PhD Advice

As a friend of my advisor Shafi likes to say: a PhD is like being in a cloud, and then at some point you emerge from the cloud… 😶‍🌫️

• 1st year: everything is new & a bit overwhelming 😯

• 2nd year: a time of excitement & exploration without pressure to know what you’re up to yet 🤩

• 3rd year: the panic sets in that you still have no idea what you’re doing or your research direction 😳

• 4th year: the existential crisis hits hard & you wonder if the whole thing was a huge mistake 😵‍💫

• 5-6th year: at some point you emerge from the cloud and what you’re doing and where you’re going finally clicks & comes together 😌

Some components to consider for building this self-management skillset include: 

• How do you want to handle context-switching? During the PhD you have to balance many things—classes, TAing, different research projects, meetings, seminars, admin tasks like email—and generally the human brain struggles with quickly switching between different settings. Do you want to theme by morning on one kind of activity, afternoon on another? Each day on its own topic? Alternate weeks on one project vs another? 

• How do you want to organize your to-dos? Do you find a daily to-do list helpful? How about weekly? Or breaking down your goals for the semester by month? Or some combination of the above, where you can promote/demote tasks to different time scales? 

• How often do you want to meet with your advisor(s) & other mentors? Weekly? Biweekly? Monthly? How about other grad students in your research area? Is setting up regular coworking sessions helpful for you? Do you want to block off chunks of your calendar for dedicated solo work time? 

• How do you want to keep track of the current literature in your area & papers you might want to read later at some point? How much is attending seminars or conferences (or reading their proceedings) part of this workflow? Do you want to use an organizational tool like Obsidian or Notion? 

• Which conferences do you consider your most “home” conferences, and which conferences & workshops do you want to keep an eye on beyond that as well in order to stay engaged with your broader research community? If your advisor has the funding or they’re occurring nearby, it’s also worthwhile to try out attending a variety of venues—you might be surprised by what clicks, and it helps you develop your academic network & potential future collaborations. 

Don't worry if all this seems like a lot to figure it out! You have years to get there & don't have to have all the answers right away. I’ve ordered these questions in roughly the order in which I feel it makes sense to engage with them. The first 3 questions are all about how you want to set up your workflow in the immediate term. On the other hand, until relatively late in your PhD, you may not have settled on your research subarea precisely enough for it to be worthwhile to develop an intentional strategy for keeping up on the literature. Finally, as you start looking beyond the end of your PhD, it becomes increasingly valuable to crystallize which conferences & workshops represent your core research community going forward.