Stay Motivated in Lab

Science can be like Baywatch.  Well, there are decidedly fewer bikinis and speedos, but there are similarities.  Specifically, there are times when all of us feel like we’re drowning.  Learning how to stay motivated in lab through the natural ebb and flow of good results is an essential skill for becoming a successful scientist.

A friend of mine, Rachel, spent summers in college working as a lifeguard.  Like Hasselhoff (not the drunken-on-the-floor-cheeseburger-eating ‘Hoff), Rachel knows the fundamental rule of rescue: swimmers will bob three times before drowning – so get there fast.  The first three times their head goes under, they have enough strength to pull themselves up.  But the fourth time they go under, they’re not coming back.

At the bench, a similar pattern emerges – with every failed experiment, our motivation dwindles until we find ourselves utterly discouraged.  Spending six months trying to figure out why the neurons are inexplicably dying is brutal.  But it’s critically important to make sure we don’t go under a fourth time.    Luckily, there are ways to keep ourselves afloat even when times are their toughest.

Set a Goal

Sometimes we need to take a step back and look at what we’re trying to accomplish.  Then set a very specific goal and work towards it.  It’s easy to get lost when we don’t know where we’re going.

Post It

Physically write the goal down and put it somewhere we will see it daily.  It’s hard to achieve a goal when we can’t remember what it is.

Break Tasks into Baby Steps

Big experiments or projects are overwhelming.  Break them into their smallest divisible part and attack it one step at a time.  On a to-do list, “Set up a novel 96-well assay” sounds very different than “Order 1 case of 96-well plates.”  It may seem small, but it’s progress, and that’s important.

Get Excited about the Future

What does this experiment mean to us?  Does it move us a step closer to publishing, graduating or finding a job?  Imagine what it will be like when we get there.  This is just a bump in the road, don’t let it knock us off course.

Find Support

Always remember, we’re not alone.  Find a labmate, a friend, a family member or even a complete stranger.  It can be online or in person.  Although they won’t be able to come perform our experiments for us, it’s the encouragement we’re seeking.  Speaking with others will help put the problem in perspective.

Realize this is Normal

There will always be highs and lows in science, but we must remember the lows won’t last forever – they will come to an end and the good times will return.  In fact, the pattern of failure is so uniform in graduate school that many departments actively try to keep fourth-year students (at their low) away from prospective students…

All of the easy experiments have been done.  If an experiment was guaranteed to work, someone already did it.  Football teams know there’s a 50% chance they’ll fail (unless they’re the Detroit Lions…), but they still show up on Sunday.  Even perfectly performed experiments will fail.  We can’t take failure too personally.

Find an Alternate Path

The tough times in science end not because of magic, but because we come up with solutions to our problems that move us forward.  Maybe this means we scrap our approach entirely and try a new assay, a new purification protocol or a new synthetic scheme.  The sooner we can devise alternate methods to achieve our goal, the better.

Motivation is always a problem in lab when things get tough.  It’s okay, it’s part of science.  Following these steps will help us keep our head above water, since there may not always be a lifeguard on duty.

What do you do to stay motivated in lab?