Want more autonomy at work? Here is the first step.

More on balancing productivity and relationships! Again, I’m writing a lot of this for myself.

This series of blog posts was partially motivated by a reader’s question about defending one’s time while also maintaining relationships. It’s an important question, but there’s an important nuance. Yes, it is critical to defend your time and say “no” to a lot of things- even to your boss. But make sure you are effectively managing and utilizing what free time you already have before you start asking for more.

In fact, utilizing your current free time more effectively is key to obtaining more autonomy later on.
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Rule #1 can be summarized as: Schedule dedicated time to invest in your relationships and your ability to build relationships. This solves a lot of conflicts.

Rule #2: The First Step: Gain others' trust by proving your value and honesty

On value

There is a fantastic interview in Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You. It’s worth repeating. After graduating from college, a young woman named Lulu takes her first job. It's a mindless, boring job pushing buttons to test for software bugs, and she doesn’t have much control of what she does and when. She just follows orders from an unending parade of micromanaging bosses.

While defending one’s time and acquiring autonomy is critical for taking control of one’s work life, it would have been a mistake for Lulu to start doing that immediately. Instead, she used what little autonomous time she did have (mostly her free time at home) to build skills above and beyond her job requirements. Instead of watching TV, she spent countless hours learning how to code on her own, and re-write the company's underlying computer system.

Eventually, she figured out how to automate the company's entire bug-testing process, saving it a ton of time and money. No one asked her to do this. Her bosses were impressed, and she was given a major promotion heading up a new software automation division with lots of responsibilities that probably had her working 80 hours per week. At this point, Lulu was really valuable. So she decided to demand a 30-hour per week schedule to reserve enough time to focus on her side projects. They couldn’t say no- they needed her.

Therefore, if you feel constantly harassed by external responsibilities, a micromanaging boss, and other demands, don’t just try to fight them or avoid them (or worse, complain). Increase your value by any means necessary and then you can negotiate your time commitments on a more equal footing.

Now, PhD students are given a ton of autonomy and then must learn how to use it effectively. I didn’t need to “earn” it like Lulu did. However, the pattern still holds. Early on in my PhD, my boss would give me a project with specific goals and I’d work on them. If I didn’t fulfill them (which happened a lot early on), it would be a problem. I had other project ideas, but I honestly didn’t know how to execute them, so my boss’ ideas came first.

I started coming up with solutions that my boss hadn’t considered. I delivered surprise results. I took note of what areas my boss was not focusing on (rigorous statistics, bioinformatics, automating common lab tasks), and dedicated time to learning how to do those things. Today, it’s pretty clear my boss is happy with my progress and fully trusts me to figure things out on my own. His ideas are now (very helpful) suggestions, not requirements. 

Every PhD student has the time and autonomy to build skills above and beyond what is immediately required for the project they are given by their boss. If a corporate indentured servant like Lulu can find time for it, so can PhD students.

Book recommendation: Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You. Lots of good stories like Lulu’s. 

On honesty

Being trusted is more important than being liked. So don’t be afraid to piss people off. Don’t go around pissing people off on purpose, but if honesty necessitates some uncomfortable words, go ahead. 

If someone else is causing you problems, the solution is simple: talk to them about it. Don’t complain, and certainly don’t write them off as inept or uncaring. If someone else is demanding too much of your time, make sure they trust you and don’t just think you’re lazy for saying “no.” If you prove your honesty first, they will believe you when you say you are too busy.

Just like defending your time, don’t go overboard with this immediately. If your boss has some major flaws that are hurting your company, don’t walk into your her office and start criticizing her management style, unless she is already very open to feedback.

Instead, start small. If someone says, “I love New York!” and you really dislike New York, don’t be afraid to say, “Being in New York City makes me want to blow my brains out.” Even if this person greatly outranks you. Most people are secure enough to not take offense at a trivial preference like that. The very fact you are disagreeing with them shows them that you are telling them the truth. Of course, don’t be unnecessarily mean about it, but don’t be afraid to be polarizing.

Then, move up. Be open with your criticisms of your organization’s plans. Be open with what you support and don’t support. Even if your boss started off squelching feedback (I hear this is a common issue in the corporate world), but if you’ve built up trust, you can always get to the point of full honesty eventually.
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Finally, note that neither of these things, proving value and proving honesty, requires you to get more free time first. You just have to do it. And it will open many doors later on.

Time to re-evaluate how I build relationships and interact with others

This has been on my mind the entire month of November. It’s something I've put aside for a while. Therefore, I am talking to myself in this post just as much as I am to my readers.

Some context: my previous experiments developing focus and batching potential distractions were meant to increase the time and energy spent on what is important but not necessarily urgent. This includes building skills, exploring ideas through reading and moving my project forward. In other words, striving to produce quality results and increase my ability to produce quality results.

Just one problem, which a few readers noticed.

You have to take control of your schedule to make time for the important. Your schedule cannot be constantly subject to external demands, or else they will fill up all your time and you will have no time to nurture yourself.

To do this, you have to defend your own dedicated productivity time. We live in an interdependent world and in most jobs you have to do things for other people. You have meetings you must attend. You must report your progress. Other people will make unreasonable demands of you because they themselves are under pressure.

So if you make yourself unavailable and don't respond to people's requests immediately (something always presented as urgent but is of highly varying importance), that might piss other people off if you don't handle it properly. Rule #2 from my last post may be especially hard for others to understand.

But the issue goes deeper than that.

"Important but not urgent" also includes one more big thing that solves this problem: investing in relationships.
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Apply newfound time and energy to investing in relationships and your ability to build professional and personal relationships

It should be no surprise that conflicts occur when people don’t trust each other and don’t know each other well.

Rather than waiting for conflicts to occur and then frantically trying to resolve them before they put your relationship at risk, why not try to prevent them from happening at all? If you’re trying to protect your time from other people’s demands, you’ll be on much better footing if there is mutual trust and understanding.

But it’s not easy. 

To state the obvious: Building solid relationships requires you to invest your time getting to know them on a "deeper" level," something which requires dedicated, focused effort. Just as it takes unbroken focus to move your project forward or develop a new skill, it takes undivided attention to cultivate a strong relationship. 

So schedule time for it. And don't be afraid to sacrifice your schedule for a person you care about.

So… how does one actually go about building solid relationships?

Personally, I find cliches like “be nice” or “be yourself” or “think of others” or "be a good listener" to be extraordinarily unhelpful. They are too general to tell if you are actually making any progress. It’s also easy to be a good person a few times, and then stop thinking of others because you just assume what you do is “good” because you’re a “good person.” It’s called moral licensing.
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Getting better

Disclaimer: I've focused on just a few concrete things. Clearly, this is an incredibly complex topic, and there is infinite variation and variables in how relationships are built. There’s a lot more I could do, but I needed to select just a few I could focus on.

High-value activity #1: Listening with the intent of identifying what the other person considers important, especially if you aren’t (yet) interested.

Caring about what they care about immediately builds trust. Not sure if you understand their priorities yet? Say you think this person is emotionally attached to a gardening hobby. The next time you see them, are they genuinely complimented when you ask them about their garden?

So imagine that person e-mails you, “Could you do X for me?” But you know that this person cares about Y a lot more, and you are in the position to deliver Y more easily than X, you can offer that instead.

High-value activity #2: Deliberately practice eye contact and other signs of listening

If eye contact is uncomfortable, practice making it comfortable. Another example of listening is never pulling out your phone to check e-mail while chatting with someone. Are you able to comment on what they are talking about that shows you are processing what they say? Even if you don’t care about the topic, you can 1) still practice, so it comes naturally when it matters and 2) build trust with this person.

Feedback mechanism: it’s not a bad idea to carry around a notecard and make a tally mark for every conversation where you make good eye contact. It’s critical to know if you’re actually making progress compared to yesterday.

High-value activity #3: Re-think how you perceive other people. 

If you think someone else is unprofessional, uncaring, unethical, a straight-up asshole, incompetent etc., don't just write them off as such. Certainly don't talk about them behind their back.  Complaining just makes you feel helpless. If you think they aren't listening to you or responding to you, try to understand WHY they aren't. Most of the time, you will discover you two simply aren't on the same page. They don't have the same information as you. If you want them to put in the effort to change their behavior, you should at least consider putting in the effort to see their point of view and then make a more effective presentation to them as to how and why they should change.


I have freed up a lot of time and energy through focus and batching. I came pretty close to simply picking up a new project and getting more work done, but I realized there’s something more important to invest in: people. Note that these “high-value activities” require full attention, and are enabled by the time freed up by enhanced productivity. I can’t resist pulling out my phone during a conversation if I’m constantly worrying about my work.

My Most Productive Month Ever: Some Secrets

Hi all! Just a quick update. This has been my most productive month yet (in my life), so I'll share my thoughts.

Back in June, I wrote a lot about:

1) working on my most important projects in focused, distraction-free 90-minute intervals
***2) batching together less-important tasks so they don't become distractions while I'm trying to get actual work done
3) preserving time for daily habits

Since my last post, I've taken #2 to an extreme, through a process of experimentation. I also have updates on #1 and 3, but I will save that for a future post.

The result can be summarized as three rules:

Rule 1: Schedule as many small tasks as possible on "Batch Day"

Batch days are perhaps the most useful innovation in my schedule. I pick the day of the week I have the most meetings/appointments and tell myself, "I don't need to make any progress on my research that day." Instead, I get all of the little things I need to get done out of the way for the week. This includes personal errands: laundry, clearing out my e-mail, shopping, cleaning, organizing, bills, etc. It also includes all the little tasks around lab that I need to do on a regular basis, favors I need to do for other people, and generally any task that takes time and energy but not much thought.

Essentially, anything that does not move my project forward gets stuffed into this single day per week.  These days end up being PACKED and I have no trouble exhausting myself by the end of the day. I usually don't finish everything, so I end up doing some "batch" tasks towards the end of other days of the week.

My time tracking for moving my project forward vs. all other tasks. Note that I only mark down time in which I am fully focused on the task at hand. Just being at work does not count for anything. My philosophy is work harder, not long.

This is intended to avoid letting these small tasks interfere with my research. They are extremely dangerous because they feel like productivity, so they can easily be used as an excuse to avoid making progress on my projects. Whenever such a task gets presented to me during the week, I put it on the list for my next batch day (which may be up to 6 days later) and go back to work. I only do the task immediately if it takes less than 2 minutes or if it is extremely urgent.

Unexpectedly, I'm now far more on top of my responsibilities than I was before. Because one day per week is specifically designated for small tasks, I rarely procrastinate on them. When someone asks me for something, I can tell them I will do it next Wednesday. And it's easy to deliver.

Rule 2: Schedule meetings only for the busiest day of the week.

Look at the schedule below. If someone wants to schedule a meeting, I will reply as follows:
"Thursday is best. If that doesn't work, I might be able to do Monday at 11am or 1pm, or Tuesday at 8am."



To concentrate on my work and do it right, I need long stretches of time to focus. Therefore, Wednesday and Friday in the schedule above must be protected at all costs. Switching between projects or tasks is the best way to lose time in the day.

Rule 3: Check priority e-mail once a day after finishing my work, and the rest of my e-mail once a week.

Checking e-mail is the best way to lose focus. Therefore, I designate a specific time in the afternoon AFTER I've finished my most important tasks for the day to check e-mail. Even then, I only look at and respond to things that make it into my priority inbox. Once a week, usually on batch day, I will quickly process my e-mail and reach Inbox-Zero in about 30 minutes (including responses and small to-dos).

On processing:
I never leave an e-mail in my inbox after looking at it. I immediately do one or more of the following:
     1) delete it
     2) archive it
     3) add event to my calendar
     4) add task to my to-do list (usually on my batch day list)
     5) write a note to myself and file it properly
     6) respond as succinctly as possible

June Review: Results and hard work are mutually exclusive

It's already time to reflect back on the entire month.

I was healthily hypomanic for the first two weeks. My willpower and confidence was through the roof- I felt like I had the discipline to break through any obstacle. And indeed I did. I easily wrote off thoughts of other's expectations (does X person expect Y from me right now?) and was able to focus on what I thought was most important.

I didn't get much stuff done in lab this past week. Most of what I did do failed. I'm OK with that. I was trying to accomplish a lot before next week's International Worm Meeting in LA, but I think ultimately my brain told me I didn't have enough time to do everything I had planned. My brain felt saturated- by everything I wanted to do, AND everything I thought others expected me to do. I took Thursday off to run some errands and read, and that was easily the best decision of the week.

My time is now constrained- I leave for LA on Wednesday morning, and I still need to make my two posters for the meeting and take care of some obligations. Not to mention do laundry and pack. So I have little doubt that today and tomorrow will be a productivity bonanza.

Then the upcoming Worm Meeting is the perfect chance to incorporate everything I've been working on these past few months- interviewing successful scientists, my first manuscript, practicing eye contact, teaching, literature reading, my current projects, and gathering ideas for the next phase. It has the potential to concretely advance my work in a measurable way. Time to level-up.

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Embrace the Cycle

There is a clear cycle at work here. When I started this month, I thought I'd be working hard every week and be relentlessly results-focused the entire time. That's what I had developed my scheduled bursts for. But hard work is NOT the best time to get results.

• Phase I: Perspiration. Work intensely to the point of discomfort. Acquire new skills and try new things. Ignore results.
• Phase II: Rest. Mental distance. Do something else, and don't worry about your work.
• Phase III: Level-up. Concrete progress. Demand results from yourself.

Phase I vs Phase II: Progress takes discomfort and hard work. There's no way around it. But that sort of mental training is impossible to maintain. As biological creatures, we need Phase II- time to rest and let our bodies and thoughts reorganize themselves. 

Phase I vs Phase III: One should NOT be results-oriented during the hard training phase. Obsessing over concrete results leads us to take shortcuts and take solace in easy and ultimately unimportant accomplishments, because it is impossible to make meaningful gains on a daily or even weekly basis. Instead of focusing on what you accomplish, focus on how you work. Refine your process and treat it like a craft. Once you have built a solid base, then you can later apply them to getting results.

Phase II vs Phase III: Phase II gives you the time to consolidate your newly acquired capabilities and build up your mental energy for the final push for results. Then, you can tell yourself during Phase III that you WILL do something amazing, and this brings the exhilaration and adrenaline required for a truly meaningful accomplishment.

The entire perspective of this post was inspired by weightlifting. My weekly workouts cycle between  intense training, a light workout, and a PR day. Analogies are awesome.

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Just because I promised it

No schedule for the upcoming week, since it will be inherently dictated by the Worm Meeting schedule.

Green blocks are successful scheduled bursts, red blocks are failed, and blue blocks are prior commitments.

Weekly Report: Discomfort Solved

This was a very interesting week to start my experiment, because I bought a condo! That obviously took a lot of time, and I faced some other personal challenges this week as well. But my scheduled bursts still allowed me to get a lot done, and my habits have taken a lot of the stress out of my life.

If you haven't read up on my new system yet, see my last blog post.

See after the calendar for the lessons I drew this week.

Report (see calendar): I met my scheduled bursts (green) on Monday, Tuesday, Friday, and Saturday without much trouble. However, on Wednesday (yellow) I had an urgent interruption related to the condo, so I simply did my burst later in the day, under non-ideal (i.e. distracted) conditions. On Thursday (red), I was simply exhuasted from the condo closing and decided to take a nap instead. Yes, I would call that poor planning, and in the future I will avoid planning bursts on days surrounding major events.

Green = success. Yellow = urgent interruption. Red = failure. Blue = other commitments.

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My new favorite thing: discomfort

But overall, I got a lot done this week. I tackled two big experiments that I had been putting off, partially because of lack of time, and partially because I was a bit fearful and didn't know where to start. However, just 1 hour of focused concentration in each case proved sufficient to break through the barrier. At the beginning, I felt stupid and perhaps a bit guilty. After that very uncomfortable hour, I knew what I needed to do, and I was able to get started on real work. And I managed to get real (and exciting) results for both of them.

This illustrates what I've known for a while, informed by bloggers like Cal Newport and Scott Young: 

~Comfort with discomfort is one of the most important skills a person can develop. Forcing yourself to persist through discomfort is critical when starting any new project. Otherwise, it is too tempting to go back to easy work that only makes you feel productive.~

Scheduled bursts are a great way to force yourself to embrace discomfort. They are time-limited, so the task no longer seems as daunting and it's easier to get started. The process of systematically eliminating distractions also helps to psychologically prepare you for the discomfort.

To facilitate getting into "the zone," I have implemented a checklist for when I start these sessions. Checklists are obviously ubiquitous, but I'm using them for two very specific reasons:

1) Mental attention: It gives my mind one less thing to keep track of. Making deliberate changes to one's productivity system itself requires mental attention, and checklists lessen that requirement. The checklist makes it easier to fully focus on the task in front of me.

2) Ritual: This tells my brain that it's time to enter a state of "deep work."

My checklist for scheduled bursts.

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Habits are investments

I won't comment much on these this week. But I've observed two things:

1) I've already begun noticing changes in how I perceive events and how I interact with people. In particular, I make much better eye contact and feel much more confident.

2) These habits are now always running in the back of mind. Thus, I can automatically activate them when appropriate.

Lift habits.

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Next week's schedule

I also noticed last week that front-ending my bursts (e.g. scheduling more towards the beginning of the week, and beginning of the day if possible) makes good use of my abundance of early-week energy. It also eliminates feelings of guilt if I have to tend to other things later in the week. This week, I have to front-end my schedule, since I will be away for a wedding Friday-Sunday.

Scheduled bursts are in orange. Other commitments are in blue. Everything else must fit into the white space.

June plan: Scheduled bursts and worthwhile habits

Last time I described my goal of combining two productivity regimes: drip and burst.

To recap, the hybrid approach has three levels:

1) pre-scheduled bursts of intense, focused and distraction-free work on my most important and difficult projects (regardless of urgency).

2) a limited number of high-yield low-cost daily habits performed intentionally and mindfully

3) batches (ideally 2+ hours) containing everything else

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Accountability is critical

I promise to my readers, that for the rest of June (and possibly beyond), I will do the following each week: 

1) I will post a calendar at the start of the week indicating my scheduled bursts and how I work around them.
2) I will post a calendar at the end of the week indicating successes and failures.
3) I will post a screenshot of Lift for daily habits that week.

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Orange indicates scheduled bursts of work on most important projects. I can work on those projects other times, but not in focused bursts (to avoid exhausting my mental energy).  Blue indicates other commitments. Everything else gets crammed into the white spaces.

Lift on iPhone for the past 2 weeks.

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Tier 1: Scheduled Bursts

1. Lab (most important project- 2 related experimental protocols I've never done before and will yield the missing data required for submission)
2. Literature review: 15 papers read in-depth, 30 skimmed, 100 abstracts. Aiming to fill in the gaps in my knowledge.

Rules: 

• Scheduling: Must schedule these in advance at the beginning of the week for at least 3 hours each. I treat these as commitments. These are non-negotiable (overrule other things that come up, like meetings). However, I will not overly fret about making an "ideal" schedule ahead of time. Perfectionism and over-planning are forms of procrastination.
• Distractions: I shut off my phone/Internet and isolate myself as best I can. If I give into ANY distraction, I must stop and mark it as a failure, and report it on this blog. If I decide an unexpected interruption is important and urgent enough to stop what I'm doing, it is not a failure, but I make a note of it to see if I can find a way to avoid it in the future.
• Focus: Use a timer for 60 continuous minutes (optional to do more on given day after a 15 minute break). Increase by 10 minutes after completing 10 successful sessions in a row.
• Visible Progress: Have something to show for each session. This can be in a summary in an idea notebook, an updated master project document, an updated manuscript, talking to my PI, prepping slides for lab meeting, etc
• Breaks: At least one day a week, I cannot work on my most important projects

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Tier 2: Worthwhile Habits

1. Check e-mail/FB/news/Feedly once a day
2. Write 30 minutes per day
3. Make good eye contact
4. Meditate
5. Do something I fear
6. Say "no" to one thing

Rules:

• Aim to do these everyday. Accomplish as many as possible early in the day
• Checking e-mail a single time is the most important and most difficult. For motivation, as soon as I check a 2nd time, I am barred from recording more habits for the day. At other times, Gmail is blocked from my computer, and Mailbox is put on the last icon screen of my phone. I do check "important" e-mail folder 1 extra time per day. It is also OK to open e-mail to obtain information necessary for a project, but getting distracted by unrelated e-mails constitutes failure

Summer plans: Big projects and small habits

I've tried two alternative paradigms of productivity in the past year. 

First I used the "drip" method, where I try to do a little each day on all of my goals. Most importantly, this helped me build habits. It reduced procrastination because I just told myself I only had to do a little bit. But as I discovered, "drip" creates too much anxiety, and costs mental energy and time for every switch to an unrelated task. Because it takes time to get fully adjusted to a new task, this meant my actual results output was often minimal unless it was a particularly good day.

Therefore, I adopted the "burst" method where I focus exclusively on one project for a half or full day. This is the only way I could've finished multiple major projects with tight deadlines. This change also coincided with getting a decent handle on applying the Pareto Principle, forcing myself to focus on the 20% of work that yields 80% of results. It is worth obsessing and enduring mental pain for that work. Everything else gets done in a rapid-fire batch, but poor quality is perfectly acceptable.

However, even the Pareto-Driven Burst is flawed. I definitely excelled at my 3 most important projects, and all the small tasks were completed efficiently. But I stopped developing productive habits, because they got mixed in with the small tasks. I started wasting time on the Internet again during my free time. I stopped writing in my journal, meditating, generating ideas, practicing gratitude, and eliminating negative thought patterns. Obviously I stopped writing on my blog. I stopped practicing good eye contact and thinking about how I interact with people. I had no time to examine my habits on a daily basis.

Bursts get results, but they are hard and can easily burn you out. That's where habits come in. They manage stress. Productive habits serve as a solid base from which you can launch your most-important projects. There's no way I could've managed the "burst" period without the thought patterns, personality changes, and habits that I developed during the "drip" period. I would've procrastinated and self-doubted at every turn.

So, it is time to combine drip and burst. Let's examine how we can add habit formation to my current method.

Burst-only (current method):

1. Pick a most important project, work on it. Another day I'll work on another project.

2. Put everything else in one pile. Once the pile is large enough, spend a half day doing it and get it out of the way.

I had a pretty full schedule before. But if I can isolate most-important projects and batched tasks to particular time slots, I will have more time. This will be accomplished by scheduling. This should be made easier this summer since I have fewer batched tasks like meetings and required seminars.

Burst/drip combo (new method):

1. Each week, schedule continuous lengthy work sessions on most important projects, >3x per week. Once scheduled, no last-minute interruptions will be allowed.

2. Assign time each day for habits (early morning, usually). Accomplish as many as possible, then be sure to do the rest later in the day.

3. Fit everything else into batches of 30+ minutes. This includes e-mail.

There's nothing glamorous about habits. They don't advance your career. But they are reliable and will get you ready for the big time.

Next time I'll lay out my exact plans and accountability scheme to test-drive this method.

Iguazu Falls: Simple vacations are better

26 hours and 5 airports later, I peered out into the subtropical rain forest. It was dark already. A van picked us up, and we bolted down long windy roads through the jungle. Finally, a building appears as we enter town. But we veer right off onto a completely unlighted dirt road which the van can barely fit through. We brake every 20 feet to carefully dodge a tree. 15 minutes later, a 5-star hotel rises out of nowhere.

We are there for my dad's conference. There are some hiking paths nearby, but absolutely nothing else except solid rainforest for miles. Since it was hard to get out, and my dad was occupied, my mother and I spent most of our time in the hotel. I ended up reading 3 books and leaving the hotel only once to go see Iguazu Falls. Speaking of which…

Exploring Iguazu Falls (2 min)

Argentine side of Iguazu Falls

Up close

Devil's Throat

More pictures at the bottom.

At first, I felt a little lame. Aren't vacations supposed to be full of seeing and doing? I imagined answering the question, "why fly 10,000 miles just to sit in a hotel and read books that you could read anywhere?" I had frequent urges to organize a group to get a taxi and go exploring, but honestly I just wanted to sit back and think. 

Every morning, I wrote for 30 minutes, meditated, explored various thoughts and ideas in a handwritten Moleskine journal. I also tried to check e-mail/Facebook/news together one single time each day- a practice I intend to continue. I didn't need to network, but I attended events primarily to accomplish one thing: practice good eye contact. Interpersonal skills tend to suffer when you're lost in your own thoughts while working in lab for extended durations.

Relaxing by the pool

I reflected back on some of my previous vacations- taking whirlwind tours around various cities, staying in a different place every night, frantically trying to catch a ferry or train or bus, always on the move, always trying to plan the next destination, meal, or shower. Honestly, I don't remember very much about them, other than a few key moments.

I see no reason to trade a busy worklife (which I always need to simplify further) for a busy vacation. Relaxing, clearing my thoughts, attaining some distance, and then dispassionately examining my own life. That's what I needed, and that's what I did.

And suddenly, I started making progress on everything I had been stuck on.


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More photos

Mulling a true return to blogging

I started this blog around this time last year, so perhaps this is the right season for a little writing and self-expression. You probably assumed that I've been too busy to blog, and that's essentially true. This semester I barely had time for my reading project- I'm now 5 books behind and I made a pledge I wouldn’t be taking on more unless I could fulfill this goal. Of course, those of you who have followed my blog in the past know that not having time is a false excuse.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I'm sitting in my hotel in the middle of the jungle in... Argentina! I'm with my parents at one of my dad's conferences at Iguazu Falls. Eleanor Roosevelt reportedly remarked "poor Niagara!" upon seeing Iguazu. I'll try to post some pictures when I get back. 

For now, here's one ripped from the web:

I intend to focus on catching up on books for the first few days. The idea is to create some mental distance, and not think about my past semester or future plans at all. To create true peace of mind, I'm going to write it all down, publish this blog entry, and be done with it.

This is the perfect time for a break. It's the start of summer. I just finished one of my projects, and now I'm gearing up for a final push on a second. And so after I've completed my trip, it's high time to carefully re-examine my goals, work habits, and life pursuits. Blogging will probably be essential.

My craziest semester ever

A quick update on what I've been up to, plus some thoughts:

Manuscript: I wrote my first first-author paper ever, and the revision was submitted yesterday! I mastered techniques an adapted my work habits to dramatically increase the number of experiments I could perform in parallel. My procrastination levels were by far the lowest in my entire life. However, I quickly became aware of my next challenge: I was too busy churning out data, and had not nearly enough time for high-level thinking. In other words, "needs to read more." Time to stretch my abilities, acquire new skills, and experience some discomfort. The goal is to come up with a big idea that I can call uniquely mine.

Presentations: my lack of time for high-level thinking became obvious once I had to prepare my first hour-long presentations on my own research. I struggled to meet this challenge. My earlier presentations were much shorter, and only involved generalities. Even for those, I had to space out my revisions over the course of a month or more. Now I had one week. Of course, feelings of self-doubt arose. Do I truly belong in a PhD program? But I fought through it, and my time invested last year in cultivating productive thought patterns paid off. I took brutally honest feedback to heart. And therefore both presentations ended up as resounding successes.

Teaching: I love teaching. I refuse to blow off teaching as a distraction from my oh-so-important research. So I deliberately approached the department where TA's have the heaviest teaching responsibilities. Yes, there is a hardass professor and a few whiny pre-meds. But most teaching headaches can be addressed by breaking away from institutionalized teaching methods. If one dares to do things unconventionally, one can have the best teaching experience ever. I came up with fun silly metaphors for abstract concepts without any idea of how students would receive them. They were making their own metaphors by semester's end. 

When the professor deliberately made the first exam incredibly difficult to force students to work hard for the rest of the semester (the average was a D and the class is not on a curve) I told my students a personal story of failure and the lessons I learned. By teaching them methods to study more effectively, I convinced them that they need not feel guilty about not being smart enough or not working hard enough, because those were not the core of the problem. They only needed to learn how to learn more effectively, and with that message they became more motivated than ever. No eye-rolls. The result? For final grades, 12 out of 16 A’s and A+’s were in my section. They even made me a card, and I honestly cried when I read it.

The most useful tactic for tackling multiple big projects

From reading above, you might imagine I was hectically moving from one task to the next. After all, student emails arrive at random times, multiple overlapping experiments are going at once, and I have random meetings and seminars at all times of day.

But probably the best advice I got was from Cal Newport, who advises doing everything in series, not in parallel. No rapid switching between teaching and research tasks. One day is entirely devoted to research. One half-day devoted entirely to teaching and answering student e-mails, or one half-day devoted entirely to meetings and small tasks. Labwork needs to be done everyday, so I can't devote a full day to other things, but I try to reach the ideal as much as possible. 

If anything, this greatly decreased my stress levels. Every activity comes with its own anxiety traps, and trying to juggle them all at once causes those anxieties to compound, so its impossible to focus on one thing and do a good job. Better to tackle one mine at a time in an obstacle course than to navigate a whole minefield.

A return to blogging?

With me adding more plans on top of what was a very busy schedule, you might think returning to blogging is ridiculous. But as I recently read, blog material is a natural byproduct of what you do during a PhD, and it takes minimal time to transform it into blog format. In fact, it may even speed up your work, since communication and teaching rapidly clarifies your thinking. As I taught my students, explaining things to others is the best way to make something stick.

A Story Not About Passion

Left for dead on the day she was born because she was a girl, Fawzia Koofi is now the deputy speaker of the house in Afghanistan and running for president in a society where many still do not believe that women should even be educated. She has perservered despite being on the run for much of her life, first from the mujahideen, who killed her father, and then the Taliban, who took away her freedoms and killed her husband and many other family members. Her soul fell as she watched all the progress towards modernization and women's rights crumble under civil war and Taliban rule. She has faced death many times throughout her life, and she still withstands regular assassination attempts.

Clearly, Fawzia Koofi is a remarkable person. But millions of Afghans have gone through virtually identical experiences. How did she become remarkable?

When you listen to Fawzia Koofi now, like during her appearance on the Daily Show, you might think that what makes her remarkable is her mission. The significance of her mission is obvious: poverty, women's rights, political reform, ensure her duaghters do not suffer as she did.

Technically, it is true that Fawzia's mission makes her remarkable. Unfortunately, it would be all too easy to take the wrong lesson from her, just as many people took the wrong lesson from Steve Job's Stanford speech.

Too many people, including me, thought that the lesson is "Find your passion."

"Find your passion" is a terrible, terrible advice.

Or rather, it is highly misleading. Fawzia Koofi and Steve Jobs did not START by finding a compelling mission or purpose. Fawzia started by insisting that she receive an education, even while on the run, and much to the resistance of her family members. She had no time to think of a mission- she was only a child when she had to start fleeing from death on a regular basis. And it was this education that made her unique. At a time when it was nearly impossible for a woman to get an education, she got one. In other words, she had rare and valuable skills.

Notably, she did not originally intend to go into politics. The idea developed relatively late in life. But her skills got her noticed, and she was given the opportunity to run for Parliament, mostly made possible by chance events. Her mission only started developing in earnest many years after she began developing her skills. Even when she was well on her way to fame, she said she felt "mentally lost" and "purposeless."

During this time, she still had to build her skills constantly, in particular in giving speeches. This ability is what ultimately gave her the power to start building women's education centers in conservative villages, to start standing up vocally for women's rights, to get on the international stage. Only now does her mission seem clear. Her passion was a side effect of getting really good at what she does.

In summary:

Wrong: Look inward and decide passion => go follow the passion

Right: look outward and see what skills might allow you to offer value to others => develop skills => explore many missions while developing more skills => find passion. Or rather let passion find you.

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I Know My Passion... Not

I'm 7 books into my effort to read 52 books in 52 weeks. This blog entry was my attempt to explain Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You using the example of another book, Fawzia Koofi's Favored Daughter. He uses many case examples to rigorously debunk "Follow your passion."

You may remember my blog entry "I'm lost. What's my purpose in life?" Cal Newport's book pretty much solves everything. I don't need to feel bad that I haven't found a purpose, because a purpose is only possible after I've spent decades developing valuable skills. My most meaningful career accomplishment will likely be something I never imagined.

I also noted that Cal Newport, being an academic, provided really really good advice for graduate students (and in general, anyone who is trying to create knowledge). I've already begun implementing his paradigm into my work (see below).

Below, I've copied my notes on Cal Newport's book. But seriously, go buy So Good They Can't Ignore You right now.

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So Good They Can't Ignore You

Popular paradigm: look inward and decide your "passion," develop the courage to leave your job and go follow your passion. Then develop passion-oriented skills and do what you love.

New paradigm: Pre-existing passions don't exist. Even if they did, you would first need rare and valuable skills to back them up, called career capital, or you will fail. To find a compelling mission for your life, you need those skills first so you can explore many possible missions. You can develop career capital in nearly any job, because you can usually apply skills to other fields. Start NOW, in your current job. Careful: the more skill you acquire, the more others will try to convince you to help them or follow a traditional path, but stay focused on what you believe will make the most impact. Use your value to demand more autonomy and surround yourself with people you like and work well with. Then, use your autonomous time to develop your own missions. These are tentative missions - anything that seems interesting and important at the time. Your mission will constantly change, so be comfortable with it. Some missions will reveal themselves serendipitously- if you have the skills then you can take advantage of opportunities. Others will be brought to you because of your skills- people want to work with you. Learn as much as you can, brainstorm ideas, and put them into action in small projects. This will allow you to continuously expand, refine, or replace your missions until you believe that you are both working right and doing the right work.

Important: these are not a series of steps. They define a lifestyle. Different aspects are more important to focus on a different times. Career capital is most important for a 20-something, for example.

What Can You Actually Do Right Now?

Bold: Goals

Italics: specific activities that bring you closer to the goals. Do these on a regular basis.

General principles

• Develop career capital - rare and valuable skills that make you so good/interesting that others cannot ignore you
• Explore possible life/work missions - these will allow you to constantly refine your skill set, explore opportunities and develop a mission
• Time tracking - track time spent towards high-yield activities, i.e. those that develop career capital and explore possible missions. These include deliberate practice and feedback, background research, little bets, serious study of others and others' work
• Autonomy - YOU must make time for high-yield activities
• Prioritize these over simple productivity
• Turn down prestigious positions that saddle you with responsibilities
• Surround yourself with likeable and talented people who respect your autonomy

Career capital

• Identify rare and valuable skills that make the most difference in your current field or are generally applicable to any field
• Study people who have rare and valuable skills
• Develop rare and valuable skills:
• Deliberate practice - strain yourself and embrace discomfort and ambiguity
• Seek immediate, clear feedback, esp from mentor/coach

Mission and impact

• Mission: Determine a tentative mission
• Study people who have compelling missions and interesting careers
• Cutting Edge: Do research and constantly scan for your field's next big idea - the "adjacent possible"
• Background research: Learn new ideas in your field through reading, meetings, talks
• Research Bible: Summarize idea-of-the-week in your own words
• Idea notebook: brainstorm own ideas
• Daily walk: free-form brainstorm related to the tentative mission
• Little bets: small exploratory projects (<1 month) to test your ideas
• criteria: must do at least one of the following:
• force yourself to master a new skill
• produce novel results
• grasp the attention of others (i.e. be remarkable)
• Seek concrete feedback, especially from others
• obsess over self-imposed deadlines
• publicize your little bets in a setting where word can quickly spread if the idea is good enough
• Reflection: Evaluate concrete feedback from little bet, alter or replace tentative mission, guide further research, plan next little bet
• Take 1 full day off per month for reflection

The best way to start the day

Today is a ridiculously busy day. I still need to prepare my lesson for teaching at 1pm, and today is one of the few days this week that harbors a continuous block of time to get lab work done. And I want to read some papers and get some planning done. And all this needs to be done before I pick up the guest I'm hosting for PhD recruitment weekend. Since I need to take him around campus tomorrow to all his interviews and events, I won't be able to do much tomorrow other than grade papers and maybe read my 5th book. Anxiety is rising.

But I'm taking a little time to slow down and gather my thoughts for this morning on this blog. I went down to the cafe, selected their newest roast, and sat down in the comfortably spacious common area. I suppose I could've looked out at the heavy snow and temperature drop from 50 to 20 degrees as a frustration and a blockade to productivity. But I'd rather gaze out of the big bright windows, see the beauty from my warm chair, and purposefully enjoy my coffee. I let my mind settle on comfort and charm of Ann Arbor and the feeling of being at home. Simultaneously, I wonder about everything else out there on this planet and all the experiences awaiting me in life.

I like slowing down at the beginning of the day. It is all too easy to see one's massive to-do list and rush straight into work. But paradoxically, this leads to less work getting done. It's hard to focus on one's work if you just think "I have to do this today," rather than "I want to do this today." It's hard to be creative unless your mind wanders a little and brings new resources to bear on the problems you're solving. And without taking some time to think, it's easy to fall into the trap of doing urgent stuff, rather than important stuff. And that is a form of procrastination far worse than delaying your work for 30 minutes.

Since sitting down, I've determined the #1 thing I need to do this morning is perform a literature search and determine the list of gene expression assays I want to design. Then, the #2 thing I need to do is plan my teaching. Also, I need to go to the gym since I won't be able to go later. Exercise is not something I'm willing to compromise on, no matter how I busy I am. That's it for this morning until my discussion section. Nothing else will enter my mind.

Taking some time to prepare the mind will cause one's most important priorities to float to the top, where they are ripe for picking.

High-Yield Practices to Prepare Your Mind
Sometimes one can get up without direction for 30 minutes and stumble upon an idea or practice that changes one's life. Not likely, however. Some default choices for what to do to gather one's thoughts for the rest of the day:

Create. 

I created this blog entry this morning. Write, build, draw, create a connection with another human being.

Focus on a simple joy. 

Just for a few minutes, nothing else in the world can get between you, your cup of coffee, and your thoughts.

Exercise.

Work hard enough to feel discomfort. Embrace the discomfort- that attitude makes you feel ready to tackle challenges for the rest of the day. Eat some protein afterwards.

Make something sparkly clean.

But don't rush it. Consider your environment's effect on your mind.

Read something unrelated to your work.

Try to learn a new idea. Or engage yourself in a new story. Important: Don't read the news.

Generate ideas.

Doesn't matter how stupid they sound. Write them down. Create. If nothing comes to you, read something first and really consider it. Anyone can become creative if they practice being creative.

Finally, after you're all done, either plan the rest of your day, or go straight into your #1 most important and most difficult task of the day. Look at it as an opportunity.