Blagnet.net

Workaholics, workophiliacs, and clock watchers

Because of a variety of factors, I’ve felt a little less than passionate and motivated about lab lately. I think these factors are mainly: fixation on computer-related free-time activities; frustration with getting scooped and having to hurry off our paper and then abandon the project; and lack of confidence that I can achieve great things if I put my mind to it and persevere through all the hardship and disappointment that science entails. I think overall it can be explained by a general high-time-preference mentality, which means I don’t think about the long run or the future enough, so I don’t see that taking pains to toil through every little step of scientific planning and progress and investing a lot of thought and effort into everything I do will result in good science and a good thesis. Or, maybe it’s just that I realize life is short and I have better, more enjoyable things to do with my time, like blagging.

Either way, what brought this on was a blag post, The Key to Employee Engagement - Don’t Hire Clock Watchers, from Kris Dunn on his human-resources blag. He was writing about Seth Godin’s blag post about workaholics vs. workophiliacs. Godin wrote,

A workaholic lives on fear. It’s fear that drives him to show up all the time. The best defense, apparently, is a good attendance record.

A new class of jobs (and workers) is creating a different sort of worker, though. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear.

The passionate worker doesn’t show up because she’s afraid of getting in trouble, she shows up because it’s a hobby that pays. The passionate worker is busy blogging on vacation… because posting that thought and seeing the feedback it generates is actually more fun than sitting on the beach for another hour. The passionate worker tweaks a site design after dinner because, hey, it’s a lot more fun than watching TV.

It was hard to imagine someone being passionate about mining coal or scrubbing dishes. But the new face of work, at least for some people, opens up the possibility that work is the thing (much of the time) that you’d most like to do. Designing jobs like that is obviously smart. Finding one is brilliant.

This description fits successful scientists as aptly as any other profession. This is the person who works out of passion and curiosity, not fear. We say the “science bug” has bitten them. We get a lot of applicants to graduate school who stress that point about themselves, whether it’s true or not. It’s a good thing to stress in a personal statement to a science graduate program. It’s even better if your boss emphasizes it.

I do have that mentality, I know. I love learning about mitochondrial, cellular, organ, or whole-body energy metabolism; I like reading about how other scientists designed good experiments to learn something new about the metabolic syndrome; I love thinking about the new things that I could discover about adipocytes, fatty acid metabolism, and obesity. My only problem is having the motivation, self-discipline, and confidence to be proactive about the whole thing and actually do them. Try new things for a while and see what I can learn. Sit down and focus for an entire afternoon about what I’d like to start into, what I’d like to uncover, and what experiments I could start with. Read more extensively about what other people have done, to get an idea of where to start.

But I just can’t put my mind to it lately because my mind doesn’t want to. I don’t feel like it. I’m so distracted by everything else because thoughts about biology and experiments don’t engage my imagination for long enough. It just doesn’t seem…fascinating or urgent at the moment.

While I’m confident that I’ll be quite motivated once I get my own projects going and design a couple experiments that work and witness the fruits of my hard work and I have a good project that’s all my own and has a solid future, I also can’t help but admit one more thing about myself. Whereas most other successful scientists have a drive, a need to get the next piece of data ASAP, to do the Western blot in one day instead of two, to isolate their RNA, spec it, reverse-transcribe it, and run the Q-PCR all in the same day, to catch a later bus because they have to run that gel tonight because they have to see how their cloning turned out—I’m not like that. I’m just more complacent or apathetic. It’s not that I don’t care, or that I really am all that complacent and apathetic—I just care a little less than the most driven students, am a little closer to complacence and apathy than the most successful scientists.

Which essentially means I’m neither a workaholic nor a workophiliac; I’m basically a clock watcher. I do things because I should, or because I have to, not because I need to. The only thing I can think of that I’m really passionate and motivated about is politics. And writing about politics. Second right now, probably because it isn’t my job and I am only allowed to do it a few hours a day at most, is learning about Linux, computers, and technology. Third is definitely science and lab; I want to emphasize that I do care about it, just not enough to excel in this field.

Now, Red Forman would tell me that it’s a job, it’s work, it’s not supposed to be fun—that’s why it’s called work, dumbass. But when there are thousands of people to whom it isn’t work, who do consider it a passion or at least a moderately well-paying hobby, you’re going to be selected against. Luckily, I am at least aware of my shortcomings and have admitted them. That’s the first step towards fixing them. (If it’s also the last, I’m in business!) And, luckily, upon introspection, my attitude seems to be to work hard, think hard and creatively, and be thorough and meticulous in lab so that I will uncover some interesting results soon and become re-motivated to nurture my baby into a successful Ph.D. and several good papers (and therefore success in finding a more-desired job afterwards, whatever that may be).

I suppose I should return to the reason for this blag post, Kris Dunn’s post. He offers some good thoughts and good advice.

We should all be fortunate enough to be so engaged in our jobs/careers that we actively seek opportunties to learn, regardless of time/location.

This blog is a good example of working with curiosity. Do I have to do it? Nope. Do I want to do it? Absolutely, especially when I get reactions and thoughts from others I can learn from as a result. That’s where the power of engagement really comes into play. It makes you want to work on the craft, and go back for more.

I think that’s a large part of what I’ve been missing in my entire scientific career: rewards that make me want to perform as well as or better than before, and go back for more. Perhaps my attitude and my constitution are the reason good results have been few and far between, perhaps I just have bad lab hands (well, there’s no perhaps about it), or perhaps my bad start in a not-so-nurturing undergraduate lab got me into bad habits and a bad mindset, which it is my own fault for not overcoming. One way or another, the scientists’ adage that “the joy you experience the 5% of the time that you are successful must compensate for the 95% of the time you fail” hasn’t been true for me, because it is definitely less than 5% and my successes aren’t big enough to cause joy. Again, maybe my fault for not doing anything about it and changing the failure–apathy cycle.

I know people who naturally bring that passion to their work. I know another group of people who are rigid about the hours they work. The interesting thing is that few of the individuals who are rigid about their hours are passionate about their work. …

My take? The naturally curious are always more apt to dream and be engaged, regardless of the job. The rest of the crowd better work OT to find a job that matches their strengths, because if not placed in a perfect situation, they’ll become clock watchers.

And once that happens, there’s little that the employer can do to change engagement levels.

Look inward, clock watchers of America.

Your office, your job, your boss, your co-workers, and anything else external can’t change it; only you can. I really hope I can improve soon, not necessarily so I can prime myself to become a successful researcher, but so I can be successful period and set myself up for the opportunities I want to pursue after graduation, in a lab or not.