Thank you for still being there. We have been climbing uphill for months now, and I am so humbled to see all that you have accomplished despite all of the heartache and adverse circumstances. I know many of you are working remotely, and even if you are going in to the office, interactions with colleagues are much more limited. Without those hallway conversations, people don’t know day-to-day what is happening with you. Most people doing research, whether faculty or trainees, have needed to change their projects and their plans over the last 3 months, for a combination of personal and logistical reasons. No-one is following the plans they laid out in February!
Like A Boss
Dear friends,
What I know is that everyone is struggling right now. Whether you are in a new and worse economic position or grieving lost family members and friends or simply trying to get through the day with kids at home, I am sending you support. Please do whatever brings you comfort, even if it is momentary.
Jump Start Your Brain!
We spoke on Thursday about productivity. To reiterate, I don't expect anyone to be at full steam right now. I can't pretend that I don't feel worry or pressure about our inability to do lab work. I think we all feel that, and it is normal to struggle with expectations when the world has been turned upside down. But going on as if things aren't any different than they were a month ago is not a solution to the problem at hand. We have to take our current situation and see what is possible for each of us. I hope in the weeks to come that we can continue to challenge ourselves to think differently about our work so that we are prepared to hit the ground running. I hope each of us will have the opportunity to better understand ourselves and be more resilient in the face of pressure.
Nice to Meeting You
Hello February! How are those resolutions going? My January was packed with meetings, an experience that you can undoubtedly relate to. While it’s easy to complain about meetings, I also believe that bringing people together is critical for creativity and effectiveness in academia. Here are my five core meeting principles:
New Year, New Ideas!
I am writing this email from the snowy comfort of a ramshackle cabin in the woods near Lake Tahoe, and I hope all of you are likewise recharging at the year’s end. It is an opportune time to reflect on the new ideas and practices I tried last year and deciding what to focus on in the coming year. Below I share my best lightning hacks from 2018- each one is easy to implement and has significantly improved my work life. You can think of them like (purely secular) stocking stuffers from me to you!
Giving Work Thanks
Hope this message finds you all doing well! I can’t believe it’s November already. With the coming Thanksgiving holiday, it seems appropriate to talk about gratitude at work. Though it seems like an optional, warm-and-fuzzy topic, in reality it’s vital to express our gratitude to colleagues. Gratitude strengthens relationships and imparts resilience, and we could all use more of that at work, right?
There was a New York Times article about the science of gratitude earlier this year that concluded that people appreciate expressions of gratitude (specifically emailed thank-you notes) more than the sender thought they would. This sparked my curiosity and I delved a bit more into the literature. Experimental evidence suggests that the most effective thank-you messages are specific, either because they are tied to an action or event, or because they mention a specific trait that you appreciate. A reflexive “great job” is easily shrugged off whereas, “thank you for preparing such a strong draft that I barely had to edit it,” sparks warm feelings. Interestingly, people who express gratitude also experience a mood boost.
280 Characters of Summer Homework
I am sending this a bit late because – it’s summer! I’ve enjoyed seeing some of you and meeting others for the first time at our summer Research in Implementation Science for Equity (RISE) program. I was part of a panel discussing social media and academia, and I thought it would be an opportune time to pontificate on this topic. There are many social media beginner’s guides available online (here’s one), and I am confident that all of you can figure out the mechanics. Instead, I hope to share the rationale for using social media, some of my best practices, and pitfalls to avoid. I’ll end by giving you summer homework! (for the new people, aren’t you glad you asked to get these emails?!)
Brand Yourself
Hope this message finds you thriving! This month’s message is inspired by a meeting with a wonderful colleague who was invited for one of our department’s visiting professorships. (I hope I’ve already suggested to all of you that you should always try to get onto the schedule for visiting professors.) He asked me, “What is your brand?” According to my colleague, a brand should capture who you are professionally, not just what you are doing now. This seemed particularly daunting for me since I have varied research and professional interests. However, advice is only good if you act on it, so I started looking into it.
Best Diet Ever
Be an Email Ninja
Hope this message finds you all thriving! There is a particular irony about my sharing my advice this month about email. Many of you know that I struggle to keep up with my email. I recently read the book Unsubscribeby Jocelyn Glei, and I learned some new email management strategies. You will have to tell me if you think they are helping!
Essentialism
Happy almost August! This is the second installment of my monthly mentoring email- sharing an idea, usually from a book, that has helped me in this academic life. I’m leaving shortly on a two-week vacation, and it seems like an apt time to re-visit my most difficult career challenge- saying “no.” I think most people have an innate “yes” or “no” inclination, and the first step is to know yourself. I am most definitely a yes-woman by nature. The advice that follows is from the “do as I say, not as I do” school!