Important Versus Doable.

Probably everyone is familiar with Eisenhower’s box:

http://jamesclear.com/eisenhower-box

The meaning of this chart is as follows. There are two types of things: important things, and urgent things. Delegate unimportant and urgent things.

Postpone (or delegate) unimportant and non urgent things. Prioritize things that are important and urgent.

Things that are important and non-urgent are crucial ones. Take care of them on a regular basis.

How Does the Eisenhower Matrix Apply to Scientific Projects?

I think in scientific projects, there are also two dimensions: there are important projects, and there are doable projects. Of course, you should prioritize an important and feasible project over all the other projects. However, I can observe that very few people have an eye for both these virtues at a time. 

Some PIs have a good sense of which research questions could bring some stir into the community, once answered. But the projects might be very hard to conduct in practice.

I know a lot of PhD students feel frustrated for this reason. They have a feeling of working on something important. On the other hand, the odds are so low that eventually, they can easily get stuck and frustrated in the process.

Indeed, according to Levecque et al. (2017), one in three PhD students is at risk of a common psychiatric disorder. 

The other extreme are projects that have a high chance of getting published. These involve a classic paradigm and a standard analysis pipeline.

However, for the same reason, the students feel frustrated as they do not believe the project could contribute something new to the field. They therefore doubt that the project is even important enough to pursue.

How Do You Develop Projects That Are Both Important and Doable?

I was thinking a lot about how to develop projects which are both important and straightforward enough. Such projects would give a high chance of publishing. I guess this is a skill that you can only learn by trial and error.

It takes trying multiple projects, executing them to the best of your abilities, writing them down and sending them out. There are no shortcuts or textbooks there.

The only thing I could share is this. It is often good to incubate the project in your head for some time before it starts.

There is nothing worse than figuring out a random project just because there is an urgent need to propose just something. Moreover, according to Locke and Latham (2002), specific and challenging goals produce better results than vague ones. 

Why Should You Incubate Project Ideas Before Starting?

I use to write down all the half-baked ideas which I might potentially use in the future. And many of these ideas disappear from my list in the process. In the meantime, I realize that the project is just undoable, outdated or would not serve a general purpose.

Conclusion.

Also, with new ideas for projects it is the same as with buying new clothes. You see this pretty dress in the gallery, and you feel excited. You get it and the serotonin just blows your mind…

And then you wake up the next day and often come to a conclusion that it is a very mundane dress. In fact, nothing really special, not even worth its prize. You don’t really understand why you felt so excited about it in the first place.

According to Wilson, Wheatley, Meyers, Gilbert and Axsom (2000) in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people reliably overestimate how long a positive reaction to something new will last. This is largely because they focus too narrowly on that one thing in the moment. 

So, if after a few months the idea still seems the same excitement as at first sight, it is probably a good project to pursue. So, good to just get an idea.

And then sleep with it many times before the final decision on whether to take the project or not. According to Sio and Ormerod (2009) in Psychological Bulletin, a meta-analysis across many studies found the following. Stepping away from a problem for a while before deciding, rather than deciding immediately, measurably improves the quality of the eventual solution.