A short one today, but kind of important one.
I just finished half of When Breath Becomes Air. I have a thing for reading…grim true stories. It’s good for perspective, I think. Because I know I’m objectively quite blessed to be in good health, and having many things in my life to be happy about, but of course I also worry about pointless nonsense way too much.
So, in some twisted way windows to other people’s genuine hardships are always helpful in appreciating what one has.
So, from the bottom of my heart, I hope you’re doing OK. No matter where you are. Doing good work, having great holidays…meeting good friends, doesn’t matter.
Just sending good vibes to you.
Which brings me to today’s message.
Be Open-Minded
Last week I spotted something absurdly cool online.
Behold.
That’s Snoop. Absolutely adore the gentleman.
That’s from a LinkedIn post on “taking advice”, in which the good man describes how he took advice humbly and willingly from Pharrell when crafting the masterpiece Drop It Like It’s Hot. You can replace the word “masterpiece” there with whatever you want, depending on your taste in music (or whether you even want to call that music, lol).
It doesn’t matter. It’s got 400 million views.
My most-read publication has about 12 downloads. Of which maybe 7 are me downloading it for some to-be-grant-reject.
Anyway.
The man is one of the all-time greatest, doing business on a gorillion fronts, being the mascot of the US Olympic team… and the point is crystal clear: doesn’t matter how big you are, you listen when there’s a smarter voice in the room.
Why?
Your time is finite. So you cannot afford to learn everything through trial and error. Every piece of good advice you refuse is time you pay for in blood, that someone was offering you for free.
When I was a PhD student, I thought I was taking advice, but I was just taking orders. And orders don’t make you humble, they just make you (often falsely) certain.
And oh boy, has that backfired later on! In the form of unwarranted arrogance and missed opportunities for overlooking fields and, to my great shame, even people.
Lesson learned.
A few years later, as a postdoc, I started gaining some confidence and thought I had it all under control. Likewise, a mistake. I really did not. I was just repeating what I knew how to do well.
Which means stagnation and no growth. Just doing the same “meh” tier stuff forever.
Fast forward to another stage in my career, and I found myself in a space where I didn’t really have any good mentors or seniors to talk about work, and it was difficult to get good advice.
Or any advice, really. Encouragement, always. But advice…. hard. Or maybe I was just scared to ask and approach the right people. That was most likely it, in hindsight.
And that was supremely frustrating.
Fast forward even further, to today, and I am just every single day more aware of how little I know and how brutally important it is to learn everything I can from those around me. I now know time is finite. Perhaps this comes to mind now because of that book. But it’s there. And it needs to be said aloud.
You/I/we should never think “I’ve got this now all under control, all on my own“
Be coachable.
Academia trains you to be totally uncoachable. Stubborn even. Peer review teaches you that the correct response to a new idea is to find its flaw. “I’m so going to kill this.” You have to, you simply must, defend your grant applications 100% — there’s no middle ground.
Your entire professional survival depends on being the smartest voice in the room and not being caught wrong.
So you build a reflex to defend your own thinking, and then you might mistakenly point that reflex at advice about your own life and wonder why you’re stuck.
If you’re trying to grow or even just keep up with the accelerating world, always seek help.
And just take in all the life’s magic.