Overthinking. I tend to conflate the amount of time spent on something with how good it is. Sometimes intuition is better than proof, and gut instinct better than hours of “work.”

Often, what happens in science is you got a problem and you solve it, and then there’s not much else to do and you have to move on. But the ribosome turned out to be a rather rich gold mine. Perhaps I’m a little intellectually lazy and feel like, “Why should I bother thinking about something else?” Maybe at some point, I should have thought, “I should do something different.”

They had large resources of compulsion at their disposal, but I was stubborn. Where my reason, imagination or interest were not engaged, I would not or I could not learn. In all the twelve years I was at school no one ever succeeded in making me write a Latin verse or learn any Greek except the alphabet. I do not at all excuse myself for this foolish neglect of opportunities procured at so much expense by my parents and brought so forcibly to my attention by my Preceptors.

Checking email when I don’t know an answer.

Well, I almost never agree with anything anyone in the current administration says, but I read their press releases and interviews and late-night tweets regularly, because I need to stay informed.