10 Lessons from The Power List (Part 2)

Jonathan V. Sweedler: While I am not sure it is the most memorable, a very useful bit of advance involved collaborative projects. One of my professors in graduate school made the following comment about collaborations. If you are ever unsure if a collaborator has done enough to be a coauthor on your manuscript, rest assured they are not in doubt that they belong. The professor went on to encourage us to have the difficult conversations that many avoid about co-authorship as the questions arise.

Emma Schymanski: Actually for me it’s two pieces of advice that combine to be both memorable and recurrent; I use them repeatedly either in combination or separately – “gather the data” and “pick your battles”. Certainly picking the wrong battle at the wrong time can be extremely energy-draining, as is even the right battle at the wrong time, but I work in an extremely challenging (and as many say at times overwhelmingly depressing) field, and picking the right battle at the right time can be extremely rewarding, leading to great science and novel insights that have unforeseen (at the time) rewards and consequences. “Gather the data” is so true for both research and life: if things don’t seem quite right, or if what’s happening doesn’t match up, gather the data until there’s enough evidence or clarity to make sense of all the inputs in front of you. If you gather enough of the right data, it’s easier to find the right timing for the right breakthrough or action.