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Question: How can early-career researchers balance side projects with their primary work and position those projects for future funding?

The answer to this question depends upon how you define “early-career researchers”.

For postdocs and graduate students: First and foremost, you should seek the approval of your mentor to divert some of your time to “investigational projects” (I would not use the term “side projects”) that have potential to be highly rewarding for you and the mentor. Importantly, you need to have a clear rationale for these investigational projects and their potentially high degree of significance. The project should also have some degree of feasibility and involve other experts and collaborators if needed. I would recommend not having a strict timeline for obtaining pilot data on these investigational projects while at the same time make it clear to your mentor when pilot data are not supporting the hypothesis of an investigational project that you would “pull the plug”. The main point is to get your mentor excited about the investigational project and impress him/her/they with the thought you’ve put into its significance, feasibility and benefit to both of you.

For new principal investigators: Hopefully with pilot funds from your department/division, you’d have the freedom to devote to investigational projects that are not within the scope of a grant you have obtained or are preparing to submit. In this case, you have the most flexibility to have an investigational project be quite far removed from your main (funded) project. If you are running your lab strictly on funded grant, you’ll have less flexibility to move too far away from your funded project but still some ability to explore projects somewhat related to your funded one. Be mindful that some funding agencies (e.g., DOD) will provide very little flexibility to devote time away from the funded proposal. In either case, you should be mindful of the same considerations as mentioned above regarding a well thought out rationale, well designed experiments and a timeline for pulling the plug. It is often helpful in this case to approach a trustworthy collaborator with expertise in your investigational project to aid in generating pilot data. Getting a collaborator excited about your investigational project would go a long way to secure his/her/their support for the project and willingness to divert resources to help generate pilot data.