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. 

I was invited by my friend and Cape Town host Gen. After a fantastic visit in 2023 I am trying to make my trips to Cape Town a regular feature, and this year I succeeded and I was back in town. A place had opened up in this workshop she was attending for work: would I be interested in going? Well yes, I would!

Now to be honest I wasn’t expecting much from the strengths assessment test. I thought it would be something like the Myers-Briggs assessment, or any of the many tools for personal development out there. I was there more because it was a unique invitation, and I wasn’t going to let that opportunity to taste a bit of SA life slip. But when I dutifully filled out the test to my surprise a profile popped up that described me pretty well!

(So much so in fact that I have ended up in some of the promotional material of the lady who organised the event, as they were recording when I was telling her how well!)

What I naturally bring: agile mind, excellent thinker, enjoys musing, brings new and fresh perspectives, finds life intriguing, understands and appreciates the uniqueness in all individuals. Check, check, check and check!

But equally interesting was what they call the ‘basement’ of each of these strengths, and this is where I will get into the PhD bit.

Four out of five of my top five strengths according to this system are in strategic thinking. These strengths are mostly conceptual. I am very good at thinking, as probably you are too!

However, the negative side of these strengths read something like: slow to act, wastes time thinking too much, lacks focus on results, learns a lot, produces little! (I am only a little offended here.)

Now obviously, compared to any other profession, academics need to err on the side of thinking too much, rather than thinking too little! But I realised looking at these results that ‘thinking too much’ was one of the main habits I changed to successfully finish my PhD in the very few hours a day I had available.

At the time I realised I had to get out of my own way. I had to trust myself and just get it done, rather than spend more time thinking. Or worse: spend time worrying about how it was going! You can even start worrying that you’re worrying too much etc. There are endless meta levels here!

The muscle I had to train was that of being disciplined in consistently doing the next task, write that next paragraph etc. which would allow me to keep the PhD moving towards completion. I had to decide to become unapologetically forward-moving!

Interestingly, as a result the whole process started to flow and just work better.

It was an epiphany, honestly. Not overthinking my thinking. And making sure I didn’t get stuck there, but rather to keep it moving.

What about you? Are you overthinking your PhD?

If you’d like to know exactly how I stopped the pattern of overthinking consider getting my course, as I walk you through the process step by step.

As a start: observe and start recognising when you’re in this pattern, and choose to finish something tangible in your next work session. It could be just a paragraph. But make it real – get it from your head onto the page.

You can do this!

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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.

Academia is a challenging environment to perform and feel well in, most of the time. It can be a relief to realise that it is not some character flaw on your part that is causing you to feel like you may be stuck (or whatever other not so pleasant feelings you may be feeling): the odds are stacked against you in this environment. Once you realise how some of these mechanisms work it becomes easier to shrug your shoulders: it is not about you personally anymore. And at that point it also becomes easier to find ways of addressing your particular hurdle.

I received an email from a PhD who is taking my course, who mentioned it was so helpful to see it spelled out: to see exactly why academia may be making you feel stressed, overwhelmed and why you feel you might be underperforming: “My colleagues and I often tell ourselves it is not us and that it’s ’the system’, but it was really helpful to read in detail about why the academic set-up may be having such a negative effect on people.”

Oh academia, most confusing workplace of all, what do you do to us? Why and how do you make people feeling so stressed and miserable “doing what they love”?

In the course I tell a true story of how a number of promising economists selected by an elite US university — starting out bright-eyed, eager and ambitious, and ready to do “whatever it takes” — ended up underperforming to the point of it being a real challenge getting papers written at all, let alone published. The PhD finish line became increasingly out of reach. When I first heard the story it didn’t make sense…but it is a repeating theme I have seen (and experienced myself): very smart people starting to seriously struggle.

I won’t go into too much detail, as I want to keep things relatively short and snappy here, but I will say this: the current academic set-up is not designed to help you perform well (however you want to measure it…but that’s another story) or feel well. The human factor seems to be not factored in in the academic work process (rather a shame when you think of it!). Some of these features are intrinsic to writing a PhD/ doing academic work, but the stress factor has multiplied due to increased competition and wonky incentives in the system as a whole.

I started to understand this phenomenon when I started looking at it from a chronic stress perspective. In a nut-shell (summarising a whole field of study in three sentences), people get stressed when their efforts are not met with sufficient rewards. Additionally, people get stressed when they feel they are not in control of outcomes. Also: perfectionist tendencies (prerequisite for joining the academic tribe) intensify these stress levels. Being stressed out of your mind isn’t great for anyone.

Once you start counting the ways in which the ratio of effort and reward is skewed in academia, you will laugh or cry! Think of four years or more of work to finish a PhD. Think of how papers are received: the model is criticism (not always of the constructive kind). Think of how little mentoring and support there tends to be along the way, a trend intensified by the work pressure senior academics have to deal with. Think of the individualised culture. ‘Feeling valued’ is the best way to prevent stress and help people perform well, and academia isn’t that into it. (On the whole, structurally. Of course there are many wonderful people, supervisors, colleagues and so on who do support each other… I believe choosing the right supervisor and department is the absolute best advice anyone can give you when choosing to embark on a PhD.)

There will be more laughter and/or tears when you look at the control ratio. The PhD process is long and it isn’t linear, even though it is often conceptualised as such. By its very nature you are trying to do something new. It will not work out the way you thought it would (part of the process), and you will have to adapt along the way, repeatedly. There is nothing wrong with this: your research in all its twists and turns can be exciting, but stress and excitement are close cousins. Where I feel this goes wrong is once the process becomes arbitrary, and I would say that in the current set-up it has done so. In the hyper-competitive grant/ publication/ job market you have little control over outcomes.

The wonky control dynamic may also show up in a supervision context: your supervisor may not ‘get’ what you are trying to do, and give you unhelpful feedback (even though she or he is trying her best (or not…)). Being so dependent on one person isn’t a great model, stress-wise. Same as above: choosing the right supervisor goes a long way, but isn’t always feasible.

I could go on, but you get the idea… In sum: academia is a stressful environment. And although a burst of acute stress will help you finish that paper, chronic stress which we are talking about here is detrimental to academic performance and wellbeing. That’s what’s happening, and it’s why you may be feeling down or panicked or overwhelmed. It is both good and bad news. Good, because it’s not you (there is nothing wrong with you)! Bad, because it’s not you (you cannot fix the system as if by magic).

Once you know all of this it becomes possible to think out how you might address working in a less-than-ideal environment. You can find resources on this blog, in my free courses and, if you want to really dive in, in my online course. You can do this! First step, always remember: It is not you!

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

Writing a happy PhD is the third pillar of the course (the first is creating a basis for productivity with self-care, and the second is creating a highly effective workday)

Writing a PhD is difficult, but often it is not the work itself that presents the main challenge. It is the (self-)criticism inherent to academic work, the constant trying to do the near impossible, and then being criticised either by ourselves or others for failing, that gets us down. It can be hard! A friend of mine compares working in academia to eating shards of glass every single day. You have to be a bit of a stoic to be able to do it. In fact you have to be an über-stoic. That is bad news for us non-stoics. How to cope when you don’t have insides of steel?

Creating space in your day

The best strategy for mental and emotional resilience in academia has two components: the first is to create space between work and self. As academics, with minds on overdrive, and highly individualistic work, it isn’t surprising that the distinction between work and self becomes foggy. It’s a recipe for disaster. To help separate ourselves from our work it is helpful to create a time-structure in your day that will make the distinction between work and play; and get in the habit of swiching between focus and relaxation: work when you want to, and relax when you so choose. I’ve written about the practical side of this last week. Taking control of your time and your mental energy and focus will start making the difference between being stuck in the zone of procrastination and guilt and feeling down, or being in the zone of getting things done and sustaining momentum.

Pay attention to the positive

The second is to start appreciating the positive more, and start taking it as seriously as you take criticism and negativity. Our brain has a negativity bias: it registers what it perceives as a threat or a problem more forcefully than it does positive experiences. It may feel like the absolute objective truth that everything sucks, including your PhD, especially when you are processing a lot of criticism (the job description of being an academic). It is not.

Seeing and experiencing the positive in a situation, and cultivating these qualities in your life will start lifting you out of any PhD blues you happen to sink into. The nice thing about being a non-stoic is that you can use your feelings to lift you up and soar. If negativity impacts you in a major way, so can positive feeling states. Cultivating these feelings is a skill you can develop. It is not about positive thinking, or positive affirmations, or any other sort of constructed positivity. It is about finding and appreciating real excitement, beauty, joy, or wonder, or whatever your positive flavour of choice happens to be. It’s next to impossible to give you a roadmap, as this is such a personal process, but I can suggest a few simple strategies to get you started. Start by choosing to give energy to the things that are going well, and the things and people that make you feel good. Take note of these small positive things daily. Give yourself compliments for every small achievement. And be compassionate with yourself when you feel you are falling short. This may sound too obvious, but if you honestly give it a go, you will see that your experience of life (and your PhD) will change for the better.

Inner drive

Another important aspect of creating an experience of effortless flow in your work is to find out more about your inner drive. Why are you doing this work in the first place? What aspects of your work get you excited and ready to go? Working with our feelings and motivation in this way, helps us shift from a mode of working from fear (deadlines, criticism, failure, aaargh!), to a mode of working from inspiration.

How to do it

Start balancing the negative with the positive: ask yourself what uplifts you in any situation. Start paying attention. These tiny shifts will keep adding up. It is a muscle that academics, especially, need to train and grow. Finally, reflect on the aspects of your work that excite you. How do you feel when you are truly engaged with what you are doing? How could you cultivate more of this feeling in the way you work? Start to be more aware of whether you are working in the ‘old’ way – that perhaps feels like forcing, pushing or clenching, and see whether, in those moments, you can be aware enough to recalibrate. Take a short break, find your excitement, and choose to work from there.

Feel like your PhD could do with a positive boost? Join us for the next Stress-Free PhD Live Sessions. They start Monday November 12th! Check out the details here, and enter the GiveAway (I’m giving away two places in class, here). Over the course of 6 weeks you’ll see real shifts, and the PhD slump will be a thing of the past…

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).