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2nd February, 2021

From a research standpoint, today was great. I managed to hit send and publish a preprint from a recently finished project. And, earlier today, I enjoyed a thorough reflective interview with the cogent Katrina Kramer at Chemistry World, talking about another research project we published as a peer-reviewed piece in the last month.

Each of these projects took around 4 years’ worth of effort from 2 different teams and 2 very different areas of science (one being to do with understanding chemical reaction mechanisms, and the other being in the area of VR for safety training). So, if anything, today’s small victories were a relief.

They were a relief because, as someone not particularly interested in being a specialist in any one area, I’ve always enjoyed having multiple projects on the go at one time. Different fields, different focuses, different mindsets. The problem with this, however, is that it puts you in danger of overvaluing multitasking. It makes it easier to perpetually procrastinate, to do everything and finish nothing. Today was a relief because it was some exciting tangible nuggets of evidence that I have started to follow through on my desire to change the way I do things.

We are serial taskers, not multitaskers. Today, I held myself accountable to creating the best version of my focused scientific self for the fellowship that now lies ahead. More importantly, I stayed accountable to the students and staff I’ve had the joy of working with over the past several years.

I’m in the right frame of mind to make the most out of this new role without compromising the valuable, immovable time I reserve for friends and family.

See you tomorrow, when I will probably say more about what now lies ahead…

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