Baby you can do it, take your time, do it right

So I've had this behavioral soap box just sitting here and I don't feel like I've abused it at all, and that's a crime.

Something that scientists hardly ever is do is slow the eff down. That exact issue is what lead to severe burnout for myself this spring, possibly culminating in writing a blog about neuroscience because I needed some catharsis from a stressful and sometimes abusive science career.

For the last year, I've managed a large mouse colony, learned to assemble, troubleshoot, and use operant touchscreen-equipped chambers, coordinated a crew of more than a dozen undergraduates, and completed *8* behavioral experimental projects (each requiring 4 months to run) in that time. Do the math - my crew has completed 32 months of projects in about 18. That doesn't even include the 50-ish pilot animals we ran during that time - each for at least six months.

This would be ridiculously productive if being productive in science was purely who finished the most studies - but it's not. The work that you publish and present is the true measure by which your productivity is measured in science. The quality of this work is a big factor in that judgement, and the rush to finish work before someone else publishes that technique or finding can frequently results in slap-dash work of questionable standards.

Why do you think the hashtag #overlyhonestmethods exists?

So I have a ridiculous and soul-crushing amount of data and it wasn't until I turned off the damn chambers and killed all of the trained animals that I was able to make myself stop. Now my PI and I are finding way more cool stuff (where cool stuff = possibly publishable data) than we've noticed in two years. It could lead to several meaningful publications of the behavioral correlates of adult hippocampal neurogenesis. Isn't that the point of all this?

Lifehacker has an incredible wealth of insight into the idea of productivity. For example, it helped me find this article describing how working more than 40 hours a week is probably making me less productive on the whole, Nicholas Tesla was just one of many wildly successful and respectful people to take walks to boost creativity and thinking, keeping a journal can help assess productivity habits, eating lunch at your desk can make me less productive, and so on.

To boost productivity in science - and not just perceived productivity - may actually mean spending more time idly or even at other pursuits.

It's shocking how infrequently this topic is broached in the workplace. Things that seem like they would improve productivity (i.e., working more) probably hurt output. Like one of my graduate school mentors, Greg Rose, impressed upon me - too little time in science is spent thinking. If we spent more time thinking critically about all aspects of our work, and ensuring that the endeavors we undertake are done so with a rigorous dedication to high quality technique, a lot less time, effort, and money would be wasted.