A student's guide to increased lab work efficiency

Laboratory work has started in earnest and it can sometimes be intimidating business, especially if previous experience is rather insufficient. It can also be horribly messy if taken too lightly. However, it should also be fun and rewarding, considering that you do it for most of the workday. Below follow some of my thoughts and guidelines on the subject in my new molecular lab.

1. Use your PPE

Photo credit: UCSF

This should be the first thing on your mind before starting your work in a lab, regardless of what kind of methodology you will use. What personal protection equipment do you need? Gloves, labcoat, safety glasses? What material should they be? If you reach the conclusion that no PPE is needed for your protection then consider if your samples need protection from you, which is another function of PPE. Finally, if you don't have your own PPE, go and get it. Now. As in right now!

2. Keep it tidy

No one likes working in a chaotic environment where things are randomly lying around everywhere, obstructing workplaces and posing a risk, not only to the quality of your science, but to your safety. This is your responsibility. Everything should have its place. Put it back and take out the garbage. And for the love of science, don't fill the place up with stuff you don't really need at this time.

3. Plan ahead

Image credit: Frits Ahlefeldt-Laurvig

What are you going to do, how will you do it and what do you need? I find following a protocol the best way of staying organized in the lab. Unless you're awesome at remembering details or you have plenty of experience with a certain method, then going
through a protocol on the method of the day will save you a lot of unwanted surprises, tediously running back and forth and most importantly, time. Assemble your lab bench with what you need before you start. The smoother your work goes the better for both your schedule, your samples and your sanity.

4. Change gloves

Just because you're wearing gloves it doesn't mean that you're sterile or even clean. If you work with sensitive samples or methods, change your gloves regularly. In general, have you left your lab with gloves on (for some good reason), change when you get back. Did you have to rummage around in a dark corner of your lab to help a colleague find a certain something, change your gloves. It could also help to actually write "Change gloves" as a strategic bullet point in a lab protocol, i.e. when working with standards.
If you work with hazardous chemicals or materials then just switching your workplace within your own lab is call enough for a change of gloves. Wiping down a lab contaminated with radioactivity because someone forgot to change gloves when switching benches is no fun. No fun at all.
Be mindful. In the end it is your health on the line. Also, it is rather embarrassing to explain why you got gut bacteria in your cultures, because then you're obviously not washing your hands either.

5. No food, drinks or mobile phones

This might seem obvious to most people, but I've actually run across more than one coffee machine happily sitting on a random bench in a lab. In the end I guess it's up to each and every researcher responsible for the lab in particular, whether or not their science or health will be affected by preparing and consuming hot beverages in the lab. In my opinion you do science in the lab and drink coffee in the lunch room. Period.
When it comes to mobile phones, unless you're expecting an important call, leave it in your office. One slide of thought and you'll find yourself grasping your frantically vibrating mobile phone with your gloved hand, possibly contaminating your gloves and/or your mobile phone. Hopefully, this will never be the case, but then you will likely either interrupt your work or be distracted wondering who called, for the rest of the day.

6. Use alcohol

It's a great chemical to keep things clean and decrease the risk of contaminants. Wipe down not just your benches but also your instruments and other equipment that you can't put in an autoclave. On a side note; please refrain from drinking molecular grade alcohol during work hours, it gets you drunk to boot and you'll make a fool out of yourself. It's not really for drinking, but you know, scientists all have their stories.

7. Relax

When stepping into your lab you should feel at ease. Don't stress out. It will affect your performance and ultimately your science negatively. We all make mistakes, but mistakes tend to be more frequent when you're stressed. Plan ahead, ask for help, put on some music, do whatever you need to make your lab work a somewhat relaxing endeavour.

8. Be a mad scientist

Image credit: CKEC

Most people enjoy field work the most and that is usually what a personal scientific story is about. There's not much fun or interesting in describing your late "pipetting-nights" in the lab for neither colleagues or friends outside of academia.
However, lab work is a major part of what most science is, and considering that you will spend most of your work hours in the lab, it should be fun. Spice it up a little and you'll even have a decent story to tell. As long as you're doing good science and staying safe, make things smoke, pop, bubble, change color or glow. It's more fun than it sounds and usually the chemistry/science behind it is really interesting.

9. Take a break

Too much of the good stuff will make even the most passionate of researchers tired. Just like reading a book for too long, your brain will ultimately switch to autopilot. The problem in the lab though is that it's not as easy as flipping the previous page if you missed to register the last few lines. If you lose your focus you could also lose the last hour of work, or worse, precious samples.
When you start feeling tired, have a coffee break and some fresh air, go for a walk or just switch your current task for a while. If you can't just leave your work like that, then plan ahead. I usually hit the gym halfway through the day.

10. Take notes

It doesn't matter how good a memory you have, you will never remember every little detail that comes up while you are working on your different methods. It might just be numbers for your samples or deviations in your protocol which at the time might feel trivial. However, further down the road when you want to look up what you actually did or there are some funny oddities in your results that you need to interpret, your lab notes will be gold. Keep a laboratory journal. One of the best investments you'll ever make.

11. Know your field of action

Fundamentally it's not much practical work in this point. It is more about reading literature and science papers until your eyes roll out of their sockets and your brain melts. Which won't happen anytime soon so keep reading. So when you've plowed
through a decent amount of text, directly or indirectly related to your subject, you will have an easier time navigating and understanding any methodology that comes your way. Because it is important that you know what you're doing, but it is equally important to know why you're doing it. So if you find yourself not knowing enough, ask questions and look it up. Once you're the expert on what you're doing you can perhaps start tweaking and improving your work and approach a problem or hypothesis in a whole new way.

12. Practice makes perfect

There's no such thing as perfect science. There will always be known and unknown biases constraining your research. The only thing you can do is try to mitigate them as best you can with the various tools available to you. Either way, you can still become a jedi master of pipetting and thereby rule out one possible source of bias. The more you practice those nimble hands the better, and that goes for all your work in the lab, regardless of what it is. Embrace your passion but be aware of the dark side of bias.

13. Sort and recycle your waste

After a long day in the lab this is for no other reason than to lighten your bad conscious over the mountain of plastic waste you just accumulated for no other reason than extracting a tiny amount of DNA. This is certainly a conflict of interest for environmental scientists and biologists where furthering the research of understanding and better protecting our environment you produce so much waste, not just plastics. Hazardous chemicals for example, need to be properly disposed of as not to leak out in the environment. Pat yourself on the back, our planet would too if it could.

14. Put on some epic music

Everything you do in the lab will feel soo much cooler with some epic music filling the room. There's a possible major scientific discovery every day when listening to epic music, and it feels good. Get inspired and progress with style. Even pipetting feels epic when listening to a pompous orchestral piece.