Effort doesn’t always equal output
I was recently chatting with a graduate student who was feeling frustrated at their progress through the program. By all accounts, it looked like things were going just fine: they had finished their classes, they had multiple projects on the go, they had some interesting findings to write up. But instead of feeling inspired about what comes next, they were feeling cynical. When I probed further to understand where these feelings were coming from, they sighed and exclaimed, “It just doesn’t feel like the effort equals the output.”
Of course, these kinds of feelings can pop up anywhere, in any discipline, at any stage in your career. But, from my experience, it seems like the transition of going from being an undergraduate student to being a graduate student can be particularly tricky. As an undergrad, the road to success seems pretty clear and straightforward: attend the lectures, read the materials provided, review those lecture notes and materials, take the test, and you can get a good grade. Effort equals output. But in graduate school, when you’re working with your supervisors to design and conduct experiments, and then write about what you find, the road to success is not particularly well lit, and it’s certainly not linear. This can certainly be jarring. Graduate school requires a lot of time and effort, but the output isn’t always there, or at least, doesn’t come fast enough.
But there’s a good reason why effort and output become uncoupled. In graduate school (and beyond), you are trying to find answers to new questions. These are, in the best projects, deeply unstructured situations that require a considerable amount of creativity and problem-solving. There are all kinds of ways in which progress can go awry: equipment breaks, some unexpected confounds in the experimental design, the analysis code has an error, or simply, the results don’t look like you thought they would and now you have another think coming about what the data might be telling you and what the next steps are. When you’re trying to chart a new course in science, there’s really no rulebook to follow. Some ideas may simply turn out to be wrong, others may be incremental and still take a ton of time to execute. And at every step of the way, it is nearly impossible to anticipate all the ways in which a project may not work. This is a challenging realization to face when you’re just getting into the weeds of your graduate career.
But, once you understand why there can be a disconnection between effort and output, the next step is learning how to stay motivated in the face of it. There are a few things that may help. One is to find another outlet where effort more closely matches output, or at least produces tangible results on a faster timeline: reading books for fun, exercising, painting, gardening, knitting, woodworking and other DIY projects, etc. These kinds of activities can give you an ongoing sense of reward and accomplishment that sustains you while you spend a year or two completing a research study and writing the paper. Another strategy is to learn to celebrate the small wins. Sure, the research paper isn’t written and published yet, but did you learn how to program the experiment? Did you learn how to collect data and perform quality control checks? Did you learn how to systematically check and re-check your code for errors? Maybe take a moment each week to jot down what you learned or what you achieved that week. Think small. By deliberately keeping track of how you are progressing, even in the smallest ways, you can start to see that effort is related to output. But, now, instead of considering output to be the ultimate goal of the published paper, the finished thesis, the funding award, the output is all of the sub-goals that get you to the larger ones.
Finally, just embrace the messiness. Things may take time, you’re going to get stuff wrong, and it’s not always going to turn out perfectly. The key is to focus on how you can continually learn more and get better. The goal isn’t to eliminate the gap between effort and output; the goal is to trust that your effort is building the foundation for future breakthroughs. And to recognize the breakthroughs when they come. Even the little ones.
Take a few minutes this week to notice where your effort is quietly building momentum. What small wins can you celebrate today? If you’re finding it hard to celebrate yourself, or to stay motivated, reach out for a 1-on-1 coaching session.
Next week: You can’t solve everything at once
