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Intro/Outro (00:08):
This is The Happy Scientist podcast. Each episode is designed to make you more focused, more productive, and more satisfied in the lab. You can find us online at bitesizebio.com/happyscientist. Your hosts are Kenneth Vogt, founder of the executive coaching firm, Vera Claritas, and Dr. Nick Oswald, PhD, bioscientist and founder of Bitesize Bio.

Nick Oswald (00:40):
Hello, and welcome to another addition of The Happy Scientist podcast. This is the place to be. If you want to become a happier, healthier, and more productive scientist. I am Nick Oswald, the founder of bitesizebio.com. And today we draw on the wisdom of Mr. Kenneth Vogt, the Bitesize Bio team coach, and the founder of the executive mentoring company, Vera Claritas. Today, and in all other happy scientist podcast episodes, you get to benefit from Ken's Yoda-like words of wisdom to help you increase your performance, enjoyment, and success in the lab. And today we are discussing a very thorny issue - How do you cope with the parts of your job that you hate? Okay, Ken, what do we do?

Kenneth Vogt (01:26):
Well, there we go. You know, it, it wouldn't really matter what you do for a living. There's probably gonna be parts of the job that you hate. And in, in the case of being a scientist, you've put so much, so much heart and soul into so much effort, so much time, so much education into getting into the lab. And then you find out there are parts of it you just don't like. Now the thing is, if you're looking at your job and you're saying, well, if it wasn't for the tasks and responsibilities, if it wasn't for the goals and objectives, if it wasn't for this messed up organization, if it wasn't for my crazy colleagues and my slave driving boss, I'd love this job. Well, you know, if everything is wrong except you, then it's probably you. Hopefully that's not the case for most of the people listening today.

Kenneth Vogt (02:19):
And it's just some part of it. And it could be something small, you know, but it's just constantly bugging you. It could be something that, that is big, but it doesn't happen very often, but it's enough to really bother you or can be something just grates on you. Something just wears you down. And it's true that these kind of things happen in whatever you're doing, you know, and if you're looking at your job and going, you know, I don't know what I'm doing here. If I'd have stayed at Burger King, I'd, I'd be manager by now. You know? So it's always easy to, to fantasize about what if I'd taken a different path, I done something different, or I took that, that other job and that other lab, or if I'd gone in a different direction, but you have to deal with the reality that's in front of you.

Kenneth Vogt (03:12):
And so it it's, it's, there's nothing wrong with recognizing there,'s something about this job that I don't particularly like. And it might be that, you know, I really hate having to do these monthly reports. I, I really don't like having to write up these experiments. I really don't like the experiment I'm doing and I've been, and I don't like that I've been tasked to do certain things and I didn't get to choose them, or I don't like all the responsibility that's on me, that nobody is telling me what to do. I I'm, I'm, I'm just out here in the wilderness, you know, I'm in the dark. I, I, and I'm stumbling around and I, I don't like that. Or, you know, or every everything's fine, except this one person I work with, man, it just, I don't know what they're doing here. You know, they're, they're not good at their job.

Kenneth Vogt (04:03):
I don't know. I don't know. And, and they're constantly getting in the way or, or maybe it's just something straightforward that with your boss, it's like, you know, my boss is fine, except I don't know what it is, but why won't they solve this problem for, or us? You know, it's a problem for me. It's a problem for, for the people I work with, but he or she just won't do anything about it. What, what you start to realize with all of these things, whatever it is, you know? And you can pick out the thing. If you pick out the thing that you least like about your job right now, even if you generally love your job, you pick something out. You're gonna find something pretty quick. You already know what that one thing is. And it's not the thing that's bothering you. It's your feelings about the thing that are bothering you.

Kenneth Vogt (04:57):
In other words, you know, filling out spreadsheets, isn't particularly hard, but for some reason it's really irritating you or this person, you know, okay. Their sense of humor's a little odd, but I, but I, I just, every time I, I lay eyes on them, I, I wanna leave the room. You know, it, isn't the specific, it's how you're feeling about. And it's how you're choosing to process that particular encounter. You know, the fact of any particular thing, usually isn't all that, isn't all that loaded. It's the emotion you have about that thing that really matters. And the reason, you know, that's true is because you see other people that have the same basic, um, basic environment, same set of tasks, and that thing's not bothering them at all. You know, they just, they just fill out their spreadsheet. They don't, they don't worry about it.

Kenneth Vogt (06:00):
They just do the experiments over and over and over again. They don't worry about it. Doesn't matter to them. That person doesn't bother them. They like the boss just fine. They think the equipment is adequate. They, they, they just, they just go through the same motions as you, but without the anxiety about it. So you can look at that and go, what are they doing different than me? How are they able to not be stressed out by this? How can, how come they don't hate it? Like, I hate it. Well, here, here's a question to ask yourself, how do you sort? Let me say sort, what do you mean? Sort? I mean, how do you sort events? How do you, how do you look at things? Do you sort by the negative, or do you sort by the positive, in other words is your first place you look is what's wrong with this. And we've all encountered people like this, you call 'em up on the phone. And their first question is like, Bob, what's wrong? Like, wait a minute. Why is something wrong? Just cause I called you, you know?

Kenneth Vogt (07:08):
But they sort by the negative, they're looking for the problem. Now there's this, this notion of looking for the problem isn't necessarily all bad. And the, especially in, in scientific endeavor, you often are looking for problems and, and that's, that's purposeful, but are you looking for problems? Because they're interesting because they are gonna be one step away from solutions. Are you looking for problems? Cause you hate problems and, and you want to defeat problems. You know, you can even try and give yourself a positive spin about it that, you know, then I'm a warrior out to, out to defeat the, the evil problem. Well, it's still sorting by the negative. What if however, you looked at it from the positive it, that is okay. I'm looking for things that I can, I can fix that I can enhance. I'm looking for things I can finish. So maybe I hate doing the monthly report, but boy, I really like finishing the monthly report. You know, you can, you can see it from that positive side.

Kenneth Vogt (08:20):
Now, a lot of this comes down to how you are. Are you just generally pessimistic, are you generally optimistic? And it's been my observation in the world that if somebody's an optimist, they generally see themselves as an optimist. But if somebody's a pessimist, they think they're a realist. Um, and you know, they're not the same thing. An optimist knows better than to label themselves a realist in most cases. But a pessimist needs to recognize that they too are not a realist. A realist is a different thing. A realist just looks at what is there. Now as a scientist, that's very useful. You can, you can just look at what's there and, and that can take you pretty far. On the other hand, you don't want to be limited that by that, cuz you do need to see things beyond what are right there in front of you. The question is, are you gonna see them as things to be afraid of things to, to be bothered by or are you gonna see them as opportunities?

Kenneth Vogt (09:32):
Another, another way is of looking at this is if, if you were, uh, a jurist, if you were a judge and, and you were gonna look at every situation, do you, do you first look at it as they're innocent until proven guilty? Or do you look at it as they're guilty until proven innocent? Or do you look at it as I'm gonna go on the preponderance of evidence? Now, there are, there are actually legal uses for all three of those things. That first one is the, is the typical, um, criminal judicial system in, in democratic states. The second one is a typical criminal, um, operation, or criminal, um, judicial system in more totalitarian states. And that last one is for civil suits that aren't criminal, because, so, so the idea is that on the first one, innocent until proven guilty is because, you know, we're not real good at knowing absolutely accurately the truth.

Kenneth Vogt (10:44):
So what we gotta do is we gotta create a system where if there's heirs, well, they don't hurt anybody or are they less likely to hurt somebody? So it's better to let a guilty person go free innocent person, go to jail. That's their outlook. In the totalitarian system, their, their outlook is that you're guilty until proven innocent while that means that, you know, we just, we just can't have chaos around here. So therefore it's better to, to punish some innocent people occasionally. So as to not have any criminal element around at all, and then the preponderance of evidence thing is used for civil suits because in that case, there's no real authority on either side. There's just, there's just a, um, a defendant and a plaintiff. And so, you know, one of is right, one's wrong. That's what we're gonna have to decide here. So yeah.

Kenneth Vogt (11:42):
How are you looking at your job? Is everything, is everything good? Unless it's proven to be bad? Is everything bad unless it's proven to be good or do you not, do you have to have a stack of evidence in one direction or another before you decide if you like something or you don't like something. Now these are all, all functional systems in the world and you can choose what you wanna do. But the idea here is that if, if you hate something about your job, that's gonna wear on you. It's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna bother you. It can impact your health. It can impact your relationships outside of your work. It can impact your work of course directly. You know, if you hate doing something, you're probably not gonna wanna do it or you're not gonna do it well. And, and if you're forced to continually do things you hate at some point, you're just gonna break down.

Kenneth Vogt (12:39):
Um, so, so you gotta, you gotta decide, how am I gonna gonna look at this? Cuz sometimes you can't change it. You know, you didn't pick, you didn't pick your colleagues in the lab. So short of quitting your job, this, you work with the people that are assigned to work with you that's that, or, or, um, tasks get assigned to you unless you're in a position of assigning tasks. That's, that's just how it is. And you may be at a point in your career where you're just not gonna get that responsibility. So, so now it comes down to how are you gonna react to your feelings about it? Are you gonna, are you gonna let this grate on you and wear on you and, and really, really tear you down to the point where it starts to impact your work and certainly impacts your happiness in your career.

Kenneth Vogt (13:29):
So here's a question to ask when you encounter something that you just hate about your job and, and by the way, you're not a bad person if that happens to you, it can, it can sneak up on us. So it happens. You realize one day, wow, I really hate working with Sally. So here's a question to ask yourself, what if you just accepted it? That is, you know, what, if you just suspend judgment for a minute, you know what? I'm not gonna worry about whether Sally is good or bad or dangerous or safe, or she's here because of cronyism or nepotism or, or who knows what she's doing here. What if you just suspend that judgement for a moment and said, okay, I'm working with this person. How can I make that work? And you can do that moment by moment. You know, if it keeps arising, you can keep doing that moment by moment, but you can develop a pattern then of releasing that, that feeling about this thing that you have decided you hate.

Kenneth Vogt (14:39):
So you'll no longer hate it. It'll just be, it'll just be a recognized part of the landscape. Sally works in the lab with me. That's how it is. And then since you're, you've constantly released any negative feeling you have about it, you develop a pattern of no longer having that feeling and of constantly releasing it. Now, if you're looking at that and going, well, I don't wanna have to do that. That's just too high a price to pay it. Um, I I'll, I'll challenge you on that. Is it really a high price? Does it actually cost anything? The only thing it costs you maybe a little bit of your pride and your pride is far less valuable than you might think.

Kenneth Vogt (15:28):
You can let it go and it doesn't hurt at you and doesn't cost anything. They're there, that's happening. And, and this is how it is. And once you accept it, well, now you can start, you can start to work out ways around it. You may realize, you know, I don't actually have to work with her as much as I thought I did. I could, we could divide up tasks so that, you know, she does this and I do that. And I don't have to deal with that. Or maybe, uh, other opportunities are arising now that I, that I can take advantage of. I, I can be more proactive about so that I spend less time working with Sally. I, I don't wanna pick on poor Sally here. It's not just about that. I might be a task. It might be, you know, I just hate working with this piece of equipment.

Kenneth Vogt (16:16):
It's old and junky and, you know, whatever that, whatever that is, but that notion of, I hate this isn't isn't reality. It's not a fact, it's a reaction now. It is a fact, okay, this is an old machine. And, and it, it has some problems and that may be true. That's fine, but you don't have to hate it. You know, it's just, it's, that's just there. So you have a choice of how you will feel about it. So this being said, if you had the notion, when you were back in university, that I'm gonna find a job in a lab and it's gonna be the perfect job. Chances out there, uh, chances are you got out there and then you found out there are some harsh realities about any job in any lab working for any boss in any organization, in any field. So that being said, Nick, how was it for you when you worked in a lab? Did everything work out perfect?

Nick Oswald (17:27):
I think, well, I think, you know the answer, but, um, I, it just occurred to me that I actually had a, a very, um, uh, instructive experience here when I was starting out in the lab. I started doing my PhD, but before, um, I started my PhD. I was like, literally the day before I started my PhD, I was working full time in a supermarket. So I had, um, stacking shelves.

Kenneth Vogt (17:56):
You could have been manager by now.

Nick Oswald (17:59):
Well, there is that, but, um, the, I, I, so I was going from a job where I was griping about it every day. And because I didn't like the job, and everyone there was griping about it, about the bits of the job that they didn't like. And I was dreaming of when I get into the lab, it's gonna be great. The next day I went into the lab from the supermarket into the lab, and everyone was complaining about the bits of the job they didn't like. And then before long, when the, the, the varnish rubbed off, I was, um, complaining about the bits of the job. I didn't like. So, um, long story short is that, yeah, that was me. Um, that was my, uh, my perception of it. And, and not everyone, um, was complaining only the ones that were sorting by the negative, as you said there, which is quite an interesting way to look at things. Um, and, uh, yeah, if you, I guess if you look for it, that's what you'll see. If you look for the bits you don't like, you'll see, that's what you'll see. And, and there's also a certain, um, benefit, certain benefit to be derived from complaining. Isn't there? Um, especially if everyone else is complaining, um, then,

Kenneth Vogt (19:15):
Uh, it's camaraderie.

Nick Oswald (19:17):
Yeah. You get the camaraderie, you get the kind of, well, I'm right and they're, wrong thing and so on. And I guess you've got to leave all of that behind, but it's

Kenneth Vogt (19:26):
Well, we need to do an episode on, on being right. That'll be, that'd be a good one.

Nick Oswald (19:32):
Yeah. That was, uh, that the best marriage advice I ever had was, uh, you, sometimes you have to choose between being right and being happy. Well, not sometimes all the time, so, but it's the same for all of your life, but, um, yeah, and also these things, you know, the innocent until proven guilty. That's really interesting. I've never thought of it, of applying that to a situation rather than a person. Is this situation innocent until proven guilty, or am I waiting for it to prove to me that it's not a problem? You know, is it guilty until proven innocent? That's very, or am I judging it all on the evidence? I guess innocent until proven guilty is, is a much lighter way to be.

Kenneth Vogt (20:15):
Yeah, indeed. And, and, you know, the fact is in, in science, obviously you're dealing with evidence all the time, you know, that's that's data, but we, we never have all the data. It just never happens. We, we go on, when we feel like we have enough evidence to at least start making some choices, um, because you don't have time or, or the resources to gather all possible data. So, you know, and, and we have to operate in a world that is got imperfect data. And some data data itself is not even perfect. You know, it's like, well, I've got 10 measurements, but I can only count on eight of 'em being right. I just dunno which eight, you know, you know, you have to deal with that world.

Nick Oswald (21:03):
Exactly. Hmm. So the, so the upshot is that if you're, if the parts that you, of your job, that you don't like then is to look at your, how you're looking at them rather than, um, what they are, rather than trying to wish them away, um, or, or even worse just grate on them all the time, rather than letting them grate all the time, choose a better way to, um, to look at them and, and to, to deal with them.

Kenneth Vogt (21:34):
Obviously. If you've got, if there's something that could be dealt with like, look, this piece of equipment is junk. We have to replace it. You know, you can take a stain for that. But if it's like, look, this is the, this is the piece of equipment we're gonna have. Now what's left for you is to decide how I'm gonna feel about it. Cause if you, if you indulge in these negative feelings, they can be very, very costly to you. And I wanna point out too, that it's, this is only happening in your world. This happens across the board. I had the same kind of experience. I was literally working in a McDonald's and then I got a programming job. It was a dream come true. I got to be a programmer for a living instead of flipping burgers. But, you know, when I look back the McDonald's I worked at had good management and they were good people to work with and they had good equipment. And then I got into this programming job where I worked with some really messed up people. So, you know, it wasn't so obvious

Nick Oswald (22:39):
Plus you have more responsibility and stuff and, uh, you know, you can in the programming job at McDonald's, it's, it's lighter. You, you might get less money, you know? So it's, what's the, what's the, what are you gonna focus on?

Kenneth Vogt (22:53):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, and so my, my, my final point here is to say that this, this notion of, I hate part of my job, well, hate is a choice just like love is a choice. How do you feel about it is up to you now, I'm not telling you to love doing the, those monthly reports, if you don't like them, but you don't have to hate them. There is continuum there, and you could get to a, a more moderate place on the continuum and realize, you know what, I, this is work, you know, work means sometimes doing a few things that are not my favorite things to do, but fine. That's just part of the mix. And you learn things from even those things, those, those tasks. So, so make a choice, how you're gonna look at it. It is up to you. No one has to hate their job. Um, you know, there, there are people that are breaking up rocks and they're whistling and singing while they're doing it, you know, it can be done.

Nick Oswald (23:59):
Yeah. Interesting. Well, I, so the, the bigger, um, the bigger, uh, sort of picture is, and I guess a trap that you might fall into in a career path like science is that you are, there's always an next step and you can always expect the next step to save you rather than you to save yourself now.

Kenneth Vogt (24:22):
Yeah, that's right. So we, we have a lot more say over how we're experiencing things than we sometimes give ourselves credit for,

Nick Oswald (24:37):
Which is good news.

Kenneth Vogt (24:39):
Yeah, Exactly. Take heart. There's hope for you.

Nick Oswald (24:44):
It's just stop doing it to yourself.

Kenneth Vogt (24:46):
Exactly. And when you realize, you know, I'm the one doing this to me, the fact that I got assigned this thing, I don't like, wasn't so bad. It's my making myself miserable, doing it, that's bad. So, you know, yeah. Let yourself off the hook.

Nick Oswald (25:05):
Okay. I think that brings us to, uh, the end of another, a really, um, actionable piece of advice. Please do it. It, it's going to, um, to make a big difference for, for you, if you can. Uh, well, it's gonna make a big difference for me if I can do that. So let's all do it. That's right. So, uh, and again, it's a continuum as well. It's, uh, these are the sort of things you could just try and get 1% better at every day. Um, rather than it's not always possible to just nail it straight, you know, and solve the issue for yourself. Um,

Kenneth Vogt (25:39):
Yes, that, that patnented Nick Oswald "1% better". I love it.

Nick Oswald (25:43):
That's not mine. That's, uh, what's his name? James Altucher

Kenneth Vogt (25:49):
Better James Altucher. I say even better, James Altucher is truly a character. Um, but you know, he, he's not a, he's not a, a, uh, a, a lab trained scientist like Nick, so

Nick Oswald (26:02):
That, I don't know whether that's a good thing or a bad anyway. Okay. Right. So that just leaves me to, before we go remind you about the rest of our episodes, uh, for all, all the other episodes of this, um, wonderful podcast are at bitesizebio.com/thehappyscientist. And you might want to, if you haven't done so already look at episodes one to nine, which lay the foundations of, uh, you know, some of the ways to look at life and look at the structures around you and the people around you, um, that we think would be very helpful for you. It's, it's definitely worth a look if you find this material interesting episodes, one to nine, and also join us at facebook.com/thehappyscientistclub. And, uh, there, you can contact us or send us pictures of your, your, um, pets or whatever you want to do. Um, and yeah, that just leaves me to say again, thank you, Ken, for another great episode. Thank you. And we'll see you for see you next time. All right. Very good.

Intro/Outro (27:10):
The Happy Scientist is brought to you by Bitesize Bio, your mentor in the lab. Bitesize Bio features, thousands of articles and webinars contributed by hundreds of PhD, scientists and scientific companies who freely offer their hard one wisdom and solutions to the Bitesize Bio community.