It was a pleasure to do a keynote talk for the British Psychological Society’s Cyberpsychology Section conference recently. One of the questions I was asked related to what advice I would give to early career researchers (ECRs) about being successful in research. As someone who isn’t brilliant at thinking of my feet, I gave quite a general response about the importance of working with the right people and recognising that failure is part of the process, but I wasn’t overly satisfied that my response was useful enough. I have since taken time to get more thoughtful responses together which I have put together in a practical list below.
Collaborate wisely
One of the most widely cited pieces of advice for researchers is to make sure you collaborate with people. I entirely agree with this but would offer some nuance on doing this smartly in a number of ways.
· Don’t work with everyone. Especially if you work in academia, if you work with lots of people in your niche area, this poses issues when finding someone impartial that you don’t have to declare interests with when trying to find an external examiner for one of your graduate students/postgraduate researchers. It’s work having an “inner circle” (collaborators on projects) and an “outer circle” (esteemed colleagues who you don’t directly co-author or collaborate with) to have multiple levels of people in your network
· Know your role in the collaboration- I have blogged previously about different collaboration models. Within this, it might be that you are an expert in more of a supervisory or advisory role for someone else’s research (e.g., a postgraduate student). In other cases, you might be on a team to contribute specific subject insight or skills to ensure the project deliverables are achievable. There are various ways that collaborations can work, and so there isn’t a one-size fits all about how to do these effectively
· Complimentary collaborations- recognise your strengths, to know what things you “bring to the table” and what areas might be your limitations. From knowing this, you can then work out strategically who might be complementary to any projects, as they might offer different expertise or skills. I routinely have conversations with collaborators about this at the initiation of projects and is a useful exercise to make sure that everyone has a good understanding of their contributions and value within a team. A former colleague outlined various different things that scientists can be, and I think this is a nice way to reflect on what aspects of being a scientist we are especially good at and/or enjoy. There may be similar types of things for researchers in non-scientific fields to use to reflect in this way.
Elaborating from Point #1 above on the issue of recognising your strengths, if you have a good idea about what these are, then make sure you play to these as much as possible. However, I’m not saying bury your head in the sand on things you struggle with: there is always merit to engaging in staff training and development, and self-development. But, if you know that you are efficient and effective at academic writing, then this seems like a sensible thing to contribute to collaborative projects you might be involved in. Alternatively, if you are spending a whole day working out how to run an R script to analyse your data, but your collaborator can do it in 2 minutes, then it does seem that a smarter strategy could be used here in the interests of saving your time and energy.
Work Smart
One of the most surprising things for me which I have observed since being on a management team, is how much variation there is across members of a department in their management of time. Most people work hard; that is absolutely evident, but I don’t think the same can be said about working smart. I feel there are various aspects to this, which I list below
· Recognise your ebbs and flows- having an awareness of your own natural fluctuations in energy across a day can be helpful to understand when you are likely to work most effectively. For example, I know I’m a morning person, who is up and alert and usually working for 7am. Relatedly, I know I’m not an evening person (I’m almost embarrassed to admit that I’m usually in bed by 9pm!) Knowing that I am alert and have better concentration and energy in the morning is helpful to plan types of work activities that require clarity of thinking and “high power” thought (e.g., conceptualising research ideas, academic writing, reviewing module content, etc). However, in the times when my energy is more likely to be waning, I can plan to do more procedural or “low power” cognitive tasks (e.g., updating spreadsheets, adding reading lists to virtual learning environment, creating a structure for a conference talk). Whilst it isn’t always possible to plan your day so it aligns to your ideal due to the fact that meetings and other commitments might get scheduled beyond our control, when we do have good autonomy to plan our work, we should look to do this as smartly as possible.
· Schedule your rest- part of recognise ebbs and flow is to also remember that you’re not a robot and it isn’t sustainable to work hard (and smart) all day, every day of the year. I take time at the start of a new academic year to map out what days/weeks I might be asking for leave across the whole academic year. I can plan this around knowing when the pressure points are, when key commitments take place etc so this is planned out proactively. Getting leave authorised in good time therefore means I usually end up being able to take all the leave I am entitled to, and be at points that mean I can get the most from being away from work, whilst still aligning with the wider policies and procedures of my department.
Find synergy in your work commitments
It isn’t always possible or indeed easy to do this, but try to align various aspects of your work so they relate thematically. To give an example, if you are a member of an EDI committee or Athena Swan steering group, and have an interest in gender equality research, then map out some projects which mean that data you collect on this might serve part of the data collection or evaluation work of the committees you’re part of. Alternatively, if you are doing a pedagogic research project for part of a PGCert in learning and teaching, discuss with your department about how the project aligns to an evaluation work that might be needed to support the work of a learning and teaching committee. Synergising can have various guises, but as a general rule, try to see the work you do in a wider context to see where some overlap or mutual ends might align.
Project mapping
One of the challenges of being a researcher is ensuring that you find a suitable balance of projects to be working on. In my own experiences of being an ECR several years ago, I have been guilty of being a bit of a “magpie” and taking on way too many disparate projects with various collaborators and then being spread too thin. Not only does this mean your time and energy is stretched, but also means that if the projects are not coherent in nature, it might be challenging for you to signal what your “identity” as a researcher is.
Something I have found really helpful to avoid this happening, is to articulate your overall research aims or key research objectives, and only commit to projects that align to these. There may of course be opportunities that crop up which are too good to miss, and so might compromise this principle, but I have found it does help me keep a more exclusive focus in my research activities, and synergise things better. See below for an example of my own research mapping
Leave bread crumbs
Academic writing can be really difficult. Even if you can schedule in time to do writing, sometimes it takes a bit of time to get back into the headspace needed. At times when you are on a bit of a roll when writing, help future “you” by signposting your current thinking so future “you” can easily pick this train of thought back up. For example, if you need to end your day, but still have lots you want to write, add quick notes to your document to give “you” an idea of what you are thinking or how you were wanting to elaborate on a particular point, or what reading you were thinking you might need to enrich some discussion. Leaving “bread crumbs” can be immensely useful to more easily get back into knowing where your past “you” left off.
Writing breeds writing
I find that the more you write, the more you are able to write. That sounds a bit weird saying it out loud, but basically what I mean is that sometimes the biggest barrier to getting started on writing a research paper is the fact you might have been away from writing for a bit. I find that even writing blog posts such as this, gets me into writing mode, and that opens the floodgates, so to speak, on feeling I’m in the correct mode for any other kind of writing. It doesn’t need to be blogposts or anything fancy, but maybe you might find things like quick research summaries or diary entries of similar useful to do on a routine basis when initiating the writing process for a given period of time.
If you’re the smartest person in the room, move to another room…but not immediately
There’s a popular saying that “If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room.”. I like the idea that you should always be pushing yourself to move further from your immediate limits and striving to learn more or be around others to stimulate you further. So I see what the saying is getting at. However, I think one part that’s missing is what you do before you move to another room. I would argue that before you move to another room, you make sure that those people staying in the room are afforded enough opportunity to have learnt from you, to have built their capacities from your insights, knowledge or skills. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that if you have something smart that will benefit others, share it with the room before you walk out of the door.
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