I do work everyday, whether it is paid work or volunteer work. For me, volunteer work includes doing my PhD (because I chose to do it on my own free will & I am not getting paid to do it), helping out in church stuff and doing housework (if that counts). Paid work is of course just work that pays (monetarily). For a good part of my life, I worked on a reactive kind of mode: something happens and I react to it, or somebody tells me I should do something and I do it. It is probably the way that I was brought up - to follow a certain pattern of doing things, to follow instructions and 'protocol', and take on whatever comes my way. But over the years I have began to feel tired of working that way; and at some point I decided to make some changes - to pursue the things that I have a passion for and try to avoid doing things that doesn't interest me (at all). So I came to Melbourne... and I am still on that journey... trying to work out some way to do the things I like and hopefully get paid (enough) doing it.
Recently I had this meeting with the boss (of my part-time job) to get some review of my performance in the past four months and to find out if I met the expectations of the role. I was given some positive feedback and also some suggestions of areas where I could improve on. Overall it was quite a standard type of review meeting and in my opinion, the outcome was positive. But there was something else that I took out of the meeting.
The boss was explaining to me during one part of the conversation about spending time and resources on a project and how every bit of effort put in could have some outcome. However, some input could have a slightly worse outcome and some could have a much better outcome. But what really counts is when the outcome goes past a threshold and becomes profitable or successful. That could be like: developing a consumer product that goes through a few prototypes and finally becomes mass produced and sold to the customers; or a new software update that has gone through a few rounds of testing, then it is finally published and it benefits the end-users. But then, not all developments become a final product or something deliverable and useful. Some just stop at a certain prototype stage and 'die' off. So the goal is to have as many 'deliverables' as possible with the amount of resources spent. I imagine this would require having some form of vision of the outcome, proper planning, and working intentionally - spending adequate resources (time, effort & money), not getting distracted by other things and making sure that every effort spent is intended to reach the goal.
I am not 100% sure if that was exactly what I heard but that was what stuck in my head. It made sense to me, and I think I could definitely apply that while working on my PhD because I really need to work more intentionally, to have outcomes that count - like doing testing and analyses that will complete certain chapters in my thesis or even publishing journal articles & conference papers from my research. There are many interesting ideas and 'projects' that distract me every now and then, but I really need to start intentionally filtering them and just stay on track to finish this PhD and finish it well.
Recently I had this meeting with the boss (of my part-time job) to get some review of my performance in the past four months and to find out if I met the expectations of the role. I was given some positive feedback and also some suggestions of areas where I could improve on. Overall it was quite a standard type of review meeting and in my opinion, the outcome was positive. But there was something else that I took out of the meeting.
The boss was explaining to me during one part of the conversation about spending time and resources on a project and how every bit of effort put in could have some outcome. However, some input could have a slightly worse outcome and some could have a much better outcome. But what really counts is when the outcome goes past a threshold and becomes profitable or successful. That could be like: developing a consumer product that goes through a few prototypes and finally becomes mass produced and sold to the customers; or a new software update that has gone through a few rounds of testing, then it is finally published and it benefits the end-users. But then, not all developments become a final product or something deliverable and useful. Some just stop at a certain prototype stage and 'die' off. So the goal is to have as many 'deliverables' as possible with the amount of resources spent. I imagine this would require having some form of vision of the outcome, proper planning, and working intentionally - spending adequate resources (time, effort & money), not getting distracted by other things and making sure that every effort spent is intended to reach the goal.
I am not 100% sure if that was exactly what I heard but that was what stuck in my head. It made sense to me, and I think I could definitely apply that while working on my PhD because I really need to work more intentionally, to have outcomes that count - like doing testing and analyses that will complete certain chapters in my thesis or even publishing journal articles & conference papers from my research. There are many interesting ideas and 'projects' that distract me every now and then, but I really need to start intentionally filtering them and just stay on track to finish this PhD and finish it well.
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