Warrior Monks
Some thoughts on professional drive and success
The biggest fears we face are ones that of the unknown. When you are on the cutting edge of science you often deal with the unknown and you deal with a lot of failure and the compensation is usually not as good as finance or tech. There is the whole “do it because you love it trope,” but when it comes down to it, having enough compensation to live a good life is important. This is why graduate school for many scientists is a very difficult place to exist. Lack of money is a concern for most scientists that I know and in western society we often associate money with success.
We often ask for advice from those who are older about being successful or perhaps preparing ourselves to capitalize on the luck of being successful.
This advice from Scott Galloway stood out to me:
Be mentally and physically … warriors. Lift heavy weights and run long distances, in the gym and in your mind. Many tasks you’ll be asked to perform early in your career will be tedious. Don’t do what you are asked to do, but what you are capable of doing. Think of it as boot camp before being sent to battle, as there are millions of other warriors fighting to win the same regions of prosperity. Get strong, really strong. You should be able to walk into a room and believe you could overpower, outrun, or outlast every person in the room.
He gives this as advice to young graduates and I see my graduate school self as a reflected in this advice. My PR for deadlift was when I was in graduate school was 395 lbs. I worked weekends out of necessity due to teaching three lab sections a week at three hours each plus prep and grading. I was a scientific warrior attempting to publish as many papers as possible in the shortest amount of time as possible. My adviser even made a comment, “I don’t often say this, but I think you need a vacation.”
Do I think my choices were healthy in graduate school?
No.
Do I think this unhealthy behavior ensured the success of my PhD?
Yes.
Did this behavior help me gain a job?
Maybe.
One thing working crazy hours did was it gave me something to channel my fear and anxiety into, which was research. Right now I channel my fear and anxiety into this newsletter.
I was never worried about not successfully defending my thesis after having multiple first author papers published, but I was very concerned about being able to get a job. I had quite a bit of fear around this actually and it’s why I tried to distill it into some useful advice. Fear is a powerful motivator. It can give you strength, speed, and endurance you never knew you had, but running on fear isn’t sustainable. Sometime in the year of 2021 after being vaccinated and writing this now I ran out of the fear that had been motivating me since perhaps high school—maybe even earlier.
I was afraid of not succeeding. I was afraid of the absence of success. I was essentially afraid of the dark (the absence of light). Work with enough lawyers and you realize the importance of definitions and defining success is no different. A narrow scope of success could be to wake up and be a functioning human for the day. Sometimes that is a big win when you are depressed.
A broader scope of success could entail obtaining a patent on a successful project or publishing in a very high impact journal. An even broader scope of success could be to “make lots of money so I can buy nice stuff and go on awesome vacations.” As the scope of success broadens the more difficult it is to obtain.
I think most people when they are younger tend to define success in a very narrow scope and if the definitions of success can be met then it can start us on what I would consider to be a hedonistic treadmill. The problem with a hedonistic treadmill is that to feel the “high” of success or accomplishing a task we need to keep striving for bigger victories. If we fast forward this success hypothesis of mine to graduate school and beyond the definitions of success are still relatively narrow:
Get into a PhD program
Get into a good research group
Pass qualification exams
Get enough data to pass candidacy defense
Publish papers
Write thesis
Defend thesis and become a Dr/PhD person
Get a postdoc or a job
Get a better post-doc or a better job
Make more $$
Do more impactful research (Nature/Science/Multimillion dollar product)
Make more $$
Question why you are doing this again
Have a midlife crisis
I guess I’m either on step 9 or 10, but I hope it’s obvious where my train of thinking is going. Up until now I wasn’t necessarily running on the high of success, but rather the fear of not being successful. If I’m not running on fear or trying to obtain the ecstasy of success then what is driving me?
Perhaps it's a curiosity as to what is around the corner. I think I’ve communicated most of my professional fears here and to those who have read them and responded to them I give you my thanks.
I hope I am running on a bigger purpose. I don’t think I am naïve enough to believe I can change the world through innovation in the lab in a short amount of time, but I would like to work towards making the basic needs of humanity more accessible as I see them:
Clean Air
Clean Water
Food
Shelter
Right now I am working in the shelter space.
For those PhDs out there struggling with mental health check out Dr Zoë Ayres
I think the "warrior mentality" works for some people, and some circumstances -- and not in others. Living life as an endless series of competitions against others can be a recipe for disaster (even for the people around you, if not for you).