Bioinformatics Zen

Computers and the Internet have made things great for scientists, particularly for us, since our jobs are sitting in front of them analysing data all day. Imagine being a bioinformatician without a computer, multivariate statistics is more of a pain than usual, genome sequence alignments need large pieces of paper. There would however be an upside to this analog dystopia - no more powerpoint presentations. Computers have arguably had a detrimental effect on the presentation of research, they allow the easy creation of big, text heavy slide sets. The emphasis of a talk leans towards the slides, and not the speaker.

Being asked to give a talk is viewed as a dull task: time taken away from research plus the discomfort of public speaking. If you’ve already decided beforehand that it’s going to be a dull, pointless exercise then don’t bother, not only will you be wasting your own time but also the time of everyone watching. It’s true that this is a very critical attitude to express; boring presentations are symptom of our scientific culture rather than the fault of the individual, but how many times have you been sat in conference and thought that you could have been using your time much more usefully? Now imagine, for a second time, a world where we have both computers and great presentations. The chance to give a presentation is greeted with enthusiasm, as an opportunity to teach the world about what you commit most of your time to, and to get valuable feedback on it. But we don’t need to imagine this place, we’re the generation of scientists coming through: the professors and PI of the next 30 years, we can start this revolution now.

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20% time. Ever heard of it? It’s also called Independent Developer Projects. In a nutshell, if you’re lucky enough to work for Google, apart from all the free food, giant colored balls and Californian weather, you get to spend 20% of your time working on whatever excites you. Related to Google’s aims of course, I doubt you can sit at your desk all day painting bananas red. The blurb on Google Jobs states that Google News, Suggest and Orkut all began as 20% time projects. This blog post is an example

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I think simple is better. Statistics says so too. Statistics says that you’ll probably read the first two paragraphs of this post, look at the pictures then go elsewhere. So I’d simply better get to my point. In terms of attention spans, computer code and (statistical) explanations, and possibly everything in general, I think it’s always better to favour simplicity over complexity.

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Scientists have to be left brained, rational and analytical. But at the same time very right brained, inventive and holistic. We produce ideas, and often make a creative leaps to connect previous work and new concepts. Your ideas are part of you as a scientist.

If like me, you’re a touch obsessed with your work, you probably think about it everywhere. Maybe you talk abut it with your partner over dinner? How about standing in the shower running things through your head? But how often have you come up with an idea that you’ve quickly forgotten?

For me, writing down every idea I have has been one of my most worthwhile habits. I find that writing down ideas is an activity that gets better with practice. By giving my creative side the attention it deserves, I find that I become more confident in making that important leap - good ideas come more frequently.

Have a hard copy of your ideas is also very handy when you hit a dead end, you’ve got plenty of material for new inspiration.

Here’s three different example systems I’ve used for storing ideas. All have a huge following as a method for keeping organised. I’ve included a link to more information on each.

Moleskine
A little black book with a folder at the back, and a strap to keep it closed. Hard wearing and a pleasure to write in. Looks pretty cool too. It was in my moleskine that I sketched out my ideas for Bioinformatics Zen. Just don’t lose it though.

Hipster pda
A set of cards held together by a bulldog clip. This has a huge following in the GTD community. Once you’ve written an idea you can pull the card out, leave it on your desk, and process it when you’ve got more time. Well worth giving a try - mine cost 30p to make.

Index cards
Slightly more tricky to carry a box of index cards around. More useful in the office. I’ve got a wall next to my desk covered with index cards, each with a single idea on. Handy when you’re writing documents and need to refer to something you thought of a while ago.