Multi-tasking used to be my favourite way to get ahead.

During my PhD I saw others around me working extremely long hours in the lab and not really having much of a personal life and quite early on I made the decision that this was not for me.

Although I enjoy my work, having a good life outside the is also very important. Also, I found that if I worked very long hours then I tended to be far less efficient overall.

But, I still wanted to get through as many experiments as possible. So I also made the decision that my approach would be to work a regular 8 hour day and be as efficient as possible during that time. My basic recipe for an efficient working day was: Read more »

• Do you *really* know what you’re doing when you search for articles in PubMed?
• Are you familiar with Boolean operators?
• What does “MeSH” mean to you?
• Can you locate (and use) the Limits tab? History? Details?
• Have you set up automatic updates with MyNCBI?
• Do you know how PubMed relates to the other NCBI databases?

If you’re like me (before I wised up to the search power of PubMed) you probably just type in your topic of interest and press Go. And then you get back about 8 billion results, which—this is just a guess—is far more than you’re likely to read.

Here are a few basic tips to help you get the most out of your PubMed searches without wasting a lot of time slogging through pages of results, thus getting you back to the bench ASAP. Unless, of course, you’re avoiding the wet lab…not that I’ve ever used literature searches and background reading as an excuse to step away from the PCR machine… Read more »

One view on the aim of graduate studies towards a PhD is to foster critical learning and thinking habits, much more so than to simply learn facts. You’re supposed to learn how to “think like a scientist,” or develop and mature your intellectual behaviors in the discussions of difficult concepts (AKA, problems).

“Habits of Mind are the characteristics of what intelligent people do when they are confronted with problems, the resolutions of which are not immediately apparent,” (Costa & Kallick, below the fold). Read more »

Are you a visual, aural, read-write or kinesthetic learner?

If you don’t know, it could be a good idea to find out. Changing the way you learn, study and take notes to suit your learning tendencies can allow you to learn faster and make your newly-acquired knowledge stay with you for longer. Read more »

Happy New Year to all of our readers! We are back, refreshed and raring to go after our holidays and hope that you are too. In the coming year we hope that Bitesize Bio will be your indispensable companion, bringing you articles that keep you informed on the best literature, products, tech tips, news and views in molecular and cell biology.

The start of the new year is always a good time to reflect on where things are going and how they can be improved, so I thought it would be good to start off with some points I will be addressing this year to give my career and practices a bit of an overhaul for 2008. I hope they will also be food for thought for you - so please feel free to comment on them, or share your own new year’s resolutions. Here are 5 areas I will be focusing on to maximize my results this year, I will…

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For most scientists, writing their PhD thesis will be one of the most time consuming and complicated individual tasks they ever undertake. In my experience, the most common approach taken by students is to bury their head in the sand, get on with the research and only start thinking about the thesis when they absolutely have to, as the end of their PhD approaches. This obviously works, but it generally leads to a very stressful few months (yes, months) of writing. But it doesn’t have to be that way, with the right approach you can make the whole process much easier - here’s how: Read more »

As scientists, we have to keep up with new research coming out and follow the journals. We all have our preferred way of doing so though. Sporadic searches on Pubmed are one way, or weekly email updates on specific search terms (also offered by Pubmed) are another. Alternatively, there’s Hubmed for RSS of Pubmed updates, and many more options besides.

Using search terms narrows your attention however, so I prefer simply browsing around my favorite journals online. I get a broader sampling of current research that way - which may not be of concern for the average scientist, but for a blogger, it’s often more productive for finding topics to blog on in the peer-review literature.

Some of my favorite journals, below the fold (feel free to add to the list in the comments!): Read more »

No matter how efficient you are, it’s always possible to improve your productivity and improving your productivity means that you get more of the rewards you are trying to obtain: results, publications… or dare I say it, money.

Here are 20 ways to improve your productivity. Some are focussed toward improving the productivity of bench research, but most are applicable in many other jobs. This list is based on much longer general list that can be found at Steve Pavlina’s excellent personal development website. Read more »

During a research project, how do you record your data, conclusions and the samples you produce? What about ideas, insights and thought-trains? It would be very useful to have a good system to easily store all of these valuable products of your work and retrieve them when you need to look at your data or your thoughts on a particular problem weeks, months, or years later. Read more »

Talented, enthusiastic scientist required. Must have good organizational skills.
Do you fit the bill? With the pace of molecular biology and biochemical research quickening year on year, the importance of good organization and planning skills for researchers is becoming increasingly important. Here are 5 ways to ensure that your data is organized and easily analyzed, samples are safe and accessible and your project is carried out efficiently. Read more »