I’m a big fan of sketching diagrams on the computer to get to grips with complex ideas and processes - I’ve written before about dia, my favourite desktop diagram tool.  Here’s an online tool, Gliffy,  that looks like it does a similar job.

You can add shapes and connectors from various different palettes and set colours and other attributes.  Impressively, it has export to a number of file formats that mean you could download your diagram and open it in another editor, or put it on a web page. You have to sign up but it’s free, although they do also have a premium account.

This question over at Ask Metafilter might not seem relevant to PhD students, but my last post on supervising as part of your PhD should make it clear why I think it is. I’ll let the title speak for itself:

” What books should I recommend to my scientist friend who is having a hard time with being a good manager in his lab?”

Check out the comments; they contain several recommendations for resources - not just books but websites, articles and podcasts - along with specific pieces of advice.

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.

Here’s a blog by a guy doing a PhD at Durham university in the UK in which he writes regularly about advice for PhD students. I particularly liked this recent post in which he discusses advice from a retired scholar who has supervised many PhD students.

This post over at Ask Metafilter strikes me as being good reading for those starting a PhD; even though the question concerns starting a job. You should treat a PhD projects just like a job in many ways.  Here are some of the replies I think are particularly good advice (the last point of the last one might have been written with a PhD project in mind!):

• ” …take the first 15 minuites of the day to write out a to do list, and the last 15 minuites of the day to review it, make notes on whats completed , wheat left undone and what do I have to do tomorrow.”

• “Keep a reference notebook so you don’t wind up asking the same questions over and over (like .. “which printer is which”..). Get the answer once and then write it down.

• “Stay organized from the start, make sure you have all the accouterments that you need. Keep a running list of what you have accomplished and what still needs to be done and always, always, always, have an end game in mind.”

Further to previous posts (one, two) on how to organise collections of papers in PDF format, here’s a post at lifehacker describing Shoka, a PDF library tool. From a glance it looks like Shoka ticks all the right boxes - it’s free and open-source, and is written in Java so it should run on all platforms (it uses Java Web Start at the moment). It looks like Shoka is under heavy development right now, so it might be worth keeping an eye on any updates.

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.

For all that academic research is supposed to be about original thought, there are times when life is made easier by a bit of rote learning. Here are a few things that I had to learn by rote during my PhD degree:

• Prominent papers and their results
• The meaning of various keywords in programming languages
• Names of taxonomic groups of animals
• Amino acid codes

Lifehacker links to CueFlash, a nice online flashcard app which lets you build decks of virtual flashcards and test yourself using them.  It’s a very simple interface and is free to sign up to. If you find the flashcard paradigm useful for learning this type of information, give it a try.

Here’s a question over at Ask Metafilter that I think is extremely relevant to anyone carrying out a long-term research project - how do you stay motivated when the goal you’re working towards is several years away? This can be a particular problem for PhD students as the goal that you’re working towards may be very loosely-defined at first. The poster writes:

“… it’s very easy to feel discouraged because it seems like you are putting in a lot of energy into doing something that will bring you benefits at a later point in time. It feels like cooking a meal that you won’t get to eat until days later.”

There are several obvious ideas presented in the comments -

• Find a symbol that represents what you are trying to achieve
• Break the project up into smaller goals (a common piece of advice on these pages!)
• Make sure that your goals are concrete

Something that only one comment mentioned, but that I think is key in a PhD research project, is the importance of enjoying the process. Regardless of long-term or short-term goals, it’s vital to recognise that the process of doing the work is valuable in itself.

As well as learning new technical skills, you’re also learning about communication, writing, time management. In addition, you’re making connections with people in your field and building up a network of contacts. These are things that are worthwhile in any context, and are separate from the immediate aims of your project. I think that keeping these things in mind can help a person deal with the inevitable long-term nature of academic research.

Here’s a website full of articles about writing. The article listing shows a huge amount of material on a range of topics. While a lot of the stuff is geared towards fiction, there are some articles that look relevant to researchers. Here’s a few that might be of interest:

6 Ways to Jump-Start Your Writing Day

Technical Writing for the Terrified

 Dreading the Writing Assignment? Outlines to the Rescue

 Editing and Polishing - How Much is Enough?