Tell me: how do you structure your PhD workday?

Are you following a general 9-5 schedule, assuming you’ll finish your work during those hours (and if not, you’ll squeeze in a little or a lot of extra time in the evenings or on the weekends)?

How do you know you are making progress? Do you use word count or other metrics to keep track?

I have come to realise that academic productivity is — and always will be — non-linear. In the face of this inconvenient truth, we adopt all sorts of systems and conventions in an attempt to keep a sense of control over how our work is going.

– Time-based systems such as an 8-hour workday.
– Output-based systems such as word count.
– Peer-based systems as in: “what is everyone else doing??”
– Effort-based systems when our hours or word count, or whatever our system is, fails to reassure us – at which point we start moving on to thinking we should be doing more, especially when it looks like nothing much is happening on the page.

Maybe if we just keep at it until we absolutely can’t do any more, we will have done enough. But will it be enough?? Feels like it is never enough.

One idea changed the way I think about how to best manage PhD work (and the question of ‘doing enough’): manage your energy, not your time.

It is about understanding your own rhythms, your own creativity — and letting those guide your work. Being aware of your energy levels is essential in making this work.

In practical language: most of us have a few hours each day when we are mentally sharp and we have most mental energy.

Use these hours for your most challenging academic tasks, like writing, every day.
Prioritise this work above all else.

That’s it. That’s the idea.

The rest of the day can be filled with meetings and other tasks, but your most important work gets done. Every single workday.

Now, there is a lot more to this as in life tends to be complicated, but simply reflecting on how this approach compares to how you manage your time and energy now is a good place to start.

Maybe you’ll notice a pattern of working lots of hours without feeling you are getting much done at all.

Or perhaps there are so many distractions you feel you never quite get round to uninterrupted work for a few hours.

Perhaps both.

What do you notice? And does the idea of managing your energy — rather than your time — appeal?

If you’d like support, I am available for mentoring and I would be delighted to work with you. Or, check out my online course — it guides you through designing and implementing what a highly effective work routine, which can help you finish your PhD in just 2-3 hours a day. 

Cassandra’s PhD Tips:

1. Attention is My Prime Resource

   Attention is the PhD candidate’s prime resource. Attention is the power to get things done. Through attention, the student learns, researches, conceptualizes, writes, and finishes a dissertation. Yet, this same resource is the target of social media, news networks, politicians and political organizations, businesses, and nonprofit groups. The most crucial strategy for completing a PhD is to recognize attention as a precious, prime resource and treat it accordingly, by nurturing, protecting, and using it wisely.

   I nurture and strengthen my attention with three habits. First, I start each work session with a 2–5-minute meditation in which I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and relax. Second, I tighten my focus by committing to a single, 30-minute task: this unit of time always feels achievable to me, but it’s fine to exceed it (as I often do). Third, I prevent distractions automatically with the Freedom app on my computer and a Focus app on my phone, but with an extra twist. These apps are scheduled to start when I wake up, so my attention is not divided before my work even starts!

2. Uncomfortable Feelings Express my Core Values

   Fear and anxiety reveal that I’m concerned about compromising or losing something I value. Anger shows that something I value is threatened. Grief also expresses my core values. I grieve because I care, because something I value might be lost, has been lost, or has ended. This course has highlighted the importance of connecting our work to our values. And PhD work must sometimes be done in the midst of uncomfortable feelings. I’ve discovered that the uncomfortable feelings themselves are useful for revealing my core values if I lean in and listen to them.

   Three years ago, I lost my supervisor and my dissertation topic. I considered leaving my PhD. But then I realized that my intense grief and disappointment showed that I care deeply. If I care that much about my work, then it must arise from my core values. My work is worth cherishing and defending. I should fight for it! I took walks and wrote in a journal every day for three months while I found a new supervisor and a new topic. I acknowledged my feelings and honored them as part of my human experience, and I also honored their significance.

3. Five Elements of Smart Breaks

   All breaks are not created equal! My most effective breaks include one or more of these five elements: (1) My brain swings from focused mode to diffuse mode and relaxes, so that I can synthesize and make fresh connections; (2) I reward myself  just for working and re-establish a healthy work-reward balance; (3) I move my body, instead of continuing to sit; (4) I do sensory-rich activities, to counteract the chronic sensory deprivation of dissertation work; (5) I enjoy a taste of regular life, apart from my dissertation, to keep my sense of self distinct from my work and prevent academic tunnel vision!

   One easy way to push myself into a smart break is to stand up and look outside. I watch birds or clouds out a window, step out onto a balcony, or walk around the block. What can I notice? What do I see? What can I hear? How does the wind feel and smell? Suddenly, I feel more alive!

4. Use a Writer’s Day Book to Warm-up to Writing

   For the last several months, I have started most days by writing spontaneously in a Day Book, preferably over my first cup of coffee. I got the idea from The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher (Don Murray, 2009). My free-writing session lasts for 15-30 minutes. My one rule is that I write. This simple practice flips on a virtual switch in my brain. As I write whatever comes to mind, I let the emerging words lead and surprise me. Later, when it’s time to write for my dissertation, my brain is warmed up, humming, and more likely to generate ideas. It has been crucial for me to identify and use my own writing method, which is quite different from the writing methods of my supervisor and secondary readers.

   I prompt my Day Book entry with morning rituals. I make coffee, get a simple breakfast, check the sunrise, and play some classical music. With my first cup of coffee, I open my laptop to a Google Drive document or open a small journal, and I write whatever comes to mind. I just show up on the page and let the words happen. I practice the inductive writing method.

    

   

I didn’t develop self-discipline necessarily. I opted for the easier way: to fight the bots with a bot so to say. I used an app called Freedom, which would block the Internet entirely, or certain sites that were difficult to resist. And difficult to resist they can be. There were three ways in particular being shielded from the online world helped.

1. A Morning Routine

   It helped me get going in the morning. Every morning I started writing/ work at 10:00, and making sure my computer would automatically go offline at that time helped tremendously in making that routine a habit. I remember the almost withdrawal-like effects when I first installed the app, the world becomes very quiet without our trusted online distractions. Suddenly you’re there with the blank page. And then you realise: this is exactly where I need to be. I need to be right here, right now with the black page. That’s the whole point of it! Over time my mind and mental habits adjusted and my brain’s inner alarm clock just knew it was time to start work, and time to focus. It becomes second nature. And not to make an ad of this blog post, but it feels like Freedom.

2. Staying with the Work When It’s Hard

   The first challenge is to actually sit down and think and write. The next challenge is to keep going when it feels difficult. And there are so many ways writing can feel difficult. Blessed are the days and weeks you have a clear idea of what you’re doing, and the writing trickles onto the page uninterrupted. It is more likely that you may think you have some relevant thoughts, but once you start putting them to paper they aren’t as coherent and brilliant as they seemed in your head. Thoughts are almost like dreams in that way: in the mind everything is possible but then try squeezing it into logically coherent sentences, in a logically coherent whole. Almost impossible! Right, do you have an impulse to check out yet?? Writing is emotionally difficult. We know writing and developing our concepts takes time, in fact it makes sense. But it is uncomfortable! Academic work is so slow. Could it be any slower?? So we need to help ourselves stay with the work, and the difficult feeling, instead of going off and checking Insta.

3. Develop Your Voice

   Finally, we need some help staying with our work. I always say: the ocean is vast. By that I mean: the ocean of the literature is vast and deep and at times perilous! Perilous in the sense that it can take us off course – you can sail absolutely everywhere, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily where you need or want to go! In fact it can take you entirely off track. Working offline for me meant that I didn’t go sailing off in any direction searching for new literature or references etc., drifting off along the way. Instead I worked with what I already knew in the mornings (I would have a few papers downloaded for reference), and if I was unsure of anything or I thought my sentence needed a reference, or I was sure someone or many people had written about this before, I would make a note, jot it down, and keep going! Keep going with my thoughts, my argument, immersed in what my paragraph or chapter was trying to do. Blocking out the internet helped me stay away from wasting hours on research that may not have been that useful. Of course, I would still need to do some of that research, but it would have to be done intentionally, once I had more of an overview, not when I bumped into a challenge or interesting thought or reference at sentence level. You need to prioritise, otherwise the ocean will swallow you whole!

Voilà, three reasons why it makes sense to block the internet: it will help you get started, keep going, and write something worthwile. Switch off for a couple of hours a day. Go old-school…

If this way of working appeals, consider joining the Stress-Free PhD Programme. Over the course of the programme you’ll develop new work habits that will allow you to finish any research project in far fewer hours a day. Definitely worth it.

As always, if you liked this post, share it? I appreciate it!

The party was organized by a professor friend with two teenage daughters who had pleaded with their dad: it would have to be a dancing party, not a sitting-down party (Dutchies, you will be familiar with ‘zitfeestjes’). Because they had already endured too many of their dad’s sitting-down parties this year and sitting-down parties are boring. Especially sitting-down parties with friends of their dad’s! (Insert eye-rolls here.) I didn’t attend these sitting-down parties, so I can’t say how bad they really were (though I tend to agree with the girls about ‘zitfeestjes’) but I was invited to this one where their houseboat’s living room had been cleared to make space for dancing.

After pouring the wine I was already almost toppling over. I concluded it wasn’t me, or the wine: this houseboat was definitely floating at an angle. Not quite Titanic-like, as we weren’t exactly going anywhere, nor were we sinking, hopefully, but there was a hint of drama in it, if you were willing to detect it.

I spotted an Italian friend, who introduced me to a former colleague of hers. He asked as you do at parties: how did we know each other? After a few seconds (‘How did we meet? It seems like a lifetime ago!) she shared that she had taken my online course and that we had kept in touch ever since. “Those writing tips I shared with you,” she said to him, “I learnt them from Amber’s course.” He nodded his head. When they worked at the same university, they had had many a conversation about staying the course with academic writing. “Those were really great tips!” he said.

The best one? Shorten your workday and work in small chunks!

Set boundaries around your writing time. Make it shorter than you think you need. Keep it sharp and snappy. Do not attempt to write for an entire day, or even an entire morning. Instead, use chunks of time: a couple of hours at a time max, interspersed with short breaks.

The colleague mentioned that the idea of shortening, instead of lengthening your day (always doing ‘more’) kind of revolutionized the way he writes. What an idea!

The second idea: match your work sessions to your focus and energy levels. Important and creative work first, always. Move that idea, those words, that paper ahead. Lots of energy today? Try slightly longer sessions. Running a bit low? Keep it tight. Make it doable: keep it fresh, do not let your energy drain.

Approaching your academic writing in this way will help you keep the momentum going.

Now, if you truly want to become unstoppable, have a look at the Stress-Free PhD Programme. It goes much deeper into all these ideas. Over the course of 6 weeks I will lead you through the process of developing your own, personalized, writing habit and workday. I share my stories and my process, and you will develop your own along the way. It will be fun (and useful!), come join me.

What I (re-)learned about writing this time around (aka: writing tips to finish your paper ASAP!)

1. Routine

Sorry, boring start to the day, but this is so incredibly necessary. By all means, if you are the person who writes whenever she feels like it, and it works well for you, do it that way. But chances are slim. Why? Because academic writing and difficult emotions go together. Why? Because academic writing is hard. Having a writing habit in place will catapult you right into it, where you want and need to be. If you write regularly, at set hours, you have cleared the most difficult hurdle: getting started. Start at 9:00 every day, sharp. Earlier if you are an early bird. Or at any other time, as long as you can be consistent. (For me, finishing my PhD it was always at 10:00. Some people have already put hours of work in by that time of day, but it worked very well for me. Two – three hours of focus is a lot, if you put these hours in consistently.)

2. Inspiration

The moment you start writing you realise the actual doing is more difficult than the thinking about writing! Blinking cursor alert! Urgh. So one option is to procrastinate. The second option is to hurl yourself over the barrier that separates you from that writing flow that is in there somewhere. A neat trick to do so is to get as inspired as you possibly can. What I suggest you do is to pull out a paper or book that is incredibly well-written or that has inspired your thinking about the topic you will be writing about. Or you could even pick a novel. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it has a rhythm or substance that gets you over your resistance. (For me, I when I was finishing a particularly difficult chapter of my PhD I used a book by Peter Mair. He was my supervisor, and an old-school academic. A writer more than a technician. He could definitely write an opening sentence. And when I would read it I would realise: yes, I can do this too!)

3. Lighten up and do it fast!

Okay, this one is a bit controversial. And during some stretches it will feel absolutely impossible! And yes, I am referring to that middle stretch where part of you is sure your work is never going to come together, and another part of you knows it will as long as you just keep pushing and plodding along. Which is what you are doing. Right in the middle of this, when fear and stubbornness are at full force, what would happen if you lighten up a bit? If you could add some quicksilver energy? I got this idea from the book ‘Big Magic – creative living beyond fear’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, and it works wonders. She calls it “the martyr vs the trickster” (p. 221), aka dying for your art vs gaming the system. When every word feels like a serious, difficult, impossible affair, are there ways to lighten up, speed up, do it quickly, or ‘not right?’ It may be the exact thing you need to get your ideas down, and for the writing pace to pick up. (You can go back and fix it later, but who knows you will find out there isn’t any fixing to be done!)

4. Take a break

Okay, so intervals tend to make an appearance in pretty much every blog post of mine, reason being: working in intervals works. Just a few days ago I got an email from a PhD I had a coaching session with, remarking how much working in intervals had improved her work. And her energy levels! Thing is, to work in intervals you need to take breaks. Proper breaks. And it gets so much more difficult when you are really under stress, and there is a deadline looming. Seems that procrastination while stubbornly sitting at your computer is the easier option. What if you do take a break? And make working in intervals a habit? You will gain control over your working hours (mental boost) and more chance of a writing flow, and new, fresh insights to happen. It’s the faster way.

5. Celebrate

Our brains have a negativity bias. That is, the regular person’s brain. Personally I think an academic’s brain will be about a thousand times worse. Trained to focus on what is lacking (gaps in the literature anyone??), what is wrong, what is insufficient. And we have criticism down to an art. Not necessarily criticism of the constructive kind! It was an eye-opener to me to work on a project with people outside of academia. They were trained to make the process as effortless as possible, to promote teamwork, to uplift each other, to keep moving. What a difference! So hopefully you have some of those colleagues, who do understand the value of support, around. But regardless of your peers and colleagues: how do you treat yourself? I say: celebrate every step of the way. And you don’t have to wait until you have submitted that paper. Finishing that paragraph is reason to celebrate too!

1. PhDs are uncertain creatures

The first thing to note is that feeling a lack of control is normal, at times central, to any PhD project. Unlike projects and assignments that are smaller and where you get immediate feedback on how you have done, this one is a huge, sprawling one, and a project where you are supposed to something innovative and worth a couple of years of your time too! Who sets the bar? How do you know how you are doing? Often, it can be impossible to tell. Simply acknowledging the feelings of uncertainty that doing a PhD provokes, and recognising them as normal, par for the course, and not something to stress out about can help. If you are feeling like you have nothing to hold onto right now work-wise, it doesn’t mean anything about how your project is going. It just means you are doing a PhD.

2. Devise a set work schedule

I keep going on about this, but it really, truly helps to have working habits you can rely on. They can be the structure that creates stability, the routine you allow on to know you are on track. Why? Because you are doing the work. Measuring and monitoring PhD progress can be difficult when looking at the content of what you have done in a day, a week, a month, or sometimes even a year! But counting work sessions is easy. And keeping it simple is what comes highly recommended. Know that as long as you keep going one work session at a time, you will have a PhD at the end. Your feelings of uncertainty about it don’t count! (If you want to devise good working habits I recommend working with the ZenAcademic Worksheet. There is a free mini course to accompany it in the free resources section too!)

3. Create momentum

You may not be able to control your output (see: 1. PhDs are uncertain creatures), but you have control over your effort and input. To create a sense of momentum (and control) procrastination needs to go. You can do this! To help yourself, make sure you keep your work sessions short (= doable) and set your aim high, one session at a time, as if you are going in for a sprint. (If setting your aim high invokes a sense of dread, set it low. That is also fine. Whatever makes you get to work, whether you need a challenge or a gentle nudge right now.) A whole workday may be intimidating, but a short work session is doable. No, perhaps you cannot solve that intricate intellectual problem you are struggling with today, or even this month. But you can work on understanding an aspect of it in the next 45 minutes. It is an exhilarating way of working: jumping right in. Whatever you get done in that work session, know it is enough. Then take a break and repeat. By the time you get to lunch you will have made real strides. It counts! And it makes you feel good.

4. Complete something

Counting work sessions is one way of feeling and knowing you are accomplishing something (even when the tangible rewards will only come in future). Another way is to complete a task. And notice and celebrate. Every small step counts. How could you divide the work you want to do today into smaller, doable tasks? It takes the mystery out of it, helps the fog clear. You may feel like you don’t have a grip on the entirety of the project, and that you somehow have to figure out how the pieces fit together before you can move on. It tends to work the opposite way: pieces fall into place as you go along, because you are moving along. What is the next small task you could complete (in the next hour, today, by the end of the week) that would help your project ahead? Then do it and celebrate!

5. Set boundaries around your workday

It is all good and well feeling out of control at work at times, but the unfortunate thing is the mind keeps going afterwards! It wants it figured out! Which may mean your mind keeps going in circles, and refuses to relax. One of the challenges of writing a PhD is getting it to not occupy more of your mind and life-space than is healthy and balanced. Setting an intention of not working (or thinking about work), can be powerful. When will you switch off? Evenings? Weekends? After 6 every day? Block (a lot of) time in your agenda for doing anything but work. Exercise helps gets your mind off things. So does yoga. So does meditation. And so does having fun!

Do you feel in control of your project? What do you do to feel more in control of your work? Any tips to add to the five above? As always, if you found this post helpful, could you share it? I appreciate it!

The ZenAcademic Worksheet (which you can find on my free resources page) now comes with a free mini course! It is an introduction to implementing the worksheet, which will help you:

• Create a work (and self-care) routine that is right for you
• By doing the above: getting your research done and writing on track!

There are no real secrets to academic productivity, but there are quite a few components to it. Decisions you make every day about how you work, when you work, and what to work on… As well as how to deal with obstacles such as procrastination etc. The mini course will help you get this academic year off to a prolific start by covering the (all too important) basics.

You can sign up for the free 4-day mini-course here

Hope you enjoy it!

All my best wishes,

Amber

PS. I am now also on Instagram: come join me here

The idea of ‘working in waves’ is at the heart of the productivity part of the course. I’ve written about this way of working before before (click on the productivity tag). Today’s blog outlines how this works. The course will help you implement these ideas, step by step. In detail. Sign up here.

Working in waves

How many hours do you spend sitting at your laptop? And how many of those hours are spent productively? Maybe you don’t need all those hours. Following a ‘normal’ 9-5 working routine is not the best way to write a PhD. You can’t do intense mental work for eight hours a day. It is impossible. If you’re having an exceptionally good day you may be able to manage six hours of reasonably intense mental work; and considerably less if you’re doing something particularly demanding.

The good news is that you don’t need to work for six or eight hours a day. Once you start writing your PhD in a more efficient way you’ll need a fraction of that. Say two or three hours of intense mental work a day. Four maximum. When I was finishing my PhD (I had to do so with very limited hours) I started researching productivity and came across an idea I wanted to try: designing my day around my mental energy levels, instead of trying to push harder for longer. This simple idea completely transformed my PhD experience. I now call it ‘working in waves’.

Catch a Wave

The basic idea of ‘working in waves’ is to ‘catch a wave’ of energy, get a lot of work done efficiently, and then relax and recuperate before your energy levels and productivity start to drop. This second step, the relaxation part, is crucial. Allow yourself to recharge. Then repeat. You’ll notice that your ability to focus is renewed when you start your second ‘wave’, because you took the time to recharge. Over the course of the day these energy refills add up. You will be more productive and will feel much better at the end of the workday (which comes sooner too).

Step 1. Work like a sprinter

The first step is to determine how long your work cycles should be. This depends on your general energy level, your attention span, and on the difficulty of the task involved. In my own case 45-minute segments, followed by a 15-minute break worked really well. Some people prefer 90 minutes. I know someone who used 10-minute slots to finish her PhD. Really!

Step 2. Relax and chill out

The second step is to relax and chill out. Get away from your computer, go make yourself a cup of tea, put some music on, go for a walk around the block, go for a short jog or whatever helps you disengage from your work. We don’t value our downtime. This is a mistake. This is not just about productivity, of course, but from a productivity angle this is certainly true.

Step 3. Repeat

Then, after a little time away, get back to work. Set your timer for a new chunk of time, and get going. Once the timer sounds: relax and recharge. Over time, once you get into the habit of working this way, this will become a flow, dipping in and out of work. Working in waves in action. This is when you will see your productivity picking up.

Step 4. Stop

The next step is to stop when it’s time. Less is more. You shouldn’t try to fill the whole day. We often try to push harder for longer. In the short run, this can be a winning strategy. In the long run it doesn’t really work. Slowly (or not so slowly) we run out of steam, until we end up in a rut or a slump. Or both!

Implement it

Find out how this way of working in waves could work for you. When are you most focused and productive? Make those hours the central focus of the workday. When are you distracted? If it’s during a time you want to be writing: you have to find another way! If it’s during a time you wouldn’t be productive anyway, ask yourself whether you want to spend your time sitting at your computer, or if it would be better to give yourself permission to ‘leave’, and do something you really want to do.

Naturally, this approach only works if you apply yourself during the chunks of time you allot to working. Imagine it as a sprint – ready, set, go!! Run! You will get your rewards afterwards: a good chunk of work done, a sense of accomplishment, and the ability to relax because you know you have done your work for the day.

My Own PhD Schedule

In the course I go into depth discussing the details of what my own workday looked like when I was finishing my PhD. Not so you can copy how I did it (though you are welcome to!), but to give you ideas, and reflect on what might work for you.

Find out all the details of the programme here. Join us! Live sessions start Monday November 12th. (PS I am giving away 2 free spots in class here).

The reality is: writing a PhD is doable. Finishing the PhD is doable. You can do this.

So how to put this monster in its place? How to shrink it, do you can get on with what you want to be doing, that is working on your project, and finishing it well?

This summer I worked with a couple of PhDs who wanted out of overwhelm. Can you relate?

Are you getting frustrated and overwhelmed even after only a couple of minutes of ‘work’?
Are you heading towards your laptop full of enthusiasm, only for it to dissipate in a flash?
Do you find yourself doing a million other things, such as reading and ‘further research’, instead of writing that next paragraph?
Do you find yourself discouraged at your lack of clarity?

What helps tremendously when your project is overwhelming you and you’re feeling a bit deflated, is to make sure you are setting yourself doable tasks. Break it down. If you’re still not getting anywhere, break it down further.

Example: your supervisor/ a reviewer has asked you to add more about X in your paper.

Plan of action: break it down into doable steps. Note: ‘Adding more about X’ to your paper isn’t one task. It is a whole series of tasks. Let’s have a look at what it may involve:

• Scan your paper to find parts where an introduction to X might be relevant
• Selecting that part/ those parts where you want to introduce X
• Brainstorming about what exactly about X you want to include: how does it fit with your main argument/ research choices?
• Look up papers/ references about X and scan (stay focused! Distraction alert) them, to see how others have done this/ to make sure you make well-informed decisions on what to include
• Write a first draft of the paragraph introducing X
• Rewrite
• Polish til done

Maybe I have missed a few steps! Writing a paragraph sounds like ‘nothing’, but it involves a lot of work!

One way to keep momentum high is to give yourself a fixed timeframe to get the next small step done. Say 15 minutes to find the parts where an introduction to X may be relevant. Then another 15 minutes to select the parts you want to work on. You can also do this intuitively (sometimes we can take steps very fast indeed), but the key point here is to not let yourself be distracted. Stay on task. If this task is done, move on to the next.

Some tasks will be more intellectually and creatively challenging than others, and may not generate immediate, tangible results. That doesn’t mean it’s not work, or that you’re not moving forward!! The thinking, the pondering, the not-yet-knowing is all essential. It is what academic work is all about. Using a timer can be really helpful here, to make sure you don’t slip into overwhelm, to keep it concrete and doable. Setting limits helps. Give yourself 20 minutes to think about something, or 45 if you are in a creative/ thinking flow. Know when you want to stop, and intend for the task, even if it is intangible, to be completed at that point. If it isn’t, don’t worry, you can give yourself another work session to plug away at it. Or not! And this is the important part. You have a choice. It’s easy to let a whole morning or afternoon slip away, so now is really the time to check back in.

Ideas need time to develop. Give yourself that time. Maybe if you check back in with the same questions tomorrow the answer that was elusive today will present itself just like that. Ideas are interesting like that, they emerge. We’re not in control of this process. But we are in control of the task we are working on. That’s the aim anyway.

Focus on doable tasks, set time limits for your work sessions, and check in with yourself at the beginning of each work session to make sure you are working on the next small task that will help your paper one step closer to completion. This is how you build your paper step by step, without much of the noise and overwhelm.

If you want help with this: I can coach you. I can help you tame your project so it becomes doable, and you can get out of overwhelm. Have a look at the Stress-Free PhD Programme. Along with coaching, your PhD will be back on track before you know it.

The next live sessions of the Stress-Free PhD Programme start November 12th! Get your early bird tickets here. I am also giving away two free places in class. Enter the GiveAway here.

I have come across one book before explicitly aimed at explaining the inner workings of academia to PhDs: ‘The Unwritten Rules of PhD Research‘ by Marian Petre and Gordon Rugg. I recommend it. In the preface they explain the book is aimed at reducing their ‘caffeine overload’, that is the time they spend explaining the basic concepts of research and what they call “the ground rules of the academic world” to PhDs over a cup of coffee. It is often assumed PhDs have this knowledge already, partly because supervisors don’t realise what the gaps in their inside knowledge are: it has all become so familiar to them over the years. I’d add to that that a great many academics are overworked and busy and — difficult truth– too often not particularly interested or well equipped when it comes to the supervision part of their jobs. This book is written from a supervisor’s perspective: it is indeed a bit like a candid chat with a supervisor (many chats!), which in real life would cover a great many coffees!

Dr. Lantsoght’s book has the same goal, but a different perspective: this book is like having an experienced colleague telling you about all the ins and outs of PhD life. It feels more like a pal or a companion, less like a lecture (nothing wrong with lectures, they are useful too!)

Some Q & A’s

Why did you decide to write the book, what is its purpose?

I wanted to combine the most important information that is available on my blog to bring everything together in a book. When I was a PhD student, I read a number of books about the PhD trajectory. Most contained some important information, but since many of these were more aimed at students in social sciences, I always felt there was something missing for people in STEM. I also came across books that seem to present the PhD trajectory as something you can “hack” or that you can complete by follow a step-by-step procedure. In my experience, all research is messy, contains setbacks, and requires you to dig deep – I wanted to share that perspective, and teach students that the PhD trajectory is a deeply personal journey, and that writing and learning to write, which is such an important part of of the PhD trajectory, is an academic coming-of-age.

Which topics did you know you had to cover, from your own experience?

I had to talk about planning, and I talk about planning throughout the book – and I try to show that, while research is a messy convoluted process that is hard to plan, it can be very helpful to know what you need to be working on when, rather than finding yourself surfing the internet or staring out of the window.

Since most available books on the PhD trajectory are written from the perspective of the social sciences, I also wanted to dedicate a chapter to experimental work. I wanted to show you need to be prepared for your experiments, but at the same time, know that things always go wrong in the lab, and that you need to learn to roll with the punches. I also wanted to mention how physically exhausting laboratory work can be.

I like your focus on self-care. Could you share your thoughts on self-care in academia?

In terms of planning, I call self-care a non-negotiable meeting with yourself. I recommend students to plan time in their weekly template for fun activities (and sufficient sleep!). It’s important to keep functioning in the long run. On the other hand, it is so tempting to go into survival mode for “just a few more weeks” trying to finish a project. I know it all too well – I just returned to work full-time after a year of working a shorter workday to take care of my baby daughter. I’m still figuring out how to organize my days now and find some time for myself…

How did you come up with the idea for the glossary of the book? (It is great. It goes into great detail explaining a wide range of PhD life related topics)

From the beginning of writing this book, I wanted it to become a practical tool. For that reason, the book is organized as a coursetext, so that it can be used in a formal classroom setting throughout the study trajectory of PhD students. As I was brainstorming ideas on how to make this book a practical tool, I wondered what I could offer somebody who finished reading the book. A glossary of terms, in which you can dip when you need some inspiration, was what came to my mind. It seemed a bit of a daunting task and I wondered if I could “cover everything” in the glossary. I decided to shake off that voice, and opened a blank Word sheet in which I started to type all the letters of the alphabet. Bit by bit, I added terms to the list – and the result is the glossary you can find in the published book.

The book is written from a STEM background, which is decidedly different from doing a humanities/ social sciences PhD. It is also quite ambitious and gung-ho, in that it assumes you can handle a really full-on schedule. This may not be the case for you right now. But if you are full of energy, raring to go, or if you are willing and able to take what works and leave the rest (always a good idea), without being discouraged by the full-on schedules it comes highly recommended! There is also Eva’s blog PhDtalk, which she started in the second year of her PhD, and is an excellent resource for PhD students.

The next live sessions of the Stress-Free PhD Programme start November 12th! Get your early bird tickets here. I’m also giving away two free places in class. Interested? Enter the Giveaway here!