On professionalism

I'm a huge fan of Conan O'Brien; there's just something about his demeanour, humour, and wittiness that I admire. I discovered him on YouTube around 2012 and was quite oblivious to who he was, what he believed in, and what he had done; for example, I never realised that he produced and/or wrote some of my favourite Simpsons episodes. Since November 2018, he has been hosting a podcast (with Sona Movsesian and Matt Gourley) and I watch snippets of it on YouTube from time to time. Recently I watched Bryan Cranston’s Advice To Aspiring Actors, which is a 8 minute snippet that I recommend watching. One piece of advice he (Bryan) offered was:

You know I tell actors all the time, get your personal life in order if you really want to be an actor. You have to get your personal life in order so that you don't flake out.

(For those that don't understand the slang, to "flake out" is to bail out or fail to show up; in addition, something that is flaky is unreliable.)

I really liked this piece of advice (which I guess is evident since I'm writing a blog post on it!) not only because I can totally relate to it, but because it's not advice that I typically hear. Usually when I hear advice it's all focused on the "professional" aspects such as being objective, consistent and reliable, efficient, having a strong work ethic, etc. But I seldom hear people talk about getting your personal life sorted out first. Perhaps in a professional setting, people avoid talking about personal things because by definition that is not work-related and not "professional". But why should that be the case!? Everybody has personal problems and as much as we try to focus on work, we can't just drown out our personal issues. Point is, don't ignore your personal life because it affects your professional life!

I realise that talking about personal issues can be a minefield, which is probably why people avoid talking about it. But perhaps we should also learn and/or train ourselves in this aspect. Philipp Bayer started a very nice list of things a scientist is supposed to know and I guess this type of learning/training falls under communication skills and self care.

And on the professional aspect, there was a nice bit in the video where Conan quoted Bob Odenkirk who had credited Bryan for helping him with his role in Breaking Bad by constantly reminding him the following:

He (Bob) said that you (Bryan) were very good at telling him that you gotta know your lines, you gotta hit your mark, and you gotta do the work beforehand.

If you didn't know this already, remember that it doesn't matter what you're doing, the key to becoming successful is consistent effort! I know it sounds obvious but knowing about something and putting it into practice are two different things! Never stop learning and never stop becoming better!

Finally, the snippet ends with Bryan saying:

Well look, if you're lucky enough to be in a business that you love to do, a creative one, and you make a living, I don't want to hear a complaint out of you ... there's enough artistic frustration within, a joke's not landing, this is not working, we need to recast because this didn't work out. You know there's enough problems to deal with...

Personally, I'm very thankful to make a living by working on biological problems using a computer. I've done various (odd) jobs in my life and eventually bioinformatics found me and I'm forever grateful.