Work Ethic

Academia tends to be more relaxed than other work environments regarding hours of work. This is not to say we work less — on the contrary, to be successful in academia you have to work very hard and put in long hours. However, there is flexibility around which hours of the day, and which days, you work. This is particularly true for students; for paid employees, there are always discussions around expectations and hours of work.

In NCIL we firmly believe in work-life balance. We do science because it's fascinating, compelling, and often enjoyable. But life has many other pleasures and responsibilities, and it is important for each of us to be aware of what is important to them as an individual and, if necessary, communicate that to their supervisor.

At the same time, academia is ultimately a highly competitive field, filled with smart, ambitious, and high-performing individuals. There are far fewer spots in graduate programs, scholarships, postdoctoral fellowships, and ultimately academic jobs than there are eager and qualified applicants — and the number of opportunities shrinks as you advance through each of those levels. Success in academia is based on demonstrated merit, largely in the form of journal publications and, to a lesser extent, books, book chapters, conference preseatations, code (e.g., for data analysis or stimulus presentation), and data (e.g., in open data repositories). A single journal publication reporting an experiment can involve over 1200 hours of work according to one estimate, and cost between $4,500 and $130,000 including the hours spent by everyone involved. Every step of the way takes many more hours than you expect due to troubleshooting, discovering and fixing mistakes that occurred earlier in the process (e.g., reanalyzing your data), and — for students — actually learning all the new things you need to know in terms of research methods, data processing and analysis, and getting on top of the literature well enough that you can competently write a professional paper about it. The people who are successful in advancing through the levels of academia are those who put in the hours, and find ways to make their life work around the large number of hours required.

Ultimately, our view at NCIL is that what matters is the output, not what hours of the day, or days of the week, you get the work done in. With that said, it is important to work steadily and regularly, because the sheer volume of work, and the importance of being correct and precise in science, mean that cramming and batch working close to deadlines will only get you so far — and often not where you want to be.

Resources

A few resources are highly recommended in terms of motivation and guidance on good work practices:

• Write it Up! by Paul Silvia. Available via the NCIL Core Basecamp. A short read but a great introduction to writing an academic paper.

• How to write a lot. Also by Paul Silvia. Tips on productivity and finding writing time.

• What to do when it's your turn by Seth Godin. Hard copies available in the lab. Godin "...pushes us to dig deep inside so we can do better work and impact the things we care about."

• Getting things done by David Allen. Fantastic book on organizing your life, setting goals and priorities, and getting them done.