• Question: Where you have long periods of time without any results, how do you keep yourself motivated?

    Asked by 533nand48 to Anil, Claire, Leona on 19 Nov 2015.
    • Photo: Leona Mc Girr

      Leona Mc Girr answered on 19 Nov 2015:

      Yes unfortunately there will always a period in research when you do not get results and it can be very hard to motivate yourself. Thankfully this hasn’t happened that much for me but when it does, I take a break for a few days and come back fresh with a new perspective. I think you really need to love what you do otherwise you wont be able to motivate yourself. Also a good team and supervisor also really helps!

    • Photo: Anil Jain

      Anil Jain answered on 19 Nov 2015:

      ohh certainly. My current circuit in the lab was designed in Oct 2013. It was tested last year but the performance was not good enough. We knew there was a problem and a possible solution. We left it in the cold for some time and we are testing it again (in 2015) trying to solve that problem. For me as long as I know what the problem is and the solution to it I can go to bed fine. Also in the meantime there are other projects that needs your attention and possibly provide you with challenges diverting your attention. So as long as there are challenges to attend to I think I can keep myself motivated enough.

    • Photo: Claire O'Connell

      Claire O'Connell answered on 19 Nov 2015:

      This happens quite a lot to me. Usually when I get a bit stumped I go for a cup of tea, have a bit of a think, maybe read some journals. Because there is so much happening at the nanoscale finding the problem to why something isn’t working is usually a big challenge. In this case I try to design an experiment that will tell me which parameter it is that is causing the problem. Once I have found it I can usually fix it, it might just take a while!

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