What I want you to pay attention to is how intentional are your yeses and how intentional are your no's. Like I said earlier, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So always notice what that yes is costing you. And in this context, it's costing you focus and mastery of what actually matters to you. Bottom line, when you're leveling up in your career and you're writing grants at this level, it's not just about learning how to write a new kind of grant. You really have to consider what else is going on in your life and your career while you are writing your grant. And this is not a one-off scenario that you need to think about when you're writing your first R01. The most successful people that we've worked with are the ones who truly understand that they're setting themselves up for long-term success by defining their priorities and building good habits and managing uncertainty and discomfort and learning how to write a truly excellent R01. Welcome to the Significant Impact Podcast, the show dedicated to helping overstretched, overachieving women faculty convert their career development award into their first big R01 with purpose, with ease, and with joy. I'm your host, Sarah Dobson. In today's episode, I'm excited to talk about something that I'm guessing doesn't get a lot of airtime in institutional K-2R programs if you're lucky enough to even have one at your institution. I think the best way to describe today's episode is three things I wish you knew about the K-2R transition that don't have anything to do with actually writing an R01. Let's get started. The reason that I wanted to talk about this today is in my work with PIs who are coming to us for a strategic grant review as part of our one-on-one service. And then, of course, with women faculty who are working with us inside our K2R program, the Impact Incubator, I've had a lot of conversations with people who are at this specific career point. And there's just so much about this career transition point that goes well beyond grant writing. And that's the piece that I think is really missing from a lot of these conversations. It's not just about learning how to write a good R01. That's not gonna get you where you want to go. And so today I wanted to talk about three things that I wish everyone understood about the K-to-R transition. So number one is that what got you your K award is not gonna get you an R01. And I'm sure that this is not news to you. You've probably heard that comment that your K award is about you and your R01 is about the science. And yes, that's true. So part of it does have to do with the actual sort of content of the grant, but a lot of it is really about your mindset in what you did in your K versus what you're gonna need to do to secure an R01. The biggest thing to notice here is that you're really moving into a big leadership role and away from being a mentee. And in the previous episode, we talked about that in depth, right? The difference between PI mentality and mentee mentality. So if you haven't listened to that one, go back and do it. But what I want you to really understand here is that you need to think much bigger in terms of trajectories and programs of research and not just getting the training and mentorship you need to move on to the next stage, right? What is also really important to understand about what got you your K is not gonna get you your R01 is that of course you're used to being a high achiever, right? You're used to putting 100% into everything and saying yes to every opportunity. But if you want to build an impactful and fully funded program of research, you're gonna need to prioritize. And I promise you, this is harder than you think. A lot of people that I speak to who are interested in joining us inside the Impact Incubator, who they say, like, yeah, yeah, I understand. Like, I know that I need, you know, better time management, um, but I really just wanna, you know, I want to get going. Or I'm I'm focused on this very specific deadline, and that's that's my goal. And I'm telling you that the work that you need to do to get your house in order before you start writing is some of the most important work that you can do, not just for this first R01, but for the habits and systems and professional structure that you're gonna create for yourself moving forward. This is not just a one-off. This is, you know, creating the conditions for success over the long term. All right. So, for example, if you also teach alongside your research, your high achiever mindset is gonna want you to be the number one best professor with the best course evaluations. And we actually coached one of our impact incubator clients on this recently. Okay. But you can't devote all your time and energy to being the best teacher and also the best PI. That's not gonna work, right? You have to ration your time. And how you ration is dictated by your priorities. Because remember that every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So you always need to ask yourself what the yes is costing you. And it is completely fine if your priority is to be the best professor that you can be, the best teacher you can be. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. But if you are telling yourself that it is your research that is your main focus and main priority, and that's where you want to have the biggest impact, you are out of alignment if you are also putting all of your time and energy into being the best teacher you can be. And I'm not saying that this is an opportunity to slack off or not do your job. That's not at all what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that you do have to allocate your time based on your priorities and find ways to get support that you need to do what matters to you. And there are lots of different ways to do that, even just in the example that I gave, right? But you do really have to be intentional and you do really have to think about how you are organizing your time to achieve what actually matters to you, because you cannot do it all. You're gonna have to make a lot of hard decisions that are probably gonna disappoint some people. And you're gonna have to learn how to cope with that, cope with them being disappointed, which is not easy if you are an overachiever perfectionist. And we're gonna have entire episodes on that, I promise you. Uh, there's gonna be a lot more uncertainty in your career path and your research, and you need to learn how to cope with that as well. So there's just there's just a lot of discomfort that you're gonna have to learn how to cope with. And again, I think this is something that people really underestimate. All right, number two, if you only focus on the grant-getting part of the K-2R transition, you will fail. So, what I mean by failure in this context is that it is going to take you longer to secure your first R01, and it will be a more painful process. Failure also means here that you're not intentionally building the career that you want, just the career that you think you deserve or that you see other people around you pursuing, which often includes a lot of unconscious bad habits that drain your energy and your capacity and make your professional life feel like a slog rather than the meaningful and impactful career that you actually want. So, look, of course, there's lots that you need to learn about how to write this one specific type of grant, and you can't, of course, you can't get past this career stage without learning how to do that. But this is truly a career transition, and you need to prepare for that just as much, if not more, than the actual writing of the R01. So lots of people think that once I get this first R01, everything's gonna be better, right? And I promise you that is not what happens. You just end up with new and different challenges. So a coach once told me that we're always trying to enhance the quality of the problems that we're solving. And I think that's a really useful way to frame this here. There's always gonna be challenges, but the quality of those challenges is what you want to focus on. And if you're trying to build a fulfilling and impactful career, you want to be asking yourself if the challenges that you're grappling with are moving you towards the impact that you want to make or away from it. So the other piece to consider here is that you want to begin as you mean to go on. So if you want to have a fulfilling and meaningful and prolific research career, you have to design it. You have to be intentional about it. It's not just gonna magically happen. You can't just sit there and wish that this beautiful career that brings you a lot of fulfillment and produces the kind of impact that is really meaningful for you is just gonna happen on its own because you want it to happen. You have to fight for it. You have to intentionally choose it and design it. And again, going back to point number one, you're gonna have to make a lot of really uncomfortable decisions, which will very likely disappoint some people because you are focusing on what is meaningful to you. And a lot of people aren't gonna understand that. And so making sure that you are crystal clear on what that looks like for you and that it gives you enough sort of fire and energy to be able to live with that discomfort, that part is really, really, really important. So you do have to think carefully about what matters to you and what you want to achieve. And it's totally okay if it changes, because it absolutely will. But you at least need to define it at the outset. Otherwise, you'll continue to say yes to everything and you'll continue to feel completely scattered. So, to bring it back to my first point, being a high achiever is gonna hurt you here more than it will help you because you're going to want to be perfect at everything and you're gonna want to please everyone, and you can choose to do that. That can be your career mission, to be the best faculty member you can be according to what you think other people want from you. But I think you'll find that it doesn't leave very much space for you and for your research, which ultimately harms your career progress. Because if you choose to do that, you are designing your career by somebody else's standards. But if you choose to focus instead on why you're here and what matters to you and what kind of impact you want your research to make, that really changes your focus and your priorities. And I'm not saying that these two paths are mutually exclusive. I'm not saying that pursuing your own research goals and prioritizing your own work means that you're a giant a-hole and a bad colleague. What I am saying is that in the beginning, that's exactly how you will feel about it. You will feel like you are letting everybody down and that you're a bad colleague. And to avoid that feeling, you're gonna want to keep pleasing everyone else at the expense of your own work. So there's a shift that you need to make there in terms of the stories that you're telling yourself about what success looks like. The bottom line here is that nobody cares about your career more than you do. And because of that, you're gonna need to advocate for yourself over and over and over again. And that, of course, is gonna bring up even more discomfort. And it's it's not easy, but it is totally worth it. And again, notice here we haven't even touched on grantsmanship. So much of this work needs to be done before you tackle the grant writing so that you can write better grants. All right, number three, mastery comes from focus. This one is a lesson that I keep learning in my own work. And I think it's extremely relevant here for a few reasons. When I say focus, here I mean specificity, consistency, and deliberate practice. So focusing on a specific topic, working consistently on that topic. And by deliberate practice, I mean intentionally improving a skill set, not just doing a task. So, just for context, in my own life, I've been reviewing research grants for about 20 years, give or take. In the last five years, I've focused almost exclusively on R01 grants. And at this point, I've reviewed dozens and dozens of them. The product of that focus, of that specialization, is mastery, expertise in the review process, right? Not only can I review and provide high-quality recommendations that can get an R01 funded, I can teach others how to replicate my success. And I have done that in the, you know, the pool of editors that I have hired and trained and apprenticed, right? But if I hadn't narrowed my focus, if, for example, I reviewed NSF grants alongside R01s, or I reviewed papers being submitted to peer-reviewed journals, I wouldn't have developed that mastery of R01 grants because my focus would have been scattered, right? So this is relevant to you for a few reasons. First of all, I want you to recognize that you are at the beginning of your expertise, right? You are developing and refining the expertise and experience in a particular subject matter area, right? And that's only gonna deepen as you progress through your career. So it's gonna get easier and easier as time goes on because you have more experience and uh and a depth of expertise that just doesn't exist yet because you haven't had the time to really focus on it quite yet, right? The other piece to understand here is the same thing applies to grant writing, right? So anytime you're writing any particular type of grant, the first time it's gonna feel really difficult and it's gonna take much longer. But the more often you do it, the more familiar you become with the patterns and the structure, the easier it's going to get. And so when you combine that experience and expertise and focus with the experience and expertise and focus of your subject matter area over time, that is going to lead to mastery, right? But on the flip side of that, and what's really important for you to get is if you scatter your focus, especially in the beginning, that means that it will take even longer to develop that mastery in any one area. So, an easy example here is if you are at this point where you're trying to figure out how you're going to cobble together funding for your salary and you start saying yes to all of these small percent efforts on a bunch of different projects because you're worried that you're not going to be able to get your own grant. I just want you to notice how you are scattering your focus and missing the opportunity to really develop mastery in the area that is meaningful to you, right? So that consistent effort, that deliberate practice, and that singular focus gets scattered, gets spread out when you are saying yes to projects that you aren't really super interested in, but you feel like you must take on. And of course, the same thing goes for other activities beyond research, right? When you're saying yes to things that really ought not to be on your plate, um, but you're saying yes out of obligation. Those are other ways that you can scatter your focus and your attention. And again, obviously, you can't just say no to everything and focus entirely on your own stuff. There are, you know, requirements that you need to meet, but what I want you to pay attention to is how intentional are your yeses and how intentional are your no's. Like I said earlier, every time you say yes to something, you're saying no to something else. So always notice what that yes is costing you. And in this context, it's costing you focus and mastery of what actually matters to you. Bottom line, when you're leveling up in your career and you're writing grants at this level, it's not just about learning how to write a new kind of grant. You really have to consider what else is going on in your life and your career while you are writing your grant. And this is not a one-off scenario that you need to think about when you're writing your first R01. The most successful people that we've worked with are the ones who truly understand that they're setting themselves up for long-term success by defining their priorities and building good habits and managing uncertainty and discomfort, and learning how to write a truly excellent R01. That's what I hope you understand about this K-2R phase. Thanks for listening to this episode of Significant Impact, from K Award to your first big R01. If you want to geek out on what we learned today and move a significant step closer to getting your R01 funded, visit saradobson.co slash pod and check out all the free stuff we have to help you do just that. Is there a specific question you have about the K-2R transition that you'd like me to talk about on the show? Head to Sarah Dobson.co slash pod and click on the listener question form to submit your question. You can choose to be anonymous or you can leave your name. It's totally up to you. But here's what I know if you have a question, chances are you're not alone. So the questions you submit to the show won't just help you, they'll help everyone who listens. Head to Sarahdobson.co slash podcast. And submit your question now. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to make sure you hear new episodes as soon as they're released. If today's episode made you think of a colleague or a friend, please tell them about it. We need more fearless, tenacious researchers out here. Tune in next time and thanks again for listening.