Motivational Speeches/Philosophy:
1. You and your research - by Richard Hamming
https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/YouAndYourResearch.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1zDuOPkMSw
2. Leadership - by Sam Manekshaw
http://www.indiandefencereview.com/interviews/leadership-in-the-21st-century-sam-manekshaw-mc/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSvLFPFXjc8
3. Grit - by Angela Lee Duckworth
Advice 1:
PhD is neither a job nor an educational degree!
Sign-up only if you are passionate about learning and discovery
Reasons:
A job has fixed functions, PhD doesn't (equivalently: An educational degree has a fixed syllabus, PhD doesn't). Imagine trying to solve an agricultural issue, yesterday you assumed solution was in genetics, today it seems like vertical farming will solve it, tomorrow it might seem like a problem of expanding at sea. So the domain and your experience keeps changing and you learn and adapt accordingly
A job has fixed deliverable timelines, PhD doesn't (equivalently: An educational degree has fixed deliverables, PhD doesn't). Imagine trying to discover the cure for malaria, there is no magical formula to arrive at it. You keep working extremely hard and some day a Eureka moment happens, you can call it serendipity or the sub-conscious working for you! Maybe you would arrive at a partial cure or understanding and the remaining journey continues in PostDoc/Industry !
Advice 2:
PhD journey is tough!
Sign-up only if you are courageous, self-motivated, hardworking and can learn from failures
Reasons:
From my perspective, at the end of a PhD you should be able to
motivate yourself, keep occupied and be pro-active in learning more than what is needed (applies to both Industry/Academia)
have enough confidence to face failures and not lose motivation (applies to both Industry/Academia)
yourself create research topics and experiments to pursue (equivalently create design/product ideas to pursue in Industry)
yourself explore and understand what type of work keeps you motivated (self-awareness applies to both Industry/Academia)
understand several subjects broadly and several subjects in depth (more important in Industry because you may not be having a big group whom you can ask your doubts)
be able to write research papers, research proposals, face tough reviews and write revisions to them (equivalently create/document project plans, project architecture, project outputs, continuous revisions, etc. in Industry)
be able to teach few courses on your own (teach students in Academia, teach team members in Industry)
learn any skills to implement the devices/products (constant learning is needed in both Industry/Academia)
maintain quality of work (not build prototypes or write documents which will look like noodles and unusable in future !!)
not be restricted to a small field of research (applies to both Industry/Academia)
guide other bachelors and masters students (or guide team members in Industry)
understand that going through a tough journey is what will make it worth-it in the end (self-satisfaction, better future opportunity, broader scope)
Advice 3:
Don't aim for the salary as the primary goal/objective!
Reasons:
Every career/job function pays people as much as they can deliver. So the more you can deliver, more you can earn.
But to deliver more, you need to be the expert in the job function, which requires huge learning and practicing efforts.
Huge learning and practicing efforts requires self-motivation, dedication, hardwork, focus (not be distracted by need of salary!) and not falter in the face of failures. This is overall called as grit (see motivation speech-3 on top of this page)
The period of learning and practicing, you would not be delivering as much as you would when you become the expert. So you would be earning less. But this will set you up for a consistent growth curve in future.
Simple equation: If you earn a lot in the beginning itself, and you are able to sustain improving skills and workload, then there are no obstacles to salary raise. But, if you are unable to sustain workload and improving skills, you will get stuck at the same salary, worse you might be asked to take a cut.
More the salary, more the tendency to spend more - more gadgets, higher rent apartment (closer to office/big city), outside food (swiggy/uber/zomato), etc. So higher salary doesn't always translate to more savings at young age, higher paying job would also mean less time to learn (more time is spent delivering/performing).
Economics Example: say INR 4Lakhs/annum starting salary, 10% annual raise subject to performance evaluation, you arrive at INR 7Lakhs/annum after 6 years. Similarly if you do a PhD "properly" then during PhD you will earn INR 3.6Lakhs/annum, but after 6 years of PhD you can see a good opportunity paying more than 8Lakhs. But the keyword here is "properly" means good work, which brings us back to grit !!
So be gritty, success/money would follow
This is the reason rich entrepreneurs/industrialists still keep working and being busy, they aim to be the best (almost on an obsession level) which as a consequence gives them success/money