Productivity and motivation together? Try Kanban.

A couple of weeks into the first lockdown, in 2020, I started keeping a list of the things I had completed each week and e-mailing it to my manager before I shut down my computer on a Friday afternoon. The reasons I started doing this were created by lockdown, but I’ve carried on doing it ever since because it had a rather glorious side effect; it is motivating.

Instead of trying to make progress through a to-do list which never seems to get shorter, I am now measuring my achievements through a “done list” which gets steadily longer over the week. Sometimes it stays stubbornly short for the first few days, if I’m working on a longer task, but then I get to add something substantial to it, and it starts to grow again.

I’m not the only one who thinks a done list is a good way of doing things, but if you can’t quite see how it would work for you in isolation, then you might like to try a technique called Kanban. Kanban comes from the Japanese for signboard, and is a way of visualising progress, including what you have already done.

A simple Kanban board
Photo credit: Kanban Tool

Spotlight on the RDF: “Perseverance”

In this series of “Spotlight on…” posts, we’ll be delving into the detail of the descriptors in Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Each one of the sixty-three descriptors is a characteristic of an excellent researcher, and we’ll be looking at how UoB PGRs can develop these characteristics.

Elizabeth Warren: “Nevertheless, she persisted”

Perseverance is a valuable quality for a research programme, so much so that one of its synonyms is specifically mentioned in the Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Students:  “a PhD is 10% intelligence and 90% persistence”.   Perseverance requires self-discipline and motivation in general, but also specifically refers to your response when things go wrong.  

Give yourself a break

August.  Somewhat surprisingly, the last few weeks have been hot, like summer is “supposed” to be.  Campus is quiet, eerily so, at times.  Lots of colleagues are taking annual leave, and there aren’t as many e-mails flying round as usual.  The days are long.

For some, this is a time of fewer distractions, and an opportunity to focus on their research.  For others, motivation is low as the hot weather induces lethargy and the beaches/mountains/meadows seem so enticing.  For others still, deadlines loom large and all these external things are irrelevant.  How can you ensure that you make the summer work for you?

Spotlight on the RDF: “Enthusiasm”

In this series of “Spotlight on…” posts, we’ll be delving into the detail of the descriptors in Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Each one of the sixty-three descriptors is a characteristic of an excellent researcher, and we’ll be looking at how UoB PGRs can develop these characteristics.

Photo credit: Kimia Solutions.

Enthusiasm is defined by the OED as “passionate eagerness in any pursuit, proceeding from an intense conviction of the worthiness of the object” [1] and I think this is something that many of us can identify with when we embark on a new research undertaking.  However, passion and intensity require a lot of energy to maintain, so this post explores ways to keep enthusiasm and motivation high over the course of a research programme.