• Question: are you going to look further into your job to get higher achievments

    Asked by abbiefoleyx to Aaron, Abbey, Keith, Natalie, Pete on 10 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Natalie Garrett

      Natalie Garrett answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      When I feel burned out from working on a particular thing for too long, I try to find productive things I can do instead to give myself a break. One of these “productive procrastination” activities is looking up competitions and prizes I could apply for. I really enjoy achieving above and beyond what’s expected of me, so I often seek out new opportunities like that.

      In terms of achievements within my job itself, this is something scientists pretty much have to do all the time anyway. You have to keep improving your work, you have to try to get your work published in better and better journals, you have to keep striving to be excellent in all that you do.

    • Photo: Aaron Boardley

      Aaron Boardley answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      I’m always looking to develop skills and improve my work. I’m 27 at the moment, so will probably be working for another 40 years before retirement – so I hope to progress at that time, get better at what I do, and earn more money along the way.

      There’s plenty of options within my area, to find new ways of being creative and new ways of communicating science. At the moment I do a lot of writing, and a little bit of work on podcasts. If I wanted to achieve more things I could develop my skills for making YouTube videos, for example – it’s an area I’d be really interested in trying!

      Also, there’ll always be new technology to understand, so I will always have to keep looking further to make sure I know how to use this. 10 years ago, YouTube barely even existed, nor did social media. Who know what we’ll all be using in the year 2025 – so I’ll always keep looking at new ways to communicate. I’d love the read your ideas if you have any!

    • Photo: Peter Burgess

      Peter Burgess answered on 10 Nov 2015:

      Flip the question around. Are you content to stay at the same level you’ve already reached?

      And the answer is no. There is a never ending list of more things to do. In my job right now, I can always fine-tune the calculations I have already written but I know there is more I can do on time-series analysis and on smart predictions that we can use to detect when things are shifting away from normal performance. I do some of this by hand already but there’s only one of me and it takes me quite a lot of time to go through things. If I can tell a computer what to look for it can do the same work much faster. My advantage over machines is that I can work out what sums I want done in the first place because I can think of new ways to do things.

      In time, I’d like to take on more responsibility and maybe manage a whole solar power operation and maintenance department/company but I know I would miss the day to day business of looking at data and working out what’s happening.

    • Photo: Keith Franklin

      Keith Franklin answered on 11 Nov 2015:

      Go further can also mean “Do different things”. I always thought I would be working in a lab – but I’m now working in an Embassy in Japan. I am always looking for interesting things to do.

      The important thing to know is that even if you start doing one job, you may end up doing something completely different!! Just keeping looking for new things to do.

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