Maximizing Productivity in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences

1. Maximizing Productivity in the Biological and Biomedical Sciences Tony Koleske Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and Neuroscience

2. Why should I try to be productive? Science (actually everything) is much more fun if you are productive. The more productive you are, the more marketable you are. The more successful your lab is, the more more marketable you are. It is your duty to whomever is supporting you.

3. How do we evaluate productivity? (What are products?) **Peer-reviewed publications - research article > reviews Grants awarded to you Patents/Licenses/Contracts awarded Productivity is considered per unit time What is not productivity? Pretty much everything else. Leadership, outreach, career development, etc. can help, but only if you have evidence of productivity.

4. Who pays attention to/judges my productivity? Your supervisor Your thesis committee Your peers Prospective employers – (Genentech Vice President “I look for number and quality of first author research papers”) Funding/Promotions (not all that different in industry vs academia)

5. The most important people in in determining your productivity: You Your supervisor Your support network/friends Your thesis committee Your peers

6. To optimize productivity, you need to be healthy Avoid getting sick: Get enough sleep, eat healthy, do other things….. Eating healthy: Good: Whole grains, vegetables, lean protein, fruits, legumes, nuts, Bad: too much salt, sugar, alcohol, drugs Get regular exercise, go outside: Keeps you fit, reduces stress, helps executive function, improves brain function. Have healthy and supportive relationships: Friends, family need to understand how important getting your work done is to you.

7. Work hard How much should students be working per week? The minimum is 40 hours https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/nihgps.pdf 11.2.7 Full-Time and Part-Time Training All fellows are required to pursue their research training full time. Full-time is generally defined as devoting at least 40 hours per week to research training activities or as specified by the sponsoring institution in accordance with its own policies. 11.3.6.2 Trainees ... Alltraineesarerequired to pursuetheirresearchtraining on a full-timebasis. Full-time is generallydefinedas devoting at least 40 hours per weekto the programor as specifiedby the recipient in accordance with itsownpolicies. The maximum is up to you.

8. Work hard How many hours should students be working per week? Poll of 17 tenured Yale faculty and 5 business leaders (VP or Director) expected people to work 55± 5 (S.D.) hours per week on their projects. Low: 40; High: 80 Poll of 18 students expected students to work 49 ± 5 (S.D.) hours per week on their projects. Low: 35; High: 60

9. Comments on working hours/effort: “People who think smarter (better hypotheses, more efficient methods, etc…) could be very successful with modest time investments. However, there is an abundance of smart people, so those who think smarter and work harder (longer) have an advantage in what is naturally a competitive human endeavor. The best answer I can give for this question is for students to choose a project that makes them want to work hard (they are profoundly interested in the science, and therefore driven to push the research forward). Of course, one can push too hard and be exhausted/miserable if putting in too many hours, and therefore one can become progressively less effective the more time invested.” “I don’t focus on hours but on progress.  It varies widely between students how long they need to spend in the lab daily to generate good data and keep forward progress.” “I think that a grad student should discuss with their advisor what outcomes are realistic on a variety of time scales (weekly, before next lab meeting, by next committee meeting) and find a way to meet those expectations. There is no set amount of time in the lab that will be appropriate for every project or even at different times in the same project.”

10. Working Smart I Be well-informed – knowing your field is essential to know what are the key issues, best techniques, avenues not to pursue. Read, read, read (set a goal – in grad school I had a goal of reading 5 new papers a week). Go back periodically and read things that you have read before to gain new perspective. Will also give you tremendous confidence! Work when others are working– talk about science! You will learn from your colleagues. Get constant feedback – Show data to your labmates, PI, colleagues, committee members, hear critical feedback as soon as possible. Figure out who gives best advice – it may not be the person who sounds authoritative. (Being well informed will help you filter) Pay attention to how you work best - you may prefer to do certain tasks in certain order, at certain times of the day. Avoid distractions – Turn off computer, phone, messaging, music, social media, limit outside activities – especially during the day.

11. Working Smart II Hours spent in lab are not the same as productivity. Track how you spend your day. Do you see patterns? Can you use to your advantage? Let’s discuss insights from how we spend our day!

12. Working Smart II Hours spent in lab are not the same as productivity. Track how you spend your day. Do you see patterns? Can you use to your advantage? Record results in notebook as you get them. (Summarize results and future directions). Don’t just go on autopilot - Confront your data! Every evening before or morning before work, plan your day. Prioritize tasks so that you know what you can dump if you run short on time. Always be planning a paper. Make figures and legends for data that you have, outline figures for data that would fit with the hypotheses you are testing and story you want to tell. Plan for success – but anticipate failure – (example – be ready to redo experiments even when you do not yet have results)

13. Comments on working smart “Failure to frequently talk about their research ideas and experiments with others can really limit progress. Students frequently get stuck on an experimental challenge or are pursuing a very bad idea. A three minute discussion with a colleague can save months of wasted research time!” • “…the most common limitation to productivity is a lack of focus and an inability to multitask.  The internet and social media has clearly impacted this as there is a tendency to check scores/news etc. in down time between appointments/experiments rather than do something useful.” • “Lab skill, is obviously important. Organizational skill and time utilization are also very important.  Power of concentration: really focusing without distraction.” “you can easily waste weeks or in some case months by not knowing sufficient background on your topic, including experimental detail. it happens all the time that students re-invent the wheel and waste weeks instead of spending 5 min at ncbi to find an established protocol or simply asking an experienced postdoc on the hallway. you can waste time by not keeping proper notes, making trouble-shooting of a failed expt. and repetition of a successful experiment at a later time difficult…”

14. How to power through when it is not fun. Break task into small bite-sized tasks, develop a realistic timeline, with milestones. Stick to your timeline. If you fall behind, work more on evenings or weekends to catch up. Set a goal for the task for the day and do it first in the day. Tell yourself that you can do other things when you are done with the days goals. Work for 2-3 hours and take a break. Go back to work after the break. Track how you spend your day. Do you see patterns? Can you use to your advantage? • “Always set short term goals that are attainable. Avoid comparing yourself to others, every student has to figure out what works for them in terms of advancing their project.”

15. Managing Stress What is causing stress? - Is it one specific thing that you or your support network can address? Too many things to do or is project too overwhelming? Make a plan, break things into bite-sized pieces, give yourself credit when you get a piece done. Put into perspective - try to manage your reactions (how would a leader react?) • Avoid negative news and people. “Occasionally, students influence each other in negative ways and they’d rather sit around and complain instead of solving problems. ” Talk to someone. Use relaxation approaches - mindfulness/breathing/meditation Stay healthy – sleep, eat etc.; limit caffeine

16. Things that limit productivity (from students). • Unnecessary talking to others; spontaneous social interactions • Poor time management, organizational, or lab skills • Lack of interest in project • Constant required lectures, meetings, going back and forth between campuses • Technical issues; lack of supplies; broken equipment. • Lack of sleep, personal life, lab drama

17. Things that limit productivity (from faculty). • Outside activities that consume lots of time  • Extended lunch hours that rarely seem to involved scientific discussions A chopped up schedule. You need to spend big chunks of time in the lab and not be running here there and the other place. This can sometimes be courses and TA’ing, it can also be extra curricular (I am not against this — it should be at the end of the day). Lack of basic knowledge of the natural sciences and their field. Many students do not appreciate that their success depends on their knowing more about their topic than anyone else in the world, including their mentor. This requires intellectual curiosity and excitement about reading the past and current literature, which is best done outside the lab. • Poor use of time. My most successful students and postdoc have been early risers, who come in early and have their experiments well under way by 8:00 am. That gave them time later in the day to attend seminars and enjoy some recreation.

18. Suggestions to improve productivity (from Students) • Use your lab notebook effectively -- clear, specific details on how you executed your experiments, and particularly if you did something differently than how you usually do it • plan out your days in advance so you have clear specific goals • Write a list of daily, weekly, and monthly goals. Start the day looking over your goals for the day and the nights checking whether you accomplished those goals. If not, list the reasons why. • Note that the majority focus on making lists and managing day to day activities!

19. Suggestions to improve productivity (from Faculty) • Identify together with their mentors what makes them tick. I think designing a project and evolving with it needs to take in account how to keep their flame on. I am not speaking about overriding the mentor decisions or not to oblige to existing forces ( like present tools in the lab, or lack of specific tools in the lab, funding pressures etc) I am asking for them to again take time to reflect and have some self-introspection on how to gain more ownership and investment – what within a project will make them want to wake up happy to go back in lab and try again. Once one feels this way (but you need to work at it to get to that) then there are no mountains one cannot move or circumvent. • Own the project,  spend time to design the right experiments to address important questions. • Be organized. make a “to do” list at the beginning of everyday. See how all the tasks are interlocking time-wise and make a plan so that you can get the most done. 2. As soon as you get a result, write it up like a high school lab report. Otherwise you will forget. Also make a figure from the data with a figure legend. If this data does not go into a paper, it can sail straight into your thesis.

20. Suggestions to improve productivity (from Faculty) • 1. Choose the most impactful project with goals that are the easiest to experimentally achieve. 2. Plan ahead! The word “wait” should be banned from your vocabulary, and use any down-time during the day to work on a second project • communicate. don’t hide and try endless futile cycles of trouble shooting. someone in the lab or the floor or the building or even your PI (haha) might have encountered the problem before and knows how to fix it. I often find that I come up with new ideas when I talk to people - stimulates brain activity to bounce around ideas.  • USE CONTROLS, both +ve and negative. you cannot learn anything from a failed experiment w/o controls. troubleshooting is much easier if you know if there was a technical mistake or if your hypothesis or approach needs to be revised (a carefully controlled -ve result is sometimes as important as a +ve outcome). keep a detailed lab journal. this too is essential as resource and will help you to reflect on experiments and help to increase your productivity over time.