Monica Dunford

What drives you?

Passion and progress. I love when people are passionate about their lives or work. With this kind of passion always comes enthusiasm and with that enthusiasm comes innovation and new ideas. I remember sitting on the plane next to a woman who loved the mechanics of historical clocks and while I generally could careless about this topic, listening to her describe why it she found it so interesting was engaging and fascinated because she made it so. The hours of that flight just flew by.

I try to take a similar approach to life. Every job and every project comes with low moments or boring elements but having passion for the project helps me ride past those moments and come up with new solutions and new avenues. Especially at work, I try to let passion and not fun be my guide. Tough projects are not always fun and if fun is my guide, I find myself regularly discouraged. I have found passion to be a wiser companion. It helps me better ride the ups and downs of daily life but also serves as a great guide when I need to say no to projects. That committee may look great on my CV but if there is nothing to be passionate about, better to pass.

How do you move when you have to overcome an obstacle, and what tricks do you reach for to help you?

First, I sleep on it and let the subconscious do its great work. Then, I sit down and try to break down the obstacle into smaller parts. I try to explore if there are other paths around the obstacle, ones that I haven’t thought about. For big obstacles, after I have drafted a plan, I always call a close colleague, someone that I trust, to run it by them. Often the situation might be much clearer from a more distant perspective. These chats help me sound out if there is an obvious path that I have missed or maybe I am too emotionally involved in obstacle to see the solution clearly.

Two tricks that always help me are first to break down my plan into many small tasks that can be accomplished in short periods of time. For example if I have to give a big talk on a subject that I not as familiar with, then I find a list of papers that I want to read, and I read one paper a day. This helps me make the project tangible and less scary. Instead of ‘God, I have to give a huge talk!’, I have transformed the problem into ‘I need to read these 10 papers.’. In this way as well, I can easily measure my progress and the obstacle feels less daunting.

The second trick is that I keep a small notebook with a list of success that I am proud of. So many times I find that I can recall of my failures or embarrassing moments in an instant. In contrast, all of my successes seem easily forgotten. When I find myself overwhelmed in a moment of panic, this list helps me remind myself of all the tough things that I have successfully overcome in the past. I tell myself - you did it then, you can do it now. Don’t be discouraged.

What do you wish you were asked more often?

Do you have a few seconds, I have an idea I want to talk about? With every day, I have this feeling that we are all crazy busy and yet we are not really sure why. I remember when I was a graduate student, we had our group meeting on Friday afternoons. The meeting lasted about an hour, but many of us would stay at the table and we would just dream about the future. Anything has game. New ideas for physics experiments, best quad exercise, topics for a new novel, achieving world peace. Everything. It was a community dream session with no real purpose. I miss that in the work environment of today, where every moment feels loaded. No one has time. Everyone needs to ‘stay on task’. Even my phone is sending me reminders about how many times I have stood up today or whether or not my kitchen floor is optimally clean.

I would love if part of our day was focused on just dreaming. For no reason, no application, no future breakthrough. Just because. Just because we are human and dreaming together is what we do.

One book you love

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse - A beautiful book on what it means to be human and how humanity is both a collective and individual journey.

One place that you will never forgot

My grandmother’s living room - Whenever I think of that room, I am immediately calm. My grandmother, who lived through many horrible times, like the depression, like the bombings in the UK during the second world war, always created this bubble of calm all around her. In any time of crisis, either big or small, she would say ‘Take a seat, have a cup of tea. There is always a solution.’