The Never Ending Pursuit of a Finish Line: a very misleading and deleterious cycle
Both academia and research are very target, milestone and landmark driven worlds, with a crazy number of metrics and evaluation criteria defining the very fabric of the industries. Such a culture persuades those who work in this sector to become focussed on ‘end-goal achievements’ that help facilitate successful outcomes of these metric systems. It’s a culture that creates a ‘after my promotion, after my paper is submitted, after my data is collected’ working ethos. The damaging effect this ethos has on students, academics and researchers at the physical and psychological level is alarming. Robert talks through his own story of chasing the next milestone, the effect this had on him during his studies and what helped him alter his way of thinking.
SIX months into a 9-month period of data collection, I was at my lowest, physically and mentally. As the weeks began to unfold, I slowly began to fall into a ‘I must work harder’ ritual in order to rectify slight setbacks and relapses in my work. It led me to become a customed to working long days; very early starts, very late finishes and the occasional ‘all nighter’. What was worse, on the odd occasion I didn’t follow this exhaustive work schedule, I became impounded by feelings of guilt as to why I wasn’t doing so. The reasoning behind all of this was that I had built up the end date of my data collection as a momentous occasion. I had decided to work to the point of exhaustion up to this moment where, once I got to this date, I would be able to relax and celebrate the success of completing this incredibly difficult period of data collection. I had justified to myself that the next 9 months or so was going to be incredibly difficult, fatiguing and physically demanding, but once its complete I will be able to enjoy the fruits of my hard work. In essence, my mind was solely focussed on the very end of this period of my PhD and life – I had even circled the date on a calendar hanging by my computer!
Fast forward to the end of this period. Several huge obstacles had interrupted my journey towards the finish line, which has subsequently stretched the original ‘momentous completion date’ back by at least 3 months. This meant working even harder and longer than I had originally justified to myself. I was straining under this added stress and pressure and began to physically and mentally display it. Nonetheless the landmark moment came when I had finally extracted my last participants muscle biopsy; isolated, cultured, passaged and frozen down the last of the primary muscle cell lines and recorded, saved and stored all the phenotypic data needed for my project. The end had finally arrived. The landmark, momentous, pivotal moment in this period of my PhD was here.
I am not totally sure what I had expected to happen at this point. Almost like searching for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Was anything actually going to happen, what was it to look like and how I was supposed to feel? Not a clue. But within a few days of this moment, I found myself back in the labs on the weekend working to analyse some of the samples that I had accrued. As the weeks passed, I realised that I was still working exhaustingly long days, through weekends and on occasions, through the night.
One particular evening, I was working alone and late into the night. It was a weekend, a Saturday, and I remember setting up my laptop in the labs to watch the football highlights all while working on some tissues samples that I was hoping to send for analysis the following week. Sat just the other side of the laboratory main entrance was a huge pot of coffee. Every hour or so, I would head out of the lab, poor a coffee, down it and then head straight back into the labs to continue processing my samples. I was running purely off of an artificial stimulus, caffeine, and fuelled by obsessive desire to get to this sample processing done and to get to the end of this period of the project. Before I knew it, I was back into the mode of working flat out in order to reach an end of a huge chunk of work, with the sole motivation that once I have managed to complete it, I will be rewarded. Rewarded both internally (pride for completing the work and a sense of achievement) and externally (giving myself a period of down time and a chance to relax).
I spent the next 12 (or so) months repeating this cycle. Over and over again. On a constant pursuit of chasing a finish line, which every time I managed to get to, a new one would appear tantalising close. So close it would urge me to continue on my exhaustive path. But far enough away to continually sap me of ever more energy, passion, focus and health.
“One evening, late into a Friday nights worth of work, I became very dizzy and passed out in our University toilets/changing facilities, and when I woke up, I was covered in blood from a nosebleed...”
Eventually it did. I became so obsessed with focussing on the finish lines in my project(s), so committed to my work and so totally obsessed with my PhD that eventually I broke. I have previously described how I lost a sense of personal identity through my PhD (see article published in Nature here), and the damaging effects of this cycle of chasing finish lines was one of the contributing factors. I lost all sense of who I was. Before I knew it the mentally destructive path I was on, spilled over into physical damage. One evening, late into a Friday nights worth of work, I became very dizzy and passed out in our University toilets/changing facilities, and when I woke up, I was covered in blood from a nosebleed (these nose bleeds had become something of a regular occurrence for me, almost a daily occurrence to be honest). Only after a very fortunate video call with my parents did I begin to realise the cycle I had wound myself up into, and, thanks to their on-going support and help, manage to work myself out of it. But the obsession of ‘pursuing the finish lines’ wasn’t fixed.
Does this story sound familiar? Does it resonate?
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Over the past few years, I have noticed myself slip back into this cycle. ‘Once my PhD corrections are submitted, I will then be able to enjoy it’. ‘Once I’ve managed to secure my first postdoc position, then I will relax for a few weeks’. ‘Once I get my first big impact paper which will set my career up thereafter, then I will be able to reign things in a bit and concentrate on other parts of my life’.
How many times have you heard these phrases, or iterations of, in academia? At any level within the industry. Undergraduate student through to experienced Professors!
Thinking about our work in such a way of continually pursuing finish lines can be a very damaging ethos, but so incredibly easy to do. The metric and evaluation system, and the intense culture academia is built on, facilitates this. But for many reasons it is vitally important that we try to change it.
Using the ‘pursuit of finish lines’ (for lack of a better phrase) ethos instils a motivation derived from our attainment of these finish lines or goals, rather than a motivation derived from our passion for the work, subject or field of research with which we study. The example I told of my own story was firstly that of completing my data collection, and secondly that of data and sample processing. What was so damaging about this is that my motivation for the work was fuelled by me finishing it, rather than the work itself. This source of motivation is very volatile and fluctuates quickly with the state at which your project is in. For example, when my data collection was delayed by three months, I became very unenthusiastic, unmotivated and down about my project and about my life. I had become so engrossed by the ‘finish line’ and therefore motivationally fuelled by attaining this mark, that when the finish line was pushed back by a significant amount of time, it completely derailed me.
In focussing so intently on the outcomes of our work or projects, rather than focussing on our day-to-day processes and routines, it also gives rise to more opportunities for things to go wrong. The best analogy I have for this is simple. Imagine you need to cross a bridge that connects to banks either side of a fast-flowing river. The swinging bridge is very old, rickety and made of nothing both wood and rope, with several wooden steps missing, ruined or damaged. If you concentrate all your attention solely on the end of the bridge, and not on each individual step, the likelihood of you misplacing a foot and stepping on a missing or broken piece of wood and falling through the bridge is greatly heightened. Conversely, by carefully and precisely focussing on each step, you will slowly work your way across the bridge and will end up at the finish line before you know it. This is the same process that we face in academia and research. The end goal is an accumulation of successfully focussing on, and delivering, minute by minute, day by day processes.
“Using the ‘pursuit of finish lines’ (for lack of a better phrase) ethos instils a motivation derived from our attainment of these finish lines or goals, rather than a motivation derived from our passion for the work, subject or field of research with which we study. ”
Finally, the ‘continually chasing finish lines’ ethos in academia is exhaustive, damaging and relentless. If we take this working ethos to the extreme for one second; it creates a model whereby we are in the constant pursuit for an absolute finish line, and only when we achieve this moment, only when we reach this landmark will we truly be happy with our work. This is inherently misleading, for several reasons. Research, by its very nature, is never ending. It is often said, in answering one tiny finding in our work, we reveal another three of four unknowns that could be pursued. If we build our working ethos, and by proxy our levels of happiness and enjoyment, around the achievement of an absolute ending, we will spend our entire careers never achieving this mark and never enjoying the work we do.
It is also very misleading. We build up the moments where we reach these milestones (e.g. publishing a paper, securing a new job or getting a promotion) as being moments of monumental celebration and significance. And while they are (we should definitely celebrate our successes, something I don’t think happens enough in our industry!), those celebrations are short lived. We enjoy our new paper being published for several days, we revel in our new promotion or celebrate getting a new job, but once that euphoria has settled down, we return to that cycle of weeks/months or even years’ worth of exhausting hard work to reach the next milestone and get that same few days of celebratory reward. If we use this model of long periods of exhaustive workload to then reward ourselves with just a few days celebration, it seems horribly unbalanced, unsustainable and unyielding.
The ‘never ending pursuit of finish lines’ is a perfect scenario for inflicting both physical and psychological distress on ourselves. While I am certainly no expert, and speak only of experience, I think we can try to tackle this, by modifying the way in which think about our research.
Turning our attention from a reward focussed approach, to one of focussed on the process and journey
“The journey in academia and research is fraught with ups and downs, successes and failures. But if we view these not as outcomes, and more as processes along our never-ending journey, than the absolute value we place on them means much less, but the enjoyment and satisfaction of this journey becomes a lot more prominent”
I found it, and still find it, very difficult to break the cycle of focussing on finish lines and exhausting myself out to achieve them. I do still get moments when I begin to sway into the ‘when I get this period of research done, then I will relax’ or ‘once this really high impact paper is finished, it will be worth all the exhaustion and fatigue’. The culture of the industry we are in I think is part of the reason for that. But for me at least, it is also partly down to how I think about the work I am doing, and I think it is this part in which we can modify, to help break the cycle of this damaging working ethos. More important and industrial level cultural and mindset changes will help drastically, but unfortunately, these are so engrained into academia, that it will take along time for these to change!
Fantastic book!
The first moment I realised I was looking at my work in the wrong angle, was after I read the book ‘The Score Takes Care of Itself’ by Bill Walsh. It’s a book that details Bill Walsh’s pursuit of excellence, through careful dedication and a meticulous approach to the small steps that would allow him (and the team he coached) to get there. It is the very epitome of caring more about the process, rather than the outcome. He surmises that by looking after the small steps, the day-to-day habits, the small parts of the big picture, you will slowly build your way to accomplishing something special. What struck me most about this book, and the philosophy within it, was that the journey towards ‘success’ can be just as, if not more, enjoyable than than outcome itself.
I then began to try and remodel this philosophy and put it in context to my own career. The journey in academia and research is fraught with ups and downs, successes and failures. But if we view these not as outcomes, and more as processes along our never-ending journey, than the absolute value we place on them means much less, but the enjoyment and satisfaction of this journey becomes a lot more prominent. Instead of viewing our work as blocks or chunks of hard, exhaustive work which we constantly look towards the end to celebrate some success, and instead view it more as a long, never-ending journey where the daily and weekly tasks are the main focus of our attention and energy, we will begin to gain greater internal reward (e.g. sense of pride, accomplishment, enjoyment from learning etc) from our work. Instead of allowing our minds to focus on the completion of a research project or the completion of a paper for example, we should try to think more about the present. More about the work that we are doing right now. I think we will gain a lot more satisfaction and remove a lot more stress, anxiety and pressure from our careers if we do.
This book by Bill Walsh, and his philosophy, really made me think about the way in which I thought about the work I was doing. It made me realise that the ethos I had employed, the ‘continual pursuit of finish lines’ approach, only served to exhaust, fatigue and disillusion me, both physically and mentally. As always, these thoughts are from me personally and only from my personal experience. Some people may find these useful and others may not. It is very personal how people best approach their work and gain most satisfaction from doing so.
