• Question: Can you tell me about your experience in dealing with routine engineering work? How do you keep from getting bored?

    Asked by Cosmic Toast to Dominic, Maedeh, Matthew, Matt, Monica on 9 Mar 2016.
    • Photo: Matthew Oldfield

      Matthew Oldfield answered on 9 Mar 2016:

      Sometimes work is just a little bit boring! I’m lucky because I’ve done my job for a long time so have lots of different tasks to do. So if one task becomes a bit tedious then I may do something different for an hour to keep things fresh.

      For example, I’ve been running computer programs all day and looking at the results. When that became boring I can catch up on some emails, answer questions on here, do some online research, talk to a colleague about an experiment he wants to try, look into toolkits for the laboratory etc. None of those jobs are as important as the computer work but they all need to get done and provide some relief from what I was doing for most of the day. They say a change is as good as a rest and, at work when a task gets boring, it’s true!

    • Photo: Monica Rozeik

      Monica Rozeik answered on 10 Mar 2016:

      Some of the routine work will be computer modelling or reading lots of scientific articles so I try to deal with that by listening to music while I’m doing it or sometimes I’ll take my laptop and sit in the tea area for a change of scenery. I love listening to movie soundtracks at work, especially Lord of the Rings or Star Wars.

    • Photo: Dominic Eggbeer

      Dominic Eggbeer answered on 18 Mar 2016:

      Thankfully, I don’t need to do too much routine work. If I’m writing, I stick the cans on my ears and listen to music.

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