Resilience: The Most Important Skill I Translated from Academia to Industry
When I was in graduate school, my classmates/labmates and I always talked about the light at the end of the tunnel. We hoped that we would attain happiness, wealth and an easy life once we got our degrees. Now I am at the other side of the tunnel, a scientist in a pharmaceutical company, and life is easier, but far from hurdle-free. I am continuously challenged by scientific questions, as well as the management of work-life balance. In this blog post, I will highlight the adjustments I had to make as I transitioned from academia to being an industrial scientist, and I will emphasize how my experiences from graduate school are supporting me in my current role.
As someone who was an academic at heart and had never worked at a company, I found that adjusting to the corporate pace was the biggest challenge. In graduate school timelines were long: weeks, months, even years. There was little progress on a day-to-day basis. I now have deadlines that are days or just hours after I get initial notification. I used to check email only 3 times a day in graduate school. Now I do it hourly. Due to the high volume of emails I get, it can take an entire day to sort them out when I return from vacation (although some of the issues actually resolve themselves very nicely without my input).
In graduate school I networked with industry professionals and they all had one thing in common. I remember hardly being able to contain laughter since they had the same answer to the question: "What is one of the things you do not like about working in industry?" Their reply: "Too many meetings." In my experience, meetings do indeed take up quite a bit of time. Most PhD-level scientists in industry have several meetings every day and they need to squeeze in experiments and writing reports during the "breaks." What is the purpose of the meetings? This brings me to my next point: teamwork. As a graduate student I collaborated with others, but I was an independent researcher responsible for my own project. Now I am involved in several projects simultaneously, but I am only responsible for a portion of those projects (the portion that is within my expertise). During meetings, team members discuss their results and then the project leader makes a decision on the next steps.
Despite these adjustments, my current job frequently brings up fond memories of graduate school. As one of the younger scientists, I still spend considerable time at the bench as well the lab supplies stockroom. I still have to develop experimental methods and contend with results that do not make much sense until I tweak the setup several times. In that regard, if I had to name one skill that I brought from graduate school with me that has been essential in the corporate world, it would be resilience or the ability to bounce back from failure and start fresh. Or, in more common terms it is the "pick yourself up and keep going" mentality.
This phrase rang in my ears every few months in graduate school. I believed that I was back to square one several times, even half-through my program. I contended with a difficult experimental setup, irreproducible results, and tendonitis in my arms, which left me unable to type or do experimental work for months. Yet, every morning I got up and went to work. Okay, not every morning, but definitely 6 days a week. Those of you who have been in graduate school probably know what it is like to force yourself to keep going even when the outlook appears dim.
Now I have different obstacles. I have a long commute, which brings up a whole spectrum of issues when one lives in New England. I am a mom, so I am lucky to have many fun family-related challenges too (and no more sleeping in on weekends!). To satisfy my job requirements, I have to meet tight deadlines, manage relationships with coworkers and contribute creatively to projects. Just like in graduate school, a lot of my efforts seem to be wasted (but they are actually not!) when projects or experiments fail. This is when resilience, that invisible force that gets me up at 5:30 am every morning, kicks in.
Resilience goes hand-in-hand with perseverance. To get through a PhD program, you need to be able to bounce back from failure, and you need to have the tenacity to continue making tangible progress every day. If you enter industry as a PhD-level scientist, the expectations are high. You will not just be doing routine work, but you will also be expected to lead projects, develop new experiments, research the literature and write manuscripts. I have many short deadlines, but also several long-term projects that I need to address daily or at least weekly. The habits of resilience and perseverance that were in instilled in me during my journey to a PhD have become the cornerstones in my career as a research scientist in industry.
To sharpen your resilience skills, I highly recommend "The Resilience Factor" by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatte.
Are there any topics you would like to see on Grad School Net? I look forward to hearing from you at dora@gradschoolnet.org.
Best wishes,
Dora Farkas, PhD
Founder Grad School Net
Author:"The Smart Way to Your PhD:200 Secrets from 100 Graduates"
dora@gradschoolnet.org, www.gradschoolnet.org
Are You Looking for More Resources in Graduate School
After the publication of my book in 2009 I began writing blogs for online graduate student communities such as Gradshare. Over the years, I have published over 100 articles, Q&A columns and newsletters. Since these articles covered a very wide variety of issues, I decided to organize them by topic to make it easier for graduate students to find the information they need. My new site, www.gradschoolnet.org, will help you to:
-Decide whether to pursue a PhD,
The skills and resources presented on my site are based on interviews for my book, with more than 100 successful former graduate students, as well as professors, deans, writing coaches, and industry professionals.
To provide you with free online tools at your finger-tips, I also have special sections for:
For additional inspiration, I also have stories from current graduate students and young professionals.
Are there any topics you would like to see on Grad School Net? I look forward to hearing from you at dora@gradschoolnet.org.
Best wishes,
Dora Farkas, PhD
Founder Grad School Net
Author:"The Smart Way to Your PhD:200 Secrets from 100 Graduates"
dora@gradschoolnet.org, www.gradschoolnet.org
It's Never Too Early to Start: How to Begin the Professionalization Process as a Graduate Student
by Katrina Oko-Odoi
Too many graduate students think that if they excel in their classes, meet their program's deadlines for advancement to candidacy (or Master's thesis defense), and develop good relationships with their professors and advisers, they will be well prepared to enter the job market when the time comes. This belief has never been more false, especially in light of the recent economic crisis. While being proactive and involved has always been a valued quality in graduate students, it is more imperative than ever to make a name for yourself in your graduate program and your field if you want a good chance at landing a job once you complete your degree. That's where professionalization comes in.
Professionalization can be a daunting concept for those who are just starting out in their graduate career, but if you follow a few simple guidelines, the process will be much less painful. Who knows, you might even enjoy yourself along the way! In a nutshell, "professionalization" means the actions and decisions you take related to your growth and prominence as a scholar in your field. This relates to several different facets of your graduate career, including:
-Professional relationships you develop
-Academic/teaching positions you hold
-Leadership roles you take on
-Professional associations you join
-Professional conferences you attend
-Articles and books you (eventually) publish
But let's take it one thing at a time. My biggest piece of advice would be to start small and be patient with yourself. Becoming a professional in your field is a gradual process, and you can only gain experience and confidence through experience, which you build over time. Depending on your degree program, you have up to six or seven years to become a full-fledged professional, so take it slow.
THE FIRST STEPS IN PROFESSIONALIZATION
1. Begin within your department and university. The strongest and most important relationships you will forge will be with the faculty who are your immediate advisers and instructors.
o Make an effort to meet professors who have similar research interests.
o Take at least one class with those professors. Go to their office hours occasionally to touch base and chat about your common research interests or ask for their guidance on what current literature you should be reading to stay current in your field.
o Make friends with graduate students who are more advanced than you in the program. They are a great resource and are often your most supportive and understanding allies in your program.
o Avoid department politics. Yes, there are politics within any graduate program/department. There are professors who don't work well together, certain staff who clash with certain faculty, and even graduate students who don't get along with particular professors or staff. These issues may seem petty to you, but stepping on the wrong foot or offending the wrong person could seriously hinder your success in the program. Ask your friends who are more advanced in the program about any departmental politics you should be aware of.
o Volunteer to participate in department events like new student orientations and open houses, or to serve on a departmental or university committee.
o Attend department events regularly, especially those related to your research interests.
2. Become familiar with your discipline. Get to know the current issues being discussed by scholars in your field, and figure out who the most senior, respected scholars are within that circle.
o Ask your adviser or colleagues what professional associations would be appropriate for you to join. If you can afford to pay the membership fee, join at least 1 or 2 of the main associations related to your discipline (they usually have reduced rates for graduate students).
o Begin to read peer-reviewed journals related to your discipline and research interests (many professional associations publish their own journal, so as a member, you would receive journal issues). Once again, colleagues or faculty advisers are great resources for this type of information. You don't need to subscribe to these journals right away; you can check out the most recent issues from your university library for free. Peruse the articles to get a sense of the type of scholarship being produced in your field, and to begin familiarizing yourself with the writing style of the articles. It could be your article published in that journal in a few years time.
o Join email listserves related to your discipline within your university and on a regional or national level. Many professional associations allow non-members to subscribe to their listserve. Also, different schools or divisions in your university (Division of Arts and Humanities, for example) maintain email listserves that provide useful information about upcoming events as well as funding opportunities, etc.
Like I said, start small. As you become more comfortable in your field and you build confidence in yourself as a scholar, you can slowly start to widen your professional circle. But that comes later. For now, focus on getting to know the terrain, and you can learn how to navigate through the speed bumps and potholes when you're ready.
Best of Luck,
Katrina Oko-Odoi
Founder and CEO, EditingWorm.com
This article is an excerpt from Katrina's forthcoming book on graduate student professionalization
For more tips on thriving in graduate school and beyond, check out Katrina's scholarly blog: http://editingworm.com/blog/
Is it Worth Getting a PhD?
by Dora Farkas
I have a Q&A column on Benchfly.com and it is clear that career options for PhDs is definitely the number one concern for doctoral students. Some students wonder whether it is worth getting a PhD or if they should just settle for a Masters. Senior students and postdoctoral fellows, who no longer question the merits of a PhD degree, have approached me for advice on alternative career paths given the fierce competition for academic positions.
If you are absolutely sure that you want to become a professor or an academic researcher, then there is probably no question in your mind about getting your PhD. If you are considering alternative paths, then it is worth evaluating whether the doctoral degree is a good investment of your time, money and energy. I spent six years in graduate school and I realized about half-way through that I was more excited about the pharmaceutical industry than academia. As many other students I began having doubts about whether it was even worth finishing my degree. First, there was no guarantee that I would finish within 6 years. My experiments had not produced the results that were expected and there were no publications on the horizon. Second, many research positions in industry only required a Master's degree. Some of my class mates had decided to leave (even 3-5 years into the program) with a Master's degree to pursue industry careers or even more exotic paths such as law school.
While the prospect of a Master's degree and an industrial job was alluring, there was a little voice inside of me that insisted that I should stay. I enjoyed my field of research, and it was highly applicable in the pharmaceutical industry. I had not generated publishable data yet, but I decided to tough it out until I had a nice story to tell in a manuscript. The next three years were grueling, with long nights at the lab and battling repetitive strain injury (RSI) that left me unable to type for months. Yet, I knew I was on the right path because everything that I was learning along the way (even fighting RSI) would prepare me for the career I desired. Now that I do work in the pharmaceutical industry I know that I made the right choice. I learned to do independent research, gained scientific writing skills, and self-confidence that I could learn anything that I put my mind to. I remember that as a fresh postdoctoral fellow I was asked to write a book chapter on a topic that was only tangentially related to my area of expertise. I knew I would need to review about 100 papers to do justice to the topic. "Well", I thought, "I have a PhD, so I could learn anything." Okay, not everything. But I certainly learned how to review the scientific literature within my general field of study.
For those of you who are money-savvy and are looking to evaluate whether earning a doctoral degree is a good financial investment, I listed several references below detailing salaries for PhDs. As you will see, most people do not earn a PhD for the sake of money. There are easier ways of getting rich (that's beyond the scope of this blog, but most wealthy people own their own businesses.) The real value in earning a PhD is to prepare you for a career path that truly excites you. Competition for academic positions gets tougher every year, and assistant professors have very demanding schedules. Work-life balance is a challenge, especially for parents of young children (although I heard that dealing with teenagers is even tougher than taking care of newborns). As a working mom, my experience is that balancing work and family is a challenge no matter where you work. If you are passionate about what you do, you will find a way to excel at your job, find the necessary support for your household and be a great role model for your children. (Strategies for working moms are beyond the scope of this blog, but stay tuned, there will be an article focusing on that topic in the next few weeks!)
Best wishes,
Dora Farkas, PhD
Founder PhDNet
Author:"The Smart Way to Your PhD:200 Secrets from 100 Graduates"
dora@phdnet.org, www.phdnet.org
References:
If you are thinking about a PhD:
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Future-of-the-PhD/131749/
Faculty Salary Data
http://chronicle.com/article/faculty-salaries-data-2012/131431#id=144050
http://www.higheredjobs.com/salary/
Is a PhD financially worth it?
http://gradschool.about.com/od/financialaid/a/worthit.htm
Articles on job search and alternative careers:
http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/tools_tips/outreach/events/2010_06_17
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Alternative-PHD-Careers-3404777/about -
Pillar of Strength: How You and Your Significant Other Can Support Each Other in Graduate School
by Dora Farkas
How can significant others (or spouses) support each other if one or both of them are graduate students? I can certainly relate, since my fiance and I were graduate students at the same time, and we got married during my last year in graduate school. (For simplicity, I will use spouse and significant other interchangeably.)
While the pressures in graduate school can put the best relationships to a test, they also present an opportunity to deepen your support and commitment to each other. Your relationship might be strained financially and emotionally as you pour every ounce of energy into a thesis that will only materialize in a few months or years. However, it is no secret that one of the most important factors influencing personal happiness is the quality of your long-term relationship. So the question is how can you and your spouse support each other to give your work the attention it needs? The strategies I share here are from couples I knew personally where one or both of them were graduate students or post-docs.
Commit to your relationship
A strong relation can endure financial hardship, long-distance, and any other personal or professional challenges brought on by life. If you want to create a mutually supportive environment in your home, you first need to strengthen your commitment to your spouse. Be proactive and give him/her the kind of support that you desire, by doing as much as you can to make his/her life easier. No matter how busy you are, there is always time to do something nice for your spouse. Your spouse will surely appreciate it, and probably return the favor doubly.
Spend quality time together to create a mutually-supportive environment
Knowing how busy graduate students are, I am sure that this suggestion is raising some eyebrows. "How can I spend time with my spouse every day when I hardly have time to work?" you might ask. Remember that you are not in this boat alone. You are part of a team. If you function as part of a team you can come up with better strategies than if you tried to row alone. No time or money for elaborate dates? A simple 15-20 minutes of connection every day (over tea in the evening, or an ice-cream during the day) will probably strengthen your relationship orders of magnitude more than an expensive get-away once a year. Use your 15-20 minutes together to solve challenges together as a couple, and soon you will come up with more creative answers than if either of you had ruminated alone.
Besides the daily 15-20 minute check-in, students have found that a weekly date can do wonders for re-energizing their minds. Once again I would like to emphasize that elaborate dates (although fun occasionally) might not be the best investment of your time and money. Simple activities such as watching a movie together every Saturday (perhaps at home if you cannot afford movie tickets or find a babysitter), going on a hike or working out together can do wonders for opening up lines of communication so you can provide each other the support you need. Keep in mind that the date is about being together. Having the certainty that there is always a person you can count on is the most powerful support one can have, especially during a challenging time such as graduate school.
Get creative with your finances
Graduate student relationships are frequently under financial strain, due to low stipends and student debt. I would like to share a story about how one spouse turned her hobby into a small business. My friend Stephanie was a working mom and wife of a postdoctoral associate, and they were just barely scraping by. She was artistic and while her husband traveled, she enjoyed doing crafts with her children. She especially liked decorating scarves and jewelry boxes. Around Christmas time she showed her crafts to her friends and they were eager to buy them as holiday presents. Soon she was generating income all-year round, and even built a website to sell her art. For other ideas on managing your money and investing in your future, I recommend the following articles:
http://www.mint.com/blog/planning/graduate-school-expenses-102011/
http://www.mispp.edu/downloads/finaid/money_management.pdf
Reach out to a support network
While your spouse is (hopefully) your best friend, it is not realistic to expect him/her to provide you all the answers and support. If you connect with graduate student organizations in your department or hobby group, you can find out how others have solved problems similar to yours. Some schools have groups for spouses, which can be especially helpful for internationals, who do not have a permit to work or study in the United States. Besides getting answers to practical issues such as obtaining visas and student discounts, you will probably significantly improve the quality of your life and your relationship by growing your circle of supportive friends.
Be proactive about planning your future together
The two-body problem can be one of the most significant factors influencing your job search. Take comfort in knowing that thousands of students have found solutions to this problem without sacrificing their professional aspirations. It does take creativity, determination and commitment, however, because the job market is so competitive. Specific job searching strategies are beyond the scope of this blog, but I can recommend books and articles on this topic. In fact, I have devoted an entire chapter to career planning in my own book, because I believe that it is never too early to begin networking and exploring job opportunities, especially if you and your spouse will be looking for employment simultaneously.
Reference Books and Online Articles:
- http://www.aps.org/programs/women/reports/gazette/upload/fall06.pdf
- http://gender.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/DualCareerFinal_0.pdf
- http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2010/100826/full/nj7310-1144a.html
- http://www.phds.org/jobs/the-two-body-problem/
Best wishes,
Dora Farkas, PhD
Founder PhDNet
Author:
dora@phdnet.org, www.phdnet.org
Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School, Part 4 of 4: Increase Your Productivity Without Eating a Real Frog
It has happened to all of us. We go to work committed to get a really big project done. We might get some of it done, but before we know it we get distracted by emails, text messages, coworkers or our own internal worries. It is not possible to eliminate all distractions or to stop random thoughts from popping into your head. But you can maintain such a high level of focus that you will be able to function at top efficiency in spite of continuous interruptions.
I have read many time-management books and a common theme I have observed among them is that motivation comes with doing. In other words, you have to start to do something before the real motivation comes. This is why it is so important to devote time to your long-term project every day even if it is just 5 minutes on Thanksgiving Day, for example. When you commit time to your goal every day you will build up momentum and focus and produce high quality work. There is more to the story, however.
One of my favorite productivity enhancing tools comes from the book “Eat that Frog,” by best-selling author Brian Tracy. According to an old proverb, if you begin your day by eating a live frog, you will have the satisfaction of knowing that that’s the worst thing that can happen to you all day. To apply the metaphor to a work day, your frog is the action that will have the most impact on your results, one that perhaps you have been procrastinating. Examples include learning a new software, getting your workspace organized or writing a manuscript. Think about which frog you would need to eat to make the biggest leap in reaching your goals.
If you want to jump-start your productivity, try the following strategy every day for the next week. At the end of the day, spend a minute or two writing down what you have accomplished that day, no matter how small. Then, write down 3 realistic outcomes for the next day. Decide which one is your frog and commit time to work on first thing in the morning. If you have trouble deciding what to work on first, pick the most that seems the most intimidating, the one that you are most likely to put off unless you get it out of the way. The next day (here is the important part), begin working on your frog before you check your email, text messages or anything else that can distract you. Work for 30-60 minutes (until you have made measurable progress) before checking your email.
This strategy will guarantee that you will have a sense of accomplishment before you burden your mind with emails, text messages etc. At the end of the day write down what you have accomplished, what your 3 desired outcomes are for the following day, and pick the toughest one to be your frog the next morning. As you will discover, there will always be frogs, challenging tasks that you would rather put off until later. But the more frogs you eat, the better (and faster) you will become at it. Soon, you will surprise yourself and others around you by becoming truly focused turning assignments much around faster.
Wishing you the best,
Dora Farkas, PhD, Founder, PhDNet
Author: "The Smart Way To Your PhD:200 Secrets From 100 Graduates."
The Roger K. Summit Scholarship is back!
The ProQuest Graduate Education Program is pleased to announce the Roger K. Summit Scholarship is once again open to all graduate students studying library and information sciences. From the ProQuest website:
The Roger K. Summit Scholarship, awarded annually by ProQuest, was established to honor Dr. Roger K. Summit, the founder of Dialog, a ProQuest business, for his outstanding contributions to the field of information science.
The scholarship is open to all LIS students worldwide. The award is the equivalent of US $5,000 and is presented at the Special Libraries Association (SLA) Annual Conference.
Visit here to learn more about this scholarship opportunity, and download a copy of the application.
Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School, Part 3 of 4: Keep Your Mind Focused
Greetings! This is the third blog in a series of four blogs Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School. In the first two parts, I showed you how you can inspire yourself and jump-start your motivation by realizing your true purpose and long-term vision. Today I want to show you how to keep your mind focused throughout the day, every day, to bring you closer to your desired results.
One of the advantages, as well as challenges, in graduate school is the freedom offered by a loosely-structured lifestyle. When you are in college, or working at a job, you are constantly pressured by external deadlines. There is not much chance for slacking off, or taking a breath for that matter. Once you finish your coursework in graduate school, however, you might find yourself with an abundance of unstructured time, and little guidance on managing your project. There are exceptions, of course, if your PI is a devout micromanager, but even then you probably have some authority over the direction of your thesis.
Many students thrive in a hands-off environment. Others, however, lose focus and motivation. Being isolated without a regular support network can be especially tough on students who excel in a structured, social environment. Take for example a day that was supposed to be devoted to writing your thesis proposal. .You might come in the morning with eight hours ahead of you to focus on writing. With the best of intentions, you begin writing but after an hour you need a break. Perhaps you take a walk, or get a snack and then get back to writing. Later on you decide to spend some time on social media, but before you know it half the day, or the whole day has gone by with little progress. You beat yourself for logging into Facebook or texting, and decide to be more focused the next day. The next day you try harder, but as soon as you start writing your mind begins wandering again, and you feel like an underachiever for not being able to focus long enough to attain your writing goal.
Now here is another question. Let's say that instead of working on a thesis proposal that's due a month from now, you had to study for a final exam that was the following day? What if you found out today that the exam was tomorrow? How focused would you be? Would you still respond to all your texts?
The level of focus that can be attained by external deadlines is enormous. If your mind is focused, you can write more in 1 hour than during in an entire unstructured day. What if you could bring a high level of focus to your thesis work every day? There is a simple strategy available to all of us to raise our level of focus almost instantly.
In the first blog of this series I discussed the importance of remembering your true purpose and long-term vision. The graduate student in cancer research had a picture of her grandmother on her desk as a reminder of the importance of her work. Another student had a picture of a graduation ceremony as his screen background, knowing that every productive day would bring him a day closer to his degree. Another student had a picture of her children next to her computer. Every time she lost focus, she glanced at her daughters. She knew that the more productive she was the sooner she could go home and be with her children. What immediate or long-term benefit would you gain by increasing your focus?
The key to maintaining your focus throughout the day is to remind yourself of your purpose and to imagine how you will feel when you achieve your goals. Just think for a moment how relieved you will feel when you get your diploma while being surrounded by your family. How excited will you be when you receive your job offer and a more secure financial future? If you give yourself these positive feelings daily (or better yet, many times daily), then the avalanche of text messages or friend requests will seem negligible in comparison with your true purpose. Give yourself this feeling every morning when you get out bed, on your way to work and when you get ready for bed. Soon your productivity will turn into a positive upward spiral. The more excited you are about your goals the easier it will be to wake up, and the more productive you will be. Of course, the more productive you are, the more excited you will be and eventually your productivity will sky-rocket.
The strategy of visualizing your goals and reliving the sense of accomplishment daily has worked many students and professionals, and I sincerely hope that it will help you achieve the level of focus that you desire. Please let me know how it goes!
Your feedback is always appreciated at dora@phdnet.org.
Wishing you the best,
Dora Farkas, PhD, Founder, PhDNet
Author: "The Smart Way To Your PhD:200 Secrets From 100 Graduates."
"I'll Take Zoology for $25,000, Alex"
The true Jeopardy fans read the title of this post and scoffed, "there is no $25,000 category!" And they are correct -- but anyone that saw grad student Sara Garnett win big on Jeopardy recently knows gets the reference. Sara is a biology grad student at Michigan State University, pursuing a masters degree in Zoology. She recently took home $25, 601 -- that's one way to pay off those student loans. Congrats Sara! Let's check out some other grad school news:
- So you have been accepted to grad school -- sweet! But...what steps should you take next?
- One thing you'll definitely have to do is balance work and life in grad school. There's academic life, work, family, social life -- but with some advice and planning, it can all be accomplished!
- Grad school and a zombie marathon -- check out what these two things have in common. Do you think this metaphor from the Chronicle is accurate?
Be sure to check back for more grad school news, and don't forget to follow GradShare on Facebook & Twitter!
Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School:Part 2/4
Part 2/4
Welcome back! Last week I started a series of four blogs entitled Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School.In the first part of the series, "Find Your Purpose" we explored how finding your true calling can drive your motivation in graduate school to help you accomplish your goals.
In this blog I want to share some simple ways to build up momentum so you can turn your goals into reality. A purpose such as "I want to help find a cure for cancer, " or "I want to write a book" might come easily, but it takes some thought to set up a realistic plan and then to follow through.
Once you have a very strong purpose that resonates with you, the next step is to define the "what", or the actual goals and sub-goals you want to accomplish. Notice we are not talking about the "how" yet (the technicalities of completing the tasks). That comes later.Many students make the mistake of immediately jumping into the "how", before clarifying exactly what they want to accomplish and why. This approach is very short-sighted, and can lead to discouragement as soon as you hit an obstacle.
In his book, "The Flow", Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi describes a state where a person is fully immersed in and enjoying in their task at hand. Imagine if you could be in that state all of the time, when actions and inspiration come naturally, almost effortlessly. Many graduate students are in this state during their final semester when they are writing their thesis. By that time most of their research has been completed and there is a straight path to the hooding ceremony. There is a bright light at the end of the tunnel and these students need little external motivation to put in the 12-14 hour days needed to make the thesis deadline. I am not suggesting that you work 12-14 hour days; that would lead to a burnout quickly. But you can get into a state where your internal drive supersedes any external distraction or hurdles that you encounter.
The reason that final-term graduate students are so motivated is that they see the end of the journey very clearly. They have a crystal clear vision of their diploma being handed to them. I remember the first time (probably around my fourth year in graduate school) when I "saw" the table of contents of my thesis in mind. After that point my motivation skyrocketed, because I knew exactly where I was going. Of course, I ran into bends in the road as well as dead-end streets, but I had a final destination, and I refused to stop until my journey was completed.
You don't need to wait until you are a senior graduate student to make a road-map. Draft your table of contents as soon as you have chosen an advisor and a general area of research. Then, make a 1-year goal. What can be realistically accomplished within the next 12 months? Be ambitious, but take into account the 3x rule (everything is research takes on average three times longer than planned). Once you have a 12 month goal decide what can be realistically accomplished in the next 6 months? How about 3 months or 1 month? A 1- month plan is very powerful because once you have it you can break down into 1-week plans and then decide what you can do today to get closer to your goal. Then write down what you can do tomorrow, and so on. The key is to make measurable progress every day. The beauty of working every day (even if you can only set aside 15-30 minutes on weekends and holidays) is that you pick up momentum. Ideas will come easier, your writing will speed up and before you know it you will have accomplished more than you had planned.
If you ever think "Not today, I am too tired", think of senior graduate students who only have only a finite number of days until the thesis deadline. Do you think they work every day and make use of every little pocket of time (be it 5 or 10 minutes) that they can find? You bet they do, even if they have a full-time job or if they just came home from the hospital with a newborn (yes, I have known students to work between newborn feedings).
As you can see, the most important phrase I have used in this blog is "every day". In the next blog I will show you some strategies to help you follow through daily on your long-term plans.
Best wishes,
Dora Farkas, PhD,
Founder, PhDNet
Author: "The Smart Way To Your PhD:200 Secrets From 100 Graduates."
