Two or three years ago, when the back-to-office wave started rolling, I wrote a blog post about why I thought the whole thing was BS. I never published it. At that time the controversy was heavy, and the data was too thin. I had a clear position at the time, but with no real data…
by Robert Last week, one of our programs wrapped up again. And as always, the participants and I looked back together on what had been achieved and what had gone well. One sentence in particular stuck with me, and that is what gave me the idea for this blog post. One of the participants, let’s…
By the end of November, I had that familiar, quiet dread that creeps in when you are a high-functioning person (hopefully) who has been doing all the things and still cannot point to enough outcomes that feel satisfying. You know the feeling: you can account for the work, the hours, the revisions, the decisions and…
You’re leading yourself, other humans, and a system inside an institution. No wonder it feels hard. I (and I suppose you also) didn’t become a PI because we were dying to run meetings, build onboarding systems, or mediate conflict between team members. I became a PI because I’m curious and I care about the science.…
by Stefanie In our blog post last week, we talked about why our inner Mr. Hyde keeps showing up. Why we In those second scenarios, it’s our inner Mr. Hyde at work. The “protector” who reacts fast and hard the moment it smells danger. I described this idea based on Dr. Jill Bolte’s model last…
It was 11 p.m., and I was furious. I’d spent the past three hours sending increasingly frustrated messages to a former student, trying to track down samples that had mysteriously disappeared. We were 24 hours from a manuscript deadline and suddenly nobody knew where critical samples were, labels were missing or illegible, and some tissue…
In our last Research Management Mastery group coaching, as always, we discussed many interesting topics and had lively conversations, but this time a big chunk of this discussion was centered on quality. Today, I, Robert, want to highlight two points that directly affect the quality of our results and that can make your work life…
The growth I wanted wasn’t inside academia “You could hire a graduate student for a year and a half for that amount of money.” My department chair was looking at the invoice for my mastermind program. $50,000 for 2 years. He wasn’t being dismissive. He was doing the math. That’s real money. But here’s what…
What’s the one non-negotiable thing every top athlete has? The one thing you simply must have to play in the top 1%, regardless of the sport, whether it’s football, tennis, or chess? Grit, discipline, and the will to win? Sure, you won’t get to the very top without them. But there are also a few…
Stefanie pointed me to a piece in The Atlantic about a new study: Measuring the Impact of Early-2025 AI on Experienced Open-Source Developer Productivity (METR). Programming is often seen as one of AI’s big strengths. The study found the opposite: developers using AI were on average 19 percent slower. The authors explain that this contradiction…