These days, I clearly observed the bottleneck of my research capability has been moving. I could possibly have two bottlenecks? However, that means I could remove a bottleneck. So I am excited. But my mind is going to blow. I have been reading a lot of papers and writing a lot of proposals. I can’t finish them all. While I seriously think I need to finish one paper one by one. I am so excited. So let’s do the science.
Let me write down the flow of my research.
- Come up with the project I am interested in
- Find or make a large single crystal
- Do the basic property measurements
- Write proposal to perform experiments
- Do the powder diffraction studies
- Do the inealstic neutron scattering studies
- Do the other measurments if we need them
- Analyze the structure, excitation, and others
- Write a manuscript
- Submit a manuscript
Among all processes, maybe the hardest thing is writing a manuscript. I need to do it anyway, I have to spend more time writing every day. So I can finish writing after. This part contributes very much to improving my throughput. That is the hardest and the most important thing a scientist had to do. So I keep working on it.
As I said I could have two bottlenecks. The other bottleneck is now fortunately writing proposals. I have tons of large-signal crystals, which I need to evaluate by reading literature and finding out what we can do about them. I feel really great, I have so many things to do but am excited. I now feel we could open up new series of materials to study. Simply we have too many things to do.
I used to think my bottle was 2. finding single crystal samples. In my field, if we have a good and a new single crystal, you are the king, you can do whatever you want and we can finish the project by writing the paper. So if I get that, I am confident to proceed next few years however now we have too many of them. So we now broke the bottleneck.
So what do I do now? Keep working on these two bottlenecks I have now, writing proposals and writing papers. While also keep working on experiments, data analysis, and cultivations but they are not my bottleneck. So let’s focus on these two bottlenecks. Let’s keep writing!