• Question: Do you ever struggle with something at work? How do you deal with this?

    Asked by hannahgrimes to Alex, Chris, Harriet, Jed, Ken on 15 Mar 2012.
    • Photo: Ken Gibbs

      Ken Gibbs answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      I frequently do and often did – struggle, that is. Would it be too simple to suggest that “If you don’t at first succeed, then try, try and try again” ? This has been my view whenever I have met a hurdle which got in my way, and I am sure that the others in this Zone are likely to say the same. If you want to achieve, there is no substitute for good, honest, hard work. Some call it a grind, but the achievement of solving whatever the problem is, is a reward of its own.

    • Photo: Jed Ramsay

      Jed Ramsay answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      That’s life isn’t it? I think if everything was so easy that you never had to struggle, then nothing you did would ever really be satisfying. A bit like learning a musical instrument – it’s hard work, but in the end when you can play that song you really wanted to play after hours of practise it’s worth it.

      It’s the same at work – well it is for me – as sometimes I have to work for months to get a project to be completed and overcome lots of problems. But in the the end it’s very satisfying when I finally build something.

    • Photo: Alexander Zacheshigriva

      Alexander Zacheshigriva answered on 18 Mar 2012:

      There are different struggles. Sometimes you try to find a solution and you fail at first attempt, you keep trying, talk to other people, try a different approach. The last resort is to redefine the problem, but normally I find a way that works. Now things like that happen all the time. In fact it is not that often that the first approach that I try works first thing (now that may be due to my inexperience).

      Sometimes you know that the thing (say a computer model) has to work, but it doesn’t. And I struggle to find what is wrong. Now this is frustrating, one can spend ages trying to find the silly mistake somewhere, muttering at the screen. Best tip is to a) go get a cup of tea and come back b) get someone to help you. Chances are they will see immediately what you missed.

      Then sometimes you can struggle with a person that you have to work with. I am lucky, at the moment everyone I work with is great. And I didn’t have terrible experience in the past either, but some people took longer to get along then others. What I find is that once you understand the person and their story, you may still disagree on some things but you can see their strong sides and respect them for that. Once you get respect between people you can have a good enough relation to work together.

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