How To Be the Best Version of Yourself

This page has been adapted from the Essential Skills section of the Grittings website. It echoes and outlines a certain credo I am trying to live by, and I include it since it is exactly that advice I would love to give to my younger self.

Work. Work. Work. Do a calculation a day to keep bad spirits away.
Be punctual. Nobody likes to wait. If you value other people’s time, they will return the kindness.
Read. Read a lot. A huge part of a student’s (or, a researcher’s) job is spent reading. I have seen good researchers starting their day checking the arXiv. Check the arXiv daily and read (at least) a paper per day. You don’t need to understand every detail of the work in question. As you read, try to understand the problem that the authors are addressing, why the problem is interesting, and how the authors are solving the problem. Trying to get the gist of the argument is of essence. Even if this is not immediately clear to you at the time, it will provide you with important tools for your work. Knowing what to read is a learning process. Be active during journal clubs. Finally, checking good pop science magazines can help you in catching important works you missed.
Discuss. There’s a lot of clever people around you. Pick their brains and force them to pick yours.
Attend Journal Clubs. If you can’t find one, start one yourself. If you are interested in GR, here’s a reading list curated by Prof. Emanuele Berti, and you can grab the pdfs from the Grittings website.
Read some more. Make it a point to read books that lie outside your so-called specialisation. There are tons of great books, amazing works of fiction and non-fiction. Read about the lives of those who succeeded in making a dent in the universe without much hubris. Keep exploring and expanding your mind. Do not forget to understand humanity in your quest to understand the universe.
Be consistent. To quote the Jogging Baboon from BoJack Horseman, It gets easier. Every day, it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day -that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.
Nobody cares. Work harder. Don’t close yourself in your little bubble. There’s a whole wild work out there. If you’re a theoretician, learn numerical methods and data analysis. If you’re a data analyst, learn the theoretical basis of what you’re doing. Learn new tools, new methods, learn. You’ll soon be rewarded.
Keep reading But eventually try to think of something new and then write it down.
On a more personal level,
- always compliment people
- be kind and respectful to everyone regardless of previous encounters
- be generous
- pursue what is meaningful (not what is expedient)
- do not wish for more or better
- be precise in speech
- do what you can with what you have where you are
- compare yourself to who you were yesterday, not to who someone else is today
- remember, one who is not satisfied with what they have will not be satisfied with what they would like to have
- pet a dog when you encounter one on the street
Lastly, some words from the wise,
- “The pursuit of science has often been compared to the scaling of mountains, high and not so high. But who amongst us can hope, even in imagination, to scale the Everest and reach its summit when the sky is blue and the air is still, and in the stillness of the air survey the entire Himalayan range in the dazzling white of the snow stretching to infinity? None of us can hope for a comparable vision of nature and of the universe around us. But there is nothing mean or lowly in standing in the valley below and awaiting the sun to rise over Kanchenjunga.”
  – Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Truth and Beauty: Aesthetics and Motivations in Science (1987), 26.
- “Do not undertake a scientific career in quest of fame or money. There are easier and better ways to reach them. Undertake it only if nothing else will satisfy you; for nothing else is probably what you will receive. Your reward will be the widening of the horizon as you climb. And if you achieve that reward you will ask no other.”
  – Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin, as quoted by Donovan Moore in What Stars Are Made Of: The Life of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin (2020), 253.
Fin. If you are still reading, live long and prosper, friend! 🖖

Subhodeep Sarkar