For every project I was freshly starting, my PhD advisor already had the final, published, scientific article fully visualized in his mind.
I remember sitting in my advisor's office, discussing my next experiment, feeling like someone had just told me the ending of a Harlan Coben series I hadn't started watching yet.
Way to spoiler the next 4 years of my experimental life.
How that manifested is that he visualized every experiment we were planning as a finished figure. He created a logical story in his head, how one figure would lead into the next question, results, and findings and how together, they build up to the final crescendo: the final results figure, usually a culmination of dotting all the i’s and crossing all the T’s in your journey to presenting the most important result of said article.
At the time, his process left me feeling disappointed and confused. Wasn’t I supposed to… just experiment? Try new protocols? Follow my curiosity? Or, forgive the audacity, have FUN learning and failing?
Now that I see the end result of my thesis, I understand why his visualization approach was much better than my YOLO scientist urge to experiment without boundaries.
Every single chapter in my thesis ended up also becoming a published article in reputable journals. And this, I reckon, is the result of having an absolute laser focus on your topic.
Sure, I was distracted by side quests, performed secret Friday afternoon experiments, and gave into what entrepreneurs call chasing the shiny objects sometimes.
But having the outline of the story and results I wanted to show, always pulled me back to the main mission: how to make cancer nanotherapies more selective and reduce their side effects.
Everything outside of that was obviously pretty cool research too. But for me, during 4 years, it was noise.
I couldn’t afford to go deeper into research rabbit holes of adjacent topics, had to minimize collaborations that were not serving my main mission and had to take the pushback when my advisor crushed one (obviously fabulous) idea after another.
The Focus Tax, or cost of staying on-topic paid in pure willpower, was skyrocket high for a curiosity-driven person. But in the end, it paid off.
And this is where I went terribly wrong in my first year of business. I didn't take my own scientist experience into consideration in my brand new career pivot.
You see I started hammering out social media posts on LinkedIn to get started in my writing journey and get visibility, which by itself is not a bad thing. You learn a lot by fighting the public cringe by developing your thoughts by researching, reading, and filtering content through your own lens.
But if you do this over a prolonged period of time, without knowing the outcome and result you are chasing…For lack of a better word: it becomes exhausting.
A better approach I am finally adopting?
I am writing my book outline first.
In marketing, they would probably call that nailing your content pillars.
I like envisioning content like a book a little bit more. It gives the notion that you are working towards completing a full body of work. That everything you publish adds to the story. And the way to recreate this is to outline your future (real or imaginary) book before getting burnout from firing your shots blindly on social media.
So even if you never plan to write a book, ask yourself: what would its chapters be? What's the overarching message? What does your audience need to understand first to get to chapter two? Before you hit publish on your next post, finish this sentence in writing: "This post belongs in the chapter about ___."
That outline is your spoiler. This time, the good kind.
Keep up the audacity,
Laura
PS. Can anyone else relate ?!
