A Happy PhD

Do you check your daily to‑do list at the end of the day?

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT have been hailed as both a revolutionary resource and an apocalypse for education.

We have now established that a PhD provides plenty of opportunity to develop mastery and (in many cases) autonomy.

A doctorate is typically the first step in a longer (academic or otherwise) research career.

We spend a lot of our time trying to avoid pain, effort, and discomfort.

In the blog we have written a lot about doctoral well-being, from different angles… but what personal and contextual factors seem to affect it?

A family member dies, or their health fails catastrophically, requiring intense caregiving.

Have you ever wished for advice from this blog, tailored to your specific questions or situation?

Co-writing a paper, especially beyond one or two co-authors, can become a protracted process.

Is there a way to be productive in our PhD without falling into all-out work obsession and burnout?

If you are a doctoral student struggling to move your dissertation forward, especially in the face of additional jobs, teaching, family, or other obligations, the thought of becoming more productive can be very appealing – to the point of becoming a sort…

In this blog I have written a lot about doctoral productivity tools and advice.

Overwhelmed by your endless to-do list?

One of the top barriers to PhD productivity is procrastination.

We know that making progress is a critical motivational factor in finishing a PhD and maintaining good mental health while we do it.

Have you ever spent an hour scrolling on Instagram (or your social media addiction of choice) and later realized with a pang of regret that such a time could have been spent much better doing something else you deeply value?

During the doctorate (and in our later lives as researchers) we have to deal with a wide variety of situations and tasks, some stressful, some requiring focus or calmness.

We often come up with complicated and costly schemes to improve our lives (buy that new gadget, watch that new show everyone is talking about), when simpler zero-cost solutions may have better chances of actually having a positive impact.

In our efforts to fix our life’s problems, we often keep adding stuff to our lives and ideas to our theses, ignoring there’s an alternative.

We all tend to delay difficult, uncertain or scary tasks unnecessarily… especially, those related to our thesis.

Feelings of being stuck, of not knowing where we’re going, self-doubt, guilt… are not exclusive to the doctoral thesis journey.

In a PhD (and as doctoral supervisors) we often face situations where we feel blocked, with no idea of how to get out or what to do next.

In recent times I’m having the fortune of seeing several of my own doctoral students approach the end of the doctoral journey (yes, it does end!).

Doctoral well-being is one of the central topics in this blog (indeed, it was the one that started it all, more than three years ago).

We have established that finding long periods of time for deep, creative research tasks (be it writing a paper or designing our next study) is critical to achieve our thesis milestones and finish the PhD.

Very often, the myriad of obligations, additional tasks, jobs and activities in our daily lives block us from making progress in our most important goals (like finishing that doctoral thesis!).

The ability to concentrate and do focused, cognitively-demanding work is crucial to finishing a PhD (and doing research in general).

Do you feel like the prose of your papers is burdensome and rambling, even after lots of outlining and feedback?

Does the thesis bring you a sense of anxiety, fear or discomfort?

Do you start your workday full of energy and eager to tackle your research but find yourself by mid-morning already spent and demoralized?

Are you spending more time on social media than you would like?

Over the years, in the “A Happy PhD” blog, we have talked about different exercises, structures and templates to support doctoral students in facing multiple challenges along the doctoral journey: from defining the PhD topic to understanding what is impor…

Social media, porn, eating sugary things, shopping, alcohol, or spending our days anxiously reading the news… Most of us have behaviors or substances we do compulsively, to the point that it damages our relationships and our ability to achieve important g…

If you are like most of us, by now (end of February) your New Year’s resolutions will have fallen by the wayside.

After a long hiatus for personal reasons, we are back in business!

If you are reading this, chances are that you have already decided to do a PhD.

One of the catalysts that kickstarted this blog was the realization that PhD students are at a higher risk of mental health problems than other students and professionals.

In previous posts, we have seen how chronotype can influence our productivity, and how we can tweak our breaks to make the most of the ebbs and flows of our daily energy.

Journaling during your doctorate can have a host of benefits (for self-knowledge, mental and physical health).

Do you ever get the feeling, at the end of the day, that you have achieved nothing?

During a PhD (or any research) we need to answer not only the research questions we have set for ourselves, but also a host of other questions.

Doctoral Consortia are events (often, at scientific conferences) where doctoral students present their dissertation ideas and get expert feedback on them.

Being the “cognitive athletes” they are, PhD students (and researchers) should take rest very seriously, to perform at their best.

Aside from PhD students’ own motivational factors (e.g., how much progress they perceive, or how exhausted they are), the support they receive from supervisors is another key aspect related to doctoral completion.

Many factors seem to play out into whether we complete our PhD, or drop out of it.

In a previous post, I mentioned that uncomfortable emotions (like guilt, anxiety or indecision) are one of the most common obstacles to productivity that our PhD students report.

As we saw in a recent post, “task conflict” is a common productivity challenge of doctoral students.

Do you ever feel, during your PhD, that you are not “productive enough”?

We know that steady everyday progress is a crucial factor in finishing a PhD.