“I didn’t feel like my work was really helping anyone, so I started to shut down and not contribute, cutting corners and watching the clock.” --Alexandra Carmichael
When Alexandra Carmichael entered graduate school in the Department of Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto in Canada in 1998 with a 2-year fellowship from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, she was filled with optimism and excitement. She was enthusiastic about the opportunity to conduct research on human telomerase, an enzyme implicated in 90% of cancers. But her emotional investment in her work didn’t last long. “Over the course of a year, I became increasingly caught in the rut of repeating experiments, meetings, dingy corridors, and the smell of cultured yeast,” she writes in an e-mail. “I didn’t feel like my work was really helping anyone, so I started to shut down and not contribute, cutting corners, and watching the clock.”
Scientists tend to work in highly competitive environments in which resources are increasingly limited. Even those who embark on their careers with passion, creativity, and idealism--and who are fortunate enough to find positions in supportive, well-endowed settings--get into a rhythm that soon becomes routine: running experiments that may or may not yield results, submitting grant applications that aren’t likely to be funded in the first round (and sometimes, not at all), and submitting and revising papers that are subject to harsh and sometimes unfair criticism by their peers.
By nature, many scientists are high-achievers who tend toward perfectionism. Yet, they often lack the space, equipment, time, personnel, and information needed to do the job they really want to do as well as they want to do it. In a time of diminishing research budgets and expanding competition, they almost always lack money (except for a fortunate and talented few). Although a scientist may bask in the glory of a new grant or journal publication for a few hours, days, or even weeks, that satisfaction eventually fades. Just as a baseball player is only as good as his last at bat--and the season is long--a scientist must soon return to the often repetitive reality of the scientific endeavor, with its pressure to achieve over and over.
Signs of being in a rut
The first time I walked into a state mental hospital as an intern in clinical psychology, I looked around the large, chaotic day room to get a glimpse of the setting I would be working in. The thing that struck me most was the unusual stench, probably some combination of body odors, feces, and disinfectants. It soon got to the point that I wasn’t aware of the odor any more, at least not after my first few minutes at work. I became so habituated to my surroundings that I no longer noticed it.
People are generally flexible enough to accommodate to the conditions of their job and get used to things being the way they are. In a sense, they develop tunnel vision; that is how they focus. But the signs of being in a psychological rut--working harder and harder and achieving less and less, or deriving less and less pleasure from one’s achievements, can be subtle and easy to miss.
You may experience a lack of energy, fatigue, or a feeling of being besieged by the demands of the job. You may have unexplained physical ailments that overlap with some symptoms of depression, such as changes in sleep and eating patterns, aches and pains, hypertension, or digestive problems.
Psychologist Herb Freudenberger coined the term "burnout" in 1974 to refer to the state of near-complete mental and physical exhaustion that is often experienced in a work setting as a result of prolonged and excessive stress in the workplace. When people burn out, they may have self-doubts and question their ability to do their jobs, or they may no longer be able to notice their own successes.
People in a rut at work often experience cognitive fatigue; they have difficulty concentrating or aren’t able to think as clearly or quickly as they once did. Others find it hard to make it to work in the morning or sit through another interminable lab meeting. They may be impatient and short-tempered with colleagues, family, and friends. Some turn to alcohol and or other drugs to escape the humdrum of work and the sense of boredom and defeat they are experiencing.
Perceptions of the problem
NSF/Paul Thompson and Arthur Toga, UCLA
To better understand the day-to-day lives of scientists, investigators at the Centro de Ciências da Saúde and the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro in Brazil conducted open, semistructured interviews with graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and professors in the biochemistry department, a department with a strong research tradition, at the university. The investigators noted the high level of stress created by the conflict between increasing competition and diminishing resources and its adverse effect on productivity.
In a September 2003 article titled "The growing competition in Brazilian science: rites of passage, stress and burnout" that appeared in the Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research, the authors paint a dismal picture: “The trajectory of the scientist becomes an increasingly difficult battle for grants, where the individual may lose support at any time,” they write. “The idea of a continuous and stable career is blurred, and the individual must continually prove his or her capacity, being always in a transition state or liminality with the chances of being eliminated from the system increasing every year.” They conclude that this mental state can set the stage for burnout that leads to a “progressive loss of idealism and [that] has been associated with impaired job performance and poor health. ...” Ironically, those scientists who are most dedicated and committed to their work are those who are most prone to finding themselves in this rut.
Digging out
The next logical question, of course, is how to pull yourself out of this mindset and develop the thick skin and resilience you need to succeed in science. Here are a few tips:
Self-identify - No one around you really knows how you are feeling. A colleague may think you are standoffish or irritable; a supervisor may see that your productivity is lagging. Based on behavior, they may suspect that you are in a rut--but you are the only one who knows what you are feeling. Monitor any physical symptoms that could be stress-related. Assess whether you are getting as much satisfaction from your work as you once did and whether you are as productive as you once were.
Get creative - Try doing things differently. One scientist took a tough academic job, with large teaching loads and research requirements, and viewed herself as a worker bee/drone who wound up working close to 100 hours a week. She escaped this pattern only when she became pregnant with her first child. Out of necessity, she reinvented herself to better balance work and motherhood. Inadvertently, she came to realize that she was being paid to inspire others and was soon promoted to full professor.
Share your burden with your peers - It is generally helpful to speak with one or two trusted colleagues about your feelings. They may be experiencing the same frustrations as you and may have found novel ways to overcome them. It always helps to realize that you aren’t alone and that some of your distress may be situational. One caution: Be careful not to co-ruminate; don't dwell in negativity with the same person over and over in a way that is counterproductive and demoralizing.
Seek out your supervisor - It’s often helpful to make your malaise explicit. If you are in a rut, the chances are pretty good that your supervisor already knows that you are unhappy. He or she may be able to reshape the demands of your job or provide you with the perspective you need to feel like you are doing a better job than you are able to admit to yourself. It may turn out that much of your stress is self-imposed.
Switch gears - If you realistically assess your job and your workplace and determine that your role is untenable, your work setting is toxic, and/or your attitude is incorrigible, think about making a change. Carmichael decided to apply her scientific training to “a greater good.” She left graduate school, gave up her fellowship, and cofounded a bioinformatics company that develops molecular cloning software affecting research areas as diverse as AIDS, brewing, skin treatments, and potato crops.
Take care of yourself - To avoid burnout, build breaks into your day (perhaps for physical exercise or meditation) and take periodic vacations to recharge your battery. Even if you don’t have the time or money for a lengthy getaway, change your scenery by doing something different and less cerebral: a hike in the woods on a Sunday or an excursion to a museum in the city.
One other possibility needs to be ruled out if you find yourself in a rut. You may be bringing unresolved problems with you in your backpack. “Anything that causes negative emotions can propel someone into a rut,” says Joseph Weiner, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of clinical psychiatry and medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, New York. “This can include personal stresses such as relationship conflicts and financial challenges,” he writes in an e-mail.
Finally, if your feelings of not being on top of your game are pervasive, affecting you outside of the workplace as well, you may be clinically depressed or having other problems that would benefit from speaking to a mental health professional.
Photos. Top: Jef Poskanzer. Middle: NSF/Paul Thompson and Arthur Toga, UCLA
Irene S. Levine is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in many of America's leading newspapers and magazines. Trained as a psychologist, she works part-time as a research scientist at the Nathan S. Kline Institute for Psychiatric Research in Orangeburg, New York, and she holds a faculty appointment as a professor of psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine. She resides in Chappaqua, New York. |
10.1126/science.caredit.a0800144 |