Routines AND Flow States IN SCIENTIFIC PROCESSES

I’ve been running my growth chambers for quite some time now, and I near the end of my experimental plan I realized that doing the same tasks over and over leads to some interesting behaviors. Typically, I have a fair amount of variety in my tasks and flexibility of timing, but with the rigorous routine of taking measurements, watering plants, and harvesting I found myself entering a trance of sorts, engaging in borderline obsessive/superstitious behaviors. Sometimes it was a good thing, sometimes it felt like I was missing out or forgetting something, but either way it was interesting behavior I don’t typically observe from myself.

dO IT THE SAME eVERYTIME OR ELSE

Very early on in the experiments I unconsciously locked in certain behaviors. I typically didn’t notice until I had to talk someone through the process of what I was doing or why. There was frequently either no reason for that behavior or I kept doing did it out of fear of causing some kind of difference between the experiments. Even when things might have been easier, quicker, or in many cases change nothing if done a different way I kept doing it anyways. Often in the middle of performing one of these behaviors I found myself relating to those with superstitious or obsessive behaviors. I couldn’t be sure that performing it would improve things, but I was certainly worried about the consequences of if I changed them, something that I wouldn’t engage in normally.

Some examples

The three different uses for the three similar standing desks
Knocking twice on the top of a cylinder after sealing it
Being excited to see plant specimen BG23 in every cycle
Using DI water from a specific source, even though all DI water should be pretty similar and confirmed to be so.
Taking extra time to gently close the chamber doors
Keeping objects in the chambers in the same exact spot for the whole duration
Not returning the razor that could cut tinfoil without ripping
Tinfoil goes shiny side up
- This applies to covering the pots limiting evaporation, not for making conspiracy hats.

Entering a flow state

It wasn’t uncommon during this time for people to exclaim how hard I was working, in reality most days I didn’t even think about it. After the first month or two the only times it felt hard were the labor-intensive days of transplant or harvest. Otherwise, my time was filled with simple rote tasks, to the point that it could occasionally feel like a trance. Arrive, fill water jug, water plants, gather sensors, take measurements, do a little other work, water again, go home, sleep, and repeat. This was rather helpful as this flow state made the days pass with ease, the tasks weren’t difficult or inconvenient as they became a normal part of existence I had accepted. Days to weeks, weeks to months and the growth cycles passed incredibly quickly, but so did everything else.

As beneficial as that mental state was, I noticed that it did have a downside. I managed to avoid abandoning social activities and becoming a recluse, but I found events and socializing outside of the experiment also whizzed by with little effort and during them I didn’t feel as present as I would like. It reminded me of a talk I attended by Rob Ferl about his spaceflight experience. His flight was much shorter than my work and during that short period he was going to perform experiments, conflicting with the rare opportunity of enjoying a spaceflight. In the talk he spent time highlighting this conflict and how he had worked with psychologists before and after to help form and retain memories of the flight outside of the work to be done. I didn’t have that luxury beforehand and didn’t recognize it until a couple months in but was glad to recall that story.

Conclusion

It seemed important to write these observations about my behavior changes down, otherwise sometime afterwards I’ll be asked about this time of my Ph.D. and I imagine the response would be vague. My recollection of everything would be blurred together, all the details dominated by repetitive tasks despite there being plenty of other things that occurred during that time. If you find yourself zoning out of life to get through a long duration task, make sure to take a step back now and then. Time can move quite fast when you are doing so and it would be a shame to miss out just because you weren’t cognizant of the mentality you entered.

Proudly written without large language models

This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0