The Strategic Value of Side Projects in Academic Medicine
The Project Nobody Asked You to Do
Every academic physician I coach has one. A project that lives in the margins. Something you work on between grants, after clinic, during the hours you probably should be sleeping.
Maybe it is a podcast about medical education. A curriculum you are building on your own time. A small consulting arrangement with a startup. A writing project that has nothing to do with your h-index.
Your chair does not understand it. Your colleagues think it is a distraction. And yet you keep coming back to it.
I think you should pay attention to that.
Side Projects Are Career Insurance
Academic medicine is not as stable as it used to be. Funding landscapes shift. Departments reorganize. Leadership changes, and suddenly the priorities that defined your role no longer exist.
A side project gives you optionality. It builds skills, relationships, and visibility in spaces your primary role does not reach. And in a career that can span 30 or 40 years, optionality is not a luxury. It is a survival strategy.
Research from the Harvard Business Review supports this. In a piece on career resilience, the authors argue that professionals who cultivate diverse skill sets and networks are far better positioned to weather disruption than those who go all in on a single path.
That principle holds in academic medicine, maybe more than anywhere.
The Hidden Benefits Nobody Talks About
The obvious benefit of a side project is that it might become something. A second income stream. A new career direction. A book deal.
But the less obvious benefits are the ones I see most often in coaching.
Energy
The right side project gives you energy that feeds back into your primary work. When everything in your day job feels like obligation, having something that feels like choice is restorative. It reminds you why you got into intellectual work in the first place.
Identity
Academic medicine has a way of flattening your identity. You become your role. Your title. Your grant portfolio. A side project reminds you that you are more than your position on an org chart. That matters psychologically, and it matters strategically when you need to make a career move.
Signal
A side project signals something to the people watching. It says you are curious. You are entrepreneurial. You can build something from nothing. Those are leadership qualities, and the right people notice.
The Objection I Always Hear
"I barely have time for my actual job. How am I supposed to do something extra?"
Fair. But here is what I have noticed: the physicians who tell me they have no time for a side project often spend significant hours on committee work they resent, collaborations that go nowhere, and administrative tasks that could be delegated.
The issue is rarely total time. It is how time is allocated. Sometimes the first step toward a side project is an honest audit of where your hours actually go. You might find more margin than you think.
I am not suggesting you pile more onto an already crushing workload. I am suggesting you might replace something draining with something generative.
Keep It Strategic
Not all side projects are created equal. The ones that pay off tend to share a few traits:
- They align with a future you want. A side project should pull you toward something, not just away from boredom.
- They build transferable skills. Leadership, communication, business acumen, public presence — these travel with you no matter where your career goes.
- They connect you to new people. The most valuable thing a side project can produce is a network outside your current institution.
If your side project does all three, it is not a distraction. It is a strategic investment.
Give Yourself Permission
The culture of academic medicine can make you feel guilty for doing anything that does not directly serve your department, your division, or your promotion file. But your career is longer than any single role. And the thing your chair does not understand today might be the thing that defines your next chapter.
You do not need anyone's permission to explore. But if hearing it from someone else helps: you have mine.
I work with physicians in academic medicine who are building careers on their own terms — not just the terms their institution handed them. If you want to think through how a side project fits into your bigger picture, let's talk.
