Don't Do that project!

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 to today's episode. I'm your host, Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is such a pleasure to be in your ears. Thank you for taking the time to listen. Today's podcast episode is titled, Don't Do That Research Project. And it's really important because sometimes when we are starting out, there's this feeling that every project is a great project.

1:25 Of course it's a great project. The mentor is a Nobel Laureate. Of course it's going to launch my career. I'm going to be super awesome. And that's how I was thinking when I first started. So no, my first mentor was not a Nobel Laureate, but might as well have been. It was the one mentor who was like, sure, come work on a project with me. And I was like, oh my gosh, I have a mentor who wants me to work on a project. And I just thought I was the luckiest person in the world. Never mind that I didn't want to do this project. And then it wasn't something I was interested in and not something I saw myself doing long term. It was a project and I needed to do a project, right? Every project is a great project, right?

2:06 And here's what happened to me. You know, I didn't have enthusiasm for the project and I started doing it with enthusiasm for just the idea of me having a project to work on or a mentor who cared enough about me to even offer me a project. So I started out with gusto, but then over time I kind of got tired. It got hard. The going got tough and it became clear that I really, really wasn't invested in the project. And guess what? I started to drag my feet and I started to turn things in a little bit late. And I mean, it kind of felt like a passive aggressive stance.

2:47 I mean, I just couldn't bring myself to be excited about a project that I was never excited about from the beginning. And you know what? The mentor just didn't think much of my inaction as well. And so there I was not enjoying what I was doing. There was the mentor not happy that I was dragging my feet on a project that they considered really important and at the end they were happy to say goodbye to me and I was not sad to go. It was a lose lose situation. And why did it happen? It happened because I felt like it was a project that I had to take because I wasn't sure there was any other project that was going to come my way.

3:30 And so I subscribed to the lie of scarcity. I'm here to talk to you about why you should not just jump out every research project that comes your way. I want you to think about actually being very, very selective about what research projects you do. And now people will tell me that I, what do you mean be selective? There's no project. But it is really important to consider that sometimes it's better not to do any research project than to do the one that you hate, that you're not doing well at and you're actually taking up space that somebody else could be, could be taking up in that moment and actually enjoying the project. And these are things that I want us to consider.

4:12 Okay. So I'm going to talk about three don'ts and I'm going to talk about three dos. The first thing, the first don't to consider in choosing a research project is don't choose the mentor first and then the project later. And sometimes people will say, hey, the mentor can make you. It doesn't matter what the project is. Just take it and run with it. The mentor will make you. And that is exactly the problem. The problem is that the mentor will make you into a person you don't want to be. If you do not want to be the number one person for receptor signaling in cancer, if you know that that's not the path for you, it doesn't matter how awesome and amazing the mentor is.

5:01 It's not a project that's for you. Yes, you will be successful. Yes, you will get an amazing abstract out of it. It'll be an oral presentation. Everybody will hail you as the next best thing since sliced bread. You'll get this amazing manuscript that'll be published in Nature and published in Science and everybody will sing your praises, but it's not what you want to do. And so it's really important to first of all, take a step back and recognize that, hey, there is abundance here. There is abundance here. You have the opportunity, the opportunity to really negotiate your path forward.

5:45 I negotiate, I'm the negotiation coach for women in academic hematology. And if you're looking for a coach, you're going to work with me. But there is opportunity for you to negotiate your way forward. And that doesn't have to look like doing something that you don't want to do just because the mentor is great. Yes, the mentor is great, but you are not them. If you're not excited about receptor signaling, don't jump on the boat and start rowing because you'll find yourself in a destination that you don't want to be at. And you get there and you're successful and people expect you to keep being successful. And that's why you see many people in academia who have what I call miserable success.

6:27 They're doing great. They have all the funding. They have all the manuscripts and they hate their job. They hate what they do because they kind of are successful in the field that they didn't even really care about. And I mean, they can force themselves to like it over the long term. And to be honest, doing work in receptor signaling is good, right? You're making a contribution. So it's not that you're not making a contribution, but if it's not heart and soul what you really want to do, then it doesn't matter how awesome the mentor is. It does matter that you find a space that resonates with you. You find a work that is meaningful to you, that energizes you. Otherwise it gets really, really hard to keep coming to work in the morning to do a project that may be awesome to other people, but is not super awesome to you.

7:15 And then part of that is you take this because there's a feeling of scarcity, right? How many Nobel laureates are there at your institution? This one chose you. You feel like the one. And if you don't take this opportunity, maybe no opportunity will ever come to you. People will hear of you as the person who refused the Nobel laureate and they will never be your mentor. And is it true? It is not true. That's believing the lie of scarcity. The truth of abundance is that there is more than enough for everyone. There is enough projects to go around. There are enough mentors to go around. There is enough for you. And when you take up space in a place that you don't even care for, just because you're afraid that you won't get another opportunity, you're taking up space that actually belongs to someone else.

8:06 You're taking up an opportunity that somebody else is super excited about and is going to just excel in and thrive in while you're just kind of marking time, fulfilling all righteousness just so that you'll say you get it and you have a super mentor who carried you along. So don't choose the mentor first and then the project leader. Make sure that the projects that this mentor does are projects that resonate with you. And if the mentor is super and there isn't a project that resonates with you, how about you co-create a project that's along the lines of what you're interested in? Now this does require the buy-in of the mentor and maybe they won't buy-in. Maybe they'll say no. If you don't work in where I work, if you don't do the work I'm working in, I'm not supporting you.

8:52 And that does happen. You want to know that upfront because eventually you're going to want to pivot to your own work, transition to work that nourishes and energizes you. And if they're not going to support you from the beginning, you really do want to know that. So think about the project and make sure it aligns with your interests. Don't let the razzle dazzle or the bling bling of the mentor distract you from making the right decision. Okay. So that's don't number one. Don't number two is don't do the project because it's guaranteed to succeed. There are so many things in academia that are guaranteed success. Sometimes it's, you know, you're in the lab of a mentor who's so successful, everything this mentor touches turns to gold.

9:37 So we hear. And so you go, you do the project because it's guaranteed to succeed. You're like, I don't even care about it, but it's going to work. And you know, I hope it doesn't work. I hope it doesn't succeed because that's actually a better outcome for you doing work. You don't care about. Yeah. If it doesn't succeed, at least it gives you the opportunity to leave soon enough and go find the work you do care about. The problem when it succeeds is that you become stuck. You become stuck in your own success. Sometimes excited that, wow, you did such amazing work and then they use the work you're successful in to define you.

10:19 And then when you're like, well, what I really want to do is over there. They say, no, you have no track record over there, but you have track record here. And therefore this is the work we believe you should be doing. And then you get pigeonholed into the place of your success where it's not the place you want it to be from the beginning, but you took the project because someone told you it was guaranteed to succeed. And the project you really wanted to work on, you weren't sure about its success. Here's the thing about the project that you wanted to work on that you were not initially sure of its success. Nothing succeeds without investment. Nothing. Nothing succeeds by chance. And the work that's guaranteed to succeed is work somebody else has been doing over a long period of time.

11:02 Of course it's guaranteed to succeed. It's, you know, eventually it's had its chance to go through all its ups and downs. It's been workshopped. It's been refined. It's gotten better over time. And the more time that's been invested in it, clearly the more return on that investment. And so your work, the one that's not guaranteed to succeed, the one that you actually want to do, will take that same amount of love and care and investment. And the time that you are not working on it because you're going for the thing that's sure is a time that's not spent developing it and making it into something that eventually becomes sure. And so if it's the work that you really want to do, it is absolutely worth making the investment to bring that work to where it needs to be.

11:48 And I know that it seems silly to say, leave the thing that's certain to succeed and go after the, you know, leave the work that's not going to succeed and go after the thing that's definitely going to succeed. It seems silly to say that you should leave the work that's not going to succeed. Like, what? Do you not want me to succeed? I do want you to succeed. I want you to succeed well. I want you to succeed in a way that you're whole. I want you to succeed in a way that you're proud of the work you do. And sometimes success is not everything. If everyone thinks you're successful and you're miserable inside because you hate the work you do, then guess what? There's only the illusion of success.

12:28 There is not the reality. So don't do work that you think is guaranteed to succeed. And in doing that, you leave behind the work that you actually care about and are passionate about because it's not guaranteed to succeed. The only person that can guarantee the success of any work is you, the one who loves it. You are the one who makes an investment that allows work to move forward. And if you don't allow yourself to make that investment in work that matters to you, then you may end up being miserable for a long time. That's don't number two. Tip number three is don't do the project because you're desperate. Okay.

13:09 So in academic medicine, there's a lot of scarcity mindset. There's a lot of information flying around, most of it untrue, that there's a limited pot of money. There are limited opportunities. Everything is limited. And so the first time that somebody shows up and says, I'll take you on as a mentee. I'll give you a project to do, you're so desperate. You just say yes. And you haven't really evaluated whether it's a good fit for you or not. You haven't evaluated whether this is a project you really want to do. You're so desperate, you take it. And that is how many people end up in abusive mentoring relationships where they are yelled at by mentors or taken off papers at the end of having made a lot of investment.

14:02 And none of that should be happening. Don't get me wrong. None of that should be happening. But when you're desperate, you tend to allow abuses unchecked. You say, oh, my mentor yelled at me because they were a little bit stressed. If I wasn't so slow, they wouldn't be yelling. And if you had a great sense of self, you would have the opportunity potentially to say, hey, when you yell at me, it causes me stress. Or maybe you don't have the courage or the confidence to do that. If you're not desperate, you can go look for someone who can maybe stand up for you. Or you can start to work towards looking for another partnership for your research. When you're desperate, though, sometimes you roll over and play dead because you're like, don't fire me.

14:47 Don't fire me. I don't know if I'll find any other work. Don't fire me. And you accept poor treatment. You accept mistreatment because you're so desperate to hold on to work. I want to say this applies to life in general. Don't do work because you're desperate. So don't take the project because you think that there'll be no other project. Because if you don't create the space or the project you really want to do, you're spending all this time doing work you don't want to do. When the work you want to do becomes available, how will you recognize it? You're so busy doing stuff you hate. How will you recognize the thing you love? And so in general, it really makes sense to create space for what you love, create space for the work you want to do, and allow the vacuum to sit for a little bit until that work comes along.

15:38 Don't get desperate doing work that you don't care about just because you're afraid that the other project that you like is eventually not going to come your way. Now, the project will come your way. You know why I know that? When you create space to work on the project, you create the project yourself, you make room for the project yourself, of course it's going to come your way. Because that's what you desire. It's what you're working towards. You are the one making the magic happen. So don't be desperate. Don't be desperate. Wait for the good that you're looking for to come your way, because you're going to make the good happen for yourself. Okay, we've talked about the three dos.

16:21 Now I'm going to offer you three dos as far as thinking about choosing a research project. The first do is to take a step back and think first about what impact you want. Now I'm talking to people who are establishing their careers, right? You are maybe a fellow transitioning to faculty, or maybe you're a junior faculty, or maybe you're even mid or senior career. And you're like, well, all my life I've been doing this work that other people have recommended for me, and I never got to do the thing I wanted to do. It's okay. It's never too late to start to make your own way. And so what I'm inviting you to do is to think about the impact you want to make.

17:01 20, 30, 40 years from now, you're going to look back on your career. And if research is the path you've chosen, who is going to be the beneficiary of your research? What population will have really benefited from your research? What population can you say, I really have made a change in the way this population is treated or what their outcomes are because of my work? And so once you identify that, then you can start to think about, well, who's doing work in this area? Well, who has techniques and research that I can apply to this area? Because you know, in research, it's not that we're not doing anything new.

17:42 Many times we're looking and seeing what has been done in another field, and we're bringing it and translating it into our own fields. And so there is opportunity. There is opportunity in our fields because there's opportunity in other fields. And so once you determine what your impact will be, who's the population you want to affect? What's the work you want to be remembered for? Start from there. There's a book by Simon Sinek. Start with why. And it is important. It's important to start with why because it allows you to stay sustained for the long haul. Many people are trying to make careers out of projects they hate.

18:23 It is so hard to succeed in research because the work we do requires years and years of investment. It is hard to succeed in something you really don't want to do. When you love the work, it's still hard work, but at least it's work you want to do. So do first think about the impact you want to make before you move forward in choosing this research project. Make sure there's a relationship. So sometimes it's not exactly the patient population you want. It's not exactly the project you want to do, but you've got to clearly see how it links to your vision for your career, to your vision for your research.

19:06 And so maybe it's not diabetes that you want to work in, but this technique and this RNA sequencing technique is relevant to the project that you want to do and say hypertension, great. Then you clearly see the connection. You're not going to get stuck in diabetes research when you really want to do hypertension. You're going to be really, really focused on taking what you learn from diabetes and transitioning it to hypertension. If you can't do it now, you do it later. But having a clear focus of what you want your legacy and your impact to be allows you to do that, allows you to be very clear and very focused. What you can do is to choose a mentor, do choose a mentor based on who is most equipped to get you to your desired goal.

19:55 Now sometimes the person you have around you are the persons you have around you. No, there isn't a mentor who's going to help you do that big project in hypertensive urgency or TMA due to hypertensive urgency. No, there isn't that mentor, right? But there's a mentor who's doing something adjacent and they have the tools that will equip you to go do the work that you really want to do. This mentor has tools that are going to help you move forward. Then okay, choose that mentor. Choose the mentor because they make sense as the mentor who helps you move forward in the work you really want to do.

20:37 Choose the mentor, not because they're the biggest name in town, but because they have the tools that you need to move forward. Choose the mentor who's going to give you the guidance necessary to come into your own as a researcher. Choose the mentor who's going to support you, not pull you down in the process of your journey. Choose the mentor because they're going to be able to help you get to your desired end. Now that requires that you know your desired end and for many of us in medicine, we actually practice not knowing what we want, right? We practice suppressing emotions, emotion, we practice suppressing feelings.

21:21 So we disconnect from when we're feeling sleepy. We disconnect from when we're hungry. We disconnect from when we want to go to the bathroom because hey, the work's got to be done. So when it comes to knowing what you really want to do, it becomes really hard. That's where a coach can be helpful. If you don't have a coach or looking for a coach, definitely reach out to me. Let's talk about whether we could be a good fit for each other. But really, coaching can help you think through what you really, really want. What you really, really want helps focus you as you're choosing projects and also as you're choosing mentors to recognize that although the mentor is far ahead of you, they're really there to serve your future. They're there to help you advance.

22:02 They're there to help you move forward. And so knowing where you want to go allows you to know how to best use the mentor to your advantage. And if you have trouble doing that, coaching can help you get there. And let's talk about how I may be able to help you. The third do is that you should recognize, do recognize that everything you need to succeed already exists. It already exists. And if it's not in the room with you, somebody in the room knows somebody with access to it. You are not in a world of scarcity. You're in a world of abundance. The person who's going to make the biggest difference in your future advancement is, drum roll, you.

22:47 You're the one who's going to make it work. And you are going to make it work because you know what? You've been making it work all your career. You started out in med school against all odds you got into med school. And then you got into the residency program of your choice. And then you finished residency and maybe you're in fellowship, maybe you're a faculty member. You made it work. And no, it wasn't because of the great institution you went to. It's because of you. You made it work because other people came through that institution and they didn't pass through. You made it work. And so you are the one who is really shepherding your career and leading your career. Yes, there are other people who are advising you, who are encouraging you and egging you on or encouraging you.

23:35 But ultimately, you are the one who's making it work. And so you can bet on yourself. You can count on yourself to help you make it through. You can count on yourself to help you recognize what you need and to help you find it, to help you go after the person who might have it or who might have access to the person who has it. Ultimately, you're going to succeed in your career because you have everything it takes to succeed in your career. All right. Are you someone who's looking for more insights to succeeding in your role as a clinician researcher? Well, if you are, definitely reach out and sign up for our weekly newsletter.

24:16 Send me a DM. Let me know how we can continue to serve you on this podcast. It's been a pleasure to talk to you. I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. See you 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.

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