A Happy PhD

When we are writing a research paper, we need to find long stretches of focused time to get that writing done.

Have you ever felt, after lunch, that your mind cannot focus?

Have you ever had this feeling, while writing, that your prose is leading nowhere?

Have you ever spent hours providing feedback over a colleague’s (or a student’s) paper?

Just a quick update about what’s been going on lately at the ‘A Happy PhD’ headquarters.

Have you ever gone out of a supposedly important meeting, after more than one hour of talking, but still feeling like a poor (or obvious) decision has been made?

What can we do, when we have to take a hard decision about the PhD (like changing supervisors or leaving doctoral studies altogether) but we don’t really know which way to go?

In the PhD (and beyond), we sometimes face a difficult situation, and we have to take a hard decision: do I leave my PhD?

As a PhD student, one sometimes gets the impression that holidays are something that happens only to other people, or that one does not deserve them (I’m so behind on so many things!).

We tend to think of research as rational, mechanistic, sterile, orderly.

Defining who are the authors of your scientific papers, while apparently trivial, is sometimes a surprisingly difficult decision (especially, the first times we do it).

By now, we have established that PhD students (and academics in general) seem to be at a higher risk to develop mental health problems like depression or chronic stress.

Not a few of the people that read this blog, do so with a very clear outcome in mind: to finish their PhD, to get that damned piece of paper saying that they’re doctors.

As our time at home increases due to quarantines and lockdowns, so does our opportunity to endlessly gossip, procrastinate or bitch about the global situation, our leaders and celebrities, or the people we happen to live with.

With the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, and increasing restrictions on movement and other aspects of life, also come anxiety, fear and a strange sense of unreality.

Along with writing your first journal paper, doing a substantial revision to your manuscript upon receiving the reviewers’ comments is one often-cited painful moment of any doctoral process.

Is your PhD giving you beautiful dreams or horrible nightmares?

In a previous post, we have seen the crucial role that having a sense of progress plays, not only in the productivity, but also in the engagement and persistence of a PhD student towards the doctorate.

Have you ever felt like you are “stuck” in your PhD, making no progress, or going in circles?

Wow, does time fly by!

The ability to pay attention is one of the most important assets of a PhD student (or researcher) and plays a crucial role on our focus and productivity, but also on our creativity and wellbeing.

In a previous post, I proposed the use of your favorite calendar app to store all your TO-DOs and avoid over-committing.

Despite the emphasis I have made so far in developing productive and healthy everyday routines (from to-do lists to pomodoros), not everything about productivity happens at this tactical, day-to-day level.

Have you ever felt that you have too many threads open in your research work, and you cannot seem to make substantial progress in any of them?

In this blog I have often covered the mental health and wellbeing problems that may come with doing a PhD, if we are not careful.

Writing research papers is one of the most dreaded (and most unavoidable) activities for many people during the PhD.

Even if you feel that your research contributes to a bigger purpose, even if you work at it with great engagement, even if you’re resilient to setbacks and misfortune… still your time working in research can suck.

No matter how meaningful your research feels to you, no matter how engaged you are when doing it, sometimes things just don’t work out as you expected.

Have you ever found yourself avoiding your supervisor, or the thesis meetings, or just not wanting to open the manuscript file you have to finish?

Continuing with last week’s post on “happiness at work”, in this post I explore the first of the four pillars for a happier workplace: the sense that your work has a purpose, that it is personally meaningful to you.

Being a Ph.D. student and being happy sometimes feel like two incompatible states.

When we present our research to others, in a conference or in writing, we often feel insecure: is what I found obvious?

Going to an international conference, to present your own work or to better understand a scientific community, is usually an intense (even stressful) experience.

A shorter post this week, to warn you about a small hiatus in the blog (due to taking a “disconnected break”), and to propose a new post format: Monday Mantras.

As a Ph.D. student, you very often have to present what your research is about.

One would think that research, as the pursuit of new knowledge, is mostly based upon curiosity.

The to-do list is an essential staple of an organized, reliable doctoral student (or academic).

This time I would like to turn the mike over to you, PhD students, and let you tell me what you want to hear about in this blog (I will do a separate one for supervisors and supervision later on).

In last week’s post, we established that dropping out of a Ph.D.

Aside from the fact that doing a Ph.D. seems to put you at a greater risk of being anxious or depressed than other occupations, some students may also face the question: will I ever finish my thesis at all?

The writing of a paper (or the dissertation itself) is often a long process, along which many decisions are made: should I send my ideas for feedback now, or generate more polished text?

Writing a paper is one of the hardest, but most creative parts of a Ph.D.

There is plenty of advice out there on how to write academic publications, from general stylistic tips to field-specific guides.

Writing (papers or the dissertation itself) is one of the activities that many doctoral students hate the most.

As a follow-up to the first post in this blog, I dig a little deeper in some of the research on anxiety and depression during doctoral studies, to find “risk factors” and “correlates” that seem to often come along these depressive symptoms.

Initially, I thought that I was doing this to help the PhD students around me (and others like them elsewhere) to pass through the dissertation process more effectively, with less stress.

This is one of the most basic, flexible and effective productivity techniques, which I’ve been using for many years.

By far, this is the tool (as in, “thinking tool”) which I recommend most often to PhD students.

Please leave your comments, suggestions (for future posts or about the blog), etc. in the form below, or email me at ahappyphd.blog@gmail.com.

There is a growing body of research that indicates that doing a doctoral dissertation can be taxing on the mental health of PhD students, with depression, anxiety, or burnout as potential pitfalls.