blog

Have you ever wished your workplace would be a more social place? A place where, sure, you have to work hard, but you can also have a chat or a laugh with people you like being around? Below are several ideas to help you transform your lab into a nicer place to spend your time.

Random Acts of Kindness
First, I would like to introduce you to Random Acts of Kindness. A Random Act of Kindness is basically doing something nice for someone you don’t know without benefit for yourself. Although you will definitely benefit from doing this, because it’s an instant recipe for feeling good! (If you would like to read more about the original Random Acts of Kindness idea, please have a look here.)

These acts of kindness can be small and cheap; like giving up your seat on the tube so that two people can sit together, or taping some coins to a vending machine with a little note for the finder (Enjoy your snack!), buying a stranger in the queue behind you a coffee, or just leaving a nice note taped to the mirror in a public bathroom. But also more substantial; buying flowers for the old lady you bump into every week at the market, or the guy who rented out an entire cinema so that underprivileged children could go to the movies!

Now of course in your lab, most likely it is quite hard to find a stranger. But creating an acts of kindness atmosphere in your work environment can massively improve the time you spent there. Which, let’s face it is most of your waking hours! So let’s think about acts of kindness that one can set up in a lab:
Of course the leaving some money taped to the lab vending machine still works. Or leave some cookies in the coffee room/kitchen. Or what about filling some of these empty boxes of pipette tips lying around the lab? Or maybe a colleague is almost out of a buffer you’re making anyway? Be perceptive; does anyone need something you can easily provide?

Language Café
Another fun thing to try in a lab is a language café (see here for an example of how to get things going). Why not grab a lunch or coffee break, gather some colleagues who aren’t from the country you live in and help each other learn a new language! You’ll be amazed at how many different languages are spoken in your department! And furthermore, helping a colleague improve their English (or any other language) is really fun and rewarding. And who knows, maybe you’ll finally be able to prepare for that foreign holiday that’s coming up this summer?

Mini Brainstorm Sessions
Perhaps you have experienced this yourself: you’re stuck with your project and your supervisor is too busy to help out. Many people experience this and also find it daunting to reach out to other faculty members. How about arranging a coffee break with a struggling colleague or a group of PhD students in your department and set up mini brainstorm sessions? Even short sessions can be helpful and it is interesting getting fresh perspectives from people who aren’t in your weekly group meetings! Not only will this lead to new collaborations, and learning about different research projects, it will also help you practice explaining your research and the problem concisely yet precise.

Unusual Movie Night
Working late? Why not find a group of PhD students in a similar situation and host a small movie night! Bring some popcorn, get access to the meeting room projector and ask everyone to bring their favorite weird movie. Waiting for your experiments to incubate suddenly does not seem so bad…
So maybe this week say hello to a new face in the lab, get to know some colleagues you have not much interacted with before, or anonymously do something nice for someone in your lab. You’ll be amazed how fun it can be! We would love to hear what you came up with and the effect it had!