Why Keeping Your Options Open Is Holding You Back
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 doctor Nick Oswald, PhD, bioscientist, and founder of Bite Size Bio.
Nick Oswald:Hello. This is Nick Oswald welcoming you to this Bite Size Bio webinar, which today is a live episode of the Happy Scientist podcast. If you want to become a happier, healthier, and more productive scientist, you are in the right place. With me, as always, is the Bite sized Bio team's mister Miyagi, mister Kenneth Voke. In these sessions, we'll hear from Ken mostly on principles that will help shape you for a happier and a more successful career.
Nick Oswald:And along the way, I'll touch in with points from my personal experience as a scientist and from working with Ken. If you have any questions along the way, put them into the questions box on the side of your screen, and I will put them to Ken. And today, we will be discussing why keeping your options open is holding you back. Okay, Ken. Take it away.
Nick Oswald:Alright.
Kenneth Vogt:So the notion of having options, doesn't that sound wonderful? I would love to have more options. Seems like options are the source of freedom. That's there's just nothing bad that could possibly be there. Right?
Kenneth Vogt:Not so much. Not I know that may sound a bit provocative, but give me a chance to to talk about that and also to talk about what the solution is to the problem you may not even know you have yet. So the first thing about options that you have to do is you have to decide which option you're gonna take in any given moment. Right? So, that word decide, it's kind of an interesting word.
Kenneth Vogt:If we take it apart, the the suffix is side, and you're gonna recognize side from other words that have that as a suffix, like homicide, suicide, fratricide. What does side mean? Well, it means to cut off. So when you decide, you cut off your options. Oh, that sounds horrible.
Kenneth Vogt:So wouldn't it be better to just to hang on to those to those options? Because, you know, then I have possibilities. Right? That's that's the notion. Well, not exactly.
Kenneth Vogt:What people end up doing in that that situation is they hoard their options. They think if I have more options, things are better. So there there are, half a dozen projects I could be working on. There are there are 3 or 4 initiatives that I could sign up for. There are multiple opportunities for jobs.
Kenneth Vogt:You know, I could work in this lab or that lab or this other lab. I could take this this, lateral promotion that puts me in a different area. And and what we do is we we spend our time pondering all of those things and fantasizing about them. Like, wow, wouldn't it be great if I went over and joined this group or I moved to this lab? Wouldn't it be wonderful if I ran this particular experiment or that one?
Kenneth Vogt:Or what if I did both? And so now what we start doing is we start stacking up these things that are, that feel real, but they're not real. They haven't happened yet. They're just possibilities. But we're giving ourselves all kinds of warm fuzzy feelings from all the stuff we might do, that we could do, that it's possible we'll do.
Kenneth Vogt:The problem with all this stuff is none of the possibilities make it onto your resume. That the lab you didn't join, although you could have, doesn't count. The the program that you didn't participate in doesn't count until you participate. Nothing happens there. Yep.
Kenneth Vogt:And so, then we become we become a hoarder of of options. And, you know, maybe you've seen some of these reality TV shows of people that are caught up in that kind of behavior. And it's heartbreaking, and it's painful. They they think they're improving your life. They think they're making things richer, but they're doing exactly the opposite to the point where you get so frozen in possibilities that you never pick any.
Kenneth Vogt:You never do anything to actually move forward. Now that's a dangerous place to be. At some point, you have to actually commit and do something. That's the that's the stuff that allows you to have future opportunities. If you don't wanna have any more opportunities other than ones you have right now, don't make any decisions.
Kenneth Vogt:Don't pick any. And that's it. Your your opportunities will start to dry up. And and that's a real problem. So there's a there's an interesting, historical account about Cortez.
Kenneth Vogt:Cortez lands in Mexico, and he he knows his crew is exhausted from the long journey, and he wants to motivate them to succeed in this new land. So he orders them to burn the boats. Right? And, you know, we've probably heard that that, account before. But why does that work?
Kenneth Vogt:Because it took away their possibilities. They couldn't sail off to somewhere else. They couldn't sail back home. They had to make it here now with what's going on in this moment. And, well, arguably, it worked.
Kenneth Vogt:And it allowed them obviously to make very hard choices. And I'm, you know, I'm not, you know, standing for colonialism or or the the conquistadors, but but the point is is that we are in settings like that every day ourselves. We have to make we have to make some decisions, And we gotta gotta take some something from among our choices and actually start doing it and actually make it reality. And in so doing, that means other things are going away. Now sometimes they go away just because you don't have time right now.
Kenneth Vogt:But, other times they go away because because they had a short shelf life. Sometimes an opportunity presents itself to you, and it's if you don't take it now or at least take it soon, it'll be gone. Now if there's a job opening somewhere, it'll only be open till it's filled. Right? If there's an opportunity to put your hand up and say, I wanna run that experiment, I wanna take charge of that program.
Kenneth Vogt:If you don't say yes to it, chances are someone else will, and then it's no longer there for you. So the bottom line is not now what do I do? Well, what you do is you choose your priorities. Now that's a that is a different thing than choosing among your options. Choosing your priorities is it it creates the opportunity for what will happen next.
Kenneth Vogt:Because if you have a variety of options in front of you and you don't know what to do, Well, if you don't know what to do, it's probably because you haven't selected your priorities yet. So if you select your priorities and then use that as a map for a while what would fit into that? Well, I wanna make sure I move up in this particular lab. I I would like to become a PI here. Well, then you start seeing opportunities to say, what will help me with that?
Kenneth Vogt:Well, that won't. That will. Well, now it's clear. Well, that first one might have been fun, might be interesting. But if it doesn't help you in your career advancement and that is something that you care about in this moment, then then you need to choose other things.
Kenneth Vogt:Now it's not to say that everything you do has to be about career advancement. Sometimes you are there because you just enjoy the work. And so you wanna do work that's exciting and stimulating, and maybe maybe you wanna work with certain equipment. Maybe there's maybe there are things you wanna develop with your own hands. Those are fine priorities.
Kenneth Vogt:Just be be clear about them. Be be aware what your priorities are. If if you take a close look at your priorities, you might examine them based on the choices you've made up till now. So it would appear that my priority has been to to make it as easy on myself as possible. My priority was just to have fun.
Kenneth Vogt:My priority was just to do things I think are interesting. My priority was to do things by myself. My priority was to do things with other people. No. None of those things are necessarily bad.
Kenneth Vogt:But if they're not if they're not chosen with awareness, then what your options are, they look different. And sometimes, once you have clear priorities, some options just go away. And not go away in that they're snatched away from you, but you look at them real as they never really were an option. Based on my priorities, that's not of any value to me whatsoever. So it clarifies things.
Kenneth Vogt:It makes it easier to pick what you need. And it also makes it clear, like, wow. I don't like the options that are available to me right now. Or I don't have any options available to me right now. Well, when you see that, that allows you to then take a good hard look and say, do I need to make a change somehow?
Kenneth Vogt:Do I do I need to improve my reputation? Do I need to be somewhere else? Do I need to be around different people? You you start to find out that some sometimes people you're hanging out with, you enjoy them, but they're not helping you advance in your career. Sometimes you realize that the way things are has to be different if you're gonna get where you wanna go.
Kenneth Vogt:And you won't know that until you you really focus your awareness on what your priorities are. So, Nick, I will, ask you. What do you think about the notion of keeping your options open?
Nick Oswald:It's pretty interesting actually because I I've given a quite a lot of career talks from my own perspective on on not getting too fixed on one option and not can not getting too fixed on here's my path, and, and I'm not gonna consider anything else. And then freaking out when you can't get there. And I'm just trying to ponder on that and I I was as you were saying talking there. And and I think that I think that it's kind of a yin and yang type thing. So there's one thing.
Nick Oswald:There's one moment to keep your options open and assess them from where you are now, where, you know, the the approach that I take when I speak to people about careers is look look at where you are now. Look at the general direction you would like to go in. Take a step to go in that direction, but keep your eyes open for the the variety of options because then you can branch off into a different way and a different pathway, that you might not have been able to see and, and, you know, in the beginning. You see what I mean? So one example one is example is how I came to do Bite Size Bio.
Nick Oswald:I didn't do that. I didn't decide, at some point I was gonna do that. It came up as an option based on me following a particular path. But I what you're talking about is quite interesting. It's at the moment that you make the decision of burning all the other bridges, and that's quite an interesting one is to because that's then a more masculine thing.
Nick Oswald:It's about energy focused decisions and generating momentum. Yeah?
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. Definitely.
Nick Oswald:And so if you're trying to relate that to someone who like, say you want to take the classical scientific path. You want your, your your in grad school or your postdoc, and you're you want to be at the top research wise. You want to be a a top level researcher, and, that's where you want to get get to. And 1 and 1 and your, you know, your school of thought there, it's about burning the bridges and doing all of the things that it takes to get you there, committing. Yeah.
Kenneth Vogt:Sure.
Nick Oswald:But in the other school of thought, there's also the option to, while you're going, just stop every so often, have a look around and say, is this right for me? You know, are there am I now at a stage where there are other options that are more appealing? Yes, no. Right. If it's yes, then refocus and off you go again.
Kenneth Vogt:Well and and that's kind of my main point is when you take those moments to just consider what possibilities are available in in this moment, that's that's fine. Yeah. And and it feels good to to ponder that stuff. But if all you're doing is daydreaming and fantasizing, nothing happens. At some point, you're gonna have to pick one of those new options and do it.
Kenneth Vogt:And and I agree with what you're saying it is kind of a masculine thing, and that's not to take away from from any woman in science. Women have masculine energy too. They'll they, you know, they just use it different than men do. And I mean, that's a broad statement, but, sometimes you need to do the the masculine thing. Sometimes you need to do the feminine thing, the nurturing, the the receiving part, and that's fine.
Kenneth Vogt:But understand that when it comes to your options, just keeping them open doesn't do anything for either kind of energy. Nothing is happening there. Nothing is being brought into reality. Reality happens after you pick one of your choices, because then then something starts to happen, and it doesn't always turn out perfect either. Sometimes you you start something, you're like, woah.
Kenneth Vogt:That didn't that didn't go as easy as I hoped it would. In fact, didn't go the way I wanted it to at all. Well, that happens. That's one of the one of the costs of making choices among your options. And sometimes, that means other options that were available when you made your your decision are gone now.
Kenneth Vogt:That happens. And that's just that's that's a price you have to accept when it comes time to to make your choice. You can't probably be employed in 2 labs at once. You know? So when you pick 1, the other one may well go away.
Kenneth Vogt:That option may not be available to you anymore. Now sometimes you can you can hang on to your other options for a bit or even for a long time. You know? So it's not like making a choice is gonna mean that you're you're doomed. Everything else is gone forever.
Kenneth Vogt:You know? Well, maybe, maybe not. So it's just about being aware when you when you have to pick up an option and take it from from just a thought into a reality. You know? Then then it becomes a different game.
Nick Oswald:Yep. So I suppose if I look at my if you look at my own my pathway, professional pathway as an example, right, then and so I was all set to be a PI. That's what I want to do. I want to go up to the top and research. And I discovered a small detail that I didn't like academia after the end of my, my, after grad school at the end of grad school.
Nick Oswald:And so it was I committed to the to grad school, got to the end, you know, and did the, you know, the burn the bridges thing. This is this is all what I'm doing. Funny enough, I did think about stopping and doing something else, but that was a big energy diffuser. That that that that took away a lot of focus, so that's the kind of the premise you're talking about here, I guess. At the end of that, then I got to the, I I realized I didn't want to be in grad school anymore.
Nick Oswald:So, I didn't want to be an academia anymore. Sorry. I had the PhD, so I wanted to stay in science. I wanted to go into biotech. So I did that.
Nick Oswald:Committed to that. After 7 or 8 years of that, I decided I would much rather be in publishing, but I didn't know how to do that. So, I just started writing, and that was the blog that turned out to be Bitesize Bio. I didn't know that at the time. But at some point I then made a commitment that Bitesize Bio was gonna be a business.
Nick Oswald:And, and so each of those is this the flip between the you have a a course, you commit to that, and then you make a decision, and then you commit to that decision. And then so there's there's 2 there there's there's a, a decision phrase, a very short decision phrase, and then a commitment phase, it looks like to me. But I I hadn't thought of the idea of of, you know, your, that once you've made the decision, then then burn the boat. Sure. Because if you can't if you are in Mexico or was it Mexico?
Nick Oswald:Yeah. It was Mexico. Yeah. In Quinta, wasn't it? And Mhmm.
Nick Oswald:You and you have a an a really hard job of of setting up there. And you keep most likely looking back at the boats that could take you back to the stuff you know. That's gonna take a lot of energy out there. It's gonna take a lot of energy out of you. A lot of focus.
Nick Oswald:And potentially lead to a rebellion in that that crew, you know. And Right. And I guess the same thing happens with you and yourself. If you keep looking back to past years old or or past years new even, you know, then you keep looking over the fence. The grass is always greener, and it just that's all taking energy away from what you could be committing to.
Nick Oswald:Sure. You know, energy could be committing to the cost. Is that the central premise that you're talking about?
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. And, you know, there's there's another side to this. The the shadow side of this is when you decide not to take an option. So let's say you you've chosen this particular path, but if you'll still leave everything open, like you say, it's still just it's you can look over your shoulder and and wistfully wonder what would happen if I do that instead? Whereas if you decide, no.
Kenneth Vogt:You know, one thing I'm for sure, I'm not gonna do x anymore. X is no longer an option for me, And it clarifies things. It just it just clears the air a bit. And sometimes we look at that and it's like, I guess I gotta give that up. You know?
Kenneth Vogt:It's a painful loss. Other times, it's like, you know, it's just a distraction. I want this gone. Yeah. You can you can choose how you feel about these options.
Kenneth Vogt:And and it doesn't mean you don't have to demonize anything. You're like, well, that's a stupid option. I'm not gonna do that. And and and that is a a immoral option. You know, I can't do that.
Kenneth Vogt:And, you know, it's just you're gonna choose. And that's it. That's where you're gonna go now. Because that's the new reality. Reality is where you get to do things.
Kenneth Vogt:Other things are just I'm gonna say just fantasy, but they they haven't they haven't yet gelled into reality. And it's, it's not the same world. You know, that unmanifest stuff is quite interesting. And, and it's good to ponder things. It's good to contemplate in, you know, in in your business, you do need to think outside the box.
Kenneth Vogt:And outside the box is outside of reality. Right? But at some point, it's you gotta you gotta take that, whatever you gained from that, and bring it to reality because reality is is the actual job you have. It's the actual assignment you have. It's the actual experiment you're doing.
Kenneth Vogt:You know, it's something that that that could be put on paper that this is what happened. It's it is it is gonna become a host a historical event. And and if you don't ever have any history, you don't have any resume. You don't have any resume. You don't have any future.
Nick Oswald:There's a quote. Yeah. Okay. I'm guessing I'm just trying to think of examples, but of where people will have felt that commitment and and can feel the difference. One very simple one is if you look at those people who are, you know, those internal student people where they where they they do a course and then they do another course.
Nick Oswald:And then, well, that one would be good. Oh, and then and then they just collect lots of stage 1 experience if you like. Because they never commit to go deeper into one area. I don't know what what drives that. It's just it it I don't know.
Nick Oswald:But and and it's not a judgment on it. It's just that if you then, you know, everyone on here presumably has has, done some level of scientific training and then decided they're gonna go deeper down one one line. And that that is what then starts to open up different doors, and actually then that's when you really start living and moving up to different light. Not start you're not you're still living as a student. But that's when you really start start living that journey if you like.
Kenneth Vogt:Right. And some things just won't. Your your your future options won't appear until you till you start making some decisions and move forward.
Nick Oswald:Okay.
Kenneth Vogt:So right now, you have you have the options you have, but you're gonna have more options in the future. But only because you decided on some past options, and it started to take you down a path. So you can't just sit there and wait at the crossroads and hope that they're gonna build new roads to you. It's not gonna work like that. Yep.
Kenneth Vogt:Yep.
Nick Oswald:And I guess, what what are the things that drive people to not make those decisions? It's it's fear of the unknown. It's, you know, that's probably a big one, actually. Yeah. That's for sure.
Nick Oswald:Fear of the next step, generally fear, and or some sort of uncertainty or indecision in a way. Is that Mhmm. Not true?
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. Well, I'm we've all had that experience our entire lives. They were just more childish experiences when we were when we were a child or when we were children. But, you know, the fact is you learn to walk because it never crossed your mind to not be a walker. You learn to talk because it never crossed your mind to not be a talker.
Kenneth Vogt:That pattern is already there, it's already built in, and you've already succeeded at it. The fact that you've gotten as far as you've gotten in your education already says that you've been choosing among your options and taking action. Well, now just keep going. Now it's the next phase. And it's always been about the unknown.
Kenneth Vogt:In fact, the unknown that you don't have to be afraid of it. You can be excited about it. I wanna see the unknown. I wanna get in there. I wanna I wanna see what's going on.
Kenneth Vogt:And and that's where all the juice in life is gonna come from. And, yes, sometimes the experiences will be hard. Sometimes you will lose, but it doesn't have to kill you. And you can protect yourself. You've got again, you've gotten this far and protected yourself to this to this point.
Kenneth Vogt:You you're gonna keep doing that. You're gonna be alright.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. Just a quote to me there actually that, I always have a a bit of a struggle processing when people talk about getting in you know, don't stop getting in your own way. You know? And what we're talking what you're talking about there is well, as a child, you don't get in your own way. You just do it because you don't you've got no other frame of reference.
Nick Oswald:You don't know what might go wrong. Right? Right. As you as you become more and more
Nick Oswald:experienced, you think you know more and more of what can go wrong, and, and that can drive you to get in your own way of making the the necessary next step of just taking the rest. And, you know, you see that in people who stay in the same place for a long, long time even though it's over ripened for them.
Nick Oswald:You know? I like that phrase. But but they've taken they've taken the path has not become optimal for them, but they're too scared to make of what might go wrong if they make the next step. And as you say, that that's that's where the juice is, is is looking for, you know, looking for the next I wouldn't even say the next level. What's the next challenge?
Nick Oswald:You know? And, I'm I'm just a bit fascinated by this kind of this this sort of tension between between looking at the options and then committing to an option. Because if you're in the job that you've been in for 15 years that is not fulfilling anymore, that that, you know, you hate everything about it, but you're too scared to move, then you're playing it like you you will play it looking at all the options. You maybe even just in a kind of fantasy way. What what's next this mix of the fire to go this?
Nick Oswald:Let's take the risk regardless. On the boats, let's see what happens.
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. I have a friend who is a a anesthesiologist. So, obviously, she's an MD. She's been doing this now for 20 some years. So she's been through all the education.
Kenneth Vogt:She's now she's had all the experience, and she got to she's gotten to the point where she's thinking, I think I'm done with this. I don't wanna be I don't wanna be an anesthesiologist anymore. She still goes to work every day, does her job. She very much cares about helping people, but she can feel that it's time to do something different. So, yeah, she's gonna she's gonna have to jettison all this investment she's made to get into where she is now, and I think a lot of a lot of scientists can relate to this.
Kenneth Vogt:You put a huge amount of investment into getting getting your degrees. And now you've if you've been in the lab for a while, you've put in a huge investment there. And what now? I'm supposed to open up a Subway restaurant? You know what?
Kenneth Vogt:Why would I do something completely different? Well, who knows? Who knows why you would do something different? Why you might make a a lateral shift or a shift with different kind of work in science, like what Nick described. You know, he was on the path of being a PI, and all of a sudden that shifted.
Kenneth Vogt:And now he's been for these last, what, 12, 13, 15 years being a publisher, but in science. So he didn't he didn't throw away what he had from the past. He found a new way to build on it, but that's something that might not have been in his awareness at all when, you know, he was first working on getting his his, bachelor of science in biology. Right? It it only arrived later after he continued to choose among his options.
Nick Oswald:Have had a similar journey of going from being a specialist to, you know, not a generalist, but going to some that's not within that specialism?
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. That's for sure. And I would have never guessed that, and I wouldn't have chosen it earlier in my career.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. Right. The funny thing that that it taught me this taught me was that I thought that, being a scientist is about knowing lots about science. Right? And it isn't.
Nick Oswald:It's it's about a way of thinking, and a way of conducting yourself, and a way of driving yourself, and you can use that for lots of other things as well. And, you know, it get it sets you up for a lot of other I keep looking at these tracks on the screen, actually. It it sets it sets you up to go down either power down either of those tracks that can have completely different destinations. Yeah. Depending on what you apply it to.
Kenneth Vogt:I I like that illustration because the left or the right, they look the same. There's nothing about in one path over the other that looks obvious that I obviously, the the left side is better. No. That's not obvious here at all, and it won't be obvious until you go down the track and see where it leads.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot there's a lot to this, actually, and and this is just one angle that you've looked at here, which is about how do you take the step, how do you power such a change and such a how do you how do you power going deep into something? And that's it. It's interesting.
Nick Oswald:Because even though I would consider myself I've gone deep into some I can still see where I don't run the bridges. And so, okay, what can I prune away? What the choices can I prune away to leave myself with nothing to focus on except going deep into the most important parts of it? And that that's something that everyone can everyone can take regardless of what position they're in, I think.
Kenneth Vogt:Yeah. Options can be a weight on you. You have to keep managing them. You have to keep feeding and watering them. You know?
Kenneth Vogt:Or if it's gone, then I have to think about it again. It's over. And
Nick Oswald:they they feel so safe, though. It feels so nice and comfort comforting to have them.
Kenneth Vogt:Well, but that's an illusion because they're not real yet.
Nick Oswald:That's true.
Kenneth Vogt:The things that are safe are the things that you have actually put into practice. Now that's the stuff that that's the stuff that is providing safety, the possibility of the future. I mean, I'm not anti possibility. Don't get me wrong here, but but we have to understand that possibilities in reality are not the same thing.
Nick Oswald:Yeah. Motion is the safest way, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it?
Nick Oswald:Motion towards an intention is the safest way. Oh, there's a quote. So I'm just thinking about when we start working together, and what I wanted to do was was, you know, you we work together. You helped me with to to, stabilize Bite Size Bio as a business. And and what I desperately want to do was to make it safe and make it a level that I could understand, and and it was in a box, and that was all good.
Nick Oswald:And one of the things she taught me very early on is that standing still is not safe. You need to keep you you need to be moving to an upward trajectory, and that's where the motion is. It's also where the bumps are, but that's why that's why life can be challenging. And then overcoming the challenge, that's where you get more experience and all that stuff.
Kenneth Vogt:Well, yeah, all you biologists out there, isn't that one of the ways you assess that something is alive and healthy is that it's moving? If it's not moving, you wonder if it's dead. Right?
Nick Oswald:Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. No. That's this went off on a tangent actually, but, it's, I think that I think it's a great topic, and, and hopefully people get, get some get some in insight in into it from yourself because I think this is literally applicable to any any, any position, anyone in any position.
Nick Oswald:It's that thing of if you look at someone else and think that they don't have to, you know, in their position, they don't have to burn the bridges and go deeper, then it's because in order to go deeper and and to to stay stay living that they have to that the best thing they can do is go deeper then. It's probably an illusion because you can't see you you can't it always looks better when you look at someone else's life. And, I think everyone in any position can take something from this and go, how can I make this easier on myself by giving myself less choice?
Kenneth Vogt:Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I'd say that's a good, good breaking point, and we've given people something to ponder, and we've shown some application. So let's see what y'all do with it in your world.
Nick Oswald:Okay, Kane. Thanks for that, wonderful insight. So hopefully that sparked some, ideas or realisation or questions for you. And if you, if you have questions that you would like to ask us about it, you can, do it via the the contact page on Bite Size Bio or by the Happy Scientist Facebook page, which is Facebook forward slash The Happy Scientist Podcast. And don't forget to go back and look at if you find this useful, go back and look at our, previous episodes, which are on, on YouTube, and they are on, your favorite podcast platform as well.
Nick Oswald:So until then until next time rather, good luck in your research and goodbye from all of us at Bitesize Bio, including mister Miami.
Kenneth Vogt:Okay. Bye
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