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.

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.

Friday Links: Online education, crime algorithm, health care

I was looking at my Blogger stats and discovered that someone found my site by googling "help i'm addicted to wasting time on the internet." I googled it and asked an acquaintance to do the same (since Google results are personalized), and it turns out my article on Internet time-wasting is hit #3-#5, depending on who searches for it. Nice. Interestingly, it goes down with "i'm addicted to wasting time to the Internet," and doesn't come up if you just google "addicted to wasting time on the internet."

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/20/opinion/the-trouble-with-online-education.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

Those who started reading my blog from the beginning know that I started off by explaining an interesting example from an online course on Coursera. To me, online courses are one way of exposing my mind to new ideas that break my preconceptions and defy conventional wisdom. Letting go of long-held ideas is critical to getting anywhere in science. But while I currently treat online education as a fun side project, there is a good debate going on as to what the role of online education will be in general for K-12 and college. Since it's the new thing, everyone wants to know to what extent it will replace traditional classroom learning. In this NY Times article Mark Edmundson, a professor at University of Virginia appears to argue against the widespread use of online education, saying there's nothing you can get from an online course that you can't get from a good book. I largely disagree.

I agree only with his thesis, "But can online education ever be education of the very best sort?" Well sure, it can't be the BEST by itself, but it sure beats the average educational experience in the US. In my opinion, education isn't about learning facts, it's about learning how to make arguments and how to understand and solve problems. And yes (agreeing with Edmundson), this can't be accomplished in a one-way didactic lecture. It needs dialogue and requires students to get to the answer themselves, with proper cultivation from the professor. However, I disagree that this says anything about the value of online education in the grand scheme of things. I don't think online education is meant to completely replace classroom learning, and certainly won't replace the best professors at the best universities. Learning how to solve problems requires some starting facts (and in science, LOTS of starting facts), and those facts should be communicated in the most efficient and organized manner. When done properly, one-way didactic lectures synergize with books (rather than being redundant). And no, I don't find it likely that every teacher individually optimizes the communication of those facts. Furthermore, in many school systems this is so inefficient that they spend all their time lecturing facts and no time on critical thinking. Only a few lucky students get real dialogue learning, since you inherently need small classroom sizes for that. Thus online education, taught by THE best educators (like, the best in the world), would go a long way to improving K-12 education. Then teachers can focus on problem solving sessions rather than lecturing facts.

I envision two parts to future education (both K-12 and college): 1) one-way lectures taught by the very best people who have developed the best ways to explain something. These can be online and available for everyone in the world. 2) actual teachers or TAs that focus entirely on face-to-face dialogue. They don't provide any actual information- they present a problem and work with the students to reason through the problem, using information that they learned in the lectures. They are more like older colleagues than anything else. In college, I often learned way more in small discussion sections than in lecture. Lectures are necessary but not sufficient for education.

In fact, when I served as a TA, there was one module that I didn't know anything about. So what did I do? I studied it just enough to get an intuitive feel for it, and then I just pummeled my students with questions while working through problems. I didn't provide a single answer for them (because I didn't know how to solve the problem), and if they asked a question I just asked a question back. The result? In my student evaluations, they specifically mentioned how well I taught that module. Real teachers don't need to know the answer.

http://www.technologyreview.com/news/428354/la-cops-embrace-crime-predicting-algorithm/

A crime-prediction algorithm takes crime data and balances information on the day, week, month, year, and decade scale to figure out where crime is statistically most likely to strike next in the city. Maybe a certain part of the city sees more crime frequently around the holidays, for example. Humans can't physically process and balance all of the data, so let a computer do it. This leaves more time for humans to do what they do best- interact with other humans. They show up, talk to people, and just by having a presence decrease crime.

http://ayoungmomsmusings.blogspot.com/2012/07/how-i-lost-my-fear-of-universal-health.html

Blog of a die-hard conservative Republican who moves to Canada and of course fears Universal Health Care. However, she soon discovers it's great and that more government control = more freedom for individuals to choose. A far more complicated issue than I'd want to address in a Friday Links entry.

Other random links:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn22088-heart-muscle-helps-cyborg-jellyfish-come-alive.html?DCMP=OTC-rss&nsref=online-news

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/07/pacu-testicle-eating-fish-illinois-lake_n_1656015.html?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular

The scale of neurology is larger than the observable universe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!