What do you usually do every day? Do you enjoy it?

Question: What do you usually do every day? Do you enjoy it?
- Keywords:
  work
Asked by anon-215742 to Laura, Kathryn, Ian, Chris, Bogdana, Alex on 11 Jun 2019.
- Ian Cookson answered on 11 Jun 2019:
  
  At the moment, most of my time is spent reading. Looking for research and drafting proposals etc. Not the most enjoyable part of being a psychologist, but it’s part of being an academic
- Laura Fisk answered on 11 Jun 2019:
  
  Most of my psychology time is spent talking with people – the vast majority of my time, actually. I speak with anyone and everyone who books in to see me. The computer tells me when they’ve arrived, I go and fetch them to bring them to my room, we talk about what’s on their mind (I’ll use psychology theory to work out how to help them make sense of what’s going on for them and help start coming up with solutions to any problems they might have), and then they’ll go away with something to try or something to look up or a service to get in touch with. Then I’ll see that the next set of people have arrived and the process begins again! I squeeze in a bit of paperwork in around those people. Then, if theres any time left (e.g. if someone doesn’t show up for an appointment), I’ll finish off some research or longer bit of writing. And then I’ll do some reading (called “continuing professional development” – to make sure I’m up to speed with research). Phew!
- Kathryn Atherton answered on 11 Jun 2019: last edited 11 Jun 2019 5:09 pm
  
  My day-to-day work involves:
  *Reading academic research papers to keep up to date with the latest behavioural insights;
  *Interviewing members of the public to help us better understand the problems we are facing;
  *Working with colleagues to generate solutions to society’s problems;
  *Designing and implementing scientific experiments to implement and evaluate our ideas;
  *Meeting with our clients (e.g. the Department for Education) to discuss our ongoing projects;
  *Presenting our results internally or externally;
  *Developing new work for my organistion by sharing what we do and what we recommend (e.g. with No. 10 Downing Street).
  
  And yes, I can honestly say that I love every minute of it (and this has not been the case in previous jobs that I have had).
- Alex Lloyd answered on 12 Jun 2019:
  
  My days are all different! Some days I spend a lot of the day reading papers and writing notes. This is usually the most boring days but I make sure to have lots of coffee and snacks on my desk to keep me going!
  
  Others, I will be collecting data by running my experiments with students at schools around the country. I usually go into classrooms and speak to students about what I do, the students then complete a game on their computers and we see who got the highest score on the task!
  
  Sometimes, I will deliver talks to students, teachers, practitioners, or other scientists about my research, where I will get their views on the research I have conducted. This can be pretty scary sometimes as I’m still nervous when I do public speaking, but I often have really interesting discussions.
  
  More recently, I have been designing new research to test new questions about human behaviour. This involves building studies and tasks and can take a lot of time!
  
  Do I enjoy it? Every day, I wouldn’t change what I do for anything 🙂
- Bogdana Huma answered on 13 Jun 2019: last edited 13 Jun 2019 6:09 am
  
  My work as a lecturer mainly involves four broad activities: (1) preparing teaching materials (which consists mainly of reading and fiddling with PowerPoint slides), (2) teaching, (3) researching (which involves transcribing, analysing data, writing and some more reading) and (4) admin (like filling out forms, dealing with emails, and other boooring stuff). I enjoy 3 out of the 4 above (you can figure out which ones).

Question: What do you usually do every day? Do you enjoy it?

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