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.

Work is Play: Stop focusing on your job's relevance

Recently, I've been reading the autobiography of Richard Feynman, the Nobel prize winning physicist. He reveals that after working at Los Alamos developing the atomic bomb, he fell into depression and a creative rut. One day he decided he was going to stop focusing on solving problems for societal benefit, significance, or any other purpose. He would simply play with science. He would work on the quirkiest problems, without any regard as to their relevance. One day he saw a colleague throw a dinner plate into the air and noticed that the ratio of the wobble to the spinning appeared to be 2:1. So he spent a huge chunk of his time trying to work out equations for it. Guess what? It got him out of his rut- he stopped caring that others might be judging him for spending his tenured faculty time on silly things. He could just dive in and think about the physics. And the equations he worked out happened to describe an analogous phenomenon in quantum mechanics, forming the basis for his Nobel Prize.

I entered my PhD fascinated by the basic biology behind aging and its implications for society. I  preferred thinking about science in the abstract rather than the labwork which I saw as hard work, a necessary evil. A lot of protocols are mindless because they are so well established- you just have to do them as manual labor. Early on I made a lot of mistakes in lab. It was very slow and I found myself procrastinating on my project, even ignoring reading papers because it would just stress me out by reminding me of labwork. Feedback loop initiated: I felt overwhelmed by how much stuff I needed to do, and I felt bad that I seemed so behind, especially compared to other people. Whenever I did make progress, the solution was so simple that I found myself regretting and blaming myself for not doing it earlier. So I started procrastinating even more.

But certain forms of procrastination are ultimately beneficial.

One purpose of this blog is to carefully consider and publicize my efforts to make deliberate changes in my life: One common question I get is, "how do you have time for blogging? Or any of this??" You could also ask how I have the mental energy for any of this.

Yes, that is the PhD. I get to choose how I spend all of my own time. Some scientists think as a PhD student you should be focused so much on your scientific work that you don't have time for anything else. I disagree. I think you should be dedicating all of your time to training yourself to be the most effective intellectual possible. You have to figure out for yourself how to do that- there are many avenues that don't involve working. 

• Stopping myself from wasting time on the Internet?  A no-brainer.
• Managing negative thoughts? Your self-talk can be a massive hindrance to your productivity. 
• Fitness? Exercise grows new neurons in your hippocampus, prevents depression, and improves cognitive function. 
• Learning other subjects? I solved a major problem in lab by analogy after reading the blog of someone describing an entirely different problem. 
• Practice writing? Last year I was really really slow at writing analysis papers for classes. When it comes to publishing, I can't let being out of practice get in my way.
• Trying new things? If you can get yourself in the habit of jumping into things you know nothing about, you will have no problem getting started on that new method which will yield the best data.
• Idea generation? Good ideas in science are a needle in a haystack. But if you don't have a haystack in the first place, you won't find the needle.

Hence, everything I am doing outside of lab IS contributing to my PhD work, by investing in my most precious resource: myself. Doing these things takes time and focus. By focusing on side projects OUTSIDE of work, I was able to get started without any of the negative feelings about my work. Like Feynman, I stopped caring about what I was "supposed" to do- and that enabled me to just get started.

Changing myself has changed the way I look at my work. 

Sure, I still don't gain any enjoyment from the physical act of conducting wetlab experiments. But one habit I've formed is to ask myself: What do I actually enjoy? What could I actually enjoy about my work?

•      Figuring stuff out
•      Talking to others and coming to a revelation together
•      Control over my own time
•      Trying new things

By mentally focusing on these things in lab, I enjoy my work way more even if there are aspects that I'm still impatient with. Nowadays, I tend to push the mindless protocols to the end of the day and just listen to the Daily Show or podcasts in the background. I'm relaxed. No longer are they a problem.

I really started only addressing this in earnest this month. When I started focusing all my efforts into lab and nothing else, I almost gave up. Negative thoughts returned, I felt overwhelmed and regretful that I "wasted" time on all these side projects. But my focus kept up and survived, because I had trained my own brain this past summer on those very side projects. 

Now I'm working way more hours in lab than ever before and every moment of it makes me happier- all because I changed the way I look at my work. When I need a break, I take a break. But I've discovered it's possible to make working extremely long hours sustainable- but it requires effort to restructure your mind so that it is sustainable.

When Richard Feynman was a child, he spent most of his time playing with science, building quirky ideas in his makeshift lab. While studying college physics, he conducted elaborate experiments on ant behavior, even though they had no relevance to physics. But by making work into play, his crazy-busy career became sustainable for him. It reminded me of one comment on my 1st grade report card: "He loves playing with math. He loves playing with science." 1st grade me was pretty wise- I have much to learn from him.

I'm lost. What's my purpose in life?

I have a personal mission statement and constitution. I try to review it at least once a week to revise it and reflect on how well I've lived it the last week, and to plan on how I'll better live it.  In my constitution I have principles and values written out, such as "I will have fun at failing," and "I will not judge other people." Sometimes I succeed, sometimes it's like I've forgotten this list exists. What is perhaps more important than the constitution is the mission statement. I have not been very happy with the life purpose I've defined for myself. It's vague but it's the best one I've come up with. The only thing I'm really happy with is that I deliberately chose a purpose that I thought most other people wouldn't understand on any level (I'm weird- I embrace it). I'm told that reflecting on my life purpose should bring me to tears. That you can find your life purpose by sitting down and writing hundreds of "life purpose" statements until you find the one that makes you cry. I've tried that, but nothing gives me that emotional "umph." And I've been worried that I can't find it.

Sometimes I think, hey I just need to focus. #1 Work on finding a proper life goal everyday. #2 Have some flexible plan for advancing that life goal each and every day. #3 Make sure by the end of each day I've met some milestone and feel like I've made progress. Then things will work out.

Not only is this focus hard, I'm also not sure it's the best plan anymore. I've been worried that I don't have a satisfying life purpose, but I think now that the worrying is the real problem. It's occupying me with trying to find some "ideal" life path and so I feel like I don't have enough time to experiment with new things. 

Society teaches us to focus on the career progression (in science it's undergrad => grad student => post-doc => junior faculty => tenure), or the life progression significant other => married => family => house in suburbs. If you don't make progress, others are trained to ask you why you haven't. Some people are happy with it, but a lot of people aren't. Some people think it's necessary, and they don't want to wander off it because it's risky. But you know what? I think a lot of it has to do with life/career progressions being pre-defined for you.  If you find your own reason to get married and buy a house that you won't pay off for 10 years, a reason that is made for you and only you, you'll be a lot happier with it.

This pre-defined path through life can sometimes feel like a prison. So we rebel against it, and we often go overboard and rebel in unhealthy ways. People party a lot, do drugs, cheat on their significant others, quit their jobs without a plan. Most of the time people do this to a lesser extreme, where we might simply lose focus on our work and do our own thing for a while. We might grow in new ways, but then reality sets in and your boss yells at you and you realize your peers have published 3 papers while you have nothing to show. So you freak out and go back to the pre-defined path. You feel bad. Nothing you feel bad about can ever be maintained (omg I HAVE to do this or else my career tanks). So it starts to fail. You work long hours but your work doesn't go anywhere, and it's because you feel bad about it. It's a hell-on-earth prison. So you rebel against it, and it starts all over again.

These are meanderings. We have to deal with societal expectations, but we also have to find our own way. Finding a correct balance- no, the correct MIX of the two is critical. And what's the best way to address something that is critical? Find a way to make it fun. Then you'll do it each and every day, and you won't worry about it.

I recently served on a panel to discuss graduate and medical school with a group of high schoolers applying to college. Every other question was along the lines of "What should I be doing right now to make sure I get into medical school?" It didn't bother me so much that they already "knew" what they wanted to do right out of high school- sure, it's naive, but I have confidence that they'll properly re-evaluate once they are exposed to more life choices during college. What did bother me was that they thought they would be trapped in whatever career path they chose, so they were scared to death that if they didn't optimize everything in their education that they would be stuck in some unhappy mediocre position. That they had to choose their career path NOW so that they could do everything right in the pre-defined life progression. Society is pushing students to imagine some ideal path through life, and if you just follow that you'll be all set for life. I was sucked into this for way too long, until I really started to reflect on what I wanted to get out of life.

Over the past year, I've been focusing on internalizing the mantra "Don't think life is good vs. life is bad. Think about what you can do right now to make it better, regardless of whether it's subjectively good or bad." It's self-managing your own thoughts. But I've really only been applying it to the "what" and the "how" of life. Not the "why" quite yet, and I realized this month that this has been a constant source of distress that I haven't been able to really address until recently.

My goal now is to be lost. And I'm going to have a ton of fun doing it.

Last-minute edit: Yesterday I found a life purpose statement that brings me to tears. But that just moves the bar up, and I bet tomorrow I will subjectively feel just as lost. Finally, this post was motivated by the first question in this Q&A by James Altucher. I have found his blog to one of the most thought-provoking ones out there, even if I don't agree with him. And his honesty is an inspiration to anyone who feels like they have hide their failures to prevent society from judging them- which is everyone.

August goals; capturing your thoughts on paper

20th post! Not doing any special post to celebrate- I'm just noting it. I considered an epic, deep post (yeah, right) but today is going to have to be quick- it's a busy week as usual.

You all know that I was a little obsessed for a while with setting goals and tracking them. I developed a single system in Evernote and stuck with it. The rigidity was definitely worth it- I developed a lot of discipline and I got used to reminding myself of my goals frequently. Furthermore, I really liked having just a few primary goals for the month that I stick by, not letting myself get so excited about other ideas that I lose focus. What I've found is that this really makes me feel like I have a "theme of the month" which is great motivation. But now I've moved into an experimental phase, playing with incentives and expanding my thoughts on what I truly want to accomplish. You know, the "why" rather than the "what." Recently I've tried two new systems, one of which is described below in my August goals. I think I'll save the other for a post in the near future (it's a web + smartphone app).

My August goals are:

1) Make tally marks each time I lose focus at work. This is a neat trick and it's helped me a lot in the last week. Essentially I have a sticky note on my laptop keyboard that says "Focus." I catch myself every time I feel like I'm about to do something unrelated to the task at hand (such as randomly checking Facebook or the news for no reason), unless I explicitly give myself permission to do it. I make a tally mark, remind myself of why the task I was performing was important, and get back to work. If I actually get to the point of checking Facebook and getting distracted, then I make two tally marks. During breaks, I may explicitly give myself permission to visit a particular website, and even then I make sure I don't continue clicking on links forever.

1a) Make tally marks each time I find myself having negative thoughts. This is auxiliary to the first point, and is accomplished in the exact same way. There's no point to worrying incessantly about something. Whether something is going badly or not is useless information to me- in fact it will just distract me from doing what I need to do. If something is worrying me, then I should ask myself "Can I do anything about it? Right now?" If the answer is no, I stop worrying and focus on something I can actually influence. If the answer is yes, I either do it or make plans to do it. This is a game I've been playing in my head for a while, and I found that having an object (piece of paper) to dump this on helps me push away the thoughts that are bothering me. That brings me to my next goal.

2) Keep a pocket Moleskine journal. I've resisted keeping a dedicated paper journal for many months now. I figured- I have Evernote to record all my thoughts! Everything backed up in one place! But it's just too clunky on my iPhone while I'm on the go, and I really need to be able to draw diagrams and integrate them with the text. Accessing a stickied page in a paper journal is so much faster than pulling up the relevant note on my computer. I tried a Hipster PDA for a bit but it didn't work out. Anyways, I've used this for the past week to develop my thought processes on my values, my short- and long-term goals, my ideas, etc. Putting it on paper (or Evernote) helps you pare down the bazillion things going on in your head to just the most important things. I originally disliked the lack of structure in the Moleskine (and you can't copy/paste templates like in Evernote)- but I've come to understand that forcing yourself create a system from scratch for organizing your thoughts is important for, well, personalizing your personal development. By the way, if you haven't started recording your thoughts and goals in any way, I highly recommend you start. If time is a worry, just know that it will save you time. Here's a wealth of productivity systems you can implement in a Moleskine.

My red Moleskine. On my computer for size comparison- it fits neatly into my pocket.

A page from my Moleskine. I made a thought process flowchart in response to feeling guilty about not getting enough done in lab. I asked myself a couple of key questions that completely modified my perceptions and put the work I did that day in context. In the end I concluded that my other priorities were more pressing and so I was at peace with myself. Those key questions are labeled 1, 2, 3, and 4 in the flowchart and lead to specific actions I should take (eg not worry or find a specific way to fix it). Then I solidified it in a Moleskine flowchart- so I can refer back to it in the future so I don't stress myself out in the future unnecessarily.

3) Be productive in the evenings learning information or a new skill that is unrelated to labwork. I don't think I have time this month to keep a consistent side project up on top of my Moleskine experimentation, so I figure why not just keep my mind fresh. I'm reading a book about dishonesty (thanks Dale!), learning some coding, learning some memory tricks, doing logic puzzles, and whatever else. The primary reason I'm keeping busy at night is that I've found it helps me sleep a lot better than if I just watch 30 YouTube videos.

Finally, I have started using a productivity web app for my goal tracking. I'm using it to remind myself of a bunch of other goals that I'd ideally like to accomplish a few times a week. Because of the way the website works, I don't need to think about them as much as my primary goals, so I don't have the focus issue that arises when I have too many goals. I will share after I explore it a bit more.

Obstacles to starting a blog don't actually exist

Hello world! Today I'm discussing the common obstacles people face when trying to start up a blog (or any other side project), and why those obstacles don't actually exist. This is a continuation of my last post on the benefits of blogging. Notably, all the benefits of blogging that I listed in the previous post can be achieved in other ways. But if you're missing any of them from your life (I know I was missing, um, ALL of them before I started blogging), ask yourself if you're just being stopped by the imaginary obstacles that I discuss in this follow-up post. Furthermore, I'd like to reminding everyone that while I'm writing about blogging, none of this is specific to scribbling in the cyberdust (hat-tip to Holly). For me, blogging is an example of deliberately making a change in my life. I've applied these same ideas to learning how to chat up strangers in cafes, remembering names, fitness, and other side projects (all of these may be addressed in future posts).

For a long time I thought blogging would be cool but I had all sorts of self-doubts: "Do I have enough time? My writing skills atrophied in college by stuffing my schedule with science courses! Do I have anything novel to say? What if people judge my opinions? My prose? Am I qualified? Do I have the right topic yet? Who would want to read my blog?" I didn't feel comfortable communicating on a really deep and personal level, even to my closest friends. And because I couldn't flesh out my ideas in detail, I didn't even fully understand the benefits of blogging- I only discovered them as I progressed, which fuels the excitement. This is why it took me almost a year to get started. And that was my biggest mistake.

Obstacles preventing you from starting a blog (or delve into any new experience that requires commitment) fall into two categories:

1) Yourself. My own perceptions of what blogging would actually entail held me back for quite a while, in spite of the excitement of taking on a side project that requires new skills, new experiences, and a little bit of self-exploration.

2) Others. For a while I was worried about the response to my blog. I guess I'm naturally self-conscious. I don't want to waste anyone's time with boring stuff, after all.

Let's break it down.

Yourself:

• Mistake: thinking it's not worth it unless you do a really good job. "I shouldn't write a blog because I'm not a good writer. Because I have nothing interesting to write about." OK, this is just silly. How does one get better at writing? By writing. A more nuanced way of looking at it is that in any self-development project, there are no stakes, only possibilities. In the professional world, crappy work won't be tolerated. But if your first blog post is crap and gets 4 page views, so what? No problem, and you likely identified a few concrete weaknesses in your writing style in the process. In fact, even if 9 out of 10 of your posts are pretty blah, isn't that one really awesome post worth it? Especially if the alternative is sitting around on your butt.
• "I don't have enough time." I used to make this excuse all the time. But how much mindless crap on the Internet was I looking at everyday? Furthermore, blogging IS relaxation. It's just a better kind of relaxation than watching TV, playing video games, or wasting time on the Internet, because you don't need to wake up your brain again when you're finished. Finally, never say "I have to do X" or "I can't do Y because I'm obligated to or supposed to do X". Say "I choose Y over X." Take responsibility.



Your blog doesn't have to be 100% unique to be something special

• Thinking that you have to be novel. You don't have to be completely original when blogging. You just need to be honest and write about things that truly interest you. If you do that, you will eventually develop your own original angle. There's no way you can be novel just sitting around and thinking about it- you need to actually start writing.

Others:

• Being overly focused on what you think others do and don't want to read about. #1 you will always be able to find an audience. Don't worry about it. #2 Having an audience should be a secondary goal. Instead of asking what people will think about your blog, you should be asking what do YOU want to write about? What do YOU need to do to become a better writer? But you might ask- then why don't I just keep a diary? Well, just knowing that someone COULD read your blog should be sufficient to motivate you to make your ideas as crystal-clear as you can manage, and motivate you to keep up the habit of writing. #3 So what if your interests are… quirky? Want to blog about Magic the Gathering? No problem. It might even help you connect with others who share the same interests but are too shy or embarrassed to go around advertising it.
• Fear of being judged. See my last post. If you open up to people, they won't judge you. Maybe a few trolls on the Internet will, but just ignore the haters.
• Fear of coming off as a snob. Sure, you think that you're expert enough to post your opinions on the Internet for everyone to read, right? What a snob. But that's completely missing the point. You don't have to be an expert to blog about anything! Writing is a MEANS to learn and gain expertise. Imagine you just read something interesting. How do you retain it? You either need to talk about it, write about it, or engage with it in some other way. Furthermore, having a blog will motivate you to go find interesting things to read about in the first place. If you're blogging with the correct intent, no one will think you're a snob.

I've realized that obsessing over questions like "What will others think of my blog?" and "What if no one reads my blog?" is completely pointless because I do not have direct control over those things. It's better to focus on questions like "What skills can I develop by doing this? What do I need to do to follow through on my goal or habit? Did I successfully complete the act of writing today? What are some things that I want to learn but haven't had a chance to? What would I enjoy writing about?"

The only thing in life over which you have complete control are yourself and the activities you voluntarily choose to do. If your job sucks or life just isn't going well for you, that has almost zero impact on your ability to write a blog entry, because it's entirely on your own time and it's entirely your own choice. For side projects like getting fit, writing a blog, taking an online course on a topic you've never studied before, or learning to chat up strangers, all obstacles are imagined. So if you want to do it, just start. Remember, there are no stakes, only possibilities.

This person spent too much time worrying about pandas and 

not enough time thinking about what he would actually do for pandas.

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.

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!