Sometimes my Principal Investigator (my boss) says things that are pretty thought provoking. One of these is the idea that you want to be at an academic program and take up projects that are within your average ability range. For example, on your ability scale of 0 to 100, you want to be working in the 40 to 80 range most of the time.
Though when he said this to me, I internally became defensive. I thought, why would this make sense? Of course I want to be at the best program that I can get into. Of course I want to take the hardest projects I can manage, since these will have a higher payout. He probably read my expression and continued to explain his logic:
If it’s too easy, you will not be engaged and have your potential and passion wasted. If it’s too hard, you will be strained just to keep up and the emotional toll will stifle you. But in a medium range, you will be able to push yourself to the upper fourth of your limit most of the time, while being able to slide down when you need to. You will consistently be productive while keeping an overall good quality of life.
While this made sense at face value, it took a while for it to really sink in. But thinking about it, with time I realized that having this breathing room will give you the ability to reflect, experiment, and approach your projects in ways no one had thought about. The ability to reach new levels of thinking and processing will push your overall range upward. You will be both happier and ultimately be more likely to come up with the breakthroughs on which you can build your career. Furthermore, the extra breathing room will be a heaven-sent when dealing with the eventualities and emergencies of personal life.
This kind of thinking goes back to a sarcastic thought someone mentioned to me, about how people will keep rising until they reach mediocrity and cannot rise anymore. Intuitively, this makes sense to me. It is human nature to want to do better and keep rising up the totem pole, but what determines where we stop? It is not impossible to think that for many of us, our stop will be when we are finally forced to do so. We will have reached our limitations and stay there. It is also not unreasonable to think that many of us will remain in that strained state, out of fear or shame of going down a level to where we are more comfortable.
As of now the way that approach it is not see it as a binary choice. Not being at the top of my potential every single day does not translate to admission of defeat, especially in the long term. Furthermore, just because I am working in my average range, it does not mean that my range will remain static. Every day I am learning and training, getting better little by little. My thinking is that as I improve, things that were harder before will get easier. Maybe it’s just like working a muscle, the best thing is to have a plan and slowly works towards your goal. Becoming upset and hurrying may end up throttling your real potential. Granted, my assessment may be a little bias since I love having that extra breathing room to just stop and think about how much I’m enjoying my work right now.
Undocumented Physician Scientist in Training 