Key Life Skills I Learnt Doing a PhD (Part 1): Broken Vs Working Systems

I started an early-stage drug discovery PhD at the University of Birmingham in 2018 and finished it in 2022.

On my first day, my supervisor at the time told me to make lots of a particular protein, CLEC14A, so I could use it in various downstream experiments. I found a protocol from a previous PhD student, gathered all the necessary ingredients from the lab and got to work.

There were various steps involved in the process, including getting the DNA of interest into cells, which effectively became a protein production factory. I then had to separate the protein from everything else using a tag fused onto the protein (called an Fc tag) and specialised beads that bind to the tag. Finally, I had to get the protein off the beads and verify that it was actually there.

When I followed the protocol, I could confirm that the protein of interest was present before the bead-binding step and that it was successfully binding to the beads. If I boiled the beads, the protein would come off them — although this made it unusable for the downstream experiments.

The problem was that whatever I added to the beads to nudge the protein off, it remained stuck to them.

It was supposed to elute from the beads below a certain pH, so I tried different acidic buffers. Nothing worked.

I told my supervisor that I kept hitting the same roadblock. As I was new to the lab, he suggested that I must be doing something wrong and should repeat the process.

So I did.

I repeatedly followed the protocol, checking the instructions and doing everything exactly as I was supposed to. And I repeatedly got exactly the same outcome.

This cycle of being told that something wasn't working because I was doing something wrong, followed by being told to repeat the process, went on for a long time.

Whenever I suggested trying things like buying fresh ingredients, including new beads, these suggestions were shut down. My supervisor was adamant that I was the problem and that I simply wasn't able to follow basic instructions.

After around nine months of going around in circles, two summer students joined the lab. One of them is currently finishing his PhD at Oxford.

They were given the same task as me.

They hit the exact same problem.

Multiple times.

At that point, it became pretty clear that the problem wasn't that I couldn't follow instructions.

The system itself was broken.

There was another problem, though.

To progress into the second year of the PhD, you have to pass your first-year annual progress review. My first attempt was a fail, and the assessors were on my supervisor's side.

I had three months before my next attempt.

So, because the system I was operating within was broken, I spent those three months getting data that wasn't directly useful for my PhD but would demonstrate that I had the work ethic and ability to do the work.

I turned up to the second annual progress review without any useful data on the protein of interest.

Instead, I had a picture of a mouse aorta that I had extracted and stained. The mouse had already been used in an experiment by another researcher. I also showed various other bits of data — a protein knockdown, a paper I'd been involved with during my Master's, and whatever else I could demonstrate that showed I was capable of doing scientific work.

The action that came out of the meeting was for my supervisor to put me in contact with another supervisor.

I met this secondary supervisor, who created models of proteins and carried out virtual drug screens.

We shifted the focus of my project accordingly.

Three months later, I had my third attempt at the first-year annual progress review.

This time, I passed with flying colours.

When I went back into the lab to do experiments testing compounds identified through the computational work, everything worked normally.

I was finally operating within a system that worked.

That allowed me to generate some decent data and, by keeping up to date with rapidly evolving AI technology, I eventually used AlphaFold2 in my final year to model some protein-protein interactions of interest.

I got onto a paper and passed my Viva at the end with only minor corrections — the final hurdle to conquering a PhD.

Looking back, one of the biggest life lessons I took from the experience was this:

If you're operating within a broken system, unless everyone is aware that it's broken, your entire focus is on fixing the system, and you're given the freedom to do so, and everyone excepts that it still might not get fixed at the end, you're essentially playing a rigged fairground game. 🎯

And a rigged fairground game doesn't measure your actual competence, skill or work ethic.

It's simply a broken system.

When you switch to a system that actually works, you're playing a fairer game. You're operating within some form of meritocracy, and you have a much greater ability to produce results.

I ended up applying exactly the same life lesson to my journey overcoming social anxiety and building a business helping other people do the same.

I first went to someone who coached people professionally in this area and who had overcome social anxiety himself.

I wanted to learn from a working system.

I overcame my own challenges and then received business mentorship from the same person to build a business helping other people overcome their social anxiety.

The timing was perfect. My purpose was becoming a confidence and social anxiety coach, while my mentor wanted to transition into business coaching.

In total, I received one coaching session per week for three years, starting as soon as the COVID lockdown restrictions were lifted.

I've now been running a full-time business helping people in my chosen area since 2022. Before that, I was learning the ropes while completing my PhD.

And this is why I think there's an important distinction to make in life:

There's a difference between something being a hard mountain climb 🏔️ and something being a broken system.

The key lesson is learning to tell the two apart.

Sometimes something is genuinely difficult. You might have to work incredibly hard, develop your skills, persevere through setbacks and keep going when you don't feel like it.

That's the mountain.

But sometimes you're climbing a mountain that has a completely broken route to the top.

You can keep working harder and harder, but if the system itself doesn't work, your effort won't necessarily translate into results.

If a system works for real people just like you, in the real world, and the important variables are broadly the same, then you can operate within a meritocratic system and make genuine progress.

If it doesn't, you might not be failing.

You might simply be going around in circles because the system is broken.

And sometimes the most productive thing you can do isn't to try harder.

It's to find a better system.

If you're looking for help and support building confidence and reducing anxiety in certain areas of life, you're welcome to book my taster coaching session to see if we're a good fit.

Before spending money on coaching, you're welcome to try a free session and see whether it actually helps you. 🙂

Phil