The biggest thing I noticed when starting my PhD was all the first and second years derping around not doing much, all the third years panicking and "just getting going" and all the 4th and 5th years really grinding.<p>So, I inverted that and worked my ass off like I was still an undergrad in the first 18 months, toned it down for the next year and submitted my thesis at 2 years 10 months (the earliest my university would allow a submission) and was viva'd and passed 2 months later with minor corrections.<p>PhDs taking forever is generally a lack of initial work by the student rather than any external factors. Too many students let their supervisors fob them off rather than getting in their office when needed and forcing their projects forward.<p>Also, selecting a sensible area with a high likelihood of novelty helps, I worked on energy harvesting for hostile environments (high temp photovoltaics, piezo etc at 300degC) which was a new area for the group and my supervisor, and published 6 papers as basically nobody else was working in the field.<p>Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors).
As a current PhD student in a highly competitive program, I wish I could say this is reasonable advice, but it's wishful thinking in the hyper-competitive environment at top tier universities (where the goal of a PhD student would be to graduate as faculty material).<p>There is just no way around grinding out the experiments. You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate again and again until you figure it out.<p>Deep work is good and nice for the theoretical parts, but all the academic superstars/upcomers I know work super long AND super hard to make conference deadlines all the time.<p>Of course, if you just want to graduate without stressing all that much or much ambition, this might work.
I do walking for 30 minutes at the middle of the day while thinking about the task or problem that I'm facing during that time. It just always amaze me that good ideas pop up in my mind when I walk.<p>For those who are stressed and overwhelmed, I would advise to take a walk. And also for those who want to be creative, take a walk. It's a productivity hack.
The problem with saying "less hours" is that the optimal numbers of hours of effort varies a lot depending on your current productivity.<p>If you can't manage to focus on something despite persistent effort, yes it's much better to stop and have fun instead. It makes no sense to have "long hours" as a goal even if you're not sure of what you are going to try to accomplish during that time.<p>On the other hand, when you are motivated, or making progress on something, or working towards a deadline, then it may be very productive to keep going for many hours. I don't have statistics, but an important part of my PhD output (both research and writing) was done between 11 PM and 3 AM, on weekends, etc. (By the way, I disagree with the advice of going to the lab early in the morning -- personally I worked better from home late at night. But it depends on how you work and whether you can do the work from home or not.) Importantly, you should be in a flow mode, so actually these hours don't feel "long".<p>The main productivity lesson I got from my PhD is this: either work productively, or relax wholeheartedly. Aka: "Do, or do not; there is no try." :) It's terrible to try to work on something and not succeed -- it's unproductive, unpleasant, it does not put you in a better mood like real fun does, and it makes you completely disgusted with the task so it will be even harder to work on it next time. You have to learn when to keep on working, and when to stop because you won't be productive working longer. (You get better at this productivity prediction with experience.) And you should be fine with stopping very early, maybe skipping the rest of the day if it turns out you're not in the mood; but you should also be fine with stopping late and working crazy hours when inspiration comes.
I think it's incredibly hard to give general advice about the Ph.D. process. Even within the same discipline, the work varies greatly from sub-discipline to sub-discipline, and from advisor to advisor.
> #6 Give yourself a break<p>This is the most important bit in my experience. I had a pretty successful PhD and I loved my time as a PhD student. I'd have days or even weeks when I just didn't feel particularly motivated, and when that happened, I didn't sit at my desk twiddling my thumbs, I took the day off. Maybe read some papers, but almost never forced myself to do hands-on work if I wasn't feeling it. Having an advisor that grants you this kind of flexibility, as well as the flexibility to let you take on projects that make you feel motivated, is pretty important for a successful and non-torturous PhD, IMHO.<p>(Meanwhile I know of other advisors whose students would come into the lab 7 days a week and try to sell their work-life balance by telling the story of this one time when one guy the afternoon off on a Friday to go skiing. It's bizarre to me that some advisors think that kind of whip-cracking is the right way to make creative endeavors successful.)
Essentially every single aspect of our cultures understanding about how to accomplish things and do work is a direct outgrowth of assembly-line manufacturing. Mental work is fundamentally different. But we continue to treat mental work as if its the same thing as mindless physical rote repetition. Humans aren't capable of extended periods of mental exertion. 40 hours of work a week was fine when moving sheet metal into a press. For mental work, it's counter-productive and borders on the cruel. It's certainly harmful to every effort that pursues it.<p>But habits die hard, and the management class is more addicted to the manufacturing-driven mindset than junkies are to heroin, so it'll take awhile to change.
Seems to me like this applies nicely to more than just PhD's; it works well with programming as well.<p>At least when you can fit that work in between all the meetings you are scheduled for in a day.
It depends on your field. There are some experiments you can't just walk away from, for safety reasons. You can't just "focus" and make your chemical reaction go faster.
Just try this for a week...<p>1. Remove Facebook/Instagram/Twitter from your phone. Using parental controls disable Safari. Remove your email too if you can.<p>2. Use SelfControl to block these websites for 24 hours at a time. So you only get to check these things once every day. After you've checked it, quickly block again. If 24 is too much, start with 8 or so. But always block again right after checking!<p>SelfControl: <a href="https://selfcontrolapp.com/" rel="nofollow">https://selfcontrolapp.com/</a><p>--<p>Few more tips:<p>- Pomodoro technique is nice (I built FocusList - focuslist.co) but in my experience it doesn't help if you keep thinking about how many more minutes you have to stay focused. Instead you have to forget about all that and just think about your task.<p>- Keep a journal of sticking with this habit. I always print current month, put it up in my kitchen and I cross off days. I'm currently doing that for my diet, but it works for any habit you wanna build.<p>- If you can't motivate yourself, reading a book like "Deep Work" will give you an initial push.<p>- Use headphones. This is individual, but speaking for me, they just gave me this feeling of immersion and it just helps me get into the zone. Get a nice pair with noise cancelling, or with those foam tips (if it's comfy), it will make you feel like you entered a different world.
I'm a little confused, has this person contributed to science in any significant way ? If not why should we listen to this person and ignore scientists who have actually achieved success in their field ?
This is complete bullshit.<p>From personal experience, one needs to stay at the experimental setup until you have publishable data.<p>For example, I had part of an experiment die when the oxygen tank ran out, rushed back to the lab at 3:00 AM, changed the acquisition mode. I took the final picture and published in a high impact Nature family journal.<p>My less productive colleges would have called the experiment a failure, and stayed home.
>The worst PhD productivity advice is to work long hours. This advice is shared by successful people in Academia, so it should be good advice, shouldn’t it?<p>Is it though? Because I've never heard this ever. I've heard over and over again to avoid working long hours. It always annoys me when articles start off on premises like these that I just don't think are true.
This is stupid advice with sole purpose of keeping students engaged in publishing incremental research. So that no one questions vanity metrics like H-index and the ridiculous condition of academic research.<p>As a PhD student the real secret strategy is to ignore academia, work only on very high impact projects ( with potential of becoming startups or revolutionizing the field), intern with production teams (in core areas) at great companies. And enjoy lack of 9 to 5 scheduled life.<p>The deep work in less hours is meaningless if the work itself is merely publishing "Minimum Publishable Units" couple of times every year. It's just fast track to mediocrity.<p>Though I agree that not all environments are hospitable to risk taking. But then dropping out is a better deal.