part at least. You get the picture!
<...Analogue Productivity - is this book bullshit?
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Inger is in town, so Jason took her to a pod casting studio as a treat for episode 80 (can you believe it?!). The sound is very nice on this one folks, but This is a Studio in Prahran can take ALL the credit.
There's a fair bit in the mailbag, leading to discussions about the book Inger wrote with Narelle (and Claude) Rich Academic / Poor Academic and a little bit of Text Expander and Omnifocus talk (because naturally).
In our work problems segment...
Tiny Experiments (and larger rants)
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In the depths of Canberra winter, no one can hear you scream about AI... except for Jason, who had to hear ALL of Inger's feelings.
Come for the promise of a 'Is this Book Bullshit?' style review of 'Tiny Experiments' by Jason, stay for the Big Rant about how Inger's anti-AI academic friends now think she is a Republican... it's a lot.
Things we mention:
Pop Canberra (for the stickers)Fated Mates romance podcast stickersIndigenous Knowledge Systems LabOmniFocusOn The R...Ai powered research workflows: Inger finally realises her dream to become a cyborg
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This one's a bit overdue folks - that's Inger's fault, don't blame Jason!
After a long catch up, where we bemoan the state of the higher education sector, and a very full mailbag, we talk about AI powered research workflows.
Inger talks Jason through her new AI enabled process for doing literature reviews, analysis and writing research papers. The crew muse on the shift in working practices how you might take advantage (or not) in your own work.
The team are loo...
What does it take to be an entreprenerd?
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Jason lost the annual Downs family hosted hot cross bun competition, but Inger's political team comprehensively won the federal election, so we figure we came out even.
There's a bulging mail bag with lots of interesting questions from listeners - some of which we could even answer.
Then we chat about the first ten months of our business 'On The Reg Team'. What lessons has Jason learned about being an entreprenerd? loyalty wont save your Higher Ed job... so how do you start yo...
Is this book bullshit? Seven Habits of Highly Effective People: Proactive
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We're back! It's been six weeks - sorry about that!
Jason was finally struck down by covid... for the first time. Yes, really! Now he finally understands what everyone is complaining about. There's a lot to catch up on: the election, a digression into 'Married at first sight' and what happens to a sander when you use it for 6 hours straight on your boat hull.
We get half way through a very full mailbag, before getting on to our dissection of chapter one o...
Where Inger makes Jason read a Romance Novel (again!)
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Longtime listeners who have been asking for Jason to read another romance novel: Inger has delivered! Jason reads Rebecca Yarros's 'The Fourth Wing' and only throws up a little bit in his mouth :-)
After a bit of mail bag, we go deep on the subject of reading: how much of it there is; how tedious academic reading can be; how tired this reading makes us; the feelings of Guilt when you read for pleasure; and the myth of 'keeping up with the literature'.
Late stage capitalism wants us dead - what can we do about it?
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Inger and Jason have been on summer holidays. Jason's family acquired a 10 year old ginger cat, while Inger has committed to #puppyproject and put a deposit on a dangerously adorable, small fluffy puppy. Prepare for a lot of pet talk this year!
In the mailbag there's a good description of a workflow with Todoist and a lively discussion of bullet journals. The work problems segment was produced with the help of Inger's work Husband, Claude who (it seems) has a frighteningly good grasp of the...
Our technology stacks - what products we use for different problems (Kitchen Table episodes vol 2)
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Inger and Jason catch up at the kitchen table... in Casa Downs this time. The sound on this one is ok, considering we were in a huge open space downstairs!
While Jack Downs washes Inger's new car, she catches Jason up on the first Shut up and Write symposium at Cambridge University. Jason tells Inger why Jack Downs is happy to earn 20 bucks by washing her car...
There's a bit of mail bag before the Work Problems segment, where the team talk about...
Why that book about Bullshit Jobs is not, in fact, bullshit.
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Jason is dying of a cold. Inger is surrounded by an ocean of redundancies at ANU. Anyone would think winter was coming, but no - it's the start of Spring (at least here in the Southern Hemisphere).
After a bit of mutual whingeing on the State of The World, the team zip through the mail bag. We answer a few burning questions about AI from listeners. There's also wise words from listeners on how to use MS Word properly to do cross referencing and such. <...
The Kitchen Table sessions (volume one)
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The OTR team have been travelling around the country, and around the world, delivering workshop goodness.
Jason was temporarily at the Canberra Branch of OTR Team on the way back from a Sydney gig, so Inger set up a podcast studio from the kitchen table to hear about his glamorous post-Latrobe life, complete with $10 cups of coffee in Hong Kong.
The team discuss the usual, you know AI in project management, writing and all that. ChattieG (ChatGPT) helped us with the work problems...
The Pain Sponge (or how to be a less crap academic manager)
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Jason is living his best life, free of Latrobe - but Inger has immediately put him to work! On The Reg Team, their new consulting company, is struggling to life through multiple stages of paperwork. More to come...
The team talk about various doings, including Doen's Jnr's laundry skills, Inger's campaign to get a Puppy and getting caught up in the Blue Screen of Death global IT meltdown!
There's a full mailbag with some side dashes of Claude before the team embark on...
Is this book bullshit? Cal Newport discovers the labour movement
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The On The Reg team have been busy with All The Things. In Jason's case, making salami and in Inger's case, possibly signing up to one too many book projects.
In the mailbag we marvel over dashboards for packing lists and cool new AI tools recommended by listeners.
This week Inger read Cal Newports's latest book 'Slow Productivity: the lost art of accomplishment without burnout' where Cal (maybe?) discovers the point of unions and even name checks Marx. The team segue onto an...
The mean girl in the internet of things
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Jason has consciously uncoupled from his employer. Inger's getting a Volvo. There is clearly a lot to discuss in the first half an hour, including the survey that Inger finally has out (participate here!)
Jason's had some time to wrangle the mailbag, so he's cleaned up Inger's mess and made a spreadsheet. People have a lot to say about our travel episode and we are ready to hear it!
In work problems, Jason brings Inger up to speed about Apple Intelligence and we...
The body keeps the score
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Jason is having some time off work to get his health back in order. Inger takes the opportunity to share the whole story of her burn out episode. Be warned, this one gets a bit heavy...
We lighten it up in the middle by responding to Ben's question about travelling with a laundry list of suggestions and hacks. Inger confesses her bag and spare cord obsession and Jason reveals his genius hack for making a personalised guide book. There's a lot of love for AirTags.<...
Trusting the Meat Computer
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Inger and Jason convene for the long awaited mailbag episode! (but first there's a bit of old-person whinging about health and other stuff). Inger explains how she and Narelle wrote a 36000 word book in a single weekend with Claude.
The mail bag is full to overflowing! There's gold in there - which prompts a very wide ranging conversation about Bujo, task managers, screen capture software, politics and - well, the usual stuff. The speak pipes failed after the first one... (which is also a bit qu...
Obsidian! 1996 called and it wants its database back.
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It's been quite the month. Jason was pulled over in the Tinny (again), Inger had a mole taken off her foot. We skipped the mailbag in favour of a deep nerd chat about Obsidian starting at 32:51. The discussion gets waylaid part way through by a mutual existential freakout about Claude Opus. It's... a lot. Enjoy!
Things we mentioned:
Kangaroo time - Winner of the Dance Your PhD competition
Be visible or vanish - the book Inger wrote with her colleague Simon Clews
Po...
What we are doing with GenAI now... (it's pretty cool)
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Jason had pneumonia when he recorded this very long pod with Inger.
It's a testament to his brainy-ness (and Inger's sound engineering skills) that it turned out as well as it did, given he coughed and sweated his way through it.
Warning: in the chat section at the top there's a lot of talk about TEQSA. If you're confused, here's their webpage. Jason was too sick to do mailbag, but please keep sending in your letters and speak pipes!
At we...
The sweet, sweet taste of academic freedom
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Inger and Jason are at the end of the holidays. For Jason this meant going to a hash den in Thailand (it's a long story) and for Inger it meant organising all her rococo style porcelain figurines (yes, really).
The mailbag (18:53) is full of interesting letters and provokes only one moment of feminist rage from Inger. Ok, maybe two.
In the Work Problems segment (56:35) Jason gives us an alternative way to think about the year ahead with the VRIO model from Jay Barney...
The unexpected Christmas Day episode!
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Inger and Jason recorded an episode at 9pm at night on the 15th of November, before Inger took off for the UK. Inger was meant to edit and post this sometime in December, while travelling in the UK, but due to the vagaries of wifi and Christmas shopping, she ended up doing it at Heathrow airport on Christmas eve.
So look, it's a little bit ... unplugged?
But at least it's short (well, for us) and there's some good stuff in here - including...
Hot academic gossip and the Circle of Niceness
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This one has been in the can for a while - but it was recorded only a week after the previous one about the Meat Grinder. You'd think that would make the banter session shorter, but ...not really. Jason has largely avoided having his face squished at Brazilian Jujitsu and Inger has been writing whiny emails to her boss.
The team finish up the Cambridge hiatus mailbag (13:32), including one from Janet Davey that was lost at the bottom (sorry about that Janet!). This prompts a...
The meat grinder
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Inger and Jason are back, a bit later than anticipated because the audio the first time this episode was recorded was borked (that's a technical term). We promise the re-record is much better, and also, much longer.
There's some unscripted banter at the start, which Inger had to cut as it went on a bit long. Jason can tell you about his new bike another time and you really don't need to hear all about Inger's struggle to find supplies of Ozempic. We dig into...
Is productivity talk the new veganism?
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The Downs household has suffered a loss, while one member of the Mewburn household has discovered hither to unknown talents. Somehow the team still end up crapping about Obsidian a lot in the banter section.
This is our second sabbatical mailbag episode (starting 20:44), which prompts a series of incredibly nerdy conversations about Microsoft Teams, Omnifocus, Text Expander, Obsidian, Bullet Journal etc - Even Nvivo and MaxQDA. In other words: the greatest hits.
(A comment from listener Aaron has us wondering why...
The one about Stephen Hawking's dining habits
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WE'RE BACK BABY!
Inger sums up her whole Cambridge University experience in one anecdote about dinner. Jason has gone up a notch in Brazilian Ju Jitsu, which puts him in a position to comment on Mark Zuckerberg's training routine. In other words, it's a normal catch up, but twice as long!
This episode is all a mailbag, starting with a speak pipe from Jonathan O'Donnell challenging the team to regular lunches and a content warning at 30 minutes about weight talk. If...
Please keep sending in your questions!
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Inger and Jason pop in for a brief, 2 minute-ish pod. The quickest episode in OTR pod history!
It's not really an episode, just a reminder that we will be back next month.
Thanks for all the amazing emails and speak pipes so far - we're enjoying them all and planning a big mailbag episode when we get back!
Got thoughts and feel pinions? Want to ask a question? You can email us on
- Leave us a message on www...
Don't you forget about us!
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On The Reg is officially on hiatus until Inger returns from her sabbatical in August.
Listen to our quick explainer so you know what is happening until then. We're asking you send in all your questions and thoughts so we can put together a reader mailbag episode when we come back.
The claim here that Severance Pod has dropped are false, but honestly, it will be here really soon. Follow on Thesiswhisperer pod
The claims about blog posts about writing with C...
How big things get done (or not)
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Inger's dusty in this episode, after an epic David Lodge style dinner party the night before, but her blood pressure is the best her doctor has seen in years. By the time you listen to this she'll be in Cambridge, punting or something.
Jason didn't win the annual hot cross bun off, but did invite Inger into the WhatsApp group so she could share the fun this year. There is also an unexpectedly long digression about workplace exploitation, so - a normal catch up.
<...
How to get to inbox zero and other stories
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Jason has been doing BJJ, the gym, eat sleep and repeat - with an occasional visit to country Victoria. Inger has been doing ALL the event organising and somehow managing to make a podcast with her sister about the Apple TV show Severance at the same time. You'll have to subscribe to the Thesiswhisperer podcast channel to get the episodes when they drop.
In other words, it's been busy.
Which means we didn't have time to prepare for this episode, other than to...
The weapons of influence
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Inger's happy her Apple Watch has declared her 'fit' while Jason surprised his team with actually putting on an interesting strategy day. Inger finally bought a ticket to the UK for her sabbatical in Cambridge, so Jason is on notice that the pod will be his while she is away. He's got Plans.
The Mailbag [21:14] has a speak pipe and a letter about Inger and Jason's current objects of obsession: ChattieG and ADHD. For once they don't talk about Obsidian the whole time...
Strategic Thinking for Fun and Profit
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Inger was late to the microphone but Jason is in the lead this time, so the show actually happened!
Jason didn't win at the first annual 'Meat Off' competition, but it was a tough field. At work it's all Chat GPT all the time, or, as Inger's sister Anitra calls it 'ChattieG'.
Inger's been on the road again, this time at Monash Uni where she ran a session on Bullet Journalling. She also wrote 5000 words of her new book without even noticing, using Obsidian.
Getting Sh!t done in 2023!
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Inger and Jason have been on holidays, so there's a lot to catch up on. Jason was off the grid, finding boxes of romance novels in country opp shops while Inger borked all the authenticator apps on her phone and was locked out of ANU email. There's a brief foray into Power Ballads and the Australian 80s band Noiseworks.
There's a rather large mail bag to get through (13:53), which also prompts a bit of a discussion about AI (again) before the duo get t...
AI: a pearl clutching panic fest, or are the robots really coming for our jobs?
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You might have noticed this episode is rather... long. But it's your last episode before February, 2023. so we figure you can digest this omnibus episodes in parts!
Look, there's a lot of Spider Talk in our catch up, so you might want to skip it if you're an arachnophobe. There's some very interesting questions from listeners in the Mailbag section [22:54], which gives us the chance to drop the knowledge on difficult publishing problems and how to tell someone they look nice at work.
Starting new things - what are the pain points?
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Inger's had Covid Bingo, where she scored almost every symptom in the book. Meanwhile Jason has been been out there, having a life, which involves a story about the physics of gumboots. It makes sense in context, we promise.
Inger snippety doodah-ded our catch up a bit, but it's still kind of long, so if you want to skip it, go straight to (24:02) when we open Mailbag. We have our first message from Mastodon and Jason got recognised in the street. Thanks to...
Twitter is a hot mess - do we have to start Tootin' on the Masty now?
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Buckle up folks, this is a long one! It's been a big couple of weeks since Jason and Inger caught up.
Inger went to Tassie and experienced crossing bass strait in gale force winds on the way back while Jason got rained on while camping and discovered 'Truckie Twitter' on the UHF band radio during an unexpected 2.5 hour journey home from work.... Oh, and Thesiswhisperer Jnr is now being paid to play with puppies at a pet store, which Inger and Jason agree is a g...
