 |
| Prof Mark Reed |
One of the most common reasons that academics
give for not applying for grants is a lack of time. Buffeted and battered
between the thousand competing demands of modern academia, grant writing always
seems to come a poor 562nd.
And yet some manage it. It’s this mystery that
Prof Mark Reed sought to resolve in his new book, The Productive Researcher. To do so, he ‘reached out to the world’s
most productive researchers...and asked them how they did what they do. Their
answers and the answers that emerged from my reading, both confirmed and
extended my thinking.’
At this point I can picture many of you
arching an eyebrow and imagining that the answer lies with teams of postdocs
and some very understanding spouses. But for Reed it’s both far simpler and far
harder. For him it is, as it was for TS Eliot in ‘Little Gidding’, ‘a condition
of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything).’
Because the productive researcher needs to
strip everything back to their prime motivating force. Why did they started in
academia in the first place? It is only ‘by understanding why - really why -
you are a researcher [that] you can become increasingly aware of the motives
that lie behind your motives.’ And only
when you understand these can you start to properly prioritise your workload.
