Flow at the Bench

My non-science friends think I'm crazy but I go into the lab on the weekends. Early in the morning before my three children wake up. Sometimes for a couple of hours or even 15 minutes to put on an antibody. It makes things easier for me and things get done faster. The effort doesn't feel proportional to the time spent there and I think this is because there is a sort of flow that happens with experiments.

Things seem to work out best, with least effort if they keep moving. If I don't freeze the samples and think I'm going to finish the experiment in a couple of weeks or if I don't let that blot dry out thinking I'm going to re-probe later.

When the whole experiment gets done in a couple of days it almost always seems to work. If things are left too long I need to play catch-up or make some ridiculous effort to get a result.

It's better for me to move through an entire experiment even if that means coming in on the weekends and then take a break after it is done. Work and then rest.

I believe the flow at the bench is is part of the flow that the Taoist's talk about. The more you are flowing with things the more effortless things will become. It feels like experiments have an energy, momentum, and life of their own and when I'm in tune with that I can make things happen.

When I'm in the flow things are easier with a quiet quality about them. Sometimes when I'm splitting cells in the hood or doing a routine assay I feel like I am floating in water suspended waiting-almost hovering above things. When I'm in the flow I can see all that needs to be done, when it needs to be done, with multiple experiments going on simultaneously and it feels clear and obvious.

When I'm not in the flow the cells are too confluent, the microscope is screwed, there is a missing reagent, I forget my keycard and can't get into building. Everything is hard and nothing works out. When I'm out of the flow I step back and gather myself. Get back to basics, throw out the cells, re-read the protocol, re-make the reagents, read some papers, take a day off.

Sometimes I see students or post-docs moving frantically through their experiments. The craziness is often driven by the fact that nothing is working and they can't repeat anything. I've been their myself. The thought is that if you just work harder something is bound to work out eventually and you will get out of the mess you are in but I don't think that works very well. The energy is scattered and your mind is not thinking clearly. I think it is better to try and ground yourself and go back to basic principles.

Something Benjamin Hoff wrote in his book The Te of Piglet really captures what I mean about basic principles.

"Observed, deduce, and Apply. Watch what is around you-putting aside, as best you can, previous conceptions that you and others might have about it. Ideally look at it as if you were seeing it for the first time. Mentally reduce it to its basic elements-"See simplicity in complexity", as Lao-tse put it. Use intuition as well as logic in order to understand what you see (a vital difference between the Whole Reasoner and the Left-Brained Technician). Look for connections between one thing and another-notice patterns and relationships. Study the natural laws you see operating through them. Then work with those laws, applying the smallest possible amount of interference and effort, in order to learn more and achieve whatever you need to- and no more."

I try and remember this when things get hairy and it gets hairy pretty quickly and fairly often here at the bench.