Monitor your performance reviews and ensure that they are showing progress, writes Paul Smaglik at the Nature Network NatureJobs forum. “Create your own set of metrics—publication, citations and patents for academics, targets met and products advanced through the pipeline for industry science. Create your own goals, set deadlines to meet them. Challenge yourself. Also, seek ”https://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2007/070621/full/nj7147-1030a.html">informal feedback from colleagues both in and outside your organization. Seek out new projects and collaborations to keep work from being route. As a science journalist, I created my own metrics

for attending meetings. And I ask people outside my organization what they think of my work. I also challenge myself to write about things I’ve never covered before (one of my scariest professional experiences was an internship at Science News; I wnated to write only about medicine, but my colleagues there encouraged me to write about a different discipline every week—truly scary!) and I try different approaches to story-telling to keep myself fresh. And I seek out healthy risks like my decision last year to leave my permanent job at Nature to hike the Appalachian Trail. Creating your own parameters for success helps exceed the metrics set by others and gives you control over the direction and progress of your own career."