Mantras & Motivational Quotes

Mantras are short phrases that help calm your mind and keep you focused

“If you find something you really love and think about it all the time and that gives you joy, don’t worry about what’s going to happen.”

James Allison, cancer immunologist. Quote from this Time Magazine article.

“Creativity is not linear”

Sometimes I berate myself for ‘wasting time’ because I worked on something that doesn’t get included in a final product. This mantra helps me remember that sometimes you have to take a detour to get to your destination. I’ve adapted a line from Edward Albee’s Zoo Story to say: “sometimes it’s necessary to go a long [way] out of [your] way in order to [approach something from the right direction]”.

“Be Brave, Be Bold”

This mantra got me through writing up my PhD thesis. To me it means when you think you understand something, you should check with others. Most memorably, there was a time when I said to my supervisor “There are two phases in humans” and she responded “Then we’re reading different papers!” She gave me the reference for the paper she was referring to and I went off to find the sources I was referring to. She was right, all my papers were looking at animal models, not humans, and all the human papers showed the pattern presented in the paper she gave me. That pattern was also depicted in low dose animal challenges, so it helped me understand that natural human infection likely was initiated with a low infectious dose.

“Don’t solve problems you don’t have” or “Only solve real problems”

This made me realize I needed to take on a real project and led to the birth of deepcelllineage.

“Write a lot of 1st drafts (… and 2nd and 3rd drafts)”

I’ve been hearing myself say “Keep it simple” or “start simple and build”, but this is not how my brain works. Instead, like when writing an essay or a journal article, where I start by putting words down on paper, when I code, I need to just start putting code down on the screen. I write way too many words, I am verbose, then I clean it up. The thing about a first draft is that I’m not sure about how everything will fit together. It’s only when I return to it, that I have a better understanding of the subtleties and am better at expressing how they are linked together.

“Refactor, refactor, refactor”

In science, we say “if you do an experiment and it works the 1st time then you’ll have trouble when you try to repeat it”. The first time you use code to carry out a command, you find a way to make it do what you want. The second time you use the same command you probably forgot how you it worked and as you remind yourself, you edit it to make it easier to figure out what it is supposed to do. Refactored code makes it easier to understand your steps and see better ways to process your data.

“I’m busy & it’s exhilarating!”

I love working hard and having the feeling of flow — where I’m efficiently producing while learning.

“Do the most important thing first”

Fit the rest of the things you have to do around the main thing. Visualize the rock, pebbles and sand.