Advice: Swim or Sink in Research

I lose motivation every now and then. I try to find it by looking at different motivational blogs. But nothing motivates more than a fellow scientist telling you how to brace yourself for the daily troubles. Then, I chanced upon this golden advice(pdf) from Prof Steven Weinberg, a renowned Theoretical Physicist from University of Texas. It is very important to keep ourselves motivated in the research we are doing. I found his advice very useful. He focuses on giving a beautiful analogy to help us surf the vast ocean of Science literature which is increasing by leaps and bounds every year. It is easy to get lost and overwhelmed. I am not ashamed to admit that it happened to me.
So, in his own words, four important lessons you need to remember:

1. Sink or Swim - I must start doing research, and pick up what I needed to know as I went along.. To my surprise, I found that this works. I managed to get a quick PhD — though when I got it I knew almost nothing about physics. But I did learn one big thing: that no one knows everything, and you don’t have to. 
2. While you are swimming and not sinking you should aim for rough water -.My advice is to go for the messes — that’s where the action is. 
3. Forgive yourself for wasting time As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge. 
4. Finally, Learn something about the History of Science,or at a minimum the history of your own branch of science. The least important reason for this is that the history may actually be of some use to you in your own scientific work. The best antidote to the philosophy of science is a knowledge of the history of science. 

This was just one step(discovering the origin of earth and sun) in a sequence of steps from Galileo through Newton and Darwin to the present that,time after time,has weakened the hold of religious dogmatism. Reading any newspaper nowadays is enough to show you that this work is not yet complete. But it is civilizing work, of which scientists are able to feel proud.

Excerpts from article published in Nature.

Another interesting quote is from Ira Glass which touches on the Writer's block which one faces soon after you engage in a creative activity. This dull phase, he states, will go soon. You have to fight your way through.

Ira Glass, American public radio personality

Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap.

For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. 

A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.          -Ira Glass

Gavin from Zen Pencils has made a beautiful illustration of this quote here.