Why please your colleagues instead of saying ‘please, help’?

This week I chose to write about a theme where I have been putting a lot of thought lately. The theme is working with your colleagues. During my career, I have been part of many research communities that are filled with people who are top researchers in what they do. Scientists in research institutes, universities and organizations are crème de la crème of the scientific community, possessing excellent skills in mathematics, analytics, data sciences or other areas in life sciences. It is fantastic to be surrounded by such talent!

Almost every day at work I have the chance to interact with these genius people. I get to reflect my scientific ideas, discuss difficult data and design complex and more complex experiments or models with experts who are skilled in slightly different areas from myself. It is very special and unique opportunity, and something to be very grateful for. However, scientific mind may not always be the most empathetic, friendly, approachable and lovable minds. So it may not always be easy to approach scientists, when in doubt.

I have been thinking about the role an individual has in such a community as a person, not as a scientist. What happens, when you (say as a young scientist) do not know the right answer immediately (or not at all)? What if I do not have experience in some analyses you are supposed to deliver on, or what to do, when you are given a subject by your supervisor, of which you have no previous experience about - and the deadline is tomorrow? There are only 24h in one day, and only two days in a weekend to catch up, and to meet the expectations.

I may be the only one seeing a potential challenge here, but I want to write about it, because I have felt it during my career not only once, but several times. It could be a personality trait, or it may have something to do with the fact I am a girl. Also, it may have something to do with the fact that in my family academics are not valued in the same way as some traditional professions. But what to do when you doubt your own skills, or when you feel like you have such complicated assignments that you do not even know whom to ask? 

To me the answer is obvious: turning to your colleagues. When you are working with complex theories and challenges, there may be people who know something you have not thought of, and who can support your ideas and your research. Luckily, I have had some of best colleagues one can imagine. They help even though they would not always have the time. And yes, that is a blessing - and yes, it is not a crime to ask for help! 

I wonder if we all have courage to ask for support. When you are a young scientist, it may sometimes feel like all problems should be solved by you alone. It may feel as a sign of weakness if you are not able to do that. And yes, I have felt the whole range of those feelings. What do I do? I try harder. I work day and night and vacation times, trying to make my analyses work. 

Wrapping up what I am trying to say here, is that maybe sometimes it is healthy to admit when there are times where it is OK to say: “I tried, but it does not work”. It may be OK not be a specialist in every topic, and it is OK to ask for help. With this, I challenge you, and myself, to do this more often.

Have a nice weekend!

(Source of the image: iStock)

Hiding the struggles

I had a graduation party to attend to this weekend. While digesting the fact that my first nephew was done with his school now, I came to think, what was it like growing up? What were the things on my mind, when I was nineteen? Of course, times were completely different back in the early 2000s when I did my college exams – we did not have smart phones and Snapchat, and nobody told us we should stop flying to save the climate – but some things were the same. I remember having the whole world open in front of me with an endless number of options, and I also remember the crazy feeling, that it is only up to me from now on.

Maybe Finland is a bit special in how fast we grow up. By the time you turn 18, you are expected to know crystal clear what you want to do your entire adulthood. You are also half expected to move out immediately, and to start building your bright future. In the country, where the happiest people of the world live in, and where we build stories of successful companies like Nokia and Supercell, combined with free education, nothing can really go wrong, right?

However, I do remember that it was not so easy to decide. I struggled with what university to pick. Should I study in the UK or in North America? What are the consequences of this choice?  And how to arrange my finances? I was lucky to have my parents sponsor my studies at the start, and also received a scholarship. Nevertheless, the choices you make at that point in your life are crucial: the field you pick will be the field you will be working with for the rest of the life. Luckily, I happened to choose something that I still like, and luckily I also put aside some savings to pay for the years after studies when the career did not take me where I thought I´d be by this time already.

What about being a little bit more easy on ourselves? Let's face it. Not everyone grows up as an heir to Supercell, and not everyone has everything that it takes to make life-lasting decisions at young age. Perhaps the young generation would be grateful, if instead of polishing it all up, we would say how things really were for us. And also, why should we be ashamed? It is only life, after all. Things happen, you deal with it, and then you move on. That´s just how it goes. 

To me, being 18 is still young. When I look back at those times, maybe it would have been a relief if someone admitted there were also some struggles in life. As a young graduate I would have appreciated the honesty. Perhaps, if someone told me how they struggled with their own business to finally make it work, or how they did not know what they wanted until turning 30, it would have made my own struggle easier. I would have wanted to hear, if to someone, plans eventually turned out completely different than what they had in mind, but this way they reached something even better they dreamt of.

So, maybe admitting our failures or flaws, does not mean we failed as human beings. Maybe it just means we all have had our fights and after successfully fighting them we became not more or less than what we are today. And maybe it is wisdom to share this with our to-be leaders of future Nokias, too!

Business or pleasure?

Maybe a new blog would have worked better (as I have swapped pretty much everything in my life since I last wrote here about two years ago), but wanting to work on my commitment issues, I decided to pick up this “dirty laundry of past writing” and grabbed my keyboard before I had too much time to think about why.

During time spent outside this blog, I had time to ask myself several times the following question: I love science, I love my job, and I have almost everything I ever wished for in life, so why am I so tired?

When I look around, it seems I may not be the only one feeling this way. Somehow, I sense that some fellow PhD students/young professionals also feel that there is a need to work as hard as possible, to be able to leave a fingerprint of you on our planet. You need to be seen, heard, or you need to feel that you did something to improve someone’s wellbeing or contributed to common good. Maybe we do not even concretely realize that these are the motivations that drive most of us to work perhaps more than is healthy.

Furthermore, to me the paradox of all this lies inside the idea, that while you are working long hours, you should be having the best time of your life. At least this is what social media is telling you 24/7. People seem to be having it all, from perfect families to amazing hobbies. Also, unconsciously we may think that before the mid-life crisis hits, we still have the energy to do things that can probably be done only once during our lifetime (depending on the set goals, it may be traveling the world, becoming rich, raising a family, or just being capable of defining your own rhythm of working to earn enough to be in peace with your choices). 

Source: https://lucid.me/blog/work-life-balance/

While being constantly occupied at work and free time, you may realize that the vision you had of you and the world around you changes as you go paving the way. In the worst case scenario something that may happen is, that in some way, you find out that no longer you are the main character of your own life, but become “a product” of our time, and time just seems to slip through your fingers.

This feeling of wanting things to make more sense drove me to search for some serious self-awareness-, happiness- and successful career -literature and online materials. I even signed up for a course dealing with these issues. I can share some material, if you guys are interested in it.

I guess my key finding when looking at my own life has been, that maybe it is time to chill. Jobs will still be there even when you are not rushing to get them all and work on them all at once. Likewise, the world will still be there to travel, and improvements will remain to be fulfilled in someone’s life. Perhaps also the dreams of the perfect free time evolve when you take a break from trying to get it all at once.

It seems to me that the right direction is that we start to treat ourselves like our best friends. By accepting that life will lead its way despite all our actions and effort, there may well be a brighter tomorrow, and we may find new ways to make the world a better place. Having said this, to me, time management may Still well be one of the biggest challenges of our times.

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/)