Five reasons to follow your passion

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 the Clinician Researcher podcast. I'm your host Toyosi Onwuemene, and it is an absolute pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you so much for tuning in. I'm talking today about why, five reasons why, you should do what you love. Five reasons why you should do what you love. And one of the reasons I think it's important to talk about this is because sometimes people tell you to do what you love, and then other people say don't do that, don't do what you love, that's ridiculous.

1:29 And so I do have a take that I think covers both sides, and I want to share that with you today. The reason I think to share this episode with you today is because I am up late, and I looked at the time and I was like, what? It's been an hour and 20 minutes already? I was just going to do this thing really quickly, and then I was going to quickly get ready and go to bed. Instead I look and before I know it, it's been an hour and 20 minutes, and wow, a lot of time has gone by and I didn't even know it. And that's the place where I recognized that I was in flow. Oh my goodness. And what was I doing? I was creating. I love to create things.

2:09 Yes, I am creating this podcast now, but this particular space of creation is really fun. Anyway, it's one of my hobbies, and maybe in a future episode I'll share a little bit more about it, but I have to say, what's important is that it absolutely is unrelated to any of the work that I do in terms of my research or my clinical work. So it really is, I think what you would call an avocation that is so, so fun. Anyway, so why should we do what we love? I think it's important to recognize that there is this controversy. I think it's a controversy. You may not agree, but sometimes you listen to a speech such as the one that Steve Jobs gave for commencement address, and he talks about the importance of following your passion and doing what you love.

2:57 And there are other speakers and none comes to mind right now, but they'll say, yeah, the whole idea of doing what you love is ridiculous. Do whatever's in front of you and do it well. And I think both speakers are correct, right? And I want to speak to that in the context of our research careers. So when I first started in research, I actually didn't have much research experience. So to be honest, I had no idea what I was going to love in research. I actually had no idea. And people would ask me, what do you want to do? And I would just say, I just want to do research. Like, well, what research do you want to do? And I was like, I just want to do research. And I think I hadn't thought enough about what I actually enjoyed in medicine.

3:41 I enjoyed a lot of things. That wasn't one thing I wanted to commit myself to. So I wasn't ready to make a commitment of like, oh, this is the thing I love and want to do forever. And I think that's where the whole advice of, well, don't do what you love, just do what's in front of you comes in. And it's real because sometimes you don't know what you love yet because you haven't been exposed to it. You know, it's kind of like if you've ever been in love, it's like, well, you know, you didn't know you would be in love until you met a person who totally just threw you head over heels. And maybe that's not a great analogy because you're like, I don't even believe in that. Just stay with me here. What I'm saying is that there are things that you don't even know you care about until you're exposed to them.

4:26 And that's the whole challenge of trying to follow your passion because sometimes you actually don't know what it is. And what you need to do is be in progress doing something that you don't yet know is your passion, doing it well. In the midst of that, you tend to fall into your passion after you've had a chance to figure out exactly what you want to do. And I think one of the things that happens, and at least I can speak from my experience, is that sometimes you're not even really focused on finding what you love until you're just trying to just figure out like, how do I actually do this? Teach me the nuts and the bolts and the mechanics. When you can figure out the nuts and the bolts, the pieces of it, okay, I write regularly.

5:07 Okay, I create manuscripts for submission. Okay, I write grants. Once you have all that down, then all of a sudden you have space where some things are now kind of on autopilot. You know how to do this. You're not really investing that much energy to try to figure out the nuts and the bolts of this academic career or this research career. And then you can be like, okay, I got that down. Now what do I love? And I think that's a journey for many of us. Now there are some of us who are like, I have no idea what the nuts and bolts are of research. I just know that this is the population I want to serve. End of story. And so people come to research from different angles.

5:49 But at the end of the day, it is important to do what you love. And if you don't know it upfront, do what you love anyway. And it may not be in your research, and that's where I started from, is that, hey, I'm doing work that I love that has absolutely nothing to do with my research. And it's so awesome because it absolutely enriches and nourishes me. And so five reasons why you should do what you love. And I may come up with seven because as I'm thinking about the items I've already kind of pre-prepared, I'm thinking, huh, there might be other things to add. But these are five and you can add more. Send me a DM and share what you're thinking about this topic. So the first thing is just pure pleasure. It brings me joy. Right? Oh my gosh, I do this?

6:30 I'm lost in flow for an hour and 20 minutes. I have no idea how much time is passing. That is beautiful. The state of being in flow where you just are into what you're doing and you have no cares, you're not stressed, you're not worried, you're just doing the thing for the sake of doing the thing. It is such a pleasurable thing. It is so awesome. It brings you joy. You totally do it. And wouldn't it be great if this was a thing that was actually my job? And I will tell you, just to take a step back, I'm talking about something that's outside of my research, but to be honest, I love writing.

7:13 I can flow in writing for a while. And so I do find this kind of joy even in my research. And when I couple my writing and research with the patient population, I really want to serve. Oh my goodness. Okay, now we're talking ecstasy. Okay, so you're like, okay, kind of psycho, you're crazy, but bear with me. What I'm really saying is that it is worth investing in the things that bring you joy for the sake of the pure joy of investing in it. And in our lives, we can't find everything that brings us joy. Everything that we do will not bring us joy at first.

7:55 Some of the things that we do right now will bring us joy over time. And some of the things that we do right now that don't bring us joy, we will eventually learn to lay them down and pick up the things that bring us joy. And the more we pay attention to the things that bring us joy, the more we can expand those things so that this is why many people who are later in their career have more fun than people who are earlier in their career, because over time, they've shed the baggage of stuff they hate, and they've kept only the things they love. You're going to do that too. Over the course of your career, you're going to say, I don't want to do this piece. Let's let it go. Because you'll find that the thing you don't love somebody else loves that. And you'll feel not guilty about letting it go, because somebody else will gladly pick it up after you.

8:39 But you don't have to wait until you're senior in your career. You can start right now. How do you shape your career to do the things that bring you joy for the sake of the joy itself rather than any other thing? Now, the benefit of loving writing is that writing is part of the job that I do as an academic researcher. Wow, that works great for me. And it may not be your story yet, but it may be that you need to actually learn the nuts and bolts and the mechanics of good writing. And I'm not talking just about the writing you learned in high school, which for all of us, I think was wrong, at least when it comes to scientific writing and grant writing. And so learning the nuts and bolts of that may actually help you come to love it.

9:23 So for whatever reason, you're like, oh, I hate that. I hate that. I hate that. Ask yourself, well, is it because you're not proficient in it yet? Do you hate it because you actually don't like it? Or do you hate it because you feel not proficient in it as you're doing it? So okay, figure out what you need to learn so you can figure out if you actually don't, if you actually like what you're doing or if you don't like it. And sometimes it's just making sure that you actually know the nuts and bolts so that you can actually evaluate if you like this activity or not. All right. So you want to do what you love because it brings you joy for the sake of the joy itself.

10:04 The second thing is that, wow, it enriches your life. Okay, so if you, if your nine to five job or how many hours you're spending on your job is something that actually brings you like pure joy, like then it feels like you're not even working. Now for many of us, right, the whole nine to five is not the pure joy. That's like for me, it's nine to 1 PM and then the meetings start and the meetings are necessary. I only have meetings on my calendar that I actually want to have, but still they don't bring me the same kind of joy as I have when I'm creating writing. Oh my gosh, I really love writing. You know, so my nine to five is not pure joy, but a good chunk of it is.

10:48 It enriches my life. So it's, you know, it's like I come away from my work day. Sometimes I tear myself away from my work day because I'm like, hey, you got to stop, you got to stop because you have other things to do. But it's enriching. It's really nourishing to be able to do things in your career that enhance you, that empower you. It makes you more pleasant, right? When you go home to your family, your friends, they're like, oh, okay, we'd like you because you come back energized. You don't come back worn out and crabby and mean. Oh, that's, that's another thing. I just want to stop and talk about, hey, if your career right now, whatever it looks like, whatever your, your, your, you know, the components of your career come together and leave you crabby and bitter at the end of the day, I want you to know that it doesn't have to be that way.

11:37 Now, you may say, oh yeah, easy for you to say, but I will tell you that that was me at the very beginning of my career. I told you I wanted to do research and I wasn't supported to do research. I wasn't qualified in air quotes to do research and I hated, hated everything I was doing because I was like, this is not what I want to do. I hate what I'm doing. And what I, what I'm saying is that it doesn't have to be that way. It takes time sometimes to shift it, but the key is to be very clear about where you're going so that you can begin the task of moving things in the direction you actually want them to go. So it enriches your life when you do the things you love, whether that's in your workspace or outside of it.

12:21 And so, hey, you just go for it and if you don't feel like you have things that you love in your life that enrich you, then the power is in your hands. Go find it and do the things that actually energize you and help you feel enriched. All right, number three, it gives your brain time to think clearly, right? It gives you space. It gives your brain time to think creatively. Wow, the work we do is hard and sometimes you're really like really expending energy trying to understand what's the next step. How do we turn this manuscript around? How do we write this grant? How do we address these criticisms? You've got a lot to do in work. Oh, well, I didn't even get to patient care.

13:02 What am I going to do with this patient who has this challenging situation? What am I going to do? Note she can't get medications, but she desperately needs, you know, there's so many things that take up our time and attention. Being able to do things that actually you love and you can get lost in the flow of, it helps your brain. Like, while you're enjoying yourself doing something different from the things in work that are somewhat stressful, your brain is actually continuing to process these challenges that are before you and your brain is able to bring you solutions, right? Able to bring you solutions in a way that you don't necessarily have them when you're crabby and you're mean and you're angry and you don't have space to think or to rest.

13:44 And so it helps you think creatively and you take time away from your work. And it's taking time away from your work, not to do work that makes you crabby, but taking time away from your work to do what you love. And even if the work you're doing is work that you love, everything you do is work that you love. It's nice to step away from the thing you love here to the thing you love there to give your brain a break, right, from what you were doing before. Because in the background, these neurons are still firing, these thoughts are still being processed in the subconscious, even if they're not conscious to you.

14:25 So it helps us and gives us time to think creatively. Number four, and I've kind of alluded to this, is it doing what you love? It wakes up for some of the things you don't love. Like I talked about, sometimes we're starting out and we're like, well, I have no clue what I would love in my work. So okay, does that mean I don't get to follow my passion? And again, like the example I gave, you can follow your passion, follow your passion outside of work so that you can go from passion to passion to passion, right? You're like, oh, I'm going to work. I have all these things I need to get done through the end of the day. And then I get to my passion, right?

15:06 And so it allows you to, to be honest, push through the day and the things you don't love so you can get to the things you actually love. And so it can be the thing that gets you through, especially if you are in a thing you don't love, right? And so cultivate your passion, even if it's outside of work and especially if it's outside of work, because even if work sometimes feels unbearable, and please don't stay in an unbearable work situation, you have an option, you have options, you can figure it out. If you need a coach to help you work through that, you know, I am right here for you. But definitely recognize that you don't have to be in an unbearable situation. But if for whatever reason you are cultivating a passion, cultivating what you love outside of work can help you move from that, you know, from one space of dryness, of bitterness and anger into another.

15:57 But again, don't stay in that space. Okay, there is help. Don't stay. Okay. Number five is that it makes you a better scientist. Every time you step away from the desk, every time you step away from the bench, every time you step away from the research paper, from the manuscript, from your meetings, your research meetings, you're a better person. Because as you step away, your brain is still processing, your brain is creative. It is, you know, thinking of new solutions to these challenging problems that be like you. And that's because you are giving yourself rest, time in between. And so what you want to do if you do not already have a passion that you love and you want your science to continue to grow, you want your research program to continue to flourish, I'm inviting you to think about how can you find what you love either in the work you do in the patient population you serve or totally outside of work.

16:55 And it's okay. Just make sure you have at least one thing you love in your sphere. Yes, in your world. All right. I'm going to recap five reasons why you should do what you love and when it brings you joy, the pure pleasure of doing it. Number two, it enriches your life because your life is so, so awesome when it has different facets to it. Number three, it gives your brain time to think creatively. Therefore, it can help us make up for the work that we don't love. And number five, it makes you a better scientist. All right. It's been a pleasure talking with you today.

17:36 I look forward to talking with you again next time on the Clinician Researcher Podcast. Have a great day. 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.