by Andrew Marcus
What if you wake up one morning and you realize that you have a superpower? What would you do? If you were a kid getting beat up at school, would you use the power to fight the bullies? If you had a soft heart, would you use the power to heal wounded animals? If you were an athlete, would you use the power to steal the ball from Steph and dunk on KD? If you were an environmental biotechnologist, would you use the power to enrich a plastic-degrading microbial community that produce jet-fuels and balance the global carbon cycle?
Superhero stories have scenes where the hero meets a wise master who takes the hero through a path of discoveries. Miles Morales meets Peter B. Parker (Into the Spider-Verse). Batman meets Ra’s al Ghul (Batman Begins). BSCEB students meet Bruce Rittmann and learn how to balance electrons, to close mass balances, and to harness the power of the Oxford comma. I met Sebastian Marshall early this year to discover my own superpower. Or more accurately, I should say that I found a way to strengthen my superpower, much like an athlete trains and grows muscles in a gym.
On February 9, 2019, Sebastian Marshall, a cofounder and the CEO of Ultraworking, offered a free session of Work Cycles. Work Cycles was advertised as a method used by NASA and Google to boost one’s productivity. While an individual is likely to falter on their own (the myth of a ‘lone wolf’), Work Cycles invite people to work amongst peers and use social accountability to boost their morale.
At 8 am, I clicked on the Zoom link to join dozens of fellow podcast listeners from the US and rest of the world. We were all greeted by Sebastian who started explaining how you can have three hours of intense productivity with Work Cycles. During a session of Work Cycles, attendees fill out three sheets in order. The first sheet is Preparation where one describes what they plan to finish in the next 3 hours. Sebastian explained that, interestingly, most people do not define their desired outcome before they begin working. The ability of people to define good work decays faster than their ability to execute it. Therefore, it is critical that we write down our plan at the start. That day I decided to do some modeling and brainstorming for writing a proposal.
“The ability of people to define good work decays faster than their ability to execute it.”
After 20 minutes of preparation, we moved to the second sheet on Work where we described and did our work. The Work was organized into cycles. During each cycle, we described what we planned to accomplish in enough detail for a peer to understand the task I felt the cycle worked like a game. In the first cycle, I set a small manageable task of looking for interesting papers to review. Once I succeeded, I could write down my accomplishments and pat myself in the back. I found that the cycle sheet was useful for tracking my thought process and defining the next task. After a few cycles of small victories, I was gaining momentum, like a snowball. By the end of the session, I had developed a new model and was more productive in 3 hours than I usually was in a week!
“After a few cycles of small consistent victories, I was gaining momentum, like a snowball.”
The third sheet is Debrief. Sebastian taught us that while many people dwell over their failures, very few of us go back and analyze the factors that enables us to succeed. And, I was ecstatic about Work Cycles!! Therefore, I emailed Sebastian to see if he would be willing to offer Work Cycles for ASU members. Sebastian, being a wonderful human being, said “sure.” So, he hosted a session of Work Cycles for Carole, Isaias, Elie, and Neng Iong. Following this success, we developed a partnership with Ultraworking to make Work Cycles available to everyone in BSCEB. Since then, I have been practicing Work Cycles for 7 months and I am loving it.
I met Sebastian at a time when I was feeling stuck and needed a new way of thinking outside of BSCEB. I imagine some of you may feel this way when writing your dissertation, when experiments are not working, and when a numerical method is not converging. Getting to know Sebastian was integral for me to turn things around and to start honing my superpower: The ability to be kind to myself. As an ambitious researcher, we often set goals that are so large that they are virtually unattainable, at least in the short term. At the end of the day, we often leave work feeling defeated and disappointed not having accomplished the goals we set for ourselves. Work Cycles let us avoid this guilt of under-accomplishment by helping us systematically estimate how much we can do in a day, break down a big goal into smaller manageable tasks, and conquer the tasks one at a time to get activated! With Work Cycles, I always leave work feeling happy and able to give myself a pat on the back for a job well done!
“With Work Cycles, I always leave work feeling happy and able to give myself a pat on the back for a job well done.”
I hope people at BSCEB will take advantage of this exceptional partnership with Ultraworking while it is available. I want you to find your own superpower and the best version of yourself that you can be. Sebastian also has an exceptional podcast on working more effectively. I am sure listening to his podcast will increase your chance of success exponentially. Well, at least that’s my opinion and my experience. But, some of you who are skeptical may ask, do Work Cycles truly give you a superpower? As Miles Morales found, “it’s all a leap of faith.”
Dr. Andrew Marcus is an Assistant Research Professor in the Biodesign Swette Center for Environmental Biotechnology.
