{"id":221,"date":"2015-11-02T11:22:30","date_gmt":"2015-11-02T11:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/temp.smartfantasyandscifi.com\/blog\/?p=221"},"modified":"2016-03-10T19:56:01","modified_gmt":"2016-03-10T19:56:01","slug":"dont-ignore-your-other-commitments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/2015\/11\/02\/dont-ignore-your-other-commitments\/","title":{"rendered":"Don&#8217;t Ignore Your Other Commitments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists, more than most, have a tendency to ignore their personal lives and focus on their work. The job becomes increasingly stressful when you leave other important tasks incomplete. As they build up, things will only get worse, so do them as they come.<\/p>\n<p>If your bills are piling up, and exercise has become something you hear about but don&#8217;t fully understand, then you need to take a step back. The chances are that although you are working pretty constantly, the quality of your research is suffering. The mistake at this juncture is to think you need to do more work rather than less. Take a break. You will gain a new perspective about your research and be able to return to it with a greater level of enthusiasm. Don\u2019t burn out by exhausting yourself.<\/p>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69d745830ce4b\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Get Practical Tips\"    >Get Practical Tips<\/span><span id='swap-id69d745830ce4b'  class='colomat-swap' style='display:none;'>Practical Tips:<\/span><div id=\"target-id69d745830ce4b\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Make time for people. Family and friends are important and will positively affect your work.<\/li>\n<li>Make a list of your obligations and cross each thing off as it gets done.<\/li>\n<li>Don&#8217;t run too many procedures at once.<\/li>\n<li>Even if you are experienced at a certain procedure, don&#8217;t just pile the replicates on top of each other without analysing the previous attempt first. <strong>Make sure you not only know the outcome of the previous attempt, but understand why any problems occurred before you do it again.<\/strong> Otherwise you will inevitably make the same mistakes, reducing both your productivity and morale.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<b>\u00a0<\/b><br \/>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69d745830ceab\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Get Wet Lab Tip\"    >Get Wet Lab Tip<\/span><span id='swap-id69d745830ceab'  class='colomat-swap' style='display:none;'>Wet Lab Tip:<\/span><div id=\"target-id69d745830ceab\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<b>\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Don&#8217;t think that you have to complete each experiment every day. Know the points where you can stop and continue the next day.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<b>\u00a0<\/b><br \/>\n<span class=\"collapseomatic \" id=\"id69d745830cedb\"  tabindex=\"0\" title=\"Read Personal Perspective\"    >Read Personal Perspective<\/span><span id='swap-id69d745830cedb'  class='colomat-swap' style='display:none;'>Personal Perspective:<\/span><div id=\"target-id69d745830cedb\" class=\"collapseomatic_content \">\n<b>\u00a0<\/b><br \/>\nAt the beginning of my third year, I didn\u2019t have a lot of data. I felt like I had to run procedures faster and faster in order to generate something useful. Before one had finished I was already running it again, and again. But of course this meant I kept making the same mistakes. I never took the time to analyse where the mistakes were, and the protocols kept failing.<\/p>\n<p>The result was that I got increasingly stressed and piled on more replicates, becoming disheartened by their failure. My social and home life both started to suffer, and I stopped enjoying my degree.<\/p>\n<p>If you are stressed by your lack of progress, don\u2019t just pile on more work mindlessly. It\u2019s inefficient, and will only make things worse.<br \/>\n<\/div>\n<div class='watch-action'><div class='watch-position align-left'><div class='action-like'><a class='lbg-style1 like-221 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='like' data-post_id='221' data-nonce='f8587c002c' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Like' \/><span class='lc-221 lc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div><div class='action-unlike'><a class='unlbg-style1 unlike-221 jlk' href='javascript:void(0)' data-task='unlike' data-post_id='221' data-nonce='f8587c002c' rel='nofollow'><img class='wti-pixel' src='https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-content\/plugins\/wti-like-post\/images\/pixel.gif' title='Unlike' \/><span class='unlc-221 unlc'>0<\/span><\/a><\/div> <\/div> <div class='status-221 status align-left'><\/div><\/div><div class='wti-clear'><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Scientists, more than most, have a tendency to ignore their personal lives and focus on their work. The job becomes increasingly stressful when you leave other important tasks incomplete. As they build up, things will only get worse, so do them as they come. If your bills are piling up, and exercise has become something &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/2015\/11\/02\/dont-ignore-your-other-commitments\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Don&#8217;t Ignore Your Other Commitments<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1374,"featured_media":390,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-work-safely-appropriately"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1374"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":490,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/490"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/390"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microsites.ncl.ac.uk\/fmspgrstudentguidelines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}