Don't defer that grant submission

0:00 Welcome to the Clinician Researcher podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. As clinicians, we spend a decade or more as trainees learning to take care of patients. When we finally start our careers, we want to build research programs, but then we find that our years of clinical training did not adequately prepare us to lead our research program. Through no fault of our own, we struggle to find mentors, and when we can't, we quit. However, clinicians hold the keys to the greatest research breakthroughs.

0:40 For this reason, the Clinician Researcher podcast exists to give academic clinicians the tools to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. Now introducing your host, Toyosi Onwuemene. Welcome. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a privilege to be speaking with you today. Thank you for listening. Today, I'm talking about why you should submit that grant, why you should submit the grant. And the reason I thought to speak to you about this today is because recently I was working towards a grant submission, and it was about maybe 10 days to the final grant submission.

1:25 And, you know, we have an institutional deadline before the actual grant submission, and our institutional deadline is a couple of weeks before the grant is actually due. So sometimes it doesn't feel like a real deadline, but it clearly is. And so it's 10 days probably to this deadline, and still feeling fuzzy on some of my aims, actually one of my aims specifically. And the person I was working with, who is a wonderful grant writing specialist who's phenomenal, is like, well, what do you think? Maybe you should defer the submission until the next time. And I remember thinking, oh my goodness, that's such a great idea, because, you know, to be honest, I just needed relief from this grant writing.

2:05 And I was like, hmm, how about I don't submit the grant? But the more I thought about it, the more I thought about how much time had already gone into submitting the grant, the fact that I'd already made a commitment to submitting the grant, and the fact that I also had other grants coming. I was like, well, you know, this grant is, you know, it's going to get out of the way, and then there's another grant coming after it. But if I don't submit this grant, then I have to move this grant to the next cycle. And it took some time and sat with myself, because I'm one of those people who really needs time between the need for a decision and the making of the decision. And I really, it takes me time to get in touch with how I really feel about things. And I remember thinking, I've made a commitment, and I'm going to see this commitment through, because if I have to spend any more time beyond this time on this grant, it will be overwhelming.

2:55 I need a break from it. And so I decided to go forward and I submitted the grants, and things came together as they tend to, and forced by a deadline, they came together, and I finally had the kind of clarity I was looking for. But I want to talk about this whole thing about whether or not you submit the grant, because sometimes there's this sense that it's got to be a perfect grant. And if it's not perfect, if it's less than perfect, why bother? Because the competition for grants are, it's so stiff. And if the competition for grant writing is stiff, or submitting proposals is stiff, then you shouldn't submit anything less than the best. But I'm here to tell you that you should submit anyway. Whether you think it's your absolute best product or you don't, I'm here to make an argument for why you should go ahead and submit the grant.

3:42 And so I'm going to tell you seven reasons, today I'm telling you seven compelling reasons why you should consider submitting the grant. And this is, you know, if you don't feel it's perfect and you're like, this is not the best grant I could have written, I still feel like it's important to submit it. And here are seven reasons why. The first thing is that grant writing is a commitment. Or maybe I should say proposal submission is a commitment, because as a clinician scientist, you're always writing grants. I mean, for the most part, you are always kind of moving your science forward and looking for who's going to be a funder to fund your program.

4:24 And so as long as you are a clinician scientist and grant writing is just what you do. And so when you look on the horizon and you see different proposals that are, you know, coming out, requests for proposals coming out, you choose which ones you're going to submit to. It really is a commitment that you're making. And in making this commitment, everything in you rises to complete this proposal submission because you've made a commitment. And so because you've made a commitment, then it's important to meet the commitment. And the commitment has a finite window. And so, you know, grants have submission cycles.

5:06 And the thing about grants is that there are rarely opportunities that are once in a lifetime opportunities. Even every once in a lifetime opportunity will come again. So there's no real missed grant deadline. That's just, oh, you don't get to submit for a few more months or oh, maybe this is an opportunity that comes once a year. And so the reality is that there are opportunity windows that you have to submit grants. And if you miss the window, you know what? The window will come again. But who you are today, where your science is today, where everything is today is not the same as it will be, you know, a couple of months from now, a year from now. You won't even be the same person. In the process of preparing and writing grant proposals, you're transforming each time. So you're not going to be the same person.

5:47 And so what you want to do is make a commitment to this opportunity window. You make a commitment and you meet that commitment. And one of the important reasons for submitting the grant, for meeting the commitment is because you're really demonstrating to yourself that you're someone who meets commitments. You are. And it's important because there will always be a reason not to submit a grant. There will always be the not so perfect, perfect, you know, environment for grant submission. And in reality, it's just you just bite the bullet and you do it. And so I think it's important because you've made a commitment and submitting proposals is really about meeting commitments.

6:30 And there's an opportunity window where if you fail to meet this commitment, then you have to defer it. And it really means you're working on this grant for so, so, so much longer than you really want to be. And people tell you the enemy of good is perfect. You are looking to submit a good grant. And over time, when you have to go back to the next submission, it will be better. It will be better. But sometimes I hear people saying, well, if I just wait and give it a few more months, it'll be better. And the reality of our very busy lives as clinicians is that there is no time like the present and tomorrow is really not promised. And so if we've made a commitment to a certain grant submission, it is probably more important that we keep the commitment than that we wait till tomorrow for a better opportunity because there's no guarantee of a better opportunity.

7:22 So that's number one. You've made a commitment to this opportunity window. Number two is the feedback potential. Okay. You cannot get feedback until you submitted something. And submitting the grant allows you to receive feedback from reviewers. Now, here's the thing. We don't always love feedback from reviewers. In fact, some of us would prefer to do without the feedback from reviewers because we kind of find it annoying. We do. It's like, huh, really? Didn't you see where I wrote XYZ? Yeah, I don't know. You know, it's a love-hate relationship with reviewers until you're a reviewer yourself and you're like, oh yeah, I love reviewers.

8:06 They're so awesome because of course you're awesome. But the potential to get feedback from reviewers is very important. It's important because honestly, when we finally shake out of the feeling bad about comments that reviewers left for us that we could have done without, when we really sit down and look at it, we realize that it's really an opportunity, an opportunity to clarify what we were thinking. Like, we may have said it, but maybe we didn't say it clearly enough. It's an opportunity to do that. And many times, reviewers' comments actually do improve our work. When we really sit down and think about it, it really, really, really does improve our work.

8:47 And even if we don't want to admit it, it really is true. And so submitting a grant gives you the opportunity to receive feedback. And that feedback will help you for the next submission. And so submitting a grant is not always about this particular submission because very rarely do you get a grant the very first time it goes out. It can happen. It has happened. It's great when it happens, but many times what happens is you submit something that's not near perfect, and then you get the kind of feedback that allows you to shape it again. And because you're not starting from scratch, you actually do have time to really reshape it. And it increases your chances of being successful eventually.

9:27 But more important than just the success, and you're like, what's more important than getting the money? More important than the success and getting the money is actually moving your project forward, moving your research program forward. And the kind of feedback that you do get from reviewers helps you move the research program forward. Ultimately, it helps you get funded. But really importantly, it really helps you to think critically about the work you're doing and how it could be improved. Okay. So you want to make sure that you submit the grant so that you can get feedback because if you don't submit the grant, then you don't get feedback. And that is a problem. All right. Number three is experience. You know, one of the things I've talked about in a prior episode is that people who submit grants get grants.

10:14 And it really is true. If you don't submit grants, you don't get grants. But if you submit them, okay, it's not guaranteed that you'll get them. But the very act of submitting grants allows you to improve the process of submitting grants. And so ultimately, number three is experience. You get valuable experience every time you prepare and submit a full proposal. Now, what's interesting is that our ability to write and submit proposals kind of depends on the quality of our writing. And we're really good writers. By the time you get to the place in your career where you're like, I'm going to be submitting grants regularly, you're a pretty good writer because you've had so much opportunity to practice your writing.

10:55 You practice a lot of writing in college. You certainly did it in med school, and as a resident, you wrote trillions of notes probably. So your writing has always been getting better and better. But submitting grants is a different kind of writing. It's a salesmanship type of writing, but it's not just salesmanship. It's really being very clear about what you are saying and communicating that very clearly. It's a specialized type of writing. And so the more you do it, the better you get, and the more you pull together different components to submit a full proposal, the better you get at doing that. And so there is value in the experience.

11:37 A grant that is not finished, that is like you get it so far and then you're like, I'm not going to submit, doesn't give you the same experience as a grant that you take to the finish line. Crossing the finish line is an important experience to gain because then you're able to do it again and again and again and again. And the more you do it, the more some things become kind of automatic and so that you're able to really focus your energies on the things that really matter. For example, there are lots of supporting documents that people kind of are frustrated by many times and they're still important because they are part of the whole grant. But really, they're not as much the critical thinking components as in the research strategy or like writing the specific aims.

12:25 And so the more experience you get, the better it is you get at those things that seem more routine so that you can really focus your time and your energy on the things that are most critical, the things that only you can do. And over time, as you become more and more experienced and as you grow in your research program, you actually might even have help to do those components of the grant that are not like the critical research strategy. And so it's important to gain the experience because you get better and as people come in to help you, you're able to show them what to do. So the experience is important. Number four is networking.

13:07 Yep. Writing grants helps you in your networking. You know why? Every time you submit a grant, someone's going to review it. Everybody the people who review it score you high enough so that you are discussed or at least your grant is discussed. They're not discussing you. They don't even know you. But your grant is discussed in an open forum and people get to know who you are. Very rarely, very rarely are grants review processes blinded. So everybody knows the investigators. And so it's one of those networking things where you're not even in the room, but your grant is speaking for you. And so the more your grant is coming before reviewers, the more people get to know what you're working on, what you're interested in.

13:54 And honestly, you know, people can't tell you they reviewed your grant. They're not allowed to do that. But they remember. And so when it comes to thinking about who's going to give a talk for XYZ and they remember that, oh, you have this idea that you submitted, it allows you to, in a sense, network when you're not in the room. So literally, your grant is speaking on your behalf. Now, not ideally. Your grant is such that people are drawn to your work. It may be that your writing is so bad or at least not in the way that the reviewers want. They're like, I don't know who this person is, but I really don't want to talk to this person or I don't want to be associated with this person because the grant is so bad.

14:40 It's rarely, it rarely happens. I think for the most part, it's just your name keeps coming up and I think it's important. So let's just say your grant is silently networking for you even when you're not in the room. Okay. Another thing that submitting the grant allows you to do is it allows you to gain visibility. And the reason it allows you to gain visibility is because the thing about your grant is that it's, it's like, it's like finishing. It's like finishing your thought, right? It's completing your sentence, completing the thought that you have about the work that you're doing, right? You're creating the future and you're saying, this is what we want to do and this is how we want to do it.

15:21 Because of that, your research is moving forward. Every time you are pulling together the grant, you're pulling together your preliminary data, you're saying, this is what we want to do. You kind of are forcing yourself to advance your research because you're putting the kind of thought into it that allows you to go to the next project and the next project and the next project after that. And then you become the expert because you know what you're writing about this thing ad nauseam and that's assuming that you're actually focused. Please be focused. Please choose one area of study and focus in on it and get it going. And it allows you to really become the expert. And because of that, you're able to give talks in the area, you write papers in the area and you're able really to become known.

16:03 And so the fact of continuously being able to submit grants and finishing your grants, submitting them, getting them to the finish line allows you to create stuff from that because your grant always does double, triple, quadruple duty if you're doing it correctly. One grant submission is never the end. It's always great. Now let's take the background and significance and write a great review article. Now let's take the background and significance and give a talk somewhere. So your grant, your grant writing, the thought, the finished sentences, the finished thought that goes into the grant allows you to really parlay the work into visibility within the scientific community.

16:48 And that could lead you to new collaborations. It could lead you to new opportunities. It's really amazing. Yes, please submit that grant. Okay, number six is pilot data. And by pilot data, I mean that whenever you go to submit a grant, you really do need to demonstrate feasibility or demonstrate premise. And some of that you do with your preliminary data, right? And even when there are grants that are like, oh, no preliminary data is needed, you know, you still have to demonstrate feasibility for which you at least have to say, okay, well, we've used these methods before, or we have access to this person who's used these methods.

17:32 And it's really helpful because whether the grant is funded or not, you can use that information for another thing, for the next grant, right? So all the things that you gather to demonstrate the feasibility of the work or demonstrate the premise for the work can be parlayed into another project. So even if this one's not funded, the fact that you took all the time to pull it together means it's already pulled together. And the next time you need to write something that's similar, maybe even if not exactly the same, you kind of already have this preliminary data that you've pulled. You kind of already have this preliminary data that's pulled. And you know what? You're going to pull it together into a paper eventually, but you are able to use it for the next grant.

18:17 And then it doesn't take as much to pull it together because the first time you're pulling it together, it takes time. You're like, I'm not even sure I'm going to have it all together in time for the grant submission. But ultimately, you do the work, you pull it together, and it's available to you to use in the next submission. Okay, so that's pilot data. Number seven is time efficiency. Okay, so going back to the beginning, I said, you know, there was a situation where I'd spent all this time working on the grant. And then I got to the point where it was almost time to submit. And it was like, should I pull out now? And I really did feel like, wow, I spent a lot of time on this grant already. I didn't want to spend more time on it.

18:58 And in reality, if you don't submit, then you're kind of doing double duty and double duty without feedback. What you don't want to do is double duty without feedback. And so it is more time efficient to submit a grant you've committed to than to prolong the submission and just keep working on it. Because here's the challenge. And I think this is really important. This is something I've really learned from my grant writing mentors is that you just don't know exactly what's going to fly. You don't. You think you do. You feel sure that you are responsive to the funding opportunity announcement or to the RFA. But sometimes you just don't know how the reviewers are going to take your work.

19:41 And so you want to know as soon as possible. You want to know. And if you wait two cycles to find out that you are heading in the wrong direction, oh, what a waste of time. And so what you don't want to do is spend so much time perfecting something that people don't want. Now, ideally, before you put the proposal together, you've spoken to a program officer. You have a sense of what the review committee wants. You might have some quote unquote inside information, but you don't know until you submit. And so it's actually more time efficient to submit the proposal than to defer it by a couple of more months. Because here's the thing. You're just going to keep working on this grant until it gets submitted.

20:23 And you could spend six months working on it or you could spend three months working on it. You decide. But the question is, does six months worth of writing get you more than three months of writing? And most of the time, really, you get more out of committing and submitting. The second thing that time efficiency gives you is the next time you go to revise the grants, because invariably, most of your grants will need revisions, it's so much more time efficient the second time around because you already have something you finished and you already have some feedback on it. So when you're going to resubmit the second time, to some extent, it's the same as if you did all six months.

21:03 So it's three months the first time, maybe three months the second time around actually shorter because you're not spending as much time writing the second time around. And a lot of the documents have already been created. And so it's so much more time efficient to revise it when it comes back because you've already done it. But it's less time efficient if you didn't do it the first time and you just keep working on it and then you don't have the feedback that allows you to really drive the proposal home. So it is time efficient to submit rather than to defer your submission. Okay. So I've talked about seven reasons why you should submit that grant, why you should not delay, why you should not push it off until the next cycle.

21:44 Number one is because you know what, you've made a commitment to an opportunity window and you don't want that opportunity window to pass you by. Number two, the feedback potential. A grant not submitted is a grant that you can't get feedback on. And so the feedback potential really helps you to advance your work and to submit a proposal that actually will get funded. Number three is the experience. You know what, the more you write and submit, the better you get at writing and submitting. And so actually allowing yourself to get to the finish line is so important. You want the experience. Number four is networking. Your grant is kind of speaking on your behalf. Hopefully it's good so that it's not judged, it's not being held against you, but your work is good, your science is good.

22:26 And so allow your grant to go out into the world and speak to people that you don't even know. It's so awesome. Number five is the visibility. Because you are continuing to pull these ideas out of yourself and out of your networks to create compelling grant proposals, you're able to parlay them into more. And so the visibility is good for you, it's good for your science, it's good for your research program. Number six is pilot data. You are able to pull together the preliminary data, which does double duty on the next grant submission or even it allows you to pull it together quickly enough to actually get papers moving forward. And finally, it's time efficiency. Instead of spending six to seven or eight months trying to perfect a grant, you spend three months, you send it out, you get the feedback, and then it takes less time to pull it together for the resubmission.

23:14 Okay, so those are seven reasons you should think about as to why you should submit the grant and not defer, not wait for a perfect time because there's no perfect time. Submitting a grant proposal is kind of like having a baby. It's like, oh, there's no perfect time, just do it anyway. Okay, I know I lost most of you there. But please submit the grant, don't defer. All right, that's the end of today's episode. If you are looking to help out a fellow clinician scientist who might have a similar concern, should I submit, should I not submit, please forward them this episode because it's really going to be helpful to them as I believe and I hope it's been helpful to you. It's been a pleasure talking with you today.

23:55 I look forward to talking with you again the next time. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Clinician Researcher Podcast, where academic clinicians learn the skills to build their own research program, whether or not they have a mentor. If you found the information in this episode to be helpful, don't keep it all to yourself. Someone else needs to hear it. So take a minute right now and share it. As you share this episode, you become part of our mission to help launch a new generation of clinician researchers who make transformative discoveries that change the way we do healthcare.