  It is important to explore how scientists decide their research agenda and
the corresponding consequences, as their decisions collectively shape
contemporary science. There are studies focusing on the overall performance of
individuals with different problem choosing strategies. Here we ask a slightly
different but relatively unexplored question: how is a scientist's change of
research agenda associated with her change of scientific performance. Using
publication records of over 14,000 authors in physics, we quantitatively
measure the extent of research direction change and the performance change of
individuals. We identify a strong positive correlation between the direction
change and impact change. Scientists with a larger direction change not only
are more likely to produce works with increased scientific impact compared to
their past ones, but also have a higher growth rate of scientific impact. On
the other hand, the direction change is not associated with productivity
change. Those who stay in familiar topics do not publish faster than those who
venture out and establish themselves in a new field. The gauge of research
direction in this work is uncorrelated with the diversity of research agenda
and the switching probability among topics, capturing the evolution of
individual careers from a new point of view. Though the finding is inevitably
affected by the survival bias, it sheds light on a range of problems in the
career development of individual scientists.
