Looking for tips, tricks and advice to finish your doctoral thesis on time and with high spirits? Baffled by how little information is out there about how to support PhD students to become independent researchers? As an ex-doctoral student now co-supervising five students, I feel your pain. “A Happy PhD” is a blog (and a series of doctoral/supervisory courses) where I distil what has worked for me, as well as recent research in doctoral education, psychology and many other fields. Join our mailing list and get short doctoral advice in you inbox every week!
[AHappyPhD] Small productivity tweaks that can have a big impact
Hi Reader!Lately I have been dismayed at my own productivity (and I don't mean in terms of publications or hustle-busyness productivity, as we discussed in the previous newsletter). A report that would have previously taken a few hours to write now becomes a multi-week project, and writing anything that other people can understand feels like swimming through molasses. It may just be that I'm getting older, but I refuse to fully give in to this downhill march towards inability. Yet... how can we improve our productivity when we don't have the energy (or the time) for a big system rehaul? This week's newsletter brings two ideas about small tweaks we can implement (one, cognitive, the others, more physical) which can have a disproportionate impact on our productivity, energy and overall life experience. New post: Tiny idea: To-do lists are menusOverwhelmed by your endless to-do list? Stressed because of the many PhD-related tasks you need to “go through”? As we discussed previously in the blog, you are not alone (and ask any already-doctors whether this feeling goes away after graduation). Lately, as I struggle with not-so-new-parenthood-unproductivity in my own research, I have been reminded several times of a mental reframe I first encountered in productivity writer Oliver Burkeman’s work. This simple metaphor helped me change my relationship with my to-do list, without hurting my productivity (more probably, the opposite). This post should be familiar to long-time newsletter subscribers, as it was once a newsletter-exclusive. Flashback: Chronobiology addendum: A neurobiologist's guide to a healthy and productive day(Tweet-length gists of past posts, so that you don't have to read through the whole blog backlog) To counterbalance the simple cognitive reframe in the new post above, this other post from a while ago goes over a set of science-backed physical tweaks you can use to improve your health and (especially, cognitive) performance:
Can a few small tweaks to our daily routine have a significant impact on our productivity, energy and overall health? A neurobiologist says YES. Strategically use movement, rest, focus, sunlight, water... More details at https://ahappyphd.org/posts/chronobiology-addendum/ May you health and presence never waver! Did this content help you? Hit reply and send us feedback (I cannot reply to all the emails we get, but I do read all of them), buy us a coffee, or help us spread the word! Forward this email to a friend you think may find this kind of advice useful. If you are reading this and you have not joined the newsletter yet, you can subscribe and get exclusive access to a worksheet to make the strategic plan towards your next dissertation goal, in the button below:
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A Happy PhD
Looking for tips, tricks and advice to finish your doctoral thesis on time and with high spirits? Baffled by how little information is out there about how to support PhD students to become independent researchers? As an ex-doctoral student now co-supervising five students, I feel your pain. “A Happy PhD” is a blog (and a series of doctoral/supervisory courses) where I distil what has worked for me, as well as recent research in doctoral education, psychology and many other fields. Join our mailing list and get short doctoral advice in you inbox every week!
Hi Reader! As we rush towards (or just after) Spring breaks and Easter holidays, we may be thinking about all those thesis tasks we wanted to get done before the summer. To help us be productive without burning out, here are two purposeful doctoral productivity tips: one psychological (a new mantra I use a lot myself lately) and one tactical (a classic post on how to schedule time for hard PhD work). Enjoy! New blog post: Monday Mantra: Nothing meaningful without discomfort We spend a lot of...
Hi Reader! In our comeback to (somewhat) regular posting, we are trying out a little experiment -- the "study brief": a new kind of post, in which I briefly summarize a recent research study that I found interesting and which may be relevant for your "happy PhD" journey. Concretely, we delve on a recent study on important factors for doctoral student well-being. To contrast this high-level view of the doctorate, we also bring you a flashback that gets into the nitty-gritty details of how to...
Hi Reader! We are still trying to come back to some sort of blogging and newsletter regularity over here. This week(s), we bring you two very related posts: a new one about restarting a long-term project (especially, thesis work) after a long stretch of not working on it. We also bring you a classic post that explains a lot of the underlying psychology of how these thesis productivity slumps appear and are perpetuated (or not): the role of avoidance in much of our self-sabotaging during the...