New Year, same old grind. Or is it?

Happy New Year, wanderers. We are now over a week into January. The champagne has gone flat, the festive lights are coming down, and the “new year, new me” energy is starting to clash with the reality of returning to work.

For most of us, the Christmas break is a frantic attempt to balance rest with the nagging guilt of unfinished manuscripts. We use the time to reflect on the past year and plot our trajectory for the next. We resolve to be more productive, to hit higher metrics, and to finally achieve “success”.

But as I sat down to plan my 2026, I found myself asking a dangerous question.

The Metrics of Worth

We are conditioned to view success as a checklist. Society points towards the property ladder, the salary bracket, and the German saloon car in the driveway. For us PhDs, the currency is different but the mechanism is the same: it is the impact factor, the citation count, and the number of papers we publish (a metric that often feels inversely proportional to our actual bank balances).

For years, I have been running on this treadmill. I chased the degree, the job, the title. I treated my life as a series of gates to crash through.

The result? I was never truly satisfied. My emotional state was entirely dependent on external validation. An acceptance letter brought fleeting relief; a rejection brought despair. In both cases, I barely paused before pivoting to the next anxiety, the next hurdle, the next “fix”.

The Forced Pause

This year was different. Due to a health condition, I was forced to step off the treadmill. I had to return home for a couple of months.

Spending that time in sunny Greece, away from the grey skies of my university town, I did more than just recover physically. I was forced to sit with my own thoughts without the noise of “productivity” drowning them out.

Surrounded by family and friends of all ages, I realised I had been striving for a version of success I had never actually chosen for myself. I was following a script written by others. I saw people who had “less” on paper but possessed a richness of life I was entirely missing.

I came to the realisation that success isn’t a destination you arrive at after your viva or your first big grant. Success is internal. It is the ability to be happy during the process, not just at the end of it.

I won’t bore you with my specific new definition of success—it is personal, as yours should be. But I will ask you to check your own compass. Are you climbing a mountain because you want the view, or because you think you should be seen climbing it?

Lessons for the Lab

Interestingly, this shift in perspective hasn’t made me care less about my research. If anything, it has made the work more sustainable. As I return to the lab for 2026, I am carrying three hard-won lessons from my first year:

1. Patience is not just a virtue; it is a requirement

Research rarely follows the Gantt chart in your proposal. Experiments fail. Code breaks. Data doesn’t make sense. In the past, this panicked me. Now, I accept it as part of the process.

2. The myth of the “Lone Genius”

The best ideas do not come from staring at a blank wall in isolation; they emerge from coffee breaks and arguments with colleagues. Even if you have a brilliant idea, you need a village to help implement it. Collaboration beats competition every time.

3. Νους υγιής εν σώματι υγιεί

As the Greeks say: “A healthy mind in a healthy body.” I used to treat my physical health as a secondary concern, something to deal with after the paper was submitted. My time in Greece taught me that physical health is the foundation of intellectual capability. You cannot write a thesis if your body forces you to stop.

Looking Forward

As I look ahead to 2026, I am genuinely excited about the new research directions I have planned. However, I am no longer letting them define my entire worth. I will explore them with curiosity rather than desperation.

I am stepping into this year to fulfill my own definition of success: to do good work, and to be happy doing it.

Stay tuned for updates on the research journey—and perhaps a few more notes on the life in between.