Veggies for non-hippies

Vegetables are a wonderful thing. It's hard to be satisfied with a meal unless it's chock full of them. One of greater freedoms of Ann Arbor is that one can be at Michigan's center of cosmopolitanism and fine culture one minute, and 20 minutes later (driving) be enjoying nature's peace of mind. I would've had to cross state lines back in Boston to do the same thing. In this case, nature is the farm that will grant me all my veggies for the summer. I've signed up for a farm share this summer, splitting it in half with my fellow MD/PhD student Ania. I participated 2 years ago and was deluged in earthly goods- some weeks I received in excess of 15 pounds. For those of you who don't know, a CSA farm is Community-Supported Agriculture (http://www.localharvest.org/csa/), where the idea is that you cut out the middle man, know your farmer, and know exactly where your food is coming from. From a more practical standpoint, you pay up front at the beginning of the summer (usually a couple hundred dollars) and get your vegetables in bulk each week for 18 weeks. It's enough for a family of 4 (which is why I split mine). The convenience is astounding- it's really easy to underestimate the time and thought spent at the supermarket selecting vegetables. The effort required in the aisles is just one more barrier to healthy eating, driving people to the pre-packaged food. Some weeks at the CSA you'll get 15 different kinds of vegetables all in one box, including ones you might have never tried otherwise. Great way to expand your palate without having to give it much thought.

This was the first week, early in the summer, so the harvest is only starting to pick up. It's mostly greens this week- later on there will be loads of squash, radishes, zucchini, bok choi, potatoes, spicy peppers, onions, tomatillos, basil, eggplant, melons and dozens of other kinds… heck there's even chocolate mint leaves. Since it was picked the day before or the morning of, everything has a wonderful earthy scent. The arugula in particular smells and tastes nuttier than anything I've ever found at Whole Foods.

A half-share of farm veggies. It's still early in the season so we're getting just greens- but there are some extremely large harvests to come! Top row: bean tops, mustard greens, chard, arugula. Bottom row: green onions, carrots, spinach, and a variety of herbs (chives, cilantro, lavender, sage, rosemary).

What will I make?

1. salad of arugula, mustard greens, and chard
2. stir-fries spiced up with some herbs, green onions, and beantops
3. eat the carrots straight up
4. GREEN SMOOTHIE from the spinach. I drink on average 1.5 smoothies per day, so my $10 personal-sized blender has seen a lot of action over the years. Peanut butter + spinach = heaven. Like most things in life, don't knock it until you've tried it.

Thank you and monthly reflections

Hello! Well, this is now blog entry #7, and I've essentially succeeded at my public goal of writing 2 blog entries per week for a month! Technically I still have one more before I can pat myself on the back, but I'm saving Wednesday's post for something else (A.O., don't give it away in the comments). I'd dearly like to thank all of my readers for following me in this mini-journey. It's sometimes a little addicting (and vain) to watch Blogger track the # of views after I've posted each entry- but I just find that having an audience for my thoughts to be really good motivation to think more deeply. 

But I think going forward, I'm going to modify my blog goal a little bit. First, two major blog posts per week has been sucking up a lot of time- I know it will get easier, but I think I can cut down. However, one blog post per week doesn't seem like enough. Second, I've found that while I'm in the writing process, my blog posts usually balloon to far longer lengths than I originally intend, and I'd like to work on the art of writing concise, quantized posts that are still useful. Thus, I'm going to write 1 major blog post per week, and 1 short post per week (1-3 paragraphs).

Speaking of goals, since the beginning of 2012, I've been doing monthly assessments of how my life is going, monitoring the progress I've made on my goals. It's almost June 2012, and this blog seems like a logical forum for me to flesh things out. I always have a whole bunch of goals that I set for myself and I'm constantly generating new ones as I go through everyday life. I make some progress on all of them, but never satisfactorily. Sure, since the beginning of the year I've definitely gotten better at seeking out interesting strangers to talk to, gotten a lot more organized, been keeping up with my friends and family long-distance, wasting less time on the Internet, keeping my e-mail inbox empty, and reading a lot more. But I think what I'm missing is focus: because I have so many goals, I find it hard to pursue these goals to the point where they have a measurable impact on my life. Also, without a way to internalize and constantly remind myself of my most important goals, it is way too easy to get distracted or to waste time. Finally, having so many goals just makes me stressed that I can't handle all of them.

Writing regular blog posts is one of the few goals that I've been fully satisfied with, and I think it provides two major hints as to how I can solve my focus issue. 1) Announce and make public all of my major goals (i.e. in this post). 2) Simplify. Focus on just a few goals and don't dedicate significant time to anything else until those goals are achieved each and every day, each and every week. 3) Review- throughout each day, review my priorities for the day and ensure that my goals are being achieved.

This month, I'm going to focus on 4 major goals that I've been putting off. 

• Generate a list of ideas everyday. I'm a fan of James Altucher's blog, and one thing that he does is write down lists of ideas every morning. Basically exercising his "idea muscle" so he has no problem being creative when the situation calls for it. He's even turned some of the ideas from his list into businesses. Some lists I could generate: 30 things I'm grateful for, 10 things I did that were productive in the last week, 20 chapter names in my own autobiography.
• Wake up at 6am every morning. I did this in January and it was fantastic, and I have two good tools at my disposal to keep up this goal: 1) Sleep cycle alarm clock. This iPhone app (see photo on right) uses your iPhone to pick up vibrations to detect when you are in deep REM sleep (muscle paralysis) and when you are in the lighter stages of sleep. You give it a time interval for it to wake you up (like a normal alarm clock) and then it will only wake you up if you're not in deep sleep, so when you wake up you feel far more rested. (credit: first found out about this from my friend Dale's blog) 2) Practice, literally. Lie in bed, set the alarm clock for 5-10 minutes later, and get up immediately and perform a putative morning routine. Idea from Steve Pavlina's blog. 
• Read at least a full paper and 3 abstracts/intros/discussions every day. I briefly discussed this in my post from May 13, and I think that establishing regular reading habits right now in my training should be a top priority. Too often at lab my mind is so focused on experiments that I have a hard time setting aside time for reading, unless it's a paper that's directly relevant to what the lab is doing right now.
• Develop a long-term lab plan with all of the experiments I am going to perform over the next month or more. So far I've only been planning each day's experiments in any real detail (which has been highly successful). I can anticipate all of the big things that I need to prepare for long-term, but it's hard to evaluate how much progress I really make over a month. My plan is to write the outline of a potential paper, look at all of the components, and decide when exactly I can perform all of them. Then, I will review it daily and decide whether or not I've made progress towards completing my plan.

Finally, I'm going to keep up two other habits to make sure I don't slip. 1) Read 40+ pages of a book every night, and 2) Skype with family once a week, and skype to catch up with a friend once a week.

All of these are going to be on a notecard in my pocket, on a post-it note on my computer, on a post-it note at my lab desk, etc.

1) Focus on stated goals to the exclusion of all others. Don't get distracted by new ideas- save them for next month.

2) Generate a list of ideas. Or, find another mentally challenging task to perform.

3) Wake up at 6am.

4) Read paper + 3 abstracts

5) Develop long-term lab plan

I thought about acronyms, mnemonics, and other mental tricks to internalize these goals. In fact, I used my idea habit to generate a whole bunch of ways to internalize "focus, ideas, wake up, read, plan." These ideas can be as ridiculous as I want. Here are three highlights:

Mnemonic: Furious Igloos Wear Religious Placemats

Link system: The focus (of an ellipse) had an idea orbiting it. Then the idea exploded and woke up from a nightmare. In the wake of this event, reading was banned. Fortunately, the Cylons have a plan to get reading back.

Mnemonic: Fine Ideas Want Radical Processes

Somehow, the third one jives with me the most. Hence, I will internalize Fine Ideas Want Radical Processes. I'll probably back it up with my link system story.

The scale of neurology is larger than the observable universe

This week, I am happy to report that I am pretty much back on track in terms of my work routine, and productivity is once again through the roof. Spelling out and publicizing my exact strategy for not wasting time on the computer definitely motivated me to adhere to it- which is the entire point of writing a blog! But I also have another motivating factor working in my favor this week- a new undergraduate just joined the lab! When I teach, I feel like I learn more than when I'm just trying to learn. Like writing, teaching someone forces me to spell out my logic as clearly as possible, which both clarifies my thinking and uncovers hidden assumptions I had been making that may be wrong. Furthermore, the best way to teach is to ask the student questions that stimulate the student's thought and lets the student figure out the answer. That means I need to put myself in the position of a beginner, so I learn more about my own field and gain insights that I might have missed. It's true that until you can teach a subject, you haven't mastered it. But what is often overlooked is that the very act of teaching something is the METHOD by which one masters something.

Yesterday, I attended the Life Sciences Institute symposium, and this year's focus was on Neuroscience. The speakers were amazing (most were HHMI), and it reminded me why I want to go into neurology. Let's just examine some of the highly attractive intellectual aspects of neurosciences

Brain-specific systems: Molecular and cellular mechanisms that are unique to the brain and, in many cases, unique to the human brain. Non-coding DNA seems to be one of the biggest things that separates us from chimpanzees- why? A lot of it might be transposons that are specifically activated in the brain to jump around and disrupt genes, so that every brain cell has different DNA- thus creating a diversity not seen in any other organ system, other than the immune system. Another thing, which I just learned from Robert Darnell, MD, PhD (Rockefeller) is that the brain has its own splicing system (Nova proteins, etc) allowing the generation of novel isoforms not seen anywhere else in the body. 20,000 genes becomes 100 or 1000 times that number because the brain can generate far more unique proteins than the rest of the body due to novel mechanisms of splicing. Furthermore, different parts of the brain have different splicing systems, and in fact different parts of the same brain cell have different splicing machinery- possibly explaining some aspects of memory assuming these are stable states. And so it also makes sense that certain cancers would co-opt the Nova system to drastically change their gene expression profiles and give them a proliferative advantage, despite the immunological risk it puts the cancer at (spontaneous regression of Nova+ cancers have been observed due to the immune response).

Combinatorial complexity: This point can be best illustrated using one of the simplest examples in neuroscience (even though really it's not simple at all). The problem is recognizing self vs. non-self. Neurons don't want to synapse onto themselves because otherwise they inhibit themselves and become useless, or they hyper-activate themselves and end up killing themselves. But how does a highly branching neuron figure out that the neuron it has reached is another neuron or another part of itself? Larry Zipursky, PhD (UCLA) has discovered how this is accomplished in the Drosophila fruit fly. The Dscam class of molecules have alternative exons at four positions. Combinatorial complexity means that 12 x 48 x 33 x 2 = 38,000 unique Dscam molecules. Furthermore, each neuron expresses a random combination of about 50 different Dscam molecules. How many different profiles thus are possible in the brain? 

38,000^50 = 10^229. That is far greater than the number of particles in the entire universe. In fact, if every particle in the universe had an entire universe inside of it, and every particle in that universe had a entire universe inside of it, 10^229 is still far larger. Now, when a Dscam group on one neuron encounters a Dscam group on either the same or another neuron, it only binds if they match sufficiently. If it binds, they inhibit each other and cause the synapse to fail. So essentially, the likelihood that two different neurons will have profiles similar enough to inhibit each other is essentially non-existent. Thus, every neuron has a unique barcode that allows its dendrites to recognize other dendrites on itself. Even cooler, the Zipursky lab systematically deleted alternative exons until they figured out how many unique Dscam molecules are required to prevent inappropriate self-synapsing and inappropriate avoidance of non-self.

Region-specific features: Let's not forget that the brain is huge. Really huge. The human brain should not be thought of as one organ system. A single brain's complexity is more on the order of the entire rest of Earth's biosphere. So one part of the brain might act under totally differently principles than its neighboring part, even though the majority of proteins are the same. So when you treat the brain with a single simple drug, it may have really awesome effects in one part, but it's going to affect everything else too, possibly adversely. Let's take dopamine as an extremely simple example. Insufficient dopamine is a cause of some Parkinson's symptoms, so dopamine therapy can have massive benefit in terms of quality of life for Parkinson's patients. But dopamine is also inappropriately elevated in an entirely different part of the brain in schizophrenia, so a potential side effect is schizophrenic-like symptoms. Conversely, treating schizophrenic patients with dopamine antagonists can have Parkinsonian side effects. 

Another example: yesterday Luis Parada, PhD (MIT) discussed his work on SSRI anti-depressant therapy. He found that the reason why SSRIs take months to work even though they cause immediate serotonin changes is that SSRIs enhance hippocampal neurogenesis over time. New neurons need to form for SSRIs to work. More interestingly, exercise seems to have the same effect- explaining why I'm always happier after exercising consistently. Furthermore, activating hippocampal neurogenesis is sufficient to reverse depression and anxiety-like symptoms in mice, and blocking neurogenesis can block the positive effects of anti-depressants and exercise. This has major implications for depression therapy, since SSRIs currently affect serotonin all of the brain, resulting in all sorts of changes that may have all sorts of adverse effects. So if we develop a drug that specifically activates hippocampal neurogenesis, we can treat depression without the side effects. Exercise should also be incorporated as a mainstay of depression therapy. Lastly, I'd like to point out that this strategy can be used for cognitive enhancement in healthy people. Meanwhile, I'm going to keep on exercising.

One reason I want to go into neurology is that there are few good therapies for any of the major neurological disorders. But I have little doubt, based on what I've heard at research talks, that major neurological therapies will reach the clinic right around the time that I start residency. Right now there are some crazy flowcharts for figuring out which patients receive which therapies. But the brain is an entirely different animal. Figuring out which patients will benefit from neurological therapies (and cognitive enhancement) will require a fundamental understanding of these intellectually challenging topics such as combinatorial complexity. Thus neurology will provide me with intellectual challenge for my entire life. My prediction that most of the diseases of other organ systems will be cured within 100 years, and medicine will become tediously boring and trivial. I doubt that neurology will be solved for another 500.

How I'm stopping myself from mindlessly wasting time on the Internet

As promised, I've written a continuation of my last post, "I like my prefrontal cortex but it naps too often," where I semi-ranted about my addiction to wasting time on the Internet. It can be summarized as two conundrums: 1) The flexibility and power of the computer/Internet is both a blessing and a curse, both a tool of incredible productivity and incredible distraction. 2) Once you start being distracted and wasting time on the web, you can't stop. Your prefrontal cortex goes into hibernation and your biological ability to refocus on work is clamped down.

For a while now I have felt like what I'm doing with my life only superficially resembles what I want to be doing with my life- sure, I'm in an MD/PhD program studying aging and longevity, while still having a social life and keeping fit. But if I actually look at what I'm spending my time doing, it feels like relatively little is dedicated to my long-term goals. Would I ever tell myself or another person that my goal in life is to waste time on the Internet? No? Then why I am spending so much of my time doing it?

Before we start, I'm loving the comments- keep 'em coming! Share your own experiences with the Internet below- we always make fun ourselves for wasting time but it's usually hard to get a good conversation going on about how to actually fix it.

A closer look at the problem- where can we intervene?
I started looking more carefully at what exactly happens when I suddenly lose 3 hours of my day to wasting time on the Internet. In particular, I looked at how these sessions begin.

1. URL autocomplete. My biggest enemy. On my computer Internet browser, I can click the URL bar and press "f" and autocomplete will take me to Facebook. Same for "g" (gmail), "h" (huffingtonpost), "t" (the crimson), "e" (en.wikipedia.org), "i" (intrade), "n" (nytimes), "d" (daily show) and "y" (youtube). Therefore, I can randomly hit keys on my keyboard and I get automatic reward. What could be simpler?
2. Random cues/distractions scattered in every window. Obviously, there are links, and I don't have much control over that. But there also used to be about 20 tabs open in my browser, and my eye skimming any one of them could distract me. Also, a whole bunch of different programs open. I used to check my e-mail all the time and find thousands of junk e-mails I hadn't bothered to delete, as well as a bunch of important e-mails I had been putting off. All of these things can trigger Googling things related to the cue/distraction and checking relevant web pages, which inevitably leads me down the path of clicking links. It also doesn't even help that some of the cues are work-related, because that just makes me anxious that I'm not doing my work.
3. Random distractions everywhere else (not on my screen). This includes my phone, the clutter on my desk, my kitchen, other people, little tasks I need to do around the lab. Real life being messy just makes me more likely to want to just look at my computer.
4. Lack of motivation. I'm procrastinating (duh) on my work. The best pearl I've heard about procrastination is that I'm procrastinating because I haven't thought about why my task is important. Sure, I may know generally why worm genetics can reveal all sorts of insights into diseases of human aging, but this bird's-eye view doesn't cut it on a day-to-day basis. I need to get specific about why I should be focusing on my work, or else I'll be inclined to start hitting random keys on URL autocomplete.

These combine to form the following scenario: I am overwhelmed by the stuff I need to do, and the distractions everywhere around me prevent me from thinking about why I should be doing the work I need to do. Thus my habit of wasting time kicks in and I start hitting random buttons and my URL autocomplete takes me to pages I check way too frequently and then I'm on the road to clicking link after link, and by then my brain has shut down.

Any solutions?

Now that I've better delineated the challenges, I can give an overview of the solutions I've been working on.

• Don't bring my laptop home. Only use an iPad at home for Internet consumption
• Compartmentalize my day. Lab is for work. Home is for personal development, reading, and entertainment. Cafe can be more flexible, but I give myself a pre-defined goal beforehand (like writing this blogpost right now).
• Give myself a routine at work to prevent me from getting distracted.
• Organize my stuff. All the time.

Internet consumption: only on my iPad, and only at home

I leave my MacBook at lab, and I only use an iPad at home. This was surprisingly helpful, and I think it pretty much solves the URL autocomplete and random cues/distractions problems. I of course need all of the functions/features of a computer to do my work at lab, but I really don't need it at home. I didn't buy an iPad until the most recent iteration because my computer could do everything an iPad could do and more. But I discovered that the limitations of an iPad are actually an advantage.

1. URL autocomplete is technically there on the iPad, but the awkwardness of the keyboard makes it so my hands can't efficiently do it without some thought. Thus, the lower portions of my brain can't compel my hands to start doing this. It also makes it harder for me to perpetuate time-wasting sessions. After all, I do frequently hit dead ends on the Internet (no more links to follow). At that point, I can stop and think, or I can randomly hit buttons for URL autocomplete or click on bookmarks on my MacBook. But on my iPad, I'm left with no choice but to stop and think about what I should be doing next.
2. It's simply a different interface than my computer. All my old habits just don't work in the same way and it's easier to shake them. It's likely starting anew! For example, it's much harder to navigate the web on an iPad. Maybe I'm just not good at it yet, but the very existence of the obstacle means it's impossible to go on autopilot. And again, it is the autopilot mode which makes these time-wasting sessions possible.
3. iPads only have one window open at a time. That means no cues to distract me. That means I can focus on my Kindle app book without seeing the YouTube window I left open on the side. Furthermore, it's more difficult to shift from app to app than it is to click around on a computer, so again, I avoid autopilot.

Compartmentalize

Most importantly, I CAN'T do my work on my iPad. This can be a good thing assuming I combine it with my next strategy, compartmentalization. I tell myself I'm not going to be doing lab-related things at home so I no longer feel guilty that I'm not doing work. Likewise, at lab I don't feel like I'm depriving myself of Internet entertainment because I am reserving that for when I get home. At home I can focus on personal development goals, or read a good book on my Kindle iPad app. And if I do just feel like vegging out and wasting time on the Internet, the prospect of work no longer hovers over me and makes me anxious, so the time-wasting actually does help me relax.

Routine- distract from the distractions
So if I don't bring my computer home, then what about work? The challenge is that I need my computer to do my work, so I have to deal with the possibility of distraction. But I find that having a routine stops me from defaulting to time-wasting. I let myself slip from my routine this week, and despite working longer hours I got a lot less stuff done. The routine is as follows:

1. I already have my first major task of the day prepped the night before. This can be a blog entry, a major lab task/experiment, reading a paper, working on a grant, etc. I do that first thing.
2. Put my laptop away into my drawer (assuming I had to take it out in the first place). I write down (on paper) everything I need to do that day. Think about why I need to do each item. Usually I combine this with organizing my desk since I likely have notes and images scattered around my desk from the previous day's work.
3. Only then do I take my laptop out of my drawer, look over my (electronic) lab notebook to finish up my to-do list. I close all tabs and programs not relevant to my current tasks.
4. Come up with a general plan for the day (consulting Google Calendar) and since I'm already thinking about my work, it's pretty easy to just get out of my chair and start prepping my reagents.
5. Select a task (or a collection of related tasks), remind myself of why it's important, then set a 50-90 minute timer. Work on it uninterrupted. Once I've identified why the task is important, it's much easier to perform computer tasks without getting distracted. Then take a break, but don't open my computer unless I'm planning on going through e-mail or organizing my electronic lab notebook. Set a 10-15 minute timer for this break, then go back to work.

I also copy the single-window nature of the iPad as much as possible on my MacBook. I close out of windows and browser tabs as frequently as possible to prevent me from getting distracted.

Organize

This applies to pretty much everything- e-mail, desk clutter, browser tabs, lab notebook, Evernote, lists. I doubt I have anything right now to contribute to the expansive body of advice on how to get organized, except to say that if you're wondering how to get organized and don't have time to explore all of the online advice and experiment with it, I'd recommend a very short and simple book called Zen to Done.

Final thoughts

I should reiterate that I still look at Facebook and I still look at random crap on the Internet. I think it's actually pretty important because I discover random useful things that way. Distraction can be a good thing, if and only if it gives me new ideas, lets me look at my work with fresh eyes, or helps me genuinely relax. The goal, of course, is to prevent it from snowballing into a waste of 3 hours of my life.

The main challenge for me in breaking this bad habit (wasting time on the Internet) was that it was interconnected with a bunch of other bad habits (like abusing URL autocomplete, being disorganized, not thinking about why I'm doing my work frequently enough, and letting stuff build on my laptop windows and my desk). I'm still working out the kinks of this, because it's impossible to address a whole bunch of habits at the same time- you get distracted if you try. Thus, it has taken me many months to implement a system that had any meaningful impact on productivity. But frankly, it took me years to acknowledge that I had a problem with Internet time-wasting in the first place. And the most important thing I discovered? The very process of eliminating a bad habit is fun- even better than the satisfaction of eliminating it at the end.

I like my prefrontal cortex but it naps too often

Hello blog readers! It's a busy week, so this will have to be a shorter blog entry than normal, and I'm going to split it into two parts- one for today and one for the weekend.

I thought I'd write about something I've been very pleased about in the last 2 months. Today's entry will be about the problem I've been frustrated with for years, and the weekend's entry will be about the solution I discovered (I promise). For the last 5 years or so I always knew that I was wasting a ton of time on the Internet, often on mind-numbing things like stupid Youtube videos and memes. Amusing myself for a few minutes is a good thing, but doing it for hours is just silly. It doesn't have to be that way- if I can stay focused, the Internet becomes a great resource for educating myself, completing my goals, developing skills, and staying in touch with friends. Even the totally random stuff that is completely unrelated to my work can be useful if it stimulates my brain. In fact the Internet is sometimes my only resource, because I often don't need anything else to get stuff done. However, what happens in practice is that I will think, "Oh I'll just check this one page," and soon enough I've lost 2 hours and I don't feel like anything I did was interesting or useful. Those 2 hours are like a black hole, but I postulate that what's happening on the other side of the event horizon is that I actually lose my biological ability to make a conscious choice to shift gears and actually get some work done.

Sure, you can say, oh that's just an excuse. But really, there are a few things about the Internet that can create a perfect storm that, in my opinion, can rob you of your free will. And this is key- IMHO, the Internet is the best thing in the world if you control it. It's the worst if it controls you. So how might it actually rob you of your free will in practice? Mind-numbing Internet material, by definition I suppose, doesn't take much active thought to process. You plop yourself down and you are entertained- and your lower brain regions (the ones that evolved before the sapience of the frontal cortex) love those reward mechanisms to death, so it is perfectly happy performing it on auto-loop. It's a lot like TV. Your basal metabolic rate sitting and watching TV is lower than when you're just sitting, and that's because your brain goes into some sort of auto-hibernate mode and burns fewer calories. The seat of your free will- your frontal cortex- is forced to take a nap by the rest of the brain.

And then every page is littered with distractions. Every link and every image on the page can catch your attention and present you with a new page that is equally filled with links and images designed to distract you. Wasting time on the Internet is a habit that's hard to break because of the constant reinforcement. But of course, is this all bad? Doesn't everyone need some R&R? The average American watches like 6 hours of TV per day, so should I really be so concerned about losing my evenings to wasting time on the Internet? But in actuality, even though the Internet is activating reward circuits, it is not relaxing at all. The entire time, I'm anxious because I know I'm capable of getting my work done at a computer, and I feel guilty. And the computer offers LOTS of opportunities to get stuff done, which both makes me feel more guilty, and overwhelms me with work choices at a time when my frontal cortex is inactive, so I'm less likely to actually go do work.

So we're left with the fact that doing mind-numbing things on the Internet is unproductive, addicting, and provokes anxiety. It can be relaxing at the start, which is probably why we all chose to do it, but then it easily spirals out of control. Again, I will present something that's helped me with a lot of these issues in my next blog entry.

I'd just like to leave you with an observation. When I started this blog, I got a lot of comments along the lines of "how the heck do you have time to write a blog?" Simply put, I'm just shifting time away from mind-numbing R&R (which is not even so relaxing) in favor of creative and intellectually satisfying R&R (like online courses, Skyping, etc). And that is the type of rejuvenating activity that makes me more productive at work the next day because 1) I don't need to wake up my conscious mind again when I'm done (because it never shut off) and 2) it gives me a chance to reflect on my life goals so that I am more committed to my work.


Keep reading Part 2.

Forget about societal expectations, MuDPhuD club, Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day!! I'm sorry I can't be home so I can't hug my mom all day, but I will be Skyping with her later on and ordered her a book off of Amazon. Also got to Skype with my nephew (or my brother/sis-in-law holding him, he's 9 months old) last night. I love Skype :)

So on Friday night the MD/PhD program held our MuddyPhuddy Club meeting at the home of one of our directors. It's a semi-social, semi-academic event where we get to talk to a guest physician-scientist about their career history and research. But Friday was something extra special- we had eight (8!) younger physician scientists dine with us. Some of them have just gotten faculty jobs in the past few years, and some are still residents or post-docs. This was great because while it's always nice to hold the attention of an HHMI investigator for a few hours, early-career scientists are much more relatable. I definitely have to give the hosting director credit- this is her first year with the program and she's already coming up with good ideas to mix it up.

So what did I learn? These sorts of meetings can always be tricky, since in science (and life, I'd argue), the usefulness of talking about career development pales in comparison to actually doing it. But I had a fantastic time on Friday, and I think that the young-investigator angle was critical. These are scientists who are still struggling to find their place, still figuring out general strategies for defeating obstacles, still changing their perceptions of how science works, still working on their own personalities and habits to maximize their effectiveness, just like early MD/PhD students. When people are in the middle of struggling with a challenge, their brains are working hard and they have to be able to crystallize their wisdom into words that they can tell themselves over and over. Good thing is, they can also tell it to us MD/PhD students. I want to spend the rest of this blog entry discussing some of the lessons I learned. I had been thinking about these sorts of issues and deliberately changing my habits and perceptions this past year, and it was good to hear that these are the exact things that young career physician-scientists struggle with. And I suspect this is all generalizable outside of science and medicine.

Up-front apology: I'm using this blog to be a bit preachy to myself, so if it sounds preachy to you, that's actually a good thing.

Lessons from MuddyPhuddy Club

1) Don't feel like you HAVE to do something or that someone else expects you to do it. Do it because you WANT to. Don't feel like you need to learn all the nuances of all the different cases in pediatric oncology just because "that's what a pediatric oncologist does," and don't take a prestigious chief resident job just because everyone else thinks you'd be great at it. These young physician-scientists evaluated their choices based on their own values, and where an appropriate choice didn't exist, they ASKED for one. One young resident thought 1 month of research per year was wholly inadequate, so she negotiated and ended up creating an entirely new program option for residents. She overcame all of the institutional resistance, but more importantly she overcame the "expectations" for what she was "supposed" to do. You need to be able to say no, to negotiate, to find your own path. That path might turn out to be exactly the same as what other people say you should do, but it's the perception that matters. Once you let other people, or your job description, or "societal expectations" tell you what to do, you are surrendering both your privilege and your responsibility as a thoughtful proactive person. I used to think I was doing research because I was supposed to in an MD/PhD program. Once I realized I should be doing what I WANT to do, I was forced to reexamine what about research I might WANT to do. Turns out it was research that I wanted to do, and I became 10 times more productive while feeling like all I was doing was having fun, and all I changed was my perception.

2) Start looking into labs immediately when I start residency. In more generalized terms, be proactive and don't let my long-term mind shut down just because I'm in super-busy mode in a well-defined role (resident)- that would be too easy. It would just be making excuses.

3) Don't put off life now just because you're busy. If you're ready to get married and have kids, do it sooner than later- it's only going to get busier. If you want to work on personal development, try new things, and improve yourself, do it now. That's the advantage of protected time, which will only disappear later on. Don't rush and try to finish the program faster, because that's just surrendering the protected time. Even if you're way ahead of the game, there's always more you can work on- professionally and personally. One resident had her child during her super-busy intern year, rather than waiting, and her reason was really good. If raising a child proves to be crazier than she suspected (like if the child gets very sick), then she can drop her job, because there are thousands of people with her exact same job description. The world keeps turning. But if the same thing happened later when she's starting up her own lab, then if she takes a break from her work, then the work simply doesn't get done because no one else has her skill set and expertise on the research problem. Thus, it is always better to live your life sooner than later, because you'll only lose more and more of that protected time.

4) Think you don't have time in the short run to read papers and work on other habits you

know will help you in the long run? Get up extra early every day and do it. I've been working on this but it's not at the top of my list so far so I've had minimal results. One of the early career physician scientists at the MPC told us, "So-and-so colleague told me that he woke up at 4:30am every morning to read papers. I told him he was crazy at the time, but now I do it all the time and its the only way I can keep up with the literature." (paraphrasing) In other words, don't complain about obstacles ("I don't have enough time."). Instead find clever ways to get around it- because that's way more fun.

On that last note, it's amazing to see that people at much more advanced stages of their careers are still forming habits, still being proven wrong and changing themselves to adopt the opposite viewpoint, still struggling to better themselves so they can contribute more to society. And this is the most important thing I realized- these habits are what I can really gain from these mentors. Often times at these meetings, it is expected that they talk about the specific challenges they faced recently- picking specialties that go with research careers, starting a family, securing funding, negotiating job packages at their first institution. But really, this is too far in the future for us trainees, too abstract, and too much of it will change by the time we are in their shoes. But the lesson to be flexible, to watch out for opportunities, to proactively improve yourself, to make time for reading and learning, to find what you truly WANT to do, these just seem like eternal truths. And I can use my protected PhD time to really master them before insanity of lab-clinic-raising kids starts up.

So I started this post with Mother's Day, and I'll finish it with Mother's Day. Here's the video I made my mom last year, accurately depicting her as the worrisome mother who sticks to conventional wisdom whenever possible. She showed it to all of her friends who laughed their heads off because apparently it's what they do as mothers as well. Happy Mother's Day!

Furious curiosity, mutagenesis screens, and prosopagnosia

And my blog returns! This is important to me because I'm trying to make writing a habit, since it stimulates thought. In the past it's been really hard to keep up new habits (even the ones I feel strongly about) but I'm slowly becoming better at it. So while this might be dangerous, I will go ahead and announce my goal: two blog posts per week for the rest of the month. No matter what.

You know what else stimulates thought? Talking to people in completely different fields than your own. I just had a really good 45 minute conversation with a fellow patron at the Espresso Royale cafe. He's a humanities grad student, so given that I'm an MD/PhD student in biogerontology, it shouldn't be surprising that it was pretty varied in terms of topic (really interesting topics, to me anyways). One might think that because neither of us knew that much about each other's fields that the conversation would be superficial. But that's not what happened. I think that because we both approached the topics as beginners, our minds were working with furious curiosity, and the ideas just started flowing. Soon enough, I was explaining the nuances of the evolutionary theory behind lifespan determination, as well as how to calculate the chances of double hits in C. elegans mutagenesis screens. He understood the intuition as well as any scientist. Meanwhile, I was also taking in ideas on the influence of postmodern thought in the humanities, the origins of musical genres, and public choice theory. I ended up sometimes sticking scientific labels on things, like emergent properties and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, but that only goes to show that the tools and concepts of one field equips you to understand other fields (cross-pollination :) ). Conclusion? The position of a beginner may be an uncomfortable place, but it's a fantastic place to grow.

Speaking of mutagenesis screens, tomorrow I get introduced to another high-throughput method in the C. elegans roundworm. I will be trying out a BioSorter, which is capable of sending worms (or zebrafish, or fruit flies, or clusters of mammalian cells) through an analyzer that can assess size and fluorescence and count and sort them (i.e. exactly like flow cytometry and FACS). Handy tool for handling large numbers of animals and systematically searching for manipulations that impact the biological process you're studying (e.g. aging).

Finally, I'll leave you with a couple of cool facts from the last book I read, The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2011, which is a collection of essays from all scientific fields (environmental science, astronomy, physics, biology, medicine). One essay by Stephen Hawking. My goal is 20 books by the end of the year, which I'm tracking on Goodreads, a social book site where you can see what your friends are reading.

1) About ten million songbirds (warblers) are killed each year in Cyprus by poachers. They are served as a delicacy called ambelopoulia. Lots of other birds can caught in the process and are simply killed. The poaching is technically illegal, but the law is minimally enforced (even prominent politicians will eat it on camera). Most interestingly, because it is illegal, most of the poachers are armed criminals somewhat analogous to drug cartels, so police officers are wary of going after them. Another example of how banning something doesn't necessarily help a situation, but instead creates a black market that is unregulated.

2) A black bear must consume 200,000 calories per day in order to have sufficient fat stores for winter hibernation.

3) Laysan albatrosses have permanent mating pairs and together nurture an egg each year. They don't stay together throughout the year but somehow manage to find each other again when mating season arrives. About 1/3 of the "mating pairs" are actually female-female pairs, as both females are fertilized by a quick mating with a male from another pair.

4) Prosopagnosia is a specific inability to recognize faces and places (agnosia is the more generalized inability to recognize objects). Usually individuals have lesioned fusiform gyruses, either by trauma or by some sort of genetic variation (some cases run in families). People with prosopagnosia usually develop tricks to get around it, recognizing other people based on gross features or context. It is believed that this is much more common than one might think, as people don't seek medical attention if they are born with it, because "that's just the way they are."

5) Kessler syndrome is the official name for the "space junk phenomenon," where it's getting increasingly dangerous in near-Earth space because of a bunch of aging equipment we've left there. The issue is that a single collision between two objects will create thousands of smaller objects that are equally dangerous, creating a catastrophic domino effect. Because of the velocities involved, one of these tiny fragments would be like a truck bomb. A 10-cm sphere of aluminum packs the punch of 7 kg of TNT.

Blog launch; people aren't that racist

Hello! I heard it's a good idea to have a (flexible) purpose in mind when starting a new venture, so here are my reasons for starting a blog- I suspect these are common to many bloggers.

1) Share things I find interesting. Usually these involve things that defy conventional wisdom (e.g. segregation, see below)

2) Share things I'm working on to improve myself. Writing it out helps me think about it, keeps me honest, invites feedback, and maybe gives others some ideas. I have so many general goals, such as reading more, keeping a diary, getting comfortable talking to strangers, pre-defining my goals for the day/week/month, etc. But I hope that having a defined task such as a blog entry will help motivate me.

3) Improve my writing skills and stimulate my mind. Pushing myself to generate interesting blog posts will force me to look into things I'm unfamiliar with.

4) Eliminate any residual fear of having my ideas be judged by others.

So, now see below for my first real blog post!

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Intro

In my free time I've been looking into the recent explosion of startups and non-profits offering online courses, including Coursera, Udacity, and edX. These offer full-semester-long courses, given by full professors at top colleges, complete with lectures, quizzes, problem sets, and final exams, and available to everyone for free. I'd argue these are going to be a lot more effective than traditional classroom learning, where half the students are on the Internet anyways NOT learning.

So right now I'm taking Model Thinking on Coursera, and I'd have to say the interface is a lot more engaging than the majority of in-person teachers I've had. The course is a personal project of Scott Page, a professor at the University of Michigan. And it's not just a video of the courses he normally teaches- you can see him directly talking to you, his pre-prepared slides, and the stuff he writes on the slides as he talks to you in real time. And yes, you can speed it up (2X max).

I hope that Model Thinking will help me think as a scientist and an intellectual, rather than just as a worm geneticist. I also like that models can lead us to unexpected conclusions, so I will share one of the first models presented in the class: Schelling's Model of Segregation.

The model

The question behind Schelling's Model of Segregation is: We all know that many (most) cities in the US are highly segregated, along lines of race, income, etc. Blacks might on average have 80% black neighbors, while whites might on average have 80% white neighbors. Why? Is it just because they are racist and like their own kind? You might think that if people want 80% of the people near them to look like them, and people are freely moving, then on average people will have 80% of their neighbors look like them. But let's do some modeling.

We have X number of people in a hypothetical city, and a grid of X homes that they can occupy. Each person is given the choice to move or stay, based on their neighborhood percentage of people who look like them, call that P. Let's say they will move to a new home if P is lower than a threshold T. In the real world, this means a person looks at his/her own neighbors, and gets a little spooked by the number of people who don't look like them, and moves. This is applied iteratively, since as one person moves that might cause others to move as well => this is a simulation.

Let's say that T is 30%. In a city of half whites and half blacks, that in fact is very much UN-racist. In fact, they would tolerate being in the MINORITY in their neighborhood. People only need 30% of their neighbors to look like them for them to stay. If you run the simulation (use a computer program), what do you get as the end result? >75% segregation. In other words, on average each person has 75% same-race neighbors.

How can this be? We already said that people don't mind being in the minority, and they are at most minimally-racist. How did we end up with major segregation without any other factors at play?

If we think carefully about the model, there are two tipping points that bias in favor of segregation. Essentially, the effect of any one person moving gets amplified.

1. Exodus Tip: A person moves out of a neighborhood. For their original same-race neighbors that may decrease their percentage below their Threshold T. For example 3/8 > 30% becomes 2/7 < 30%.
2. Genesis Tip: That person moves into a new neighborhood. For their new different-race neighbors, that may decrease their percentage below threshold T. For example 2/6 > 30% becomes 2/7 < 30%.

These are kind of common sense, but it's hard to fully appreciate the domino effect this can have.

Once one person moves, another moves, then another moves. The end result is segregation. In fact, if we only have the requirement that people don't want to be in the minority, i.e. people only want at least 50% of their neighbors to be of the same race, what happens? The end result is that 90% of a person's neighbors ends up being of the same race.

Finally, the kicker. What happens if people ARE really racist? What if they have a requirement that 95% of the people near them have to be of the same race? Here's another thing that completely defies conventional wisdom: you DON'T GET SEGREGATION!!

This blog post is getting long, so I'll let my readers figure out why HIGH LEVELS OF RACISM leads to situations where there is NO SEGREGATION.

Anticipated rebuttal

I'm sure you have a rebuttal to all this. That there are many other factors at play that might allow racism to be the primary explanation for segregation, i.e. racist laws, rent, gentrification, etc. Fair points- it is POSSIBLE for racism to explain segregation. But it is still valid to say that just because there is segregation arising from individual behavior, we shouldn't assume that individuals are racist.

Furthermore, this highlights the importance of models. This model left things like rent and gentrification out of the equation. It made some assumptions that may not be entirely true. But all that is besides the point. The act of laying out assumptions and taking them to their logical conclusion helps us think about a problem. In the end, we may end up keeping or throwing out some of our assumptions, and deciding that we need more data on the things we left out of the model. And in the end, we're all the better for it. We made progress.

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Conclusion

I hope that the models I learn the Model Thinking class will be fertile, i.e. they will be applicable to biology and medicine even though many of them were developed for economics and social science. A PhD is a fantastic time to explore all sorts of things that interest me and develop a variety of skills, because I have control over my own time. This will be an adventure, and I hope you'll join me.