Category: Time management

In general, doing a PhD degree is about working on your own projects and managing your own research. However, it’s important to remember that there’s a good chance you’ll be asked to do some supervision of students during your PhD. The likelihood of this will vary between countries and institutions, but it can take several forms:

• Supervision of undergraduate students who are carrying out short projects in the lab (normally a few months, possibly part time)
• Supervision of postgraduate students on Masters courses; these people will usually be working full time for a longer period
• You may be tutoring/demonstrating undergraduate courses - this will involve looking after more people, but for a small amount of time, and spread over several months in a more structured manner

There are lots of benefits to doing some supervision during your PhD. You’ll get experience of directing other people’s research (essential if you want to have PhD students of your own someday!) and you’ll have a better idea of what it’s like for your own PhD supervisor. You get to explore interesting side projects which are not directly related to your PhD research.

You might get valuable feedback on your own work - I supervised several undergraduate and masters students during my PhD. They carried out projects using software I had written, and the feedback they gave me went into producing the next versions.

The down side of supervision is that it’s an extra demand on your time - one which can easily grow if you’re not used to it. The most important thing to remember is to treat it like any other task and manage it using whichever system you use to organise your time. I’ll have more to write about supervising in future posts, but even if you’re not planning on doing any supervising in the near future, it would be a good idea to think of the benefits, and plan how you could fit it into your schedule.

Continuing in the theme of simple online tools, here’s WorkHack - an online whiteboard to-do list that’s as simple as it gets. There no signup or login required, just enter the tasks, set the priority, and rearrange them. I wouldn’t use this for organising a large project, but when you have a bunch of tasks at the start of the day and you want to get them all written down in order, use this.

Here’s a rather long article containing organisation tips from the point of view of a professional project manager. While it’s unlikely that you’ll be doing project-management-type stuff during your PhD (e.g. supervising large groups of people, delivering work to paying customers) there are some interesting points here. I’ve pulled out the ones that I think might be relevant to researchers, along with my own comments in bold:

34. When in doubt, ask: Don’t refrain from asking “stupid” questions – they may save miscommunication and misunderstandings, resulting in saved time and money!

36. Ask questions and listen to suggestions.

These two highlight an absolute requirement of academic work - willingness to ask lots of questions. Whenever you work outside your own micro-field, you’ll be working with people who know a lot more than you - take advantage of it.

44. Celebrate achievements – even mini-achievements: Celebrating at every landmark gives your team something to look forward to, and lets them remember that they are making steady progress towards their goal – project completion!

This is interesting; in the process of a long-running research project I agree that it’s important to celebrate intermediate steps - getting a paper or abstract approved, or getting the first set of results back. It keeps us motivated and lets us know where we are in the project.

61. Break down work into tasks: Breaking down the project into smaller tasks (and mini-tasks if required) ensures that you have a systematic approach.

This is important in any large, sprawling project, such as those that often occur in research. The idea of breaking work down into actionable tasks is key in a PhD project and is an important part of the GTD system.