Maximising scholarly output (part 2)

This is the second part in a series of post discussing the structures I've put in place to wring every last drop of scholarly output from my intellect. You can read the first part here. Feel free to skip any parts that you feel are irrelevant to you.

Non-work reading
I think reading both fiction and non-fiction is essential to maximising scholarly output. It took me a long time to realise the value of reading fiction. For much of my adult life, time spent reading fiction seemed to me to be time wasted. It was only really in the last few years that I began to read fiction seriously. There are numerous benefits to reading fiction, that are more than adequately covered elsewhere (see, for example, this article in the Harvard Business Review); the one I wish to focus on here is the effect of reading fiction on creativity (as suggested by this article, published in Creativity Research Journal). The authors of this paper base their findings on the need for what psychologists call 'cognitive closure', which has been associated with decreased creativity and rationality. The authors show that reading fiction resulted in a decreased need for cognitive closure and this may lead to increased creativity. So, I've started reading fiction. I think it has increased my creativity and given me all those other benefits listed in the Harvard Business Review article; moreover, it's enjoyable. The last fiction book I read was Lord of the Flies. I read fiction a few evenings a week and for an hour or so on the weekend. I'm quite flexible with my fiction reading; sometimes it can lapse for a few weeks.

I still find, however, that I am drawn to non-fiction much more strongly. Without fail and with a good coffee in hand, I read a non-faction book for about 30 minutes every morning. I start by reading one chapter of the Bible and then I'll usually pick up a philosophy, theology, history or psychology book. I try to read a range of authors, even the ones I disagree with; this not only broadens my understanding of various topics but enables me to clarify my own thoughts and ideas and come up with coherent arguments to support them. These generic skills spill over into my academic work and makes my writing clearer and critical thinking sharper. I think this time spent reading also helps me to remember how small my life and work are in the grand scheme of human history, which is somehow invigorating to me.

Meditation
I imagine some academics will scoff at this practice, but I have found it to be invaluable for maintaining a clear head when work is challenging (which is most of the time). Meditation for me is a fairly quick exercise that I do as necessary (normally once or twice a week). It usually involves focusing on my breathing for a minute or two and trying to make my breath as deep as possible (i.e. diaphragmatic breathing). I then try to focus my mind on something positive that has happened during the day, something that I am looking forward to or a particular verse from the Bible. This practice helps me keep calm and puts me in the right mindset for creative and excellent work. 

Exercise
I ride around 12 km to work each morning and then 12 km home each evening. Rain or shine, I spend about 50 minutes on my bike each workday. And during this time I have a strict rule: no headphones. This is 50 minutes that I have set aside as 'sacred' to visualise and contemplate the day to come and reflect on the day that's been. On my way to work, I run through the plan for the day and try to identify any difficult points or tweaks I could make to improve the flow of the day. If I have a day in the lab, I visualise each step of the experiments I've planned. If I'm struggling for things to think of, I might start by chewing over something that I read during my morning reading ritual. On my way home from work, I reflect on the day and formulate solutions to any problems that arose during the day. By about the halfway point, I'm done thinking about work and I use the last 6 km to mentally prepare for fathering and husbanding.

Maximising scholarly output

This series of posts is aimed at academics, particularly early-career researchers (ECRs). While some of the topics I cover will be relevant across the board, ECRs will find them particularly relevant.

A major area of concern for ECRs, such as myself, is scholarly productivity. I have found that scholarly productivity is different from productivity in less 'thought-based' employment. In most jobs, even highly skilled ones, productivity is mostly about time and project management. Scholarly productivity also requires these skills in substantial amount, but that is a topic for another post. What I want to focus on here is the additional structures that I have implemented in my life in an attempt to wring every drop of scholarly output from my intellect. Because one's brain is always taking in and processing information and one's brain is the primary tool for scholarly work, every aspect of a scholar's life contributes or detracts from scholarly output. From the way we interact with the news, to the way we use our exercise time and what we choose to do on the weekends. Everything is either contributing to or detracting from our output, so it is important for us to structure our lives so that as many things as possible contribute to and as few things as possible distract from our output. If we get this right, then we can be satisfied that we gave the world our most creative, insightful and helpful outputs. To borrow a phrase from Cal Newport, if we structure our lives well, then we can engage in the increasingly rare activity of 'deep work'.

I want to cover this topic in three parts. In this first part I'll cover structures I've put in place for managing the news and social media. In the second part, I'll cover non-work reading, meditation and exercise. In the third part, I'll cover structures I've put in place for managing recreation, friends and family life. Maybe you'll find it useful to kickstart your thinking about how you structure your life. Failing that, I hope you at least find it interesting! I've included headings so you can just skip to the bit that is most relevant to you.

There are three underlying principles that have guided my thinking on these topics. The first is that boredom breeds creativity (this idea is supported by data; see, for example Danckert & Eastwood, Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, Harvard University Press, 2020). The second is that humans are at their most productive when they are happiest and this requires regular periods of rest and work; if the balance becomes skewed too far towards either one of these both our happiness and the quality and depth of our work will plummet (I don't have data on this idea, but I've heard it in a variety of forms over the years from people I trust and it intuitively makes sense). The third is that solitude is important for creativity, focus and deep work (this idea is discussed at length in Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism).

The News
It's no secret that the way we engage with the news has changed dramatically since the internet became widespread. For a long time, I thought that being informed was essential to being a functioning adult and involved checking news websites, like ABC, SBS and Sky News, multiple times per day. But essentially all this constant checking achieved was putting me in a heightened state of arousal and staving off small moments of boredom (e.g. waiting in line at the kebab shop, or a few seconds waiting for a webpage to load). Essentially, my compulsive news-checking stole all of these little moments of boredom until my brain was frequently flitting from work to the news and back again. This behaviour stemmed from the desire to be informed, but actually I barely remembered anything I read and my scholarly creativity and focus were suffering. 

After trying a variety of different approaches to engaging with the news, I have landed on the following structure.

1. Every morning at 5:40 AM while lifting weights I listen to The Squiz Today, which is a free, weekday, Australia-centric podcast that covers 4-6 major news stories in under 10 minutes; this keeps me up to speed with important national and global events.
2. Every Saturday morning, I walk down to the local servo and buy The West Australian and then spend the next few hours devouring it; this keeps me adequately informed about news from Perth and its surrounds (and provides newspaper that can be used for window cleaning!).
3. Once or twice a year (usually during my annual leave) I read some longer form journalism, such as The Monthly; this gives me a chance to take in some more in-depth reflections on big events.

I find this keeps me informed enough to discuss current events with my colleagues and make wise decisions in my own life but does not overload me with unnecessary information that detracts from my scholarly output.

Social Media
Alongside the news, social media appears to me to be one of the biggest detractors from scholarly output. The problem with social media is two-fold. First, social media, like the news, fills every spare moment of boredom without giving much in return. Our brains need boredom, not constant input. Second, social media platforms are designed to keep as much of our attention as possible for as long as possible (the so-called 'attention economy') and as long as our attention is even partially on them, we cannot be engaged in creative and focussed work. However, unlike some others, I am not an advocate of completely dissociating from social media; I think it has its value if used correctly. One of the most useful exercises I did when thinking about this is to precisely define what you use social media for (as suggested by Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism). Don't just think, 'I use Twitter'; instead, think, for example, 'I use Twitter to keep an eye on developing trends in the medical research field.'

The system I have for managing social media is:

1. Check Twitter and LinkedIn for five minutes each workday morning, while eating breakfast. These are valuable tools for maintaining my professional network, so it's important I stay active on them.
2. Post to Twitter and LinkedIn once a week (usually on Fridays).
3. Spend a maximum of 15 min on Facebook on Saturday mornings.

Virtual Conferences Are Not Here to Stay

I was recently part of ASPB's Plant Biology 2020 Worldwide Summit. It was my first virtual conference and I've got to say that overall it was a great experience. The talks were exciting and the posters were interesting. People were genuinely engaged and asking really good questions. One of my favourite features was the voting system for questions; it was a nice way to know that others were thinking the same questions as me.

All the plenary and concurrent symposia (CS) talks were pre-recorded. In the plenary sessions the speakers were present for a live video Q&A, where the speakers answered questions that had come in via the text chat function. The plenary sessions were re-broadcast to accommodate more time zones; this was a really nice touch for someone in Australia and some of the speakers even made the effort to be present for the re-broadcast.

In contrast, the CS talks were played back to back, and questions that came in via the text chat function had to be answered by the speakers during others' talks. I didn't like this as much. It meant that I was answering questions about my talk instead of watching the next talk, which would have been interesting, if I had been able to pay attention! One of the worst features of the plenary and concurrent symposia was the Discussion Tab. This was a text chat window that was available during the talks, but I don't really know what it was for. Discussions happened, but they felt a little forced. And it seemed to be encouraging people to chat during the presentations, which would never be encouraged at an IRL conference.

As for the posters, they  were the best they could be at a virtual conference. There were certainly some positives of being able to search for posters in your areas of interest without having to wander a poster hall for ages. And you could fit much more information on a virtual poster than a traditional poster. I experienced very little interaction around the posters, though. A few people asked me questions and I asked a few questions and got answers, but one of the benefits of a real life poster hall is the interactions you get with people you weren't planning to interact with; it's sometimes those interactions that lead to the most interesting projects and collaborations.

This leads to my final point. Despite the valiant efforts of the organisers, I found the networking to be essentially nonexistent. Perhaps this was due to the time zone difference and the fact that I didn't want to be nocturnal for a week. But this is why I don't think virtual conferences are here to stay: you miss out on all those unplanned interactions with fellow researchers, which are invaluable for scientific progress.

We need to change the way we teach science (part 2)

In response to my last post on science teaching, my father asked for some examples to clarify the type of science teaching I had in mind. Well, for those that asked, and those that did not, below are a few examples of the kind of science...let's call them...'experiences' I have in mind. The guiding principal for all these experiences is that, to make a science experience meaningful, you need to be answering a question the students actually care about.

 

You can start giving kids science experiences from the very beginning. Actually, as soon as their about six months old (probably earlier for some), kids are doing science. They make hypotheses, they test them and then they learn from the results. Don't believe me? How about learning to speak? Babies make noises. I assume initially by accident they find that some noises elicit a response from people around them. They hypothesise that these noises will elicit a response from Mum and/or Dad every time they make them. Some noises do. Some noises consistently elicit a very big and pleasurable response from Mum and/or Dad. Through science, babies learn that some noises are good for getting people to respond in certain ways, so they keep making these noises. I'm not saying that babies are conscious of this at all. I am just saying that kids are hardwired for science from the beginning, so most, if not all, will be enthusiastic for well-crafted science experiences.

 

What about with toddlers? What science experiences are appropriate for them? I stumbled across a fun one with my three-year-old a few years back. He had a 'magnet wand', which is basically a fairly strong magnet encased in a plastic handle. He enjoyed sticking it to the fridge and oven and the washing machine. He was wondering one day why the wand stuck to things. I jumped on this opportunity and suggested that there could be a few reasons, since the things he had been sticking it to all had common features. Together we came up with two hypotheses: H1 the magnet wand sticks to things that are white; H2 the magnet wand sticks to things that are metal. Then we went around the house finding metal things of different colours and concluded (obviously!) that the wand stuck to things that were metal. I think simple experiences like this can start kids thinking scientifically. They will start to see that the world is comprehensible and ordered and that, through science, we can understand and manipulate the world.

 

What about 6- to 12-year-olds? There are so many ways you can introduce science into a child's life to answer questions that really matter to a child, such as: what is the best type of sand for sandcastles? Or what is the best chocolate chip recipe? Or what is the best method to clean up the baking soda/vinegar volcano mess that just frothed all over the carpet? And how can I get it clean without Mum or Dad ever knowing it was there?

 

I hope you can see the point I'm making, but what about for high school kids and college students? How can we give older kids or teens meaningful science experiences? You might ask a very simple question, to which your students may know the answer, like why do plants get heavier? Your students might know a bit about photosynthesis, but few of them will have seen experimental evidence for it. So, you could ask, where does plants’ extra mass come from? Are plants taking up something from the soil or air or light or some combination of all three? You could then ask students to come up with methods of testing these four hypotheses. For example, you could grow some plants in the dark and some in the light and see which ones get heavier. You could grow plants in different gaseous environments. You could weigh the soil before you grow a plant in it and then again after the plant is grown to maturity (after removing the plant from the soil, of course!). Thinking about photosynthesis in this way is not only going to help students develop their scientific skills, but it will also teach photosynthesis in a way that sticks.

 

And what about at university? The approach that I have taken with my recent lab redesign is to give the students several tools they could use for conducting an experiment and then letting them decide which tool they want to use. The goal of the lab is to separate proteins in a mixture using chromatography. The students will be supplied with two types of resin and three buffers at different pH values, but it is up to them which resin to use and which order to add the buffers. This forces students to really grapple with the concept of separating proteins based upon differing pI values.

 

I could go on, but I think I'm just multiplying examples at this point.

We need to change the way we teach science

Recently I have been involved in re-designing a university laboratory course. The process got me thinking about the philosophy behind the way we teach science. And I have come to the conclusion that we've got it wrong. Well, largely wrong.

Let's start from the beginning. The way I was exposed to science as a child was through museum exhibits, books, magazines and science live shows. I suspect your experience of the practical side of science was similar. It was great seeing how vinegar and baking soda frothed and bubbled like a volcano. It was cool seeing the catalytic effect of cigarette ash when trying to burn a sugar cube. I loved seeing a flower smashed into hundreds of pieces after being dipped in liquid nitrogen. These cool demonstrations of science gradually became more complex as I progressed through high school and into college and university. But even at university, the principle was still much the same. The underlying principle throughout all my science education was to understand certain concepts and memorise certain facts. The way this usually worked (even at the university level) was that we were taught something in lectures and then the labs provided practical experience of the concepts being taught. My science education was probably somewhat unique, since I was home schooled, but I think that science education in principle is largely the same throughout the Western world: science is taught as concepts to be understood and facts to be memorised.

Granted, science concepts and facts need to be taught and understood and practical demonstrations/experiences are great for re-enforcing concepts taught in class. But science practical classes are rarely true experiments. They may be described as experiments but there is no element of uncertainty; there is no new knowledge gained. There is just re-enforcement of ideas to which students have already been exposed. Science practical classes are largely recipes that are followed to give an expected outcome. And if you don't get the expected outcome, then you must have done something wrong.

I propose a complete re-imagining of science education. From the very beginning of primary school to the very end of university, we need to focus more on the process of science. Yes, we need to teach students as much of the body of scientific knowledge as they can take in, but more importantly we need to teach students about the process of generating a hypothesis, designing and performing an experiment to test the hypothesis and comparing the experimental result to the hypothesis. One way we could do this is through designing practical classes where failing to get the desired result does not mean 'failing' the lab class. We need to give students the mental framework they need to be able to ask intelligent questions and generate meaningful experiments, provide the resources for them to conduct these experiment, and then give them the freedom to conduct their experiments, even if we know that they won't all work.

That's how we create good scientists.