No-one said it would be easy! We are, after all, pushing back the frontiers. That may sound grand, but there are reasons why the frontiers are where they are. Progress is never as quick as we would all like it to be. The world is imperfect. Equipment breaks, experiments fail, projects run into dead ends, good papers and grant applications get rejected, administration takes time (often far too much), some people let us down, and the world is full of distractions. All of these take time not only from our research but from that of all other scientists. And they have done so, to greater or lesser extents, for generations. Even worse, these problems drain our motivation. We need an unbreakable sense of purpose, and commitment to it, that we can tap into to ride them out. So what is purpose and how do we find it?
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The world is full of people who achieved high levels of ‘success’ in business, sport, wealth and other domains only to find this did not bring the happiness and satisfaction they sought. Success in research is no different. My own experience on being awarded tenure, for example, was an immediate sense of relief after years of career insecurity, and of gratitude for the hard work of my team, followed by an unnerving feeling of ‘what now?’, when faced with the opposite extreme. However ironic this sounds, this is a remarkably common experience that needs its own solutions. The way I rationalise it today is that my craving for security and success had unconsciously taken over from the intrinsic motivations that brought me into research in the first place. So once I had all the security I could want, there was just emptiness. Reconnecting with these underlying motivations, and the values they relate to, takes a while but that process is crucial.
Organisational psychologist Adam Grant writes: “Success is most rewarding when it serves the people and principles that matter to you”. Your values, in other words. Success when it comes feels hollow unless or until it is aligned with our deepest values. But is a focus on values just a privilege of those lucky enough to have security? And what are values? How can we get crystal clear on ours, and, crucially, how can that help us in other career stages? Feelings of insecurity in research have many triggers: when the remaining funding period ticks below a year; an argument with the boss; being scooped on a paper; a fellowship rejection.
But feeling insecure can be even more damaging than job precarity itself. What does that chronic, pervasive, nagging doubt do to our research and to us? And how can we manage it better? The answer to both questions is ‘much more than we think’! Science is a creative endeavour: without ideas there is no science. So why do our best ideas come in the shower? Or while out for a walk or staring into space? Long train journeys once had the same effect, before we had smartphones. What is it about these environments that allows our thoughts to flow freely and can we replicate this elsewhere? My personal favourite is seminars where the speaker has completely lost me. Confined to my seat by the embarrassment of leaving, I feel desperate to occupy my mind. I’m drawn to random words from the talk, or any small fragment I can follow, before heading off at a tangent to wherever my thoughts take me. Perhaps I should be more grateful for these presentations! What do all these circumstances have in common that allows ideas to flow? How does this process work? And how can we use this knowledge to optimise our working style and research culture? |
AuthorProfessor Michael Coleman (University of Cambridge) Neuroscientist and Academic Coach: discovering stuff and improving research culture Archives
October 2024
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