New year, new plans (and goals)

 

A year has past since I last wrote a blog text, and I thought it would be about time to come back. This time I want to address the topic based on my past year's experience of failing projects; and mostly how to overcome it. My strategies to deal with my unsuccessfull time spent in the lab is to look for answers in SMART goal setting and the power of positive thinking in planning. Hope these tips will bring you some enlightment, as they did to me!

Failing project planning - how to start avoiding it

During the past year I have attempted to start a couple of experiments which both failed. Now some months after, when I look at what went wrong, I realize that the plan was obviously not well designed. As a consequence I spent months in trying out something that was not even meant to succeed, which in turn used up my time (and the time of others) and resources. Sticking to this plan would have hence not made sense and it was time to create some new ones.

I think it is important to realise that most research plans do not work! One way to improve the planning could be designing mini-projects (or sub-goals) as Matta and Ashkenash propose (2003). If you break your work into smaller units, you will quicker realize if something does not work to start with and can reassess what you are doing without losing time. In practice, this may even mean that you write down on your weekly schedule what you will do that week, and build the plan up through the calendar months of bits and pieces.

How to start planning?

Narayanan suggests in his blog (2013) that when looking for research ideas, one should aim for "big hits" that will be remembered still 10 years from now. He classifies these into (1) research problems that no one has realized are important and (2) problems that everyone considers prohibitively difficult but which turn out to have a back door. However, at an early stage of research it may be hard to point these out, and there may be benefits in diversifying your "research palette", i.e. taking a wider perspective into things.

I revisited an old method of goal setting, and I think still today this works. In the SMART method, your goals should be specific (not ambiguous), measurable (it would be possible for someone to determine I achieved it), action oriented (the action to be taken is specified), realistic (consider time frame and difficulty of the project) and time-bound (a deadline is specified).

Positive emotions enforce our chances to succeed

Misreading negativity from the environment

People are skillful animals at learning. A bird who tastes a poisonous lily of the valley -berry which is red, quickly learns it shouldn't eat another berry that looks the same. However, not all red berries are poisonous, so it may get a proper meal when trying a lingon berry - hence its sense not to touch the berry is not correct everytime when encountering a red berry.

Based on self-perception this applies to our brain, too. When we try something that does not work, our brain starts picking up signals from the environment that may indicate a (similar) failure may be approaching. However, this does not not often hold true. We are good at picking up signs fast but we may be mistaken. I think when we plan a new project after failing another, it is important to consider this process in our thinking.

Empirical evidence for the power of positive thinking

Psychologists have through time attempted to understand emotions, and there is a huge diversity of studies on the influence of positive thinking on our behaviour and sense of achievement. A world-leading psychology researcher, Barbara Fredrickson, has published important works on the topic (e.g. Fredrickson et al. 2008; Fredrickson 1998). I recommend you all to read this article! Here I will only pick out some interesting parts:

According to her studies there has been less research on the positive emotions than negative, due to historical reasons (psychologists have attempted to solve challenges related to negative emotions rather than researched the positive ones) and due to the fact that the range of our negative emotions is larger than that of the positives. In her very interesting article "What Good Are Positive Emotions?" she classifies our positive emotions into joy, interest, contentment, and love. She states that "these positive emotions both broaden the individual’s momentary thought–action repertoire, and in turn build the individual’s enduring personal resources".

Positive emotions are proven to have many advantages. Fredrickson reviews the empirical findings of Alice Isen from the 1980s of that positive emotions broaden the scope of cognition. One of the outcomes of her experiments was that people experiencing positive affect perform better on standard tests of creative thinking. In addition to creativity, positive emotions build intellectual resources through enhanced learning and performance (e.g. ability learn thorought adulthood) as well as social resources (which are an important support through life). 

References

Fredrickson B., L., Cohn M. A., Coffey K. A., Pek J., Finkel S. M. 2008. Open Hearts Build Lives: Positive Emotions, Induced Through Loving-Kindness Meditation, Build Consequential Personal Resources. Journal of personality and social psychology. 95(5):1045-1062. doi:10.1037/a0013262.

 

Fredrickson B. L. 1998. What Good Are Positive Emotions? Review of general psychology : journal of Division 1, of the American Psychological Association. 2(3):300-319. doi:10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.300.

 

Fuhrmann, C. N., Hobin, J. A., Clifford, P. S., Lindstaedt, B. 2013. Goal-setting strategies for scientific and career success. (http://www.sciencemag.org/careers/2013/12/goal-setting-strategies-scientific-and-career-success)

 

Matta, N. F., Ashkenas, R. N. 2003. Why good projects fail anyway. Harvard Business Review (https://hbr.org/2003/09/why-good-projects-fail-anyway)

Narayanan, A. 2013. Embracing failure: How research projects are like startups (published online January 2013: https://33bits.org/2013/01/02/embracing-failure-how-research-projects-are-like-startups/)