What is the right way to motivate researchers? On one hand, we want to keep the pressure up so that people feel a sense of urgency. On the other hand, we want to avoid burnout, and we also want people to drift a bit so that they can find new areas away from their local areas of expertise. Trading these off is difficult. One idea is to have is to have each researcher publish a research agenda and refresh it quarterly with a senior researcher, who can help load-balance topics across the team and may have some intuition on which paths are likely to be easier or more fruitful than others. As long as the research agenda is progressing on a quarterly basis towards the mutually agreed-upon goal at a reasonable pace, the research program is considered to be successful.