How are we making ourselves more resilient (as researchers)?

There is a lot to deal with these days: institutional budget cuts; regulatory changes in policies that make things harder rather than easier; budget constrictions in funding agencies at various levels; the pressure added from the global geopolitical situation and more local political shifts and the uncertainty this brings; climate change, global change and the extreme events this adds (see the recent heatwave in Germany); infrastructural deficiencies (power outages and other events that seem to have been accumulating recently). And of course the normal pressure of leading a group, reviewing, teaching, dealing with people, and with doing science.

I think there has always been stress, since I have been doing this job, also when the lab was not 40+ people, but just 3. I just wonder if something fundamentally has changed in terms of the external pressures, or are we just perceiving it differently?

Whatever it is: it seems like just in my own research subject in ecology, this is also a high-dimensional problem, a problem with many factors at play.

But how does one deal with this? It’s a matter of personal resilience. Just talked to a colleague from another discipline a bit about this this morning. I am not sure I have general lessons, but here are a few thoughts:

Diversify. I think this is key, to not have all eggs in one basket, but to diversify in different ways. This can mean different things for different people. It might mean for me to get into more applied research topics, not just purely curiosity-driven science, even though I am not sure about the path. It can mean diversifying funding sources, easier said than done for sure, since most of the time we don’t know what viable options are and what’s worth attempting (I count myself in that group). It could also mean diversifying a personal focus or strategy, maybe away from very expensive research to more conceptual work (I have been doing this at least as part of the mix), or to get more interested in different things besides just the research (for many people this might be policy, for me it’s maybe more the arts).

Saying no. It’s essential to say no to some stuff, some opportunities, since otherwise the pressure just piles up, even if a thing is small. The tricky bit is to know what you should say no to. Still learning…am I missing an important opportunity to meet people when I turn down this seminar invitation, will a millionaire listen to my radio interview if I say yes and then donate to our lab, could I get funding if I say yes to this particular effort? The list is of course endless, and some decisions will be right and others will be wrong, but you will often simply not know. So this means there is limited opportunity to learn.

Taking breaks. Everybody needs breaks, but different people need different breaks. Long vacations don’t really work for me, for me it’s just taking it easy on some days, not being super efficient, and so on. Maybe everybody should over time figure out what kinds of breaks the need. It may also not mean doing nothing, quite the contrary, it may mean doing different things.

Delegate. I think we don’t need to just bear everything by ourselves. It is good to ask others for help, sharing some of the burdens. This is a matter of delegating tasks, but it is an art to know which tasks you can delegate and which ones you should really do yourself. Also one should keep in mind that there is first an investment necessary (training), and sometimes this is not taken into account the way it should be. I think I have become better at that, but still room for improvement for sure.

Share. We are not alone. There are colleagues, at our institution and at others. Sometimes it just helps to share what bothers us, to get that off our chest. Sometimes sharing with others can also open new opportunities: oh, that’s how you deal with that admin hurdle? I hadn’t even thought of that! Oh really, you can do that - how cool! Should do way more than that. And I don’t mean just whining. Just sharing problems alone helps. Others are in the same boat.

Beyond these things, there are also a couple of tasks you can follow to make your lab more resilient for when calamity strikes: I wrote that up in a paper with some friends a couple of years ago (during corona). It’s also simple things like establishing alternative communication channels.

Of course, as I write this I realize how much I do so from a position of extreme privilege: I have a permanent job, utter freedom, good baseline funding (still), a great lab, and I love what I do. In many ways it doesn’t get any better than this.

What would you add to the list? Let me know in the comments!