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$
My First Post Doc Year
25 Dec 2024
(中文版原文連結)
(Translated from the Mandarin version with the help of GPT-4o)
It feels like time has never passed so quickly in my life. It seems like just recently, my friend J and I went to see last year’s Rockefeller Christmas tree, and in the blink of an eye, households have once again put up their Christmas decorations. The light snowfall a few days ago has also added a bit more festive atmosphere compared to the same time last year.
Since graduating last year, I started a postdoctoral position in computational neuroscience at the Flatiron Institute under the Simons Foundation in New York. Although I am still in academia, and I had already interned here during the summer of 2022, looking back at this journey over the past year, I realize that the shift in field and role has unconsciously taken a lot of time and effort to adjust and adapt. Gradually, I started practicing piano less, hardly exercised, and spending all day coding and making figures drained my motivation to learn new things and write.
Switching fields feels like compressing four to five years of foundational training into a single year, while interdisciplinary research feels like learning two to three new languages simultaneously. The loneliness and self-doubt of forging a new path add to the mental challenge. Living in an era of paradigm shifts and widespread restlessness, I have often found myself suddenly realizing that I have spent too much time on trivial matters or being tempted to take shortcuts out of laziness.
However, there have also been many exhilarating moments—perhaps even more than I expected. Every time an experimental simulation matches my predictions, when I suddenly gain a new understanding of a derived equation, when I see students making small progress, when experimental collaborators discover interesting results using our methods and programs, or even when I stumble upon an insightful talk, an interesting paper, or gain new ideas through discussions with collaborators—it all makes the effort feel worthwhile.
Time Management
I still remember back in high school, when preparing for entrance exams, I would meticulously plan my study schedule in one-hour blocks before heading to the library with friends on weekends. I would even specify which pages of textbooks to read and how many practice problems to complete. Looking back, what amazes me most is that I usually managed to stick to the schedule and complete everything I had planned.
Of course, this habit gradually faded in college, especially after I started doing research. I shifted to the other extreme—relying on my intuition to decide what to work on at any given moment. Looking back, I have no idea how I managed to juggle multiple projects. Sometimes, I would get so absorbed in solving a small puzzle that an entire afternoon would pass. I still remember wondering during my PhD why my friend W often needed to watch some videos before starting work. He would always say, “You’ll understand one day.”
Now, I’m not sure if it’s due to aging or a change in my work nature (from abstract logical reasoning to intensive coding and visualization), but W’s words have proven prophetic. I often find myself sitting in front of my computer, wanting to start working but struggling to get into the flow. I need a distraction—eating something, watching a video or the news—before I can begin. The scary part is that once I enter work mode, I also find it hard to detach, only leaving the computer reluctantly when my legs or back go numb. This sensation isn’t unfamiliar, but in the past, I could carry problems in my head while walking or biking; now, my mind is clear, but my hands can’t keep up with coding.
On another note, since I started learning the piano in 2020, even though I’m still not very skilled, I can clearly feel the improvements from practicing for over an hour daily—better finger independence and strength, heightened sensitivity to sound, faster sight-reading, and much more room for growth. A few years ago, I could never have imagined playing like this.
These small, daily accumulations yield visible changes even over short periods. When learning a new (not overly difficult) piece, if I dedicate ten hours to practice, spreading it over a month with 20-minute daily sessions, I can usually play through it reasonably well, even if not at performance level. But if I try to cram all ten hours into a single day—not even considering the risk of hand injuries—it would be a struggle to get through half of the piece. On the other hand, if I only practiced five minutes daily for four months, I doubt I’d achieve the same results as the 20-minute daily approach.
Reflecting on these two observations about time management—when to start and stop work sessions and the cumulative effect of daily habits—I realize I need to rebuild my sense of time to live more efficiently and with better quality. My intuition about time is too constrained by its apparent one-dimensional structure, like a straight river flowing steadily forward. Immersed in it, I can only see the scenery around me, at best trying to peer ahead occasionally.
But anyone who has studied signal analysis knows that analyzing a time series usually starts with Fourier analysis, which, simply put, transforms the time axis into frequency bands for analysis. Looking at a weekly schedule from a time-based perspective feels like a chronological log: “Monday: bagel for breakfast, one-on-one meeting with my advisor at noon. Tuesday: a free day to focus on research. Wednesday: meetings with students, plus an evening seminar to attend…” This approach is great for tracking specific tasks, but when things pile up or scale increases, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture.
Thinking about time from a frequency perspective, however, changes the question from “What tasks must I complete today?” to “How much time should I spend working today?” Instead of “Read 30 books this year,” it becomes “Read for 20 minutes during my subway commute on weekdays and for two hours one weekend afternoon.” Instead of “Publish X papers before my postdoc ends,” it turns into “Allocate a certain percentage of my time each week to different projects.”
Mental Stability
We live in an era of widespread anxiety, where rapid information dissemination exposes us to an unprecedented flood of data. In hunter-gatherer societies, people only needed to know a few dozen or hundred individuals in their tribe. Now, we are bombarded with news and social media, and our brains—which evolved for a much smaller scale of social interaction—struggle to distinguish which information is truly relevant to our lives.
Many of our emotional fluctuations and anxieties stem from misprocessing information. If we see different friends posting vacation photos every day, our brains might mistakenly group them together, creating the illusion that “everyone is always traveling except me, stuck working overtime.” In reality, those friends might only take one trip a year. Similar distortions happen when seeing “Yet another classmate published a paper,” “Someone else had a fancy dinner,” or “That person’s stocks went up again.”
At the same time, the overwhelming amount of information we must process has ironically reduced and rushed human communication. In academia, for instance, it may seem like per capita productivity has skyrocketed compared to a decade or a century ago, but despite technological advances reducing administrative burdens, people now have fewer opportunities for deep thinking and meaningful discussions. The lack of such dialogue leads to asymmetrical information (or in trendy terms, misaligned granularity), triggering a chain reaction of uncertainties and, ultimately, anxiety.
During my studies, perhaps because I was in a familiar field with shared communication styles, I maintained a stable mindset with little anxiety. I used to think mental stability was a form of soft skill—a matter of willpower and discipline. Maybe my baseball team training as a child helped me with this.
Now, looking back at my first postdoc year, I realize that sheer willpower is merely a necessary condition. The real culprits behind mental instability are information gaps, ineffective communication, and misplaced expectations. Especially given the differences in work styles and thought structures across fields, misunderstandings and misaligned expectations can lead to avoidable negativity. Yet, every time I sit down with my advisor or collaborators for a proper conversation, the clouds part, and my worries dissipate.
Mental stability is more crucial than ever in today’s fast-paced world. The root cause of instability isn’t necessarily weak willpower; it often lies in the poor handling of excessive information. My goal moving forward is to manage information better, establish good communication habits, and foster a stable mindset for myself and those around me.
What Does an Ideal Day Look Like?
Maybe it’s the magic of New York, but this past year has felt chaotic, making me lose sight of my ideal day. This Christmas break, cutting my usual 12-hour workdays down to 2–4 hours, practicing piano seriously again, writing and organizing my thoughts, watching movies, reading books, and reviving my sourdough starter—I’ll bake my first loaf in over six months tomorrow. Maybe it’s time to dust off my long-forgotten running shoes too?