I asked over a dozen Cambridge researchers whether they'd been delighted to get the job they have now.

Every hand went up.

Then I asked a second question, and watched almost every hand come down.

I told them I could identify.

I only left academia, I joked, because I feared the pressure to publish.

Then I rolled my eyes and showed them the three books I went on to write anyway: practical ones, for ordinary readers rather than academics.

They groaned. They knew that pressure only too well.

The joke had some truth in it.

By the end of my PhD, I was thoroughly sick of writing.

The idea of doing more felt faintly masochistic.

And I couldn't shake the feeling that one journal article, read by a tiny academic audience, would have far less impact than speaking with thousands of people.

So I didn't write my first book until five years after I'd left Cambridge.

I needed the break before I could fall back in love with writing, and remember how much I loved research!

For the postdocs and early-stage lecturers in that room, there's no such break.

They're assessed constantly.

Judged on their publication output, and on what their research yields, which isn't always in their control.

For those from under-represented backgrounds, it all compounds via the "paradox of hyper-visibility".

They're highly visible as a minority, yet strangely invisible when it comes to progression.

They're less likely to hold open-ended contracts, and still grossly under-represented at professorial level.

Covid hit them hardest too: visa uncertainty meant missed conferences, family obligations piled up, and plans went on indefinite hold.

The numbers make me furious.

So, partway through the session, I asked them: how many of you were delighted with the role you have now when you got it?

Every hand went up.

Then: how many of you are still equally excited by it?

Barely a hand stayed up.

Nobody needed me to explain what had just happened.

They'd seen it in their own raised arms.

Our goalposts for happiness keep moving.

The moment we get the thing we wanted, we quietly raise the bar, and push back the date when we'll finally feel satisfied.

Psychologists call it the hedonic treadmill.

I call it the reason so many brilliant people feel vaguely discontented in jobs they once dreamed of.

It isn't ingratitude. It's how we're wired.

But it helps enormously to notice it happening.

Questioning it slows it down, and that builds resilience.

I've been musing on something since.

Almost everyone in that room will be aiming, consciously or not, for the traditional summit: a permanent post, a lab of their own, perhaps a professorship.

Statistically, most of them won't get there. Gulp.

Many will leave academia for commercial roles, which is every bit as valid.

After all, industry badly needs what they know.

And for those who do get there, the "reward" for being good at research is often to recruit, fund and manage an entire lab team.

A whole new job, and one nobody trained them for.

If the goalpost is going to move anyway, it's worth asking who put it there in the first place.

"Bouncing back" suggests returning to where you were.

I'm far more interested in where you go next.

In the session, we looked at the inner voices that talk us down, and at finding the gift in a challenge none of us would ever have chosen.

And we finished on the idea I most wanted them to take home: you've already been through a lot.

Which means you can do it again, and smarter.

A few of them stayed behind afterwards to talk.