On my desk : Sue Swinburne

The 3 P’s of focus

My working day tends to be lots of different tasks .. lecturing and mentoring students, curriculum development, university administration, project work with industry partners – as well as trying to fit in my own research, and film and interactive media practice.

I have to refocus a lot, trying to shift gears in one part of my brain to another. If I’m honest, sometimes I stare into space for a little while to help with this – or I look at the pictures of two of my favourite theorists, which are stuck to the wall next to my desk. These guys are Michel Foucault and Marcel Mauss.

Mauss and Foucault were both great thinkers, wonderful iconoclasts. Their writing is passionate, funny, provocative, and tackles complex ideas in quite delightful and sometimes frustrating ways. They remind me that looking for joy and surprise in hard work serves the pursuit of great ideas.

I also have three simple words above them: pleasure, passion and purpose. In what often seems to be a constant avalanche of work, those words are there serve as a reminder of what it’s important to stay connected with in everything I do.

Sue Swinburne is Founder of Long Distance Pictures Pty Ltd and a PhD candidate, researching new forms of story creation, and new business models for factual content. She is based in Brisbane, Australia. Connect with her on LinkedIn and follow her @sue_swinburne