Just One Thing
Sometimes we get a bit stuck in life, or career, or garnering support for our research ideas. When we’re feeling positive and motivated, we develop a grand plan, I just need to do X, then Y will happen. But somehow when it comes to it, we seem to get stuck in implementing the thing, perhaps self-doubt sneaks in, often in the format of blaming the system, or others, so it doesn’t feel like self doubt. Perhaps we think, peer review will never like this idea, there’s no point even submitting this as a grant application… Often, everything else is always more urgent, so time cannot be found and we think what's the point if I cannot craft the perfect application. But what if we took a different approach, what if we decided to produce the best possible application we could, and then see what peer review thinks of it, rather than making assumptions about the outcome based on zero evidence?
Shifting mindsets though is really difficult, especially in a context where the outcome of a funding application is no, far more often than it is yes! As an aside remember that most of the time the result isn’t because peer review said no, it is because there simply isn’t enough money to fund all the excellent ideas out there. That isn’t to say peer review had zero questions about the proposal, peer review rarely finds everything to be perfect, but the result is usually that the ideas were welcome contributions, and the responses to queries were no less than satisfactory. Therefore, if there was infinite money available, your peers would have liked to see the work go ahead.
But we digress, back to mindsets. A mindset can rarely be shifted simply by deciding that your current way of thinking isn’t serving you and therefore you will think differently. Humans don’t operate like that. We develop mindsets, and thinking short cuts (which include assumptions) to make life easier. The first step is to become aware of these automatic thinking patterns playing out in your own head. Deciding to become aware of these is sometimes all it takes to start to observe them at work in your day to day experience; it's often easier to see the result of a mindset, or a way of interpreting a situation, that it is to be aware of the mindset itself.
Once you become aware of these patterns try using a technique such as Just One Thing to interrupt thought and action. Decide when the unhelpful mindset comes up, what one thing that you will do differently as a result. Don’t over complicate the process, otherwise it will be difficult to create change. One small do differently at a time, then gradually build on that small step, with another, until you have completely overhauled your experience. So, when you catch that mindset coming up, you have already done the hard work of deciding how you will approach it differently and therefore can more easily disrupt the automatic response with a different approach/thought. Here’s an example: I feel nervous in meetings with senior colleagues, so I blurt out a rapid string of words and therefore colleagues find it difficult to understand what I’m trying to contribute. My Just One Thing will be that when I feel nerves building, I will take a deep breath before speaking. That will give my brain time to order my thoughts and therefore when I speak I will do so with more clarity. As an aside, physiologically your body will be better oxygenated so you'll speak with more conviction, but that's for another blog post!
We hope this suggestion was useful, tag Becky on Linked In to let us know if you try it and it helps.
For more 1:1, or specific grant applications support, please follow the links to delve deeper into the ways in which we support the UK research community, or check out our Artemis Project, where we're on a mission to unlock large grants and similar success for a greater number of women!
Good luck!
