The Great Barrier Reef, by the way, is awesome. One of a short list of wonders of the world that I’ve seen, along with Milford Sound, Yosemite Valley, and the Grand Canyon.

The Daintree Rainforest is pretty amazing, also. There’s not many places where you can stand on a beautiful beach, with the world’s oldest rainforest on one side, beautiful mist-covered hills looming above you, and with coral reef on your other side.

All in all, a very good trip.

Principles of personal behaviour: proactivity, vision, and discipline

I believe that the foundation of effective research is to internalize a strong vision of what you want to achieve, to work proactively towards that vision, taking personal responsibility for successes and failures. You need to develop disciplined work habits, and to achieve balance between self-development and the actual creative research process.

Proactivity and personal responsibility

Effective people are proactive and take personal responsibility for the events in their lives. They form a vision of how they want their life to be, and work toward achieving that vision. They identify problems in their lives, and work toward solutions to those problems.

Isn’t this obvious, banal advice? I heard a story years ago in which a representative from McDonald’s was asked what gave McDonald’s the edge in the fast food industry. They replied that McDonald’s took care of the little things, like making sure that their restaurants and surrounds were always extremely clean. Representatives of other fast food companies replied incredulously that surely that was not the reason McDonald’s did so well, for “anyone could do that”. “But only McDonald’s does” was the response. The heart of personal effectiveness is not necessarily any special knowledge or secret: it is doing the basics consistently well.

When it comes to proactivity and responsibility, it seems to be incredibly difficult to internalize these principles and act on them consistently. Almost everyone says and thinks they are proactive and responsible, but how many of us truly respond to the force of external circumstance in the most proactive manner?

My belief is that the reason it is difficult to be consistently proactive and responsible is that over the short term it is often significantly easier to abdicate responsibility and behave in a reactive fashion. In my opinion, there are three basic ways this can occur.

The first way is to blame external circumstances for our problems. “We don’t have enough grant money.” “I have to teach too much.” “My supervisor is no good.” “My students are no good.” “I don’t have enough time for research.” When challenged on what actions we are taking to rectify the situation, we will claim that it’s the fault of other people, or of circumstances beyond our control, relieving ourselves of the burden of doing anything to solve the problem.

In short, we abdicate responsibility, preferring to blame others. This is easier over the short term, since it’s easier to complain than it is to take action, but is not a recipe for long-term happiness or effectiveness. Furthermore, we will usually deny that it is within our power to take actions to improve our situation. After all, if it was in our power, it would be us who is responsible, and our entire worldview is based upon blaming others for our own problems.

The second way of abdicating responsibility is to get caught up in displacement activities. These may give us a short-term fix, especially if they win us the approbation of other people, perhaps for responding to requests that they label urgent. Over the long run such displacement activities are ultimately unfulfilling, representing time lost from our lives.

The third way of abdicating responsibility is by getting down on yourself, worrying and feeling bad for not overcoming one’s difficulties. Winston Churchill spoke of the “black dog” of depression that overtook him during times when his political career was in eclipse. Personally, I sometimes get really down when things are not going well, and get caught up in a cycle of worry and analysis, without constructively addressing my problems. Of course, the right way to respond to a bad situation is not to beat yourself up, but rather to admit that, yes, things are going badly, to figure out exactly what problems you are facing, write out possible solutions, prioritize and implement them, without getting too worried or hamstrung by the whole process.

Why are these three options so attractive? Why do we so often choose to respond in this way to the challenges of life rather than taking things on with a proactive attitude that acknowledges that we’re responsible for our own life? What all three options share in common is that over the short-term abdicating responsibility for our problems is easier than taking responsibility for meeting the challenges of life.

A specific example that I believe speaks to many of us is when we’re having some sort of difficulty or conflict with another person. How many of us put off confronting the problem, preferring instead to hope that the problem will resolve itself? Yet, properly managed – a difficult thing to do, most likely requiring considerable preparation and aforethought – it’s nearly always better to talk with the person about the problem until you arrive at a mutual understanding of both your points of view, both sets of interests, and can resolve the issue on a basis of shared trust.

How can we learn to become proactive? I don’t know of any easy way. One powerful way is to be inspired by examples of proactive people. This can either be through direct personal contact, or indirectly through biographies, history, movies and so on. I like to set aside regular time for such activities. Another powerful tool for learning proactivity is to remind ourselves regularly of the costs and benefits of proactivity and responsibility versus reactivity and irresponsibility. These costs and benefits are easy to forget, unless you’re constantly being reminded that complaints, self-doubt, blame of others and of self are actually the easy short-term way out, and that chances are that you can construct a better life for yourself, at the cost of needing to do some hard work over the short term.

In the context of research, this means constantly reminding yourself that you are the person ultimately responsible for your research effectiveness. Not the institution you find yourself in. Not your colleagues, or supervisor. Not the society you are living in. All these things influence your research career, and may be either a help or a hindrance (more on that later), but in the final analysis if things are not working well it is up to you to take charge and
change them.

This is Part I of a lengthy (about 10,000 words) essay that I intend to post in parts over the next couple of weeks. I’ve tried to make the different parts more or less independent, so they can also be read separately as shorter essays (or blog posts!) At the end, I’ll repost it in a pdf format, where it comes to about 10 pages.

Overview

This essay is intended as a letter to both myself and others, to hold up in the sharpest possible terms an ideal of research I believe is worth working toward. I’ve deliberately limited the essay to 10 pages, hoping that the resulting omissions are compensated by the forced brevity. This is a rather personal essay; it’s not the sort of thing I’d usually make publicly available. I’ve made the essay public in order to heighten my commitment to the project, and in the hope that other people will find it stimulating, and perhaps offer some thoughts of their own.

A few words of warning. My primary audience is myself, and some of the advice is specific to my career situation [*], and therefore may not be directly applicable to others. And, of course, it’s all just my opinion anyway. I hope, however, that it’ll still be stimulating and helpful.

[*] I’m a theoretical physicist; I lead a small research group at a large Australian University; I have a permanent position, with no teaching duties for the next few years; I have several colleagues on the faculty with closely related interests.

The philosophy underlying the essay is based on a famous quote attributed to Aristotle: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” Underlying all our habits are models (often unconscious) of how the world works. I’m writing this essay to develop an improved personal model of how to be an effective researcher, a model that can be used as the basis for concrete actions leading to the development of new habits.

Fundamental principles

The fundamental principles of effective research are extremely similar to those for effectiveness in any other part of life. Although the principles are common sense, that doesn’t mean they’re common practice, nor does it mean that they’re easy to internalize. Personally, I find it a constant battle to act in accord with these principles, a battle requiring ongoing reflection, rediscovery and renewed commitment.

Integrating research into the rest of your life

Research is, of course, only a part of life, and must be understood in relation to the rest of life. The foundation of effective research is a strong motivation or desire to do research. If research is not incredibly exciting, rewarding and enjoyable, at least some of the time, then why not do something else that is? For the purposes of this essay, I’ll assume that you already have a strong desire to do research [*].

[*] People sometimes act or talk as though desire and motivation cannot be changed. Within limits, I think that’s wrong, and we can mold our own motivations. But that’s a subject for another essay.

Motivation and desire alone are not enough. You also need to have the rest of your life in order to be an effective researcher. Make sure you’re fit. Look after your health. Spend high quality time with your family. Have fun. These things require a lot of thought and effort to get right. If you don’t get them right, not only will your life as a whole be less good, your research will suffer. So get these things right, and make sure they’re integrated with your research life.

As an example, I once spent three years co-authoring a technical book, and for the final eighteen months I concentrated on the book almost exclusively, to the neglect of my health, relationships, and other research. It is tempting to ask the question “Was the neglect worth the benefits?” But that is the wrong question, for while the neglect paid short-term dividends in increased productivity, over the total period of writing the book I believe it probably cost me productivity, and it certainly did after the book was complete. So not only did I become less fit and healthy, and see my relationships suffer, the book took longer to complete than if I’d had my life in better order.

I got back yesterday from Canada, but am off again tomorrow, this time on holiday in the Daintree Rainforest, north of Cairns, for five days. After that, no travel until mid-August!

It’s off to Canada I go, to give some lectures at a Summer School at the Perimeter Institute. In the meantime, at the risk of annoying people with long download times, I’m uploading three photos taken on my recent trip to Leiden, just Southwest of Amsterdam.

An interesting door:

to go with an interesting building:

Overall, the atmosphere was one of geek cool. It made me nostalgic for Caltech, which is the only place I can imagine not being surprised at seeing something like this (of course, it’d be a Saturn rocket or a Shuttle at Caltech).

I’ve had an exciting week personally, with the news that I’m to receive an Australian Government Federation Fellowship. This is a very generous Fellowship scheme (described here), and I’m incredibly pleased and grateful to have received it. I was also extremely pleased to find out that my fellow quantum physicist Howard Wiseman (at Griffith University, also in Brisbane) was a recipient this year. Any scientist who’s ever thought, even remotely, that they might have an interest in moving to Australia, should definitely check out the scheme.

I went to see Shrek II with a group of nine last night, on the day it opened in Australia. Six of us turned around and went to see it again immediately, which is not something I’ve ever done before. If anything, I laughed even harder the second time. Much funnier than the first movie, although not as sweet, and probably not as durable, due to all the references to contemporary pop culture. But my sides still hurt.

Brad DeLong makes a very good point: if Tim Berners-Lee hadn’t put the basic ideas behind the web into the public domain, the evolution of the web very well might have been a lot slower, with concomitant economic costs. Something for University researchers to think about, perhaps: we are supported in the public interest, and putting ideas into the public domain is often the best way of supporting that interest.

A note on a highly visible change: I’ve reversed the order in which comments are displayed, so the oldest comments now display first. This should make it easier to just read through the entire set of comments on a post.