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Oliver Bogler

@oliverbogler.bsky.social
197 followers 132 following 152 posts

Supporting Science & Scientists 🔬| Night Science Institute CEO 🌚| Grant Consultant 📝 | Career & Life Coach 💪🏼 | Advocate 📣, Podcaster 🎤 & Innovator 🤖

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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
The goal is not to leave academia. It is to reach a point where staying feels like something you chose. That shift is mostly internal. It happens when you can name what you actually want from the next ten years, when you trust your own judgment again, and when your week reflects your priorities.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Leaving the building at a reasonable hour is not a reward for finishing. Nothing is ever finished. If you wait for that, you'll keep leaving in the dark. The faculty I know who have found a sustainable pace did not find it by working less or caring less. They made hard choices. I can guide that.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 16/09/2026
The decisions ahead of you are large. Whether to push for promotion now or in two years. Whether to take the administrative role. Whether the lab you have built is the lab you want to be running in 2031. These are the decisions that set up the next decade. Most faculty make them while exhausted.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 15/09/2026
Under pressure, you don't behave the way you do at rest. Most people know this about themselves in a vague way. Fewer can describe the specific shift, or predict when it will happen, or name what triggers it. That gap matters, because decisions that shape a mid-career get made in those moments.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Most faculty at mid-career do not need better time management. They have already optimized. The calendar is full because they said yes to things that were reasonable, one at a time, over several years. The useful question is not how to fit more in. It is which of these commitments still connects.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
The hardest part is not the workload. It is admitting any of this out loud. You work in a culture that rewards self-sufficiency and toughness. Saying you are struggling risks being read as saying you can't handle what your colleagues appear to handle without difficulty.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Someone at home has probably said this to you. That you seem somewhere else, even when you are physically there. They said it gently. It stayed with you anyway, because you know they are right and you do not know what to do about it. The work does not stop at a defined hour. I can help.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
You have had a version of this evening. Sitting in the car in the lot, engine off, running the conversation with your chair back through for the 4th time. The replaying is not weakness. It is an analytical mind doing what it does. The problem: it costs you the evening, but does not change things.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
Everyone around you appears to be moving. Publishing, funding, promoting, building. What almost nobody says out loud at this career stage is that the confidence they had at thirty-two has quietly eroded by forty-one. Not from failure. From ambiguity, politics, and expectations never written down.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 04/09/2026
You arrive on Monday already behind. 2 manuscripts to review. A progress report due. 3 student meetings. A committee meeting. You worked through the weekend and it made no visible difference. That is a structural feature of mid-career faculty life, not a personal failing.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 02/09/2026
August has a specific quality in academic science. There's sometimes, briefly, a moment of genuine clarity about what you want the year ahead to look like. What you want to be different. What you don't want to repeat. That moment is worth something. It's also short. DM me before September.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 01/09/2026
My Reclaim Your Ground coaching program starts with a research-validated assessment that shows exactly how stress is currently shaping your decisions. Total of 10 sessions of structured 1:1 coaching with someone who spent 30 years inside academic biomedical science. reclaim.bogler.cc
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
I have time for a handful of real conversations this month. Not a discovery call. Not a consultation. A conversation — 20–25 minutes — about where you are in your faculty career and whether coaching is something that could help. DM me and tell me where you are. I'll take it from there.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Sabbatical is the only formal mechanism academic science has built for mid-career reflection. The fact that it exists means the system once acknowledged that scientists need space for genuine recalibration. Summer isn't a sabbatical. But it's sometimes the closest thing you get.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
It doesn't capture what the career actually costs. That cost is real. And it's worth examining — before it makes the next decade's decisions for you.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
I started coaching mid-career faculty because I couldn't find what I needed when I was navigating my own. Not a career counselor. Not a therapist. Not a colleague offering advice shaped by their own institutional interests. Someone who understood the terrain and could help me think through it.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Something shifts in the lab when the students leave for summer. For some, it's relief. For others, it surfaces something uncomfortable: without the operational demands of running the team, the larger questions get louder. Why am I doing this? What's the quiet surfacing for you this summer?
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
The data on mid-career faculty wellbeing and attrition suggest a different problem needs solving. #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
I use a research-validated assessment with my clients: the iPEC Energy Leadership Index. One thing it consistently shows: the way people make decisions under stress is significantly different from the way they make decisions when they're operating from clarity and intention.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 18/08/2026
The career advice nobody gives you in academic science: Apply protection before you need it. This applies to sunscreen. It also applies to thinking clearly about your career before you're in the middle of a funding crisis, a leadership transition, or a year three post-tenure identity question.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
The Energy Leadership Index shows you what this actually looks like in your specific decision-making. That's where the Reclaim Your Ground coaching program work begins. #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Situations I hear about from mid-career faculty: The lab is running. The grants are funded. And you're questioning, quietly, whether this is actually what you want to keep doing for the next 20 years. If this is your situation and you'd like to think it through with someone DM me.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
August is when academic scientists quietly audit the year. Was this year what I expected? Is the lab where I want it to be? Am I doing the work I came here to do? Does the next year look different, or just more of this? The answers don't always feel good. DM me if you want to think it out loud.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 11/08/2026
The data support this. The culture doesn't advertise it. #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
The cost nobody puts on your CV: 6 years working in different states, separated from my family. Institutional upheavals that I navigated while maintaining whatever professional composure I could manage. If you've absorbed a cost like this I'd like to hear about it. DM me.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 07/08/2026
Scientists on vacation, a brief taxonomy: The Fully Disconnected (rare, possibly mythological) The Partial Disconnector: checks email once a day, feels vaguely guilty about all of it. The Person Who Brought The Laptop: you know who you are. Which type are you this summer? #FacultyLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 05/08/2026
Not your PhD advisor. Not your department. Not the tenure committee. The Associate Professor years are where the original career map runs out. My coaching program, Reclaim Your Ground exists for exactly this moment. #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 04/08/2026
The assumption that carried most scientists through their early career: Work hard. Publish. Get the grant. Earn the position. Then things stabilize. I believed it too. What I've learned, is that the stabilization doesn't arrive the way you expected. When did you first see that ?
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Summer in academic science has a texture that the rest of the year doesn't. Not slower, exactly. But different. Pockets of something that resembles breathing room. In my experience working with mid-career faculty, those pockets matter more than they look like they do = a chance to reassess.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
If this resonates, why not reach out? #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Nobody talks about the Associate Professor years honestly. Pre-tenure, the system gives you a timeline, a checklist, a clear measure of success or failure. Post-tenure, the structure disappears. The checklist is gone. The next milestone, Full Professor, is vague, institutional, and often far away.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
Not captured: the career decisions you made from exhaustion this year. The questions you haven't had space to ask. The slow drift from intention to survival. That gap is where the real work happens. #AcademicScience #FacultyLife #MidCareer #BiomedicalResearch #AcademiaLife
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Academic summer, translated: June: "I'll rest after the conference." July: "I'll rest after I finish the grant." August: "I'll rest before the semester starts." September: "The semester started." The rest never quite arrives. What's the thing you keep moving rest behind this summer?
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Mid-career is harder than the system acknowledges. The work isn't figuring out why — it's deciding what to do from here.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
A scientist I was working with described her situation like this: "I'm doing everything I was trained to do. I have the lab, I have students, I just got tenure. And I feel completely lost." If that sounds familiar I'd like to hear what's underneath it in your specific situation. DM me.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
If you're navigating a funding gap and making decisions from depletion rather than clarity — that's exactly what Reclaim Your Ground is built for.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Every June, I tell myself the same thing: summer will be slower. I'll finally have space to think. 30 years in academic research. I believed this approximately 0 times and told myself it approximately 30 times. If you have any version of actual space this summer, what are you doing with it?
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 17/07/2026
"Is this what the next twenty years looks like?" Many mid-career scientista I've talked have had this thought. It's not a sign that something is wrong with you, your career, or your commitment. If this is familiar, I work with mid-career faculty navigating exactly this.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 15/07/2026
Fewer than 50 of 100 R01 recipients receive a second R01. (Antman et al, 2021) Most faculty I've talked to didn't know that. They assumed that tenure plus one funded grant meant stability. What I'm curious about: when did you first realize the trajectory you'd assumed wasn't guaranteed?
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 14/07/2026
The people who love you usually notice before you do. Not because they're more perceptive, but because they see a version of you that the institution never does. If someone close to you has gently mentioned that you seem checked out, that is worth taking seriously.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Many articles will be published this July about how to maximize your summer productivity: read, write, submit more. Optimize routines. Build systems. Clear the backlog. I suggest instead: between now and Labor Day, ask yourself is the career you're working this hard on still what you actually want.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
A career structure with no finish line creates a problem: your sense of enough has to come from somewhere internal, because the system will never tell you you've arrived. Building an internal definition of enough isn't lowering the bar. It's becoming the person who gets to decide where the bar is.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 08/07/2026
I've been thinking about what actually pulls someone out of survival mode in academic science. Not the advice they get from their department chair. Not the "have you considered industry?" conversation. Not late-night Reddit. What actually shifts something. I'd genuinely like to hear it.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 07/07/2026
The ground under your feet has felt shaky for a while. Cracked. Uncertain. It doesn't have to stay that way. Steady footing, clear focus, decisions made from agency instead of dread — that's reclaimable. That's the point of Reclaim Your Ground. If you're ready let's start with a conversation.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
"How's everything going?" "Great! So busy!" We both know the script. But every so often someone says something a little too accurate, and the mask drops — and the relief is enormous. I'm not a motivational coach. I'm a scientist who's lived this. If you want to talk with someone who gets it, DM.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 03/07/2026
You'd never run an experiment without controls. Yet you make the biggest decisions of your career with no data on how you operate under pressure. The ELI Assessment is that missing data. You measure everything in your lab. This deserves the same rigor. DM me "ELI" and I'll send you the details.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 01/07/2026
The calendar flips. Year after year fills with committees, reviews, favors — everyone's priorities but yours. Then one day you look up: "Wait, where did I go?" A career can drift for years on autopilot. Noticing the drift is the first step. If you're ready to take the wheel again, let's talk.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
You typed "I won't be able to take that on." Then you hovered over send while the guilt-music swelled. You sent it anyway. The world kept turning. If boundaries feel impossible right now, that's a pattern we can work with. Message me "boundaries" to start.
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 29/06/2026
You sprint back and forth trying to keep work and life level, dropping things with every step. The seesaw never balances. It's not built to. The goal was never balance. It's sustainable energy. Want to stop running and start building? Book a call on my website bogler.cc
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Oliver Bogler @oliverbogler.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
In the department photo, everyone looks composed. Inside your head: "Any minute now they'll figure out I don't belong here." Here's the part no one says out loud — half your colleagues are thinking the exact same thing. Impostor syndrome thrives in silence. Let's break it. Message me.
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