Peaks and Valleys.

The whole lifestyle of college professors and most academics is a series of peaks and valleys. We are exuberant with successes like funded grants and exciting research data. Conversely we live with constant rejection from failed experiments, rejected papers and grant applications. So the peaks really need to outweigh the depths reached in the valleys.

Along with being thick skinned from the rejections one must also be long term goal oriented. Instant gratification is not the hallmark of research. A scientist can spend an entire career trying to (and sometimes failing to) answer a single research question. Most research projects take years to complete. So for three years of hard work the end will be either a very high – high or extremely low – low.

In medical research 1 in 10,000 drug candidates are successful whereas 1 in 100 pre-clinical studies shows promise. When negative results are obtained these are often not publishable. So much time can be lost. A failed trial cannot be considered a failed scientist. Publish or perish is part of life for medical research but so is “get funding or get lost.” Without substantial grant funding the research will stop and the position will be ended. With pressure like that we really need to celebrate the successes.

So along with a kind of manic lifestyle being a college professor is also a lot like a small business. You need to have a revenue stream to keep the business afloat and a pipeline of new things to stay ahead of the competition.

What I have personally found is that my best ideas and my most creative inspirations come when I am not intimately focused on the day to day life of grant writing, paper writing and University duties. On the rare occasion when I can spend some time in the lab or literally cleaning my office as opposed to churning out words on the computer I get relevant ideas. All I seem to need is a little breathing room and time to let new discoveries germinate in my head. But with a fairly strict requirement of 8 grant proposals per year, 5 publications per year, 6 thesis committees per year and endless training in-services there is no time to let the creative juices flow.

Time management seems to be focused on squeezing in as much traditional work product as possible. However, I posit that the same time management skills some strive for takes away from discovery oriented productivity. So managing time to allow for productive down time needs to be protected from intrusions of external factors.

I need to relate an ancient anecdote I picked up somewhere to make a point. A senior administrator of a large company based in a metropolitan high-rise frequently observed a middle manager standing and staring out his office window. The boss never saw this employee at his desk working. Finally the boss notified management that this employee was to be terminated because he was never working. The employee’s direct managers informed the boss that this employee had come up with several money saving strategies as well as a couple of new revenue opportunities for the company. That this employee continues to come up with novel and new ideas and that these ideas often seemed to “hit” him while standing in front of that window. The financial value of this employee was clearly put to the boss and the managers waited to see if the termination would proceed.

Upon hearing this, the boss got on the phone and called the window washers to make sure that his new star employee always had a clean and unobstructed view from his office.

We all need time to let subtle ideas bubble up to our consciousness.