Now that COVID-19 has made many of us take a step back, this might be the
right moment to use that step back to rethink research culture. For many of us, winter already provided our mood with a challenge. This seasonal impediment came on top of the seemingly glaring mental health issues in academia, that was proven once more in a recently conducted, largest ever survey into experiences of research culture. More than half (53%) of the participating researchers in this study have sought, or have wanted to seek, professional help for depression or anxiety. The results show it's time for a change.
What helps you to remain or become a productive and healthy researcher? What will you do
differently if you reenter academia after this sudden break of habits? Here is our top 7 list of
evidence-based tips.
DO #1: Choose to collaborate, instead of compete, to increase your performance
Academia has long been a place of competition. Jobs are scarce, so many academics feel
that they need to perform top of their peer group to even have a shot at a career. Moreover,
the entire vision of modern day scholarly institutions is firmly based on driving progress
through competition, as evidenced by the popular university rankings. A 2002 analysis indicated that competition is the very thread with which scholarly interactions are woven. The previously mentioned large survey on research culture also shows this predominance of competition in researchers’ daily lives and participants indicate it is often overly aggressive and harmful.
Tip number 1 therefore is to consider sometimes choosing for collaboration instead of
competition, particularly when it comes to competition within your own team. As aptly put
by Bloch, almost every researcher is trying their best and feels the hot breath
of competition:
“The deceiving game [is] that everyone pretends to have confidence and control in relation to their research.”
But do we really always need to compete? Isn’t competition just one way of motivating ourselves to take that extra step, to do a better experiment, to strive for even more excellence? There are myriad other ways of achieving excellence. It has for instance been shown that between-group competition motivates better performance in throwing a basketball, but only if there is predominantly cooperation
within the team itself. It is therefore crucial for your own excellence (at least when it comes to shooting hoops) to allow for ample cooperation instead of competition within your research group or department.
GO DO: The next time you feel competitive with one of your fellow guinea pigs over
some reward or promotion, ask yourself whether this competition is really helpful for your
progress. Will you gain a better mood and ultimately more productivity if you simply share
whatever there is to be won? Or when you feel competitive, bravely choose to share your
doubts or insecurities, instead of pretending you have everything under control. This way,
you might actually recruit the help you need to excel. If you’re working from home these
days: sending out an e-mail or postcard aimed at nurturing collaboration with someone
might be the healthy start of something new.
DO #2: Get out into nature, especially when you feel low
Universities and research buildings tend to be stuffy, overcrowded places. Although these
places are designed for deep thinking and innovation, many researchers report ruminations:
repetitive thoughts focused on negative aspects about themselves. A recent PNAS study shows that these ruminating thoughts may be put on hold by a 90-min walk in nature, decreasing both self-reported rumination and neural activity in the subgenual prefrontal cortex (sgPFC), whereas a 90-min walk in an urban setting has no such effects on self-reported rumination or neural activity. In other studies, the sgPFC has been associated with a self-focused behavioral withdrawal linked to rumination in both depressed and healthy individuals. This study reveals a pathway by which nature experience may improve mental well-being and suggests that accessible natural areas within urban contexts may be a critical resource for mental health in our rapidly urbanizing world.
GO DO: Identify a piece of nature on the way to work, or around your working place,
to take walks when you find you’re repeating negative thoughts. Try to immerse yourself
there for 90 minutes for the full evidence-based remedy, but you might find that shorter
bouts of nature also alleviate your ruminations. This tip is extra powerful if you are currently
working from home: spending time in a non-crowded piece of nature might make a big
difference.
Do #3: Give your colleagues and PI constructive feedback, particularly if you like them
Academic feedback is often focused from PI to PhD candidate or postdoc, or from colleague
to colleague anonymously (in peer review) or during intervision. However, there are reasons
to make it part of your MO to incorporate feedback in every working relationship. When done right, giving and receiving feedback makes it easier for everyone to know whether they
are on the right track and - when necessary - self-improve.
GO DO: Although giving and receiving feedback may be stressful and uncomfortable,
it contributes to an open, trusting working relationship and thus better mood for everyone.
It is therefore all the more interesting that likeable colleagues actually receive less feedback
from their supervisors, leaving them with less clues to work with than less liked trainees. The same potentially holds for feedback from trainee to PI, so make sure that you incorporate feedback in your meetings with your likeable PI as well.
DO #4: Ask for recognition for what you want to be recognized for
Recent initiatives, like the Dutch white paper on new ways of recognizing and rewarding
scholars, have heralded a new dawn in how academic performance is evaluated. This emergent change in policy bears important opportunities for guinea pigs. In the past, it has become clear that academics feel they need to take on too many roles and do not have the opportunity to negotiate how they are evaluated, relating to their self-perceived high stress levels and dampened mood. Instead, the respondents of this large survey indicate that..
“They wish their institutions to minimise the new ‘accountancy’ culture and work towards the development of a social culture that values scientific and intellectual endeavour”.
GO DO: Spend a (half) day thinking about how you want to be evaluated at work,
perhaps discussing the topic with your peers or loved ones for inspiration. Then plan a
meeting with the person doing your yearly appraisal to discuss personalized performance
indicators, and negotiate away.
DO #5: Take time off
The aforementioned large survey shows that working hours are staggering in UK academia with only 31% of respondents working their contract hours and 11% working more than 60 hours a week. Dutch academics are not doing better with on average 12-15 hours of overtime per week according to this 2020 survey, suggesting a global problem in work-life balance. Interestingly, UK interviewees added that the causes of their long working hours were complex. Regardless of any pressure from employers or external stakeholders (this is unfortunately not mitigated by one of these tips), they are also driven by their own beliefs, ambition and love for their discipline. And that is exactly where your own power to feel better comes in.
Despite the challenge we have in academic culture, there is no need for you to become ‘learned helpless’: believing that there is nothing you can do, that you are a victim to the bizarre demands of your supervisor or the system. This personal story from a tenure-track MIT professor may most tangibly give you a gist of what we mean here. Now work out your own boundaries and enforce them!
GO DO: Stop being learned helpless. Decide how much you want to work, what you
want to prioritize, and stick with these decisions. Did corona force you to set firm priorities
and did you experience you can actually drop some activities without too much negative
impact? That might be a great starting point for building a schedule that works best for you.
Building a healthy work-life balance is like shaping a habit, so make it increasingly easier for
yourself to actually do as you promise yourself. Checking out Charles Duhigg may help you out here.
DO #6: Stop bullies
Academic bullying is unfortunately part and parcel of our culture. There is simply no excuse
to accept being bullied. Instead of talking about it, we better do something about it.
GO DO: check out table 1 of this study to assess if bullying is taking place in your
workplace and work through the tips in table 4 of the same study to ameliorate your situation asap.
DO #7: Practice gratitude
It has been thought since the Buddha that gratitude links to greater happiness in life, as this
Benedictine monk also argues in his TED Talk. Recent research indeed establishes the link between more gratitude and less mental health issues. Moreover, practicing gratitude daily may indeed impact how people feel: by writing down a few sentences on things they were grateful for every day for a couple of weeks, participants in this study reported higher well-being than participants who did not practice gratitude.
GO DO: Keep a gratitude journal and write down 2-5 things you are grateful for
everyday. Other ways to incorporate gratitude more into your life are writing (mental) thank
you notes to close ones or colleagues, praying, or meditating.
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