This interview is part of the “A Peek behind the Curtain” interview series.
Eva did an Economics Ph.D. and Mathematics M.A. at the University of California, Berkeley after a master’s in Development Studies at Oxford University. She then worked at the World Bank for two years and founded AidGrade before finding her way back to academia.
In this interview, Eva and I discuss her thoughts on mentors, doing a PhD, research, and sustainable motivation.
Note: This interview is from 2019 and some parts may no longer accurately represent the guest's views. The transcript has been edited for clarity and readability.
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Lynette: What things are most important for you being in a good mood?
Eva: There’s a lot of individual heterogeneity, but I would say [one thing that’s important for me is] getting enough sleep. Getting some physical activity. Getting outside and/or some sunlight, because I think mood is important. Not being super stressed or having any kind of anxiety is important, and probably getting outdoors helps with that, at least it seems to for me.
What other things? Not having personal drama. It certainly helps, I think, to be happy, to have a supportive environment. Some jobs can be demotivating, and having meaningful work with agency helps.
What else can I say helps me personally? Having the ability to chat with people about the things that I'm working on, who can give feedback, so that if I'm going about something in the wrong direction, I get some feedback on that. One thing that's a little bit underrated is figuring out whether the direction you're going in is in fact a good direction.
Lynette: How do you normally get that feedback now?
Eva: I'm in academia, so I go to conferences and present at seminars, and sometimes people make really smart remarks, or say things like, you know, "Why are you doing this? Shouldn't you be doing this other thing instead?"
But I guess the main way I get feedback is actually by talking with particular individuals. Like there’s some person who is in my field, and I reach out to them directly and try to chat with them. It can also be a little bit more opportunistic—so it's maybe somebody who's not quite in my field, but you know, maybe they're in my department or I run into them in the hallway or see them at a conference or something like that. So your environment also matters.
Another thing that I've heard—and I have not done this myself, I have to say, but I know a lot of people who have and I wish I did this myself—is to find mentors, to give more advice.
Lynette: So what do you look for in people to give you advice?
Eva: For my own career track—I'm assuming you're interested in the academic career track—it's important to hear what more senior people think, who’ve sort of gone through this process. Especially because senior people tend to be more plugged in and have a lot of accumulated knowledge. So trying to pick their brains on things tends to be more valuable.
You can also learn a lot through collaborating with people. I'm working with this guy right now, Stefano DellaVigna, who's fantastic. And it's been a great learning experience for me to see how he works on grant applications and how he phrases things. It's been really wonderful working with him. So some of that is also just learning by working with other people.
Lynette: So it sounds like you're finding people who know what they're doing and just basically copying that.
Eva: Yes, sometimes, or learning from their experiences.
Lynette: What are the most helpful things you've learned from others?
Eva: So several things. First, learning how to communicate better with others. I know that sounds a little bit silly, but a lot of times, you know, you want to make sure that you're not getting on people's bad side. So learning some little tricks about how to couch criticisms so that they're not taken personally. Honestly, that's probably one of the more helpful things. There's also a lot of really highly specific things, like learning about data sets. Or more generally how to set up my day to be a bit more productive.
There are also some things I’ve learned from people a little bit too late for myself, but which would have been very useful. I feel like one thing that's super important is actually investing a lot of time into learning particular hard skills early on, and continuing to build on those skills. I mean, there's an exploration-exploitation trade off here, right? But at the same time, really deep expertise tends to be valued a lot. And I feel like students, in particular, tend to be encouraged to be a bit more generalist. It just doesn't have the same kind of returns in my line of work. Maybe it works in other lines, but in my line, not so much. So I know people who have very similar interests, and by now, you know, we have similar levels of expertise or whatnot. But they had a much easier time of it because they started doing that and focused on it earlier on, while I did a lot of things very broadly. I'm not sure how generalizable that piece of advice is, but at least in my area, it seems really valuable.
Lynette: So I'm curious how you prioritize what things to invest in? That is a big commitment, to specialize in something, how did you choose what to do?
Eva: I'm hesitant here because my path is, in some sense, a little bit weird, because I did things a bit differently. I did my PhD in four years, which is really early for an Econ PhD. The average is like six years. I graduated in four because I got a job offer from the World Bank, and I decided to take that job offer and not go on the academic job market. Because I did that I was able to set up this organization, AidGrade, that gathered results from impact evaluations. And through that line of work, I noticed there are a lot of issues with external validity. And so I started working on what I thought was an important hole in the literature.
Lynette: But I'm curious, even before that, what did you do before you were like; "Okay, let's graduate and take the World Bank." How did you decide; "I want to focus on this type of work, I want to start an organization?" Those are big steps, what led up to those?
Eva: I felt that looking at the career paths of academics around me, I wasn't confident that a lot of the work that was being done was necessarily useful, and that led me to try to do things a little bit differently. I actually went into the Econ PhD planning to graduate in four years and work at the World Bank for a while before determining what to do next. Back in undergrad I majored in philosophy, but I thought that as nice as philosophy was, no one knew how to operationalize it. Like if you believe in Utilitarianism, what does that actually mean you should do practically speaking? That seemed like a giant hole that maybe I could help fill.
I also loved physics, so as I thought about grad school, I was choosing between physics and international development, and I thought I could make a bigger difference to the world in international development, and then within international development, economics appealed the most to me as something very quantitative. As I considered economics PhD programs, I knew I didn’t want to spend too much time doing a PhD because I was aware of opportunity costs, so I wanted to just go in and get out as fast as possible, and I also thought that going to work at the World Bank for a couple of years afterwards could give me a lot of experience, and maybe then I would be in a position to know what the best thing to do would be.
So actually, going to work at the World Bank was part of the data collection process in some sense for me to try to figure out, you know, where I can make the most difference. It just turned out that the biggest difference for me was ultimately back in academia.
Lynette: It sounds like one of your steps was noticing what you felt like were holes in what was currently being done. What kinds of thought processes led you to notice those?
Eva: I feel a lot of research is finding some failure with the way things currently are and current models. Some of that comes fairly naturally if you're doing a lot of reading of other people's work, like if you're reading other people's work you might notice what hasn’t been done yet and what would be really useful to know. But also part of it is learning by doing. At least for me, when I start a project, often through the course of doing that project I realize there’s another interesting question that I could have answered if I'd set things up a little bit differently. So then I try to answer that question. And then I learn, "Oh wait, you know, there's this other interesting question...." But in terms of forming the big picture ideas, reading a little bit more broadly—even reading a blog post or chatting with effective altruists—can be helpful.
Lynette: So let's just look at the breakdown of time, how much time do you spend doing that kind of exploratory open-ended stuff versus more like, “Here's the priorities, here's the projects I'm trying to produce and deliver” and execute these things?
Eva: I think it changes over the lifespan of a project. I mean, it's hard because right now I'm definitely in the “Let me just sort of exploit” phase. But when I started out, I was like, 100%, new projects. So it changes over time. Here's the thing: projects take a really long time...
Lynette: Yeah. And when you're going through this timeline, let's say like right now, in the exploit stage, how many hours a day on average are you devoting to executing. Like “Here's the top priorities I need to do to get this done, get that paper out?”
Eva: Let me tell you a bit about what I do in general. One thing is that at least once a week I take a break, like a long break. I found that that's actually good overall, because otherwise, you know, you can be less productive. And it's important to take breaks, I think. So that's a thing that I've also learned from observing other people and being like, "Oh, they seem to work more efficiently, and then take a break. Okay, I should do that as well."
But then when I’m working, I’m really working. I try to make sure that I’ve got blocks of time in the mornings to work intensely on things, because for me personally, that's when I'm most capable of higher-order work. So I would say that, from when I get up to when I just peter out of energy, and I need to get some lunch or something—maybe like, anywhere from noon to 2PM—I will work intensively on things. Then I'll take a little bit of a break, and then I'll come back and continue to work.
Depending on what I need to do that day, it might still be pretty intense, but I try to schedule tasks for after lunch that are a little less cognitively demanding. And then I take another break for dinner, and that's a really long break. I'll still probably answer some emails for an hour or two after that, from around eight to ten or something. But, that's my typical day.
Lynette: That would be like four or five hours in the morning, then a break, then a couple hours of lighter work and a break, then an hour or two of email.
Eva: Yeah, though there can be weeks with much more than that. I'm not saying that's optimal.
Lynette: And when you're more in the explore mode, does your daily routine change? Or is it just what you're doing during that morning block that changes?
Eva: Yeah, I think it's more that what I'm doing in that block changes. Also, some of that exploration happens off that timescale. A lot of it is like, "Oh, you know, I'm coming up with new ideas at conferences," and that's totally different. So that could also happen at different times of the day I guess.
Lynette: That makes sense. When you're in the exploration stage, what does this look like? I'm curious how you get to the point of committing and pulling that trigger on projects, because that is such a big commitment.
Eva: Honestly, a lot of these things are not things that necessarily get a binary, “Yes, it's definitely going to happen” decision. It's more of a process; I learn a little bit about it, and I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I should continue to pursue it." And then I learn a little bit more about it, and I'm like, "Okay, I'm gonna continue to pursue it." A lot of them peter out, because they don't work for some reason, like that the project is just not very tractable, or more likely in my area: projects just fall through, funders fall through, you know, or the government says, “Hey, you can't do this project,” or something like that. So it's more like an iterative process of continuing to pursue things until I find some reason to not pursue them anymore.
Lynette: Are there any things that you do that are maybe quirky to you, but that really help with productivity?
Eva: That's a great question. I try to schedule calls all in one block because I find it hard to shift gears between calls and writing, say. And I try to ignore distractions. So I try not to look at email in the morning, or if I know I need to find a particular email, I’ll just look for that email and filter out others. I generally wear earplugs while working. I have basically quit social media, except I do sometimes use Twitter for work purposes. It's actually good for networking, oddly enough. Being mostly off social media is also better for my mood.
Lynette: Is positive mood one of those things that helps you be more effective then?
Eva: Yeah, it definitely is. Also like, decreasing anxiety over things. Because I feel like there's this vicious cycle a lot of people get sucked up in, where if you're really anxious about something, you're focused on the anxiety and assuaging the anxiety rather than on the work that you need to do.
Lynette: Got it. Okay, one last question. Some people fall more on the side of following their curiosity and daily planning; maybe having a list and kind of choosing as they go. Some people are more like, “I'm going to set these goals, follow them, maybe even put financial penalties in place to make sure I follow them,” where do you fall in this spectrum?
Eva: Yeah, so it depends a little bit on the deadlines that I've got. So if, for example, I have to send the paper in at this particular deadline, then I will try to structure my work. I'll even plan out—say like, a month before that's due, I'm like, "Okay, this is what I've got to do, and this week this is what I've got to do, and this week this is what I've got to do, and this week this is what I've got do, and this week..."
And then within that week then you have a little more granularity of like, "Okay, so I'll spend three days doing this, I'll spend one day doing this." Sometimes when it gets really down to the wire, you know, two days before, I'll be like, "Okay, shoot, you know, I've got to do this task to complete it. It'll take me three hours." So the level of granularity depends a little bit on how close the deadline is.
Lynette: Do you find that you do more when you have these clear deadlines and goals for the day?
Eva: I do. Actually one thing I do that helps set these deadlines a bit artificially is that every morning before starting to work I identify the main things I want to accomplish that day. It might not be everything that I want to get done, but the most important ones. I have a running routine with my partner where every day we ask each other what we want to do that day before wishing each other a productive day. Of course, often the deadlines are external and coming at you quickly, and then maybe it’s not so important because it’s obvious what tasks you need to do that day, but nonetheless I think setting an intention for the day helps.
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