Doing science is not always a fulfilling experience. It is hard, risky, and time consuming. You also don’t get rich from doing it. So what are some essential ingredients that need to be present for it to be ultimately meaningful and worthwhile? Here I reflect on this question and list a few things that I think are important.

  1. You’re working on high impact problems in an area that you deeply care about. Academia is competitive, and it’s often easy to choose a project or a lab thinking “if I do this, then I’ll be successful”. Personally, I find that over time this way of thinking really eats at my passion, makes science less enjoyable, and detracts me from my real purpose. For what is a successful career if doesn’t change the world in ways that you want?
  2. In the process of doing so, you’re growing as a scientist, either by acquiring new skills or becoming the expert in a key domain that will enable you to solve even bigger problems and have broader impact in your future work. Research is risky and not every project succeeds. However, don’t forget that your growth as a scientist is a project in and of itself, and it should never fail!
  3. You’re learning from an amazing mentor/team who constantly inspire you. Makes the day to day more fun and key to your growth as discussed above.
  4. You’re solving a problem that you are uniquely equipped to solve. I often ask myself: there’s so much progress and innovation happening in science everyday, why is it important that I work on the things that I do? Is there any real way for an individual to influence the trajectory of science? I think one way to answer yes to this question is to find problems that you’re uniquely positioned to solve based on your background, training, or skill set. In other words, you want to find something that, if you didn’t choose to work on this, it probably will not happen for quite some time. Interestingly, this also makes doing something where you’re “racing to be the first” almost meaningless, because then you’re working on something that will happen anyway.
  5. There is a community who also care about the problem you’re solving and benefit from the approach you develop or build on discoveries that you make. This helps amplify the impact of your work.