Last night I gave a webinar on grant writing, where I told a story of a grant. It was a story of both failure and successes, showing what things worked and what things didn’t. It was meant to be an instructional story, as many good stories are. In fact, the older I get, the more I realize that people learn far better through story than through pedantic spewing of facts.

So. A lot of people wrote to me afterwards thanking me for the webinar.

But. One lady, we’ll call her “the nice lady” (I previously had called her something not so nice, but I reconsidered – she’s well meaning but a bit misguided) writes to me saying, basically that I should have been more dry, more pedantic, and more boring.

She tells me that I shouldn’t have told an “educational story” of one line of research that I’ve had funded consistently for 9 years through 4 different grants, that this was too “me focused.”

I think she expected me to sit there lecturing about the ABC’s (and D’s E’s and F’s) of “good grants.”

In other words, she wanted me to act like a mummy lecturing from a sarcophagus. That would have been “acceptable.”

There’s a lesson here, which is why I bother posting it. If you think, like this lady does, that writing a great proposal is all about giving a dry, boring “lecture” to your readers, you’re going to struggle. Mightily.

Grants must engage the reader with a great story about great research. In these days of 1 in 6 grants being funded, that’s the ONLY WAY you’re going to get any traction (and even then, you’ll need a bit of luck mixed in!)

Fortunately, she’s the only one who complained! Most others who wrote in, “Got it”.

Now, due to some technical glitches at the beginning (which she also complained about), I’ve decided to do an encore. It’s going to be next Tuesday, Jan 17th at 10AM PST, 1PM EST. You can sign up using the page here (ignore it if it still lists the old time): http://grantdynamo.com/tgbt-webinar/tgbt-webinarblog/

And, be prepared for a “story” where I may actually swear a time or two on a live call (gasp). If you’re not prepared for that, then you probably shouldn’t sign up!

Ever feel like you’re fighting an uphill battle to convince your conservative colleagues that your new theory or hypothesis has merit? Feel like talking to them is much like talking to your teenage daughter who just slammed the door in your face?

Check out this video by Dan Schechtman, especially the part mid-way through, where he talks about the resistance he faced to the idea that a crystal could have 5-fold symmetry.

It wasn’t like he was just some random nobody proposing this theory from out of the blue.

No, Dan is a respected crystallographer. The reason he proposed this new type of crystal was because he had direct evidence, staring him in the face, that it was real.  Still, people wouldn’t believe it.

Hey, my science friends, let’s use this as an opportunity to open our minds just a bit more to new ideas.  It’s easy to point the finger of blame at conservative colleagues when it comes to our ideas, but then the question is this: are we really open-minded when it comes to other colleague’s more “out there” ideas?

We can’t have it both ways, folks.  If we want others to be open minded and listen to us and our wild ideas, we have to be willing to return the favor.

Speaking of “out there,” check out my impersonation of a famous movie character.  It’s short.  It’s horrible.  And I think you might like it (plus, at the end I give you a chance to get in on something brand new that will help your grants).

Bruce is an admitted (and reformed) racist, who cheated on his wife.

In this Ted talk, he discusses how the amount of deception you practice in life is inversely proportional to your feeling of aliveness.

He also shows how being honest helps you connect more deeply with your audience in a talk.

It’s a great watch:

If you like it, please hit the Facebook Like button.

Enjoy!

My Father the scientist circa 1935

Originally I was going to post just about being thankful.

See, despite shrinking budgets and challenging times, we scientists are a lucky group – especially those of us who have benefitted from the budget largesse of the USA towards our endeavor.

When else in history has any society spent so much money on people simply exploring and figuring out who the world works?  Never.  It’s actually amazing if you think about it.

We are so lucky to be living in a time when society has had money to spare for such things.  I can only hope it will continue in the future.

So when lamenting about the challenges that we face, it is good to keep this in mind.  Just imagine if, instead, we were beholden to rich patrons to fund our work – ones whose tastes were fickle and craven?

We’ve got something to be thankful for!

But … (there’s always a but…)

I want to say “no thanks” to university bureaucracies.  I don’t know about you, but in my own case, I’ve seen so much sclerotic implementation of arcane and byzantine architectures of arbitrary rules that my head is ready to explode.

Seriously – if you think about it, almost half of all money that NIH, NSF, and other agencies give out as grants go to fund the university bureaucracies.

I don’t think anyone set out to make these for malevolent purposes.  Quite the opposite, they grew out of the desire to “protect” and “do good.”  But in the ones I’ve observed so far, they’re like trees whose branches have grown too big for the trunk.  They soon topple over by their own weight.

In other words, they are big money pits.

And that’s a real shame.  Given that we have had this tremendous opportunity to do great science, and to have a big part of the money and momentum sucked away by bureaucracy is simply a damn shame.

So, I give one thumbs up to being thankful for the opportunity to do great science

And I give one thumbs down (no thanks) to bloated university bureaucracy.

What about you? Thanks or no thanks?  I want to hear from you.

ps – have you grabbed your copy of the free report on the five keys to a successful science career yet?

If you are too attached to the outcome of a specific thing like the decision on a grant or paper submission, you are more likely to fail at that thing.

Does this sound crazy to you?

It is not. Eastern philosophies like Zen have taught this for centuries. I never “got it” until recently.

A discussion with a successful senior colleague illustrates.

We talked about grant funding, and he said that he has rarely failed to get a grant in his whole career. He attributed this to one simple thing: he was never fearful about the outcome. He just focused on writing the best grant possible – and enjoying the doing of the thing – rather than focusing on outcome.

When he started as faculty in the late 60′s, there were two important factors that helped with this sense of detachment:
1. almost everyone who was doing good science and getting published could get a grant if they wanted one, and
2. the career pressures to have a lot of grant funding were much less than they are now.

In fact, his first rejection didn’t come until 10 years or so into his career, giving him a tremendous head start in his confidence that funding wouldn’t be a problem for him.

When I think back to my successful grants, all of the writing was done with this same sense of detachment. It was often very hard to get in that frame of mind, but once I did, e grant would flow and be almost enjoyable to write.

If you are stressed out and worried about the outcome of the grant or paper you are writing, then you are hurting your chances of getting that thing.

To get more grant writing tips like this, grab your free copy of the “Back door to funding report.”

What is your biggest science career challenge?

I’d really appreciate it if you take a few moments to fill out this survey to let me know. I’ll use the results to create new materials to help you overcome your challenges and achieve your best success.

It is quick and anonymous. Here’s the survey: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/XNHZYNH

Many thanks!

Events often conspire to force us to wake up and think about things in a new way. I’d had many discussions about whether the Apple iPad is a “necessity” or just superfluous fluff. Having my iPad grabbed from my hands on a train in Paris forced me to really think about this.

The US NIH recently changed the grant format, among other things adding a new section titled “Innovation.” Many of us have wondered: how can we convey innovation if we’re using standard techniques and methods? Morgan has some ideas on this, illustrated with an iPad and a razor.

When we get our grant rejected, it is easy to point the blame at the reviewers. “Those
stupid reviewers, they didn’t get it.” While that approach may be emotionally satisfying and ego-stroking, it doesn’t
solve the problem. Your reviewer didn’t understand your proposal, and there is only one person to blame for that.

A colleague recently said to me, “Graduate education is fundamentally a fact-based activity.” I respond to that somewhat misguided view in the latest video. In my view, a graduate education (particularly PhD) is a skills based endeavor, not a fact based one.