@Adam: I can see the difficulties. I hope it all works out for you both.

@Joonas: What do you mean by "realism"--accepting that some things cannot be solved? Realising one's limitations is wisdom; not all have this wisdom. Then, there's initiative: a researcher must have initiative. When your PhD students approach you, asking what they should do next, what do you say?

@tony Not just accepting that some things can't be solved, but more specifically identifying which things can't or shouldn't be solved.

This also applies to matters of health. An employee does help anyone by quietly struggling with mental health instead of asking for help. In my experience the people who ask for help are the most efficient ones.

I agree that researchers should have initiative, but they also can't be entirely free to pursue any whim. If they're working on my projects, they should be asking me for directions and goals. I can point them to a specific direction, but it's their job to figure out a route.

Whenever I meet my students and postdocs, I make sure to end it in making sure everyone knows what they should be doing next. Usually that becomes clear through the meeting itself. Discussing the subject matter and giving instructions are deeply coupled.

I've never had a student over to just ask what they should do next. Doing that without anything else to say would baffle me.

@Joonas: It sounds like a strong hands-on approach, without being dictatorial (a joke). A whim, a flight-of-fancy, might be the inception of a revelation. It may n

be good for morale to let a researcher to have his head. If the whim goes down a blind alley; then, it's time to return to the fold.

@Joonas: Changing the subject: Elon Musk's SpaceX returned the booster stage of a rocket to it's original launching gantry--quite a feat! Do you understand the maths involved? EL's boundless ambition wants to establish colonies on Mars--would you like to go? One problem: there's no coming back--it's a one-way trip! People have already put-down for it--true pioneers eh?

@tony It's hard to tell from the outside what's hard and what's easy. The maths of rocketry is pretty simple, and writing down the formulas needed is an elementary exercise. But executing it all with great precision in practice is hard.

In this case the math is easy and the engineering is hard. There are other cases when it goes the other way around.

@tony Excursions out of curiosity are always welcome. There just has to be a limit to them. Self control like that is a part of what I referred to as "realism".

There's also the very practical point that they were hired with my grant money so it is literally their job to work on specific tasks given by me, and I have a legal obligation to make them do just that. There's of course liberty in the details, but in a broader sense very little of scientific work is free exploration.