After working for many years in a development environment, I transferred to a research department last year. After working there for one year I had a discussion with my manager about how I was doing. I commented that I didn't feel like I had changed to a research organization - it's as if I was still doing the same style of work I had been doing in development. His reply was yes, I was still working as if I was in a development group. Specifically, I was working on projects as if I had to succeed on almost everything I did, and if I didn't, I had to explain why I screwed up.
He went on to remind me that in a research organization, you have to be more aggressive at taking risks to explore new ideas. He wanted me to come back at the end of the year and list the 5 big projects I worked on that failed (and if I had maybe 3 that succeeded that would be good too). What great advise! That really produced a change in the way I started viewing things.
I started wondering if there were phases or areas of life that corresponded to research and some that corresponded to development. Starting and supporting a new family has some similarities to development. While there can be periods in college or early adulthood that call for more of a research attitude as far as aggressively exploring new ideas. There may also be times later in life when things start to stagnate or plateau which also call for some more aggressive pursuing of new ideas. In some cases perhaps this might correspond to the infamous mid-life crisis.
Other situations corresponding to transitions or reaching former goals may also call for more of a "research attitude" when it comes to exploring what to do next or what changes to make. The key lesson for today is that trying things that don't work out is supposed to be part of the process of moving forward.
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