How to plan for your research success

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 such a pleasure to be talking with you today. Thank you for listening. I'm excited to continue the thread that we started in the last episode, and that's really talking about planning, planning for success. So this episode is about how to plan for your research success.

1:22 And I want to tell you that your work matters. The research you do is amazing. It is life-transforming, and I want as many people as possible to benefit from it. And part of your success is having a plan and executing on the plan. So last week, we talked about tools that you would need for succeeding in spite of a broken mentoring system. And today, I'm going to talk about planning, which is one of your tools. Planning is so important. I'm showing a whole episode on it. So I can talk to you about planning for research success. Okay. Planning. So I didn't know, you know, it's interesting. When I started as an undergraduate, I mapped out my next four years because I was in a small liberal arts college, and there were some courses that were not offered every year.

2:14 Some of those courses were going to be prerequisites for graduation or maybe even prerequisites for the next course. And so I would look and say, hmm, this course is offered every other year, and I need this course so I can take this course. Therefore, I'm going to make sure I take this course by this time. And I mapped out my entire undergraduate career. Actually, sometimes I can't believe I did that, but it was very helpful because every year I would just pick up the plan and some things would change a little bit. But for the most part, the plan stayed in place. And so planning is so helpful. So it's interesting when I got to my faculty career, how much I didn't plan. And I think one of the challenges with planning is that what am I planning for? I have clinic this week and next week and then the week after that.

2:57 And okay, so I could do some planning around my clinic, maybe spend time, you know, prepping notes and, you know, closing charts to make sure that I'm not behind from the next clinic. I could plan the clinic, but what about my research? I didn't have a plan for my research. And somebody, and in particular, it was the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity and that the founder is Carrie Ann Rockamore. She was the one who taught me how to plan. Okay, she taught me how to plan. And actually, since then, I've had many people help me in my planning. So at the end of this, I want to say the foundation is really Carrie Ann Rockamore and how she shared with me how to plan.

3:38 And a lot of other people have contributed along the way. And this at least is the way in which I'm presenting it to you. Okay, for more resources, I will add in the show notes websites that you can go look at to think about your planning. Okay, so the very first thing I want to share is the importance of having a plan for your life. Now, I started from a huge high level, the level of planning your life and it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, let's let's come back here. Who can plan a life? Actually it's, it's very difficult to do. I agree. It's very, very big, daunting, challenging task.

4:20 And when we're talking about moving forward to your research, it's like, oh, is my life the first place we begin planning? But I do want to pause and put in a plug for planning your life. You cannot plan your whole life. You cannot plan every aspect of your life, but what you can do is plan the things you want to make sure to accomplish. Those are the things that don't change. I want to make sure that 20 years from now, I have a healthy relationship with my children. Now, I don't want that to be left off to chance and I can be intentional about it so that 20 years from now, the chances are high that I'm going to have a great relationship with my children because I'm setting the building blocks now.

5:00 Do you see the kind of life planning I'm talking about? I'm not saying, you know, make up the plan for where you'd be living 17 years from now, but maybe you know, maybe you're like, you know, when we went to Costa Rica, it was an experience that changed our lives. And we know that when we retire, we're moving to Costa Rica and I would say plan it. And maybe as you're doing your planning, you say, why do we want to wait until we're 65 to go to Costa Rica? Why not go now and vacation there every year or maybe have a second home there. And we go in the summers, you know, so those are the kinds of things I'm talking about. The kinds of things that you know, 40, 50 years from now, I want this to still be important to me.

5:40 Now, the theme is important, right? The theme I'm talking about in life planning is really your health, your relationships. It's your health and your relationships. It's your personal development. Like no matter what's happening in the world 20 years from now, I want to be more than I am today. I want to know more. I want to have like a higher sense of self actualization than I do now. I don't have to wait and see what happens. I can plan that. I can plan that in the books I choose to read. I can plan that in the career development courses that I take. I can plan them the professional development opportunities available to me. I can plan those things. So that's what I'm inviting you to do as you think about your life plan.

6:22 And as you think about your life plan, I want you to think about these specific domains. I want you to think about the domain of your personal and intellectual development. Now, if you're a clinician, and I hope you're a clinician scientist listening to me or an aspiring or developing clinician scientist, then you've made a huge investment in your intellectual development just by becoming a physician. But you know, and I know, that science knowledge is changing. And the things you knew so well today, you come back to the wards two years from now, and already there's been an evolution. So scientific knowledge is changing. Intellectual knowledge is evolving. It's growing to know things more deeply.

7:05 And so you cannot say, well, I went to medical school and learned a lot of things. And oh my gosh, you did learn a lot. That cannot be the end of your intellectual development. Have a plan for that. And I think that is one of the most important things you'll do. Okay. Have a plan for your personal development, right? Personal growth. Like, how do you become a kinder person? How do you become someone who has more compassion? Right? These are not things we just sit and hope we were kinder. These are not things we just sit and hope you are more patient. We develop a plan. So I want to make a plug for a book that helps me put together a life plan. And it's called Living Forward by Daniel Harkavy and Michael Hyatt.

7:48 And they talk about developing a life plan. And so I want to share that resource with you. It's a great read and it actually helps you just put in the big domains of your life. You know, as another example, health, that's kind of like an easy example. At the age of 90, I want to be flexible and I want to have good muscle mass. Now I don't have to wait until 90 to decide to try to achieve that goal. I know that it involves strength training today. It involves exercise today. So that's the amazing thing about having a life plan is that you can start to execute on your life plan today and you can actually choose what parts of your life you control. Like, you know, you just don't control the future, but you can control what health you'll be in when you get to the future.

8:34 You can control the quality of your relationships when you get to the future. And because as you make a plan, then you know what to invest in today. So the very, very first thing that's important in your research success is your life plan. The reason your life plan is important is because you do not want to get to the end of this research success and realize that you're alone on the top of a beautiful mountain of awards and accolades and a CV that's as long as the Nile. And you're alone because you lost your loved, your loving relationships or you didn't make the necessary investments. And your kids who got the best education don't even talk to you anymore.

9:19 And oh, wait a minute, you have grandchildren and you don't know their needs. And this is so important. And just want to just pause here for a little bit because when we are not making intentional moves, then we do not control the things that we do or we do not control how we move forward. For example, if I'm so focused on my research, I'm like, look, I don't have time to think about my family right now. What you're doing is neglecting an area that's so important where you could be investing in and you're focusing on an area that ultimately is important, but not more important than the other things in your life.

10:00 And so when you're like, look, kid, when you're five years old, you're five years old now, in five years when I finished my career development award and transitioned to independence, then I can talk to you. I can be your dad. Wrong move. Because the investments you need to have a great relationship with your 12 year old, you make now, right? When you're 12 year old to seven. Okay. So please, please, please start with your life plan. Start with how you're going to enhance your health because that affects everything else you do. Because the moment you've decided that, Hey, I'm all about advancing my health. Therefore, I exercise for 30 minutes every day. It doesn't matter the crisis. Your exercise is already set.

10:40 Your exercise habit. Your exercise plan is already set. Okay. I've said a lot about the life plan and it's, I don't want you to think of it as a daunting, overwhelming thing, but I want you to think about it as something that helps you set the stage for your research career. And it helps you not to burn, burn your life in the process of trying to reach research success. Okay. That's number one. The next thing I want you to do is just to plan the year. What do you want to accomplish this year? What are the three things you want to accomplish in your scholarship this year, in your research this year? What are those three things? Now don't tell me I want to write three manuscripts.

11:20 I'm sorry, I'm laughing. The manuscripts are important, but three broad ranging things, right? What do I want to accomplish in the next year? And so what I want you to do is think about three overarching goals that you want to accomplish this year. And maybe that goal is I want to submit my first career development award by the end of the year. Okay. That's one goal. Maybe your second goal is I want to have published this original research that we started doing last year on X topic. You want to have published it, right? That's the goal. You don't control the publication, but you do control the submission. Okay. And then the third thing you might put on your list is I want to have enhanced my skill in grant writing, right?

12:04 That kind of goes with the, I want to submit this grant funding. So anyway, so have a goal for the year. And here are the three general areas in which I recommend that you create a goal. And so three areas. Number one is in what research funding you're going to bring into your program. Okay. Like I want to submit for this award, right? And then the second thing I want you to think about is what manuscripts, which original research manuscripts, you can write a lot of case reports, you can write a lot of other reviews and everything, but I'm asking you to focus just on original research manuscripts, because part of that is building your platform of the scholarly knowledge that you're creating, right? So what original research manuscripts would you want to accomplish, would you want to publish this year?

12:48 And then the third thing is what talks do you want to give? You know, I'm going to have a podcast episode in the future about how to become known for what you do. Okay. All right. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to preview a speaker who's coming on, who is going to share with us about how to increase visibility for your research program. Okay. I'm getting off that public service announcement. That's in the process of happening. Okay. So I talked about three goals, right? One goal is a grant writing goal, or it's a proposal development submission goal. The second is an original manuscript goal. So please, not just one manuscript, but at least one. And then the third is a communication goal.

13:29 Like where do I want to be a speaker this year? Like in what areas do I want to communicate my research? Like what are the platforms in which my research is going to be heard about? Okay. So three things. Okay. Now you have a goal for the year. Now three things. It could be more, but usually just keep it short. And they're big overarching goals. There are going to be many steps to get there. And now you're going to say, well, in the next three months, which of these three things are we going to accomplish? Okay, great. In the next three months, you know what? This data has been collected. It's been sitting there and I have not yet turned it into a research manuscript. In the next three months, I want to submit this manuscript because I'm going to write this grant later in the year.

14:09 I want to have the manuscript already published that's going to support this proposal, right? So that's what you're going to do in the next three months, in the next quarter. Okay. So now, so we went from planning your life, number two, we went to planning your year, number three, we went to planning your quarter. And here's where you bring these big audacious goals that you have for the year and you just make them more tangible. Like in the next three months, I want to do these things. I want to submit this original research manuscript for publication. That's one of your goals. Now, I hope that's not the only goal you have in the next three months, but even if it was, that's a pretty worthy goal, right? And I want to go back actually to the one-year plan because it's like when you go, wait, this is really helpful, I think.

14:51 It's coming together for me and just sharing with you that. Think about your one-year review. One year from now, you're going to go and maybe for you it's six months, I don't know. But in one year, you're going to have a review with your division chief, department chair, your dean, whoever you have the review with. What do you want to say you've done in the year? That's a starting point for your year, right? And there's some very specific things that you know your chief is going to ask you about. How many manuscripts did you publish? What grants did you submit? Those kinds of things. So in thinking about the plan for the year, what I want you to do is write yourself a mock annual review with your division chief or your department chair. Now this is, it's not real yet.

15:33 Write out the list of all the things that you want to say to your department chair, I have accomplished at the end of this year. That's how you make your one-year goal. I want to say I've submitted three manuscripts for publication or I've published three manuscripts, original research. Or I want to say I've submitted five manuscripts for publication, a mix of original research and other things. I want to say I've given talks at five institutions. Okay, do you see what I'm saying? So if you are not, like you have no idea what your one-year plan should be, think about your annual review. What are the things that are expected of you? Make that your plan. Say okay, five manuscripts it is, this is what I'm going to accomplish. Give three talks across different institutions, this is what I'm going to accomplish.

16:15 Submit three research grants, this is what I'm going to accomplish. Okay? Okay, so you know your one-year plan. Now we break it down. What are you going to accomplish out of that one-year plan? You already have that one-year plan. So you take that one-year plan and you say which of these goals am I going to do in the next three months? Now sometimes people will tell you to make these goals realistic. I'm kind of, I take the other track. I say they don't have to be realistic because sometimes the whole mental energy of trying to say are these realistic or are these not just takes up a lot of time. You want them to be goals you actually can accomplish, but you know what? You don't have to make them goals that you definitely accomplished because you have a whole year.

16:59 You have a long runway. And so if you say okay, I look at this list of 12 things that I want to accomplish by the end of the year and I want to try to do five in the first three months, five is a lot, but what you'll do is in making your three-month plan, you're going to prioritize. The most important of my plan is this original research manuscript because it really needs to come out so I can submit this grant. That's going to be priority number one. And then priority number five will be that nice case report of that case you saw in the awards last week that you're like okay, I want this to be one of my publications by the end of the year. And okay, you want to be able to do it and you want to accomplish it in the next three months, but it's going to be number five because in the grand scheme of things, the original research manuscript matters more.

17:42 And if you get to this case report before, as number five thing of this quarter, that's great, but if you don't get to it, it's okay too. Do you see how I'm asking you to think about it? So I'm asking you to think about it as a priority list, not necessarily like oh my gosh, if I don't accomplish these three things, it's going to be overwhelming. It's going to be awful. Just think of it as a hierarchy of I'm going to start with these important things first, right? Most important things first and then I'll move to the next thing. So start with the most critical, the things that are most important. If you're trying to decide what are the things that are most important, think about your promotion and tenure requirements and think about what things do people get promoted for.

18:23 For many institutions, it's your grants, it's your manuscripts that are published. For many institutions, it's the talks you give, right? Your scientific contribution. Use that as a priority list for what you work on first, okay? Now I do want to point out that as we're making these plans, what I'm not asking you to do is to plan your clinic. Your clinic is never going to go away or whatever you do clinically, it doesn't go away. It's there every week. Even if you don't plan for it, well, it's going to come and you're going to have to deal with it. And to be honest, you're a clinician, you've gotten really good at that. You're like, oh no, no, no, no, no, I need to prep my notes. Okay. But whether or not you plan for it, these notes are happening.

19:05 So what I want you to focus on in your planning is not the things that are going to happen whether or not you plan, but the things that if you don't plan for, they may not happen. You know? Like planning for the clinic. If you say, I'm going to show up for a clinic, how about you try not showing up for a clinic? Now, one of the best things to do if you ever get into trouble is to get in trouble on a day in which you have clinic because they will find you. All of a sudden your chief will say, can we send the police out to her house for a wellness check because clinics started at eight and she has not shown up and it's 1230. Right? Did you see what I'm saying? Your clinical things have accountability.

19:46 Even if you don't plan for them, they're going to happen anyway or someone's coming after you. Your research, your professional development, nobody's asking you. A year from now, they'll be like, oh, how come you haven't published any papers? That's a year later. I'm missing one clinic and figuring out when you're going to hear about it. Do you see what I'm saying? I'm saying the things we're planning are the things for which otherwise we would not have accountability for. We're creating the system that helps us give ourselves accountability. Okay. So, I've come into the three-month planning. You're looking at your one year. You're looking at the three most important things you want to accomplish in this quarter and that's what you're planning.

20:26 Okay. Now, let's take one item. In the next three months, I want to submit this original research manuscript. Now, remember your goal at the end of 12 months is to publish this research manuscript, but you do not control the publication. What you control is your submission. I'm going to talk next week about the things you control and the things you do not control. You do not control the outcome of publication, but you're going to increase the chances of the outcome by doing the work you do control, submitting. You control your submission and that's what you're going to work on. Okay. So, your goal at the end of these three months is not to publish the article that's beyond your control. Your goal is to submit it.

21:07 And now, what does it take to submit this original research article? Ah, I'm glad you should ask because I actually kind of have to write the article. Great. Let's put it on there. When are you going to write this article? When are you going to write the article, right? I mean, okay, you're going to want to think about that. But right now in the three-month planning, we're just saying, okay, what needs to happen for this article to be submitted by the end of these three months? Okay, you got to write it. So write that down. Well, you know, I can't just write it. Yeah, I actually need to do the data analysis. Oh, okay. Well, put that on your list. Well, I can't just do the data analysis. I actually need to meet with a statistician who's going to do the data analysis. Okay, put that on the list. Meet with a statistician. Well, the thing about meeting with a statistician is that first of all, you need to clarify that the data collection, what the parameters of the data collection were, or maybe it's a data set.

21:56 You haven't acquired the data set. I mean, the data is there, but you haven't acquired the data set. Okay, well, put that on the list, right? But you have a list of things that need to be done so that you can submit at the end of this three-month period, you put that all on your list for your next three, your plan for the next three months. And so when you look at each category, the category of submit original research manuscript for publication now has acquire a data set, set up meeting with statistician, meet with statistician to review data, complete the data analysis, write the first draft of the manuscript, submit, circulate to co-authors and revise and then submit. Do you see there are all these steps to get you to that one beautiful goal of submitting your research article for publication.

22:43 So your goals have babies. You're going to create the hierarchy of the latter of those goals. This is the first step and then this is the next step and this is the next step. So now you have your three-month goals. Okay. Now we're going to go on to planning your week. Okay. Planning your week. We have a beautiful list of our three-month goals and the babies of each three-month goal. We know the steps that need to be taken to accomplish these three-month goals. Now I'm going into next week. Today is my data plan. Okay. Let's look ahead to the week.

23:24 What do I need to do this week that supports my three-month goal? Now remember one of the things I wrote down on my list for this original research manuscript is acquire the data set. Okay. This week I'm going to make, send the email to my mentor to ask for the transfer of files from their computer to my secure server. Okay. Very good. You're going to ask for the transfer. But wow, it turns out that you actually need to complete a DUA, a data use agreement to be able to request that these files be transferred to you. So what you're going to put on your list for this week is I'm going to write the proposal or write out the DUA or complete the DUA form.

24:14 That's on your list for the week. Now remember I'm just using the example of the original research manuscript. You're going to have a couple of goals for this particular quarter and you're going to put them down. You're going to put them down. And so you're going to make up a list for your week. Now here's the thing. Remember we said that this plan does not involve the things for which you already have accountability? Yes. When you go to make your weekly plan, this is where you first of all, the first thing you do is plan the things that are on your list from your three month goal, which you got from your one year goals. You're going to write those down. You're going to embed them into your week. When is this going to happen? I'm going to do this thing on Monday morning or maybe you have Monday morning clinic.

24:56 You're like, okay, on Tuesday morning, I'm going to do this because my best writing time is on Tuesday morning. Let's do Tuesday morning. I'm going to write this. It's probably going to be the outline of this request on Tuesday. And then on Wednesday, I'm going to finalize it. And on Thursday, I'm going to send the email to my research mentor so that they can review it and then submit. So you have a plan and you put it out throughout the week. And what's nice is to actually spread it throughout the week. So you're not trying to do it all in your eight hours on Monday because most of us don't have eight hours of just uninterrupted time. You know that from 8 a.m. to noon on your schedule, nobody interrupts you because you put a block on your schedule.

25:37 Nobody interrupts you because you actually put the block on your schedule. You close the door. You're out of the way. And you're like, okay, in this four hour block, this is what I'm going to do. Most of us don't have the four hour block. Maybe we have an hour block. In this hour block, I'm going to write for 30 minutes. And so your weekly plan, first of all, should be populated with the things that move you forward based on your three month plan and based on your one year plan. And the one year plan being the things on your review list that your division chief wants to hear about or your chair wants to hear about. Okay. The thing you put on your weekly plan, though, is all the other stuff that's on the schedule. I have clinic on Monday morning. Okay. I'm putting it on my weekly plan. So I know the first patient. Oh, first patient is coming in at 830.

26:17 I want to write by 8 a.m. That's on the plan. My daughter has soccer on Tuesday at 6 p.m. You put that on your weekly planning meeting. And by the end of your weekly planning meeting, you have your entire plan for the week, right? Your entire plan for the week. And you know what meetings you're supposed to be on. You can reconcile them to your home calendar. I have three calendars. I have the home calendar. I have the work calendar and I have the podcasting calendar, right? The people who, you know, when either preparing the podcasts or interviewing for the podcast. So there are different calendars that you might have to reconcile to say, okay, I need to make sure that I'm here for this meeting and then available to do this meeting.

26:59 So reconcile your calendar and make sure that at the end of your weekly planning meeting, you know exactly what you're going to do with your research and writing and you know all the places you need to be, what meetings you need to be to attend. Now I've talked a little bit about the weekly planning meeting. It's one of the episodes from season one. You can go look for it. If you search our website, clinicianresearcherpodcast.com, you search weekly. It'll be one of the podcast episodes that comes on. So definitely listen to that episode about how to do the weekly planning meeting. But that's what you do. So we've talked about, we talked about a couple of things. Number one, we talked about planning your life. An important thing. Number two, we've talked about planning your year based on the review that you are going to do and sit down and do with your division chief.

27:44 Number three, we've talked about planning your quarter based on the things that are in your one year plan. Number four, we have talked about planning your week. Okay. And then the last thing is planning your day. So you now have the plan for your week and on your week you said Monday morning I'm going to do my clinic. And then at the end of the day on Monday I'm going to wrap up my clinic, finish all the calls and be done. So Monday morning you wake up, you look at your list, you say, all I have to focus on today is clinics, notes, patient callbacks. And that's what you do. Then at the end of the day Monday you look at your plan for the next day and you say, well, Tuesday morning I plan to do the DUA, but it turns out that my clinical research coordinator can help me write this piece of it.

28:27 So now I'm going to adjust my schedule tomorrow so I can focus on actually drafting the final piece of it. You know, I'm making this up as I go along. What I'm saying is that your daily plan is for a daily review, but you're not making a daily plan every day. You're just tweaking and adjusting to the weekly plan you've already made. So we talked about planning your life, planning your year, planning your month, I mean planning your quarter, planning your week and planning your day. Now one of the things I didn't talk about is planning your month. I started to say that and I remember why I don't necessarily recommend planning the month because when you're planning a month, you're planning a four week period and four weeks is actually a short time to accomplish goals and you can do that.

29:10 So I'm not saying it's a wrong thing to do. I think in my experimentation, it's nice to have an overarching three month goal because of a little bit of breathing room and then the weekly goal kind of makes it really come to life. Four weeks feels like a long stretch of time and if you're not careful, you're not necessarily focused on trying to accomplish the things that you need to within the time frame that you need to and then before you know it, four weeks is gone and maybe anyway, I think you should experiment with it. And so I think I'm here to say I'm not saying it's not okay to plan monthly. I've succeeded with doing the quarterly planning, taking it into a weekly plan, but you can try and see what works for you.

29:51 And the most important thing is not the plan itself, it's that you are planning because in planning, you have to think about it. What is the priority? What do I want to focus on? Why is this important? And that may be the most important thing that you do in your planning. All right. Now, because you have a community of people and part of your community of people that are in your peer network and people who are coming after you, I want you to share this podcast episode with one person who's going to benefit from planning. Now I don't want you to share this episode in judgment saying, well, that person clearly needs to plan, but just saying, hey, this is an interesting podcast episode. Who else in our network needs to listen to it so that they can enhance their planning or support somebody else to do that planning?

30:34 All right. I'm so excited to have been able to talk to you today and I look forward to talking with you again on the next episode of the Clinician Researcher podcast. Take care. 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.

31:15 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.