I think that in my case it was an iterative process to sort of figure out what I was going to do. And when I look back, I knew I wanted to do something with Positron Emission Tomography and psychiatric research, but how I would apply that was not so clear.

I was one of those individuals that I think struggled with, and perhaps this is really the majority of fellows and students, struggled with spreading oneself too thin, struggled with not focusing enough and so forth.

And so that was also sort of an iterative process through the years that you got better at. Some of it really depended upon a mentor that really pushed you toward that and also advised you toward that. And so in that regard there were some very specific mentors that were helpful that way.

And one of them, probably one of the most important ones for me, was David Kupfer. He had a lot of experience with researchers and with career development for junior faculty and really emphasized focus of one's research, emphasized focus of one's time management so that you didn't get involved in too many things to distract you from getting your work done.

He emphasized really bringing each project carefully to a conclusion because it was critical to move forward that you had accomplished research projects and that you'd proven it by publishing the results. And getting grant funding was really hinging on that history of having brought projects to a conclusion, publishing them.

And so he taught me to move forward in lockstep where, with between grant applications and publishing papers, and ultimately that ended up then, really, over a series of years, helped me to really improve my productivity substantially.