Organization and Productivity

How often have you torn apart the lab looking for the reagent you need right now for some thawing samples?  That reagent which you (possibly) ordered a week ago and which (maybe) came in yesterday?  If your answer isn’t “just once in my entire career,” please read on!  I will outline four steps to setup…

Following closely on the heels of Cristy’s article “How to Clean a Waterbath”, I’d like to take a moment to rant about a few other hated (and carefully avoided) lab tasks.  Here are my top ten LEAST favorite things to do in the lab: Cleaning out the vacuum trap – truly gag-worthy…you never know what…

Everybody is different when it comes to how they like to run their work space.  Some people just find a space in the lab and work wherever there’s room, sharing their tips and pipettes, while others like to have a designated area to do their lab work in, with their own equipment. Personally, I much…

Back in 2010, Bitesize Bio’s senior editor, Jode Plank wondered whether the release of the iPad would eventually see us ditch the paper lab notebook in favor of more searchable, organized and legible electronic lab books. Electronic lab books have been around for a while, but the disconnect between the desktop computer – and to…

You get that familiar blue screen or an application hangs, usually one that’s been tanking your memory. No keystroke response.  The deer-in-the-headlight look on your face prompts your colleagues to ask, ‘is everything ok?’ while they secretly laugh at you. Rebooting 27 times will not save you now. Your computer has breathed its last. Even…

Following on from the previous article on Developing your Analytical Skills, this article will be the last in this series and looks at how to properly plan out your lab days and manage your time. Good time management is invaluable for researchers. For example: Imagine finally getting to the end of your cytofluorescence and you’ve been probing for…

A lot of effort is spent on running experiments…and occasionally it can feel like an almost equal amount of effort is spent on administrative tasks! Policy compliance is important for keeping everyone in the lab safe, but it can be difficult to keep track of it all when your primary duties are at the bench.…

Everyone loves a bargain! These days, more and more labs need to stretch every dollar as far as it will go. So how do you keep your lab well-supplied on a tight budget? To get a better deal on products you might choose to shop around, buy in bulk or haggle with vendors. However, if…

In a previous article (Tips for Constructing Lab Databases in Excel by Emily Crow), BitesizeBio readers began a brief, but spirited commentary on the application of using true databases (MySQL, Access, etc.) versus Excel “databases”. While Excel can be quite useful to organize information (for example, an inventory of reagents, plasmids, laboratory items – even…

These days, raw text data sets can be spat out at you from all manner of instrumentation. This automation is efficient, however it can give you a headache when it comes to extracting very specific information from reams of characters and numbers within a raw data file. Brute force (editing or extracting data from the…

Good organization is essential for keeping a lab in good running order.  Databases of strains, plasmids, primers, and stocks are useful for keeping track of your materials, and allow your work to be continued easily after you’ve left the lab.  In this article, I’ll talk about a few tools in Microsoft Excel that will make…

Organising lab meetings, journal clubs and even lab get-togethers can be a bit of a hassle, with emails flying about and spreadsheets coming out of your ears. Luckily, thanks to some nifty, free online tools you can remove the pain of being the resident meeting organiser forever. The best of these at I’ve seen is…

In April 2010, just after the release of the iPAD, Jode Plank wrote an article for Bitesize Bio asking whether the iPAD will replace lab notebooks.  Fast forward a year and a bit, and I’d like to put my head above the parapet and answer the question:  Yes!  With the iPAD now a roaring success,…

Many PhD students conducting their research are not aware of the fact that conducting autonomous research is project management. This assumption is realized by most students only after graduation or in the last year of their studies (a webinar discussing project management will be held this coming May). Because being a technician and a project…

I write regularly about topics related to electronic lab notebooks over on The electronic lab notebook blog. Nick thought it might be interesting for me to do an occasional post on electronic lab notebooks for Bitesize Bio, so here goes! I thought I’d start with a comparison of electronic lab notebooks with wikis and Google…

Research is a challenging field that demands a tremendous amount of skill and dedication.  We are required to be creative but logical, independent but team players, innovative but grounded, proliferative but focused.  This balancing act requires not only a very broad set of skills and talents, but also the ability to manage it all with…

The release of the iPad this week may bring the long-expected replacement of the paper-bound lab notebook by electronic notebooks one step closer. But are scientists, particularly PIs, comfortable with electronic lab notebooks? The rise of the tablets The concept of an electronic lab notebook isn’t anything new, and even the idea of implementing it…

Chances are, in the course of your scientific career, you will encounter a common problem in research: losing time due to someone else’s mistake. Whether the problem is an incorrect strain or plasmid given to you by another lab, incorrectly made buffers or media from within your own lab, or, in the most extreme case,…

A couple of weeks ago, Nick tried to convince us that we should all be using Macs. But why would you want to use a Mac (or a PC) when you could have an operating system that: Is free Does not slow down after a while and limit your productivity Does not need extra antivirus…

Macs are great and there are a lot of reasons I recommend them to anyone who asks my opinion on which computer they should buy. But for bioscientists, perhaps the best reason to buy a Mac is summed up by one word: Mekentosj. Mekentosj is dedicated to producing fantastic software that addresses the needs of…

Rushing and overloading yourself in science is common, even normal. Surprisingly it is considered as an admirable aspect of “scientific flair” in some quarters. And the sad fact is that it is an ingrained part of the scientific landscape. But is this the best way to do things? Should you allow yourself to succumb and…

The manner in which some people orchestrate their daily activities is sheer poetry. Unfortunately, I’m not one of those people. I need help…and lots of it. So I put a lot of thought into managing my To-Do Lists, and here I’ll share with you what I have learned. Most people I know in industry use…

I love that word. Transmogrified. It sounds like something Rob Grant and Doug Naylor, the writers of the sci-fi comedy series, Red Dwarf, would make up. As in, “Kryten and I were transmogrified into another time dimension”. Anyway, enough of 80’s cult TV shows. If you are still with me after the last two articles…

Since you’re a Bitesize Bio reader, you’re well aware that there is an abundance of both broad and specialized bioinformatics tools freely available for researchers – if you know where and how to find them. Recently emerging is a push to combine or link some of the most important concept-related databases as well as create…

Gmail is no longer just an email provider, but is now packed with loads of useful tools that can make your like easier. In this article, I will share some of the Gmail features I have made use of for my work and research. Search your mail and the WWW Google, being one of the…

As far as your lab work is concerned, your lab book is the source of all knowledge. Making it easy to find things in there will help. Here’s how to do it.

Bioscientists are generally nature-lovers at heart, but the average bio lab is incredibly wasteful. Here are some ways to reduce your lab’s environmental impact.

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…

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