How to be unbreakable

​No-one said it would be easy! We are, after all, pushing back the frontiers. That may sound grand, but there are reasons why the frontiers are where they are.
 
Progress is never as quick as we would all like it to be. The world is imperfect. Equipment breaks, experiments fail, projects run into dead ends, good papers and grant applications get rejected, administration takes time (often far too much), some people let us down, and the world is full of distractions. All of these take time not only from our research but from that of all other scientists. And they have done so, to greater or lesser extents, for generations.

​​Even worse, these problems drain our motivation. We need an unbreakable sense of purpose, and commitment to it, that we can tap into to ride them out. So what is purpose and how do we find it? 

​Why do we bother?
We all wonder this from time to time! For most of us, there are some very good answers but it is not unusual to lose sight of them. If we can start every day crystal clear on these answers, then nothing can knock us off our stride. There will still be just as many problems. Peer review will still be imperfect, science will still be underfunded, vital equipment will still break when we most need it, plus whatever else the day might throw at us, but however much these problems delay us we know exactly why we are doing it. It’s the emotional impact that does the real damage, not the time they take up.
 
Each of us will have a different set of answers to this question. There is no recipe I can give! But some common themes may help you find yours: the experience of an illness in a close relative or friend, an insatiable curiosity, a desire to make the world a better place, or wanting to communicate cutting edge research to others.

A sense of purpose is impervious to both good and bad fortune. Would we let one rogue reviewer stand in our way? And if we won the lottery, would the causes we are working towards cease to matter? Motivation will ebb and flow every day, but commitment is constant. It keeps us on track no matter what.
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Where does our sense of purpose come from?
Our late teens and early 20s are our ‘formative years’, when experiences often profoundly shape our personality for decades to come. An example of my own was the mental illness of a close relative. Seeing this close up, and its impact on the entire family, was the primary driver behind me going into neuroscience research. Even 40 years later it greatly influences how I run my research group and my commitment to improving research culture today.  
 
Purpose can also be defined by our own experiences of injustice or misfortune. Even if we are unable to change how an adverse event affects us personally, we can avoid feeling like its victim by finding some way to change it for others. Philanthropic research funding is a good example of this way of thinking. An event that made a particularly big impact on me was seeing bestselling author Terry Pratchett announce his dementia diagnosis at the 2008 Alzheimer’s Research UK conference, and make a large donation to research saying: “This is my way of fighting back”. He knew it would not help him but this generous action helped him accept his misfortune. As researchers, we can learn so much from this and apply it when we have to respond to misfortune.
 
We may also find purpose in what we are good at or passionate about. If we find ourselves drawn to specific activities, it is natural to look for useful applications of them. For example, if we have a skill in communicating, we can use it to inform or inspire a target audience that means a lot to us. Or if we derive great satisfaction from doing a well-performed experiment, we can look for a project to harness this whose goals we consider particularly important.

​The bigger picture
Seeing our part in the wider goal can be a particularly strong source of purpose. An inspirational example is the supposed story of a janitor at NASA telling President Kennedy he was “helping to put a man on the moon”. Whether or not this event actually happened, it does illustrate an important point: you don’t have to be Neil Armstrong to be part of the outcome!

​Remembering this point in research can change how we view learning a new technique, writing a thesis or paper, presenting a talk, or applying for a grant. It’s not just about us and not just about the here and now! The technique we learn may lead later in our career to us, or someone we train to do it, making an important discovery in a completely unrelated project. A three year project may also play a key, and sometimes unpredictable role in a decades-long bigger research story of our group. And the paper we are writing could spark an important new train of thought in any reader, anywhere, anytime. These unexpected developments are what makes science so exciting.
 
This way of thinking also provides a route to greatly reduce friction between administrators and scientists for the benefit of both and our research output. Despite these two groups of employees having very different roles, they each play crucial parts in the wider purpose of a research organisation: to generate and publish high quality research, and to train the next generation of scientists, within an acceptable legal and ethical framework. This common purpose is rarely voiced or harnessed as it could be. It is a gap that presents a clear opportunity for any department, or individual, wanting to improve research culture and productivity. 

​Teamwork
If an individual sense of purpose can help us each ride out adverse events with less anguish, then a common sense of purpose across a team of co-workers can amplify this effect many times over. Some people are particularly influenced by this. Some athletes, for example, are known for regularly beating competitors in relays who they lost to in the individual event, despite having started their relay leg behind them. If we can harness this same drive for the success of our research team it can have profound effects on output and wellbeing.

​Purpose changes
It is not unusual for our sense of purpose to change as our life and career move on to new stages. My own sense of purpose has been greatly influenced, for example, by becoming a parent, by career successes and challenges, and by my children entering adult life.
 
As so often, there are many comparable examples in sports psychology. Adam Peaty, Mark Cavendish and Laura Kenny are among the many elite sportsmen and women who have gone public about how their motivation faltered after starting a family, only for them to discover an entirely new sense of purpose, and new successes, as a role model for their children. Tennis star André Agassi struggled with a lack of purpose after reaching the top of his sport, but found new purpose in the pleasure he brought to those watching. Even the greatest adversity can bring a new sense of purpose. The response to Sir Chris Hoy’s recent sad announcement of his terminal illness, led to a new resolve to turn it into something positive. As one of the most successful Olympic cyclists in history, we might think nothing could top that but, in a new life stage, something can.

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​When we lose sight of purpose
Benjamin Franklin is reputed to have said: “Most [people] die at 25 but are not buried until they are 75”. We all lose sight of our sense of purpose from time to time, and this, in my view, is what he meant. Extrinsic motivations such as our need for security, income or recognition so often take over from the intrinsic motivations that brought us into science in the first place. We may start off with lofty goals of how we can help the world through science, even in small ways, but these take a back seat when we struggle to meet our thesis deadline and find our way through the funding and security mazes. But is this 'living' or just surviving? When we are facing adversity, reconnecting with those original intentions can quite literally 'make life worth living' again. 

​The power of purpose
Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search for Meaning endured hardships none of us could even imagine. One thing he noticed in the concentration camp, as a trained psychiatrist, was how much a clear sense of purpose in those around him seemed to influence who lived and who died. In his words: “Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose”.
 
The lesson we can take from this is that, as researchers, it helps to define our sense of purpose as clearly as we can and to revise it when appropriate in response to life events. Occasionally, we all lose sight of it but it always helps to reconnect. Adversity is not unique to research, but everyone in research does experience it. Sometimes it is even unfair or inexplicable. But long-term purpose and commitment have so much more power to overcome this adversity than any short-term motivation for extrinsic reward. If we keep our sense of purpose, our next rejected paper or grant, our next failed experiment or our next period of overwhelm is not a road block. It is a hurdle to be jumped.