Clarity in resilience in research
Dealing with others who distract me
Distraction at work and home can take very similar forms. One of the things that derails resilience can be not completing the task that you set out to complete at the start of the day.
All sorts of things can be distracting but on a resilience boosting day you can avoid distraction by:
- Knowing what is important to you and why you shouldn’t be distracted from it.
- Getting the most important thing done at your time of maximum concentration when no one else is around and when your resistance to interruption is at its best. Morning people find that working first thing in the day is best for them, whereas this might be an afternoon or evening technique for others.
- Accepting that there will be parts of each day where your concentration is lower and that you won’t get as much done during these times – good times to schedule meetings, go for a brief walk, allow yourself to chat to others and/or use the internet.
In a 90-minute plan for personal effectiveness – Tony Schwarz writes about how we can boost our attention span by working in concentrated bursts.
Dealing with criticisms, conflict and failure inherent in research
Generally we are not very open about the subject of criticism, conflict and failure in academic environments – it is an environment where all three are inherent behaviours in the environment and yet we are not open about them.
Getting to the stage of undertaking a PhD and developing a career in academia is based on strong academic and personal performances in all other forms of qualifications and education up until that point. Part of this is accepting that your work and ideas will be challenged, that there will be (sometimes significant) disagreements between researchers and failure.
Academia involves us taking significant personal and professional risks to create something that doesn’t exist at the moment, which can dent our resilience when we fail.
This article talks about the importance of being able to bounce back from failure.
Being able to say no
This is a topic many struggle with their whole life. Sometimes it isn’t because you don’t have the skills to say ‘no’ – one can be assertive and have clear cause to say ‘no’ many times a day and do so without thinking.
In many ways you don’t say ‘no’ more often because you don’t want to – we want to say ‘yes’ to things. Attracted by the ‘bright shiny’ opportunity that you may be creating in conversation with someone else it is easy to say ‘yes’ now to creating something that seems great in the future. However, this is a practice that you may need to work on to keep on top of managing our resilience.
This also linked to the earlier topic of how you respond to an obligation – once you’ve said you will do it you may then feel you have an inner and extended obligation to follow through on it. These articles, ‘the power of saying no’ includes a useful technique for imagining your future self’s response to something you said ‘yes’ to today.
Learning from observing others
Observing how other people do things is a useful way of ‘borrowing behaviours’, that might work for us, from others. Resilience building and maintenance, is no different, particularly learning from those who manage challenging work in a seemingly effortless way. It is rarely as effortless in practice as it appears and often requires developing a discipline that you might not naturally have. Three ways of learning from others include:
- Reading – reading blogs of people who work or live in similar worlds of work/lives to you to see what they do, how they manage themselves and what they know that is new to you and could be useful.
- Observing – how people manage their time, writing and research work, flow of email, how they say no to things and how they (appear to) avoid being overwhelmed with commitments are all interesting things to observe in practice. 3. Asking – this may take a long time to develop but can be most useful to share good practices.
Dr Caitlin Nunn’s blog shares her insights on managing her transition from one side of the world to another.
Creating headspace to deal with difficulty
It has always seemed incongruous that in the height of stress or busy-ness that finding time to take a break should be a priority. Surely the priority should be getting on with the things you need to be getting on with? However, small pauses or breaks can be very helpful to pace things and help us regulate the energy you have to deal with different challenges.
To be more resilient you may need some coping mechanisms to be able to create some headspace to think and deal with what has happened. Time outside, exercise, a hobby, sport, mindfulness, a long weekend, holidays or talking with a boss, coach or mentor can be very helpful in allowing us to process the difficulty you are dealing with or the disappointment or failure you have experienced. By having such mechanisms that help you to process and think, you may be more responsive to taking day-to-day difficulties in your stride and build your resilience as a result.
What do I want to do/achieve/be?
Even if you don’t know exactly where you want to take your career over the next 5, 10, 15,…, 50 years, can you talk about a direction of travel and the risks you are prepared to take to pursue it?
Much of what is written about resilience building is about having something that you are working towards and perhaps something that involves personal and professional growth. This section is written with the knowledge that the research environment is a precarious one with little stability or guarantees of employment. Does this prevent you having a view of the future or some clear (and possibly flexible) goals?
If you can manage your day to day resilience through focus, managing procrastination, keeping yourself balanced with holidays, family time and investment in yourself is there an opportunity for you to take on more challenges to help you grow in a different, new or more resilient direction? What might be possible, if you can find a way through the day-today challenges and focus on things that you are working towards?