A Happy PhD

A Mantra for Daily Reviews

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0100

Do you check your daily to‑do list at the end of the day? If not, you probably should. Yet, this healthy habit can lead to an increasing sense of dissatisfaction and/or shame, as we are prone to plan more tasks than we are realistically able to execute (due to a very human bias). Do we have to choose between productive habits and a positive self‑image? This post introduces a “mantra question” I am using lately to maintain focus during daily reviews.

Learning for the PhD in the age of GenAI

Sun, 05 Oct 2025 06:45:25 +0200

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT have been hailed as both a revolutionary resource and an apocalypse for education. Among graduate and doctoral students around me—and in my own everyday learning as a researcher—I see both futures playing out. How to use these tools to support learning as a budding researcher, rather than de-skill ourselves? This post reminds us that the doctoral journey is a learning journey and highlights a key aspect of any learning process, along with different ways we can engage in it. Then, I draw on research-based ideas to outline (tentative) principles for learning effectively with (or without) these AI tools.

A PhD So Good It Can't Be Ignored (II) -- Mission, a System, and a Case Study (book extract)

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 10:50:36 +0200

We have now established that a PhD provides plenty of opportunity to develop mastery and (in many cases) autonomy. Yet, these properties alone do not always ensure a remarkable and satisfying research career. In this second part of the book extract from Newport’s So Good They Can’t Ignore You, we look at an additional piece in the puzzle—having a “mission”—and summarize the book’s system of practices to develop both mastery and mission, which can be applied directly during the PhD. I conclude with some critiques of the book and a case study to test whether these ideas map to my own research career thus far.

A PhD So Good It Can't Be Ignored -- Passion, Practice, and Control (book extract)

Fri, 20 Jun 2025 10:50:36 +0200

A doctorate is typically the first step in a longer (academic or otherwise) research career. Many think of it as a grueling rite of passage one must endure to get the job they want later on. But are there ways we can do the PhD to set us up for a remarkable and satisfying career? Are there ways we can make the PhD journey itself feel like a “good job”? In the first part of this book extract, we draw lessons from Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You, about “passion traps”, we look at properties of a good PhD job, focusing on mastery, control, and how to develop them for a more satisfying PhD (and beyond).

Monday Mantra: Nothing meaningful without discomfort

Wed, 09 Apr 2025 08:29:18 +0200

We spend a lot of our time trying to avoid pain, effort, and discomfort. In the PhD, this can take a myriad shapes: reading too much literature (rather than writing our own ideas), not reading a competitor researcher’s latest paper (it may render our work unoriginal), doing email first (vs. that hard, laborious qualitative data analysis), making a research plan with concrete deadlines (accountability, yikes!), asking questions at a research seminar (will we look dumb?), delaying reaching out to potential participants in our research (cold-contacting strangers is awkward, right?), meeting our supervisors… Then, one day, we realize that avoiding discomfort is exactly the opposite of what makes the PhD a meaningful endeavor. This post delves deeper into that realization, deriving a “mantra” to support us during hard times in the doctoral journey.

Impostors and supervisors - Personal and contextual factors in a happy PhD (study brief)

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 08:43:50 +0100

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 recent study out of Italy asked 216 students about this and about challenges to their well-being. In this post, we summarize the study and its findings, connecting these results with prior ideas in the blog, and how we can apply them in our own doctorate journey to find better well-being.

How to restart our PhD habit after a productivity slump

Thu, 23 Jan 2025 17:12:17 +0100

A family member dies, or their health fails catastrophically, requiring intense caregiving. A workload spike at our thesis-unrelated job becomes an ongoing plateau. Life’s logistics somehow magically align to get in the way, again and again. The experience of a “hair on fire” emergency morphing into a prolonged thesis progress slump is more common than we think. My recent hiatus from blogging has helped me see this common problem of doctoral students in a new light (and to experience it firsthand). This post explores mindsets and strategies that can help us return to making regular progress on our non-urgent but important projects (a.k.a. the thesis).

Tiny Practice and AI Tip -- Create Your Topical 'A Happy PhD AI Companion'

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 09:17:34 +0100

Have you ever wished for advice from this blog, tailored to your specific questions or situation? For getting a tl;dr of our blog posts on a certain topic? For an “A Happy PhD” podcast? In this post, I detail step-by-step an easy way of using AI to get information and advice tailored to your questions, about the blog’s very topics and contents.

Tiny idea: Feedback options, not checkpoints

Thu, 11 Jul 2024 10:58:01 +0200

Co-writing a paper, especially beyond one or two co-authors, can become a protracted process. If, on top of that, you try to have multiple feedback cycles (as we recommend), co-authoring a paper can feel like swimming in molasses. This brief post describes how the most effective PhD students I know handle this kind of feedback situation.

Two Hundred Weeks: Productivity for Mortal PhD Students (book extract)

Tue, 30 Apr 2024 09:52:37 +0200

Is there a way to be productive in our PhD without falling into all-out work obsession and burnout? What habits and systems could help us make good use of our (inherently limited) time and effort, taking into account that we could die tomorrow? In this second part of our Four Thousand Weeks book summary, we look at some of the tactical and strategic advice stemming from the productivity mindset shifts the book suggests – filtered and contextualized for doctoral students aware of their finitude.

Productivity as Avoidance, or How Not to Think about Doctoral Productivity (book extract)

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 10:40:14 +0200

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 of obsession. After our review of (somewhat caricaturesque) doctoral productivity and anti-productivity arguments, in this post I summarize some of the ideas in Oliver Burkeman’s recent book, Four thousand weeks, which I have found very helpful to reach a balance between my own productivity obsessions and the abandoning of all hope of being any good at my daily research activities.

Is Doctoral Productivity Bad?

Tue, 12 Mar 2024 11:20:36 +0100

In this blog I have written a lot about doctoral productivity tools and advice. Yet, many doctoral students out there may also think that the focus on productivity is exploitative, dehumanizing, and counter to the very spirit of the scientific endeavor. Should we reject the quest for being productive altogether? Should we “quiet quit” our PhDs? This post tries to clarify what I mean by (doctoral) productivity, which may not be the “narrow productivity” view you find in certain research policy or journalistic articles about the topic. That way, you can decide whether it makes sense for you to follow my advice, or get it elsewhere.

Tiny idea: To-do lists are menus

Wed, 06 Mar 2024 10:13:12 +0100

Overwhelmed 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).

Tiny practice: Beating procrastination with The Right Now List

Wed, 17 Jan 2024 12:10:57 +0100

One of the top barriers to PhD productivity is procrastination. Have you ever found yourself with a big ugly task getting stale in your to-do list, repeatedly postponed because it is too big, too abstract, or makes you somehow uncomfortable? This tiny practice post gives you an simple trick to beat this sort of procrastination.

ChatGPT's doctoral productivity advice... and four ideas the algorithm will (probably) not give you

Wed, 20 Dec 2023 10:21:11 +0100

We know that making progress is a critical motivational factor in finishing a PhD and maintaining good mental health while we do it. In turn, our productivity plays a big role in whether we make progress on our dissertation or not. As the first post in a series on doctoral productivity, I could not help but fall into one of the thèmes du jour: whether ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence (AI) tools can write a good piece about this topic. In this post, I go over a couple of iterations of (pretty good) computationally-generated advice, and finally give you a few ideas that I think are overlooked by the algorithm.

Tiny idea: Use the Regret Test for daily decision-making

Sat, 28 Oct 2023 10:33:53 +0200

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? This sort of realization is at the core of this week’s blog post: a tiny practice to guide our daily decision making about what to do next. This idea will also be familiar to long-time newsletter subscribers, as it was an early “newsletter exclusive”.

Breathing through the PhD: Breathwork in the doctorate

Wed, 18 Oct 2023 11:39:38 +0200

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. Going to therapy, doing therapy-inspired reflection exercises, journaling, and other practices are all very useful, but they require us to step away from the difficult situation. If only there was a simple, free, portable tool to help us in such situations, something we could do in any occasion and which is evidence-based… Wait, there is! This post is about breathwork, an array of tools with an increasing body of scientific evidence demonstrating its effectiveness. The post describes how we should breathe for better health and cognitive performance, and how different kinds of breathing patterns can help us cope with common challenging situations throughout the PhD.

Tiny practice: Boost your workday happiness with natural spaces

Fri, 06 Oct 2023 15:47:18 +0200

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 another tiny post, I share a quick tip on how to enhance your lab/work-life by using natural spaces. This idea will also be familiar to long-time newsletter subscribers, as it was an early “newsletter exclusive”.

Tiny idea: Subtraction

Fri, 02 Jun 2023 07:06:42 +0200

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. In another tiny post, I quickly share how you can harness the power of subtraction. This idea will be familiar to long-time newsletter subscribers, as it was an early “newsletter exclusive”.

Tiny practice: Granny's rule

Wed, 26 Apr 2023 07:25:41 +0200

We all tend to delay difficult, uncertain or scary tasks unnecessarily… especially, those related to our thesis. How to avoid such procrastination? In this new kind of short post (so far only available to our newsletter subscribers), I share tiny practices or ideas that have had an outsized effect on my thinking or my research practice.

A happy Master thesis: Progress and appropriation even before the PhD

Tue, 28 Mar 2023 08:15:13 +0200

Feelings of being stuck, of not knowing where we’re going, self-doubt, guilt… are not exclusive to the doctoral thesis journey. Despite their smaller scope, other long projects with little feedback or structure (like a master thesis) share the same motivational pitfalls and may induce the same kind of uncomfortable experience at times. In this two-part post series, we review key advice and simple practices which could also be useful to help us face these capstone projects. But these can also be very useful if you are a PhD student just starting out!

Intervision: Unblocking yourself... with a little help from some friends

Thu, 29 Dec 2022 16:45:22 +0100

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 this post, the first of a series distilling wisdom from the latest round of “A Happy PhD” workshops, we look at a peer advice technique we have repeatedly use in the workshops to help students (and supervisors!) unblock. All you need is… a little help from a small group of people.

Swath and Dive: A pattern for PhD defense presentations

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 13:29:23 +0100

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!). As they submit the dissertation and prepare for their defense, there is one piece of advice I find myself giving again and again, about how to tackle the impossible task of presenting multiple years of research work in less than one hour. In this post, I describe a “presentation design pattern” for thesis defenses, which builds upon classic conceptualization exercises advocated in the blog.

Reviewing doctoral well-being research (study report)

Fri, 07 Oct 2022 12:23:40 +0200

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). While I have tried to base my writings in the peer-reviewed research of this area, so far my reading of it has been rather unsystematic. How do doctoral well-being researchers summarize this body of knowledge? In this post, I distill from the findings of a systematic literature review on doctoral well-being, teasing out topics and factors that we already knew about from previous posts as well as novel ones that we can try to act upon.

Quickie: Preloading productive meditation (book extract)

Thu, 15 Sep 2022 08:42:03 +0200

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. Yet, we are all very busy and have limited time for such creativity. To help in solving this conundrum, this short post describes a technique I’ve been using lately to squeeze a few extra hours a week to make headway in those hard, creative research tasks.

The four disciplines of executing your PhD (book extract)

Wed, 31 Aug 2022 10:11:55 +0200

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!). This is especially true of part-time doctoral students that have a day job to make ends meet, but even full-time students face this challenge. Our behavior needs to change, but we can’t find what to change (or the energy to do it).

Four scheduling strategies of successful PhD students (book extract)

Wed, 27 Jul 2022 23:51:25 +0200

The ability to concentrate and do focused, cognitively-demanding work is crucial to finishing a PhD (and doing research in general). Yet, we often spend our days in emails, meetings and other busywork that does not bring us closer to completing our goal (e.g., the thesis!). How to keep the busyness at bay so that we dedicate more time to the important stuff? In this post, the first of a series based on Cal Newport’s classic book Deep Work, we look at the high-level shape of a deep-worker’s calendar. What are the strategies that doctoral students have successfully used to find time to advance in producing their thesis materials?

Getting into the weeds of writing

Wed, 06 Jul 2022 01:14:56 +0200

Do you feel like the prose of your papers is burdensome and rambling, even after lots of outlining and feedback? Do you often get feedback from co-authors about it being ambiguous, aimless or vague? Do you keep making the same writing mistakes again and again? The final step in drafting a paper (generating final prose and editing it sentence-by-sentence for clarity) is laborious and often overlooked. In this short post, I point you to a set of proofreading/editing tips from another blog, and share with you one tip to help you detect those pesky errors and make your prose more punchy.

Avoiding avoidance and other mental self-sabotage in the PhD

Wed, 29 Jun 2022 11:17:22 +0200

Does the thesis bring you a sense of anxiety, fear or discomfort? As we saw in a previous post, that is not an uncommon experience at certain points during the PhD. At the heart of many of our unsuccessful strategies to deal with these symptoms (including distraction and addiction) is the notion of avoidance. In this post, we’ll explain what avoidance is, its key role in many mental health afflictions, and suggest exercises and strategies to help us overcome these challenges.

The Create/Consume Hypothesis: A simple rule for more effective and valuable PhD work

Tue, 07 Jun 2022 12:02:15 +0200

Do you start your workday full of energy and eager to tackle your research but find yourself by mid-morning already spent and demoralized? Does this happen after a flurry of email interactions, social media scrolling, or passive meetings? You may be experiencing the differential effects of creative and consumptive work on your motivation and energy. This post will go over a (still half-baked) idea about how different kinds of work energize us, and simple rules that we can implement for a more sustained sense of progress and satisfaction with our (PhD or otherwise) work.

Facing addiction to social media in the PhD

Mon, 23 May 2022 23:55:08 +0300

Are you spending more time on social media than you would like? Is your use of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok… hampering progress on your doctoral research? You are not alone: many doctoral students report in our workshops that spending too much time scrolling compulsively on social media is one of their biggest productivity challenges. Building upon the insights about dopamine and addiction from our previous post, here I go over eight concrete steps we can take to break this compulsion and do more of the things we think are really important (like finishing that thesis).

Tue, 17 May 2022 07:59:00 +0100

The Happy PhD Toolkit

Tue, 17 May 2022 07:59:00 +0100

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 important in the doctoral process, or defining the co-author team for a new publication. We are now centralizing all these tools and exercises in a single place, categorized by the problem or need they aim to help with.

Addiction and the PhD (book extract)

Sat, 09 Apr 2022 12:06:48 +0200

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 goals (including, of course, finishing our PhD thesis). Dopamine is at the heart of these addictions. In this post, I distill lessons learned from reading Anna Lembke’s book “Dopamine Nation”1 about how dopamine works, how to face our addictions, and do more of what we think is important.

Forget New Year's resolutions -- Do a Yearly Review instead

Sat, 29 Jan 2022 12:13:04 +0100

If you are like most of us, by now (end of February) your New Year’s resolutions will have fallen by the wayside. In recent years, I have stopped doing resolutions altogether. This post is about what I do now instead, heeding the advice of productivity systems and psychotherapy approaches: a yearly review. This post goes over my particular yearly review process, and how it can give your research motivation (and satisfaction with life) a yearly boost.

A hiatus... and more BIG PhD questions

Fri, 28 Jan 2022 12:36:55 +0100

After a long hiatus for personal reasons, we are back in business! Continuing from our last post from 2021, here I highlight one of the blog’s big foci for this starting year: the “big PhD questions”. The post goes over what Google has to say about this (!) and asks for your ideas and opinions on what big questions about the doctorate we should investigate next at the “A Happy PhD” blog.

Big PhD questions: Should I do a PhD?

Thu, 28 Oct 2021 15:21:05 +0200

If you are reading this, chances are that you have already decided to do a PhD. Yet, you may know someone who is considering a doctoral degree (or you may be offering such a position as a supervisor to prospective students). This post is for them. In this new type of post, we will look at big questions facing any PhD student. Today, we analyze the question that precedes all the other big PhD questions: “should I do a PhD?”. Below, I offer a couple of quick, simple ways to look at this important life decision, and a list of 10 factors to consider when offered (or seeking) a PhD position.

Quickie: How many PhD students are anxious or depressed (or will drop out) worldwide?

Fri, 24 Sep 2021 13:44:49 +0200

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. Yet, how bad is the problem really? Exactly how many PhD students are suffering from depression or severe anxiety right now? How many will drop out? In this quickie post, I pull from the data of a few recent studies to give a concrete, numeric ~~answer~~ guesstimate to these questions.

Chronobiology addendum: A neurobiologist's guide to a healthy and productive day

Wed, 25 Aug 2021 18:14:20 +0200

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. But, how exactly can we use this chronobiology knowledge to craft a daily routine that is both productive and healthy, and fitting to our particular situation? In this post, I borrow from the habits and routines of an expert on the topic (Stanford neurobiologist Andrew Huberman) ten easy protocols you can put in practice to make every day your best day.

Journaling for the doctorate (II): How to journal effectively

Sat, 21 Aug 2021 12:45:00 +0200

Journaling during your doctorate can have a host of benefits (for self-knowledge, mental and physical health). However, not everyone will benefit to the same degree, and different kinds of journaling have different advantages… if done correctly over a sustained period of time. In this post, I will go over different research-backed journaling exercises and tips to make your journaling most effective.

Journaling for the doctorate (I): Types and benefits

Wed, 11 Aug 2021 10:40:54 +0200

Do you ever get the feeling, at the end of the day, that you have achieved nothing? or that days and weeks pass by, indistinguishable from one another, time slipping away like water between your fingers? Is your mind an unfocused maelstrom of swirling thoughts, ruminating again and again about the same worrying (or plain silly) things? Journaling has been proposed (both by ancient philosophers and modern researchers) as having many benefits, from dealing with stress and trauma, to just understanding ourselves a little better. But, can journaling be useful for us in facing the challenges of a PhD? In this post, I will take a look at the research on different kinds of journaling and what are their effects for mental and physical health.

Quickie: A simple trick to get better answers to your open questions

Mon, 14 Jun 2021 09:34:01 +0200

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. Many of them are reflective and/or open in nature. Yet, we often slap whatever answer first pops into our brains, and run with it. In today’s “quickie” post, I share a simple practice that can help in getting over this availability bias to get deeper, better answers to your open reflective questions.

A Doctoral Consortium format for times of COVID

Wed, 02 Jun 2021 09:35:04 +0200

Doctoral Consortia are events (often, at scientific conferences) where doctoral students present their dissertation ideas and get expert feedback on them. I have co-organized a few of these events during the first waves of the pandemic, which students seemed to find useful (the events, not the pandemic!). In this post, I describe the (online) event format that we followed, in case it helps future organizers of similar events. If you are a PhD student, I hope this post will also encourage you to attend one!

Notes on chronobiology for the PhD (II): The science of breaks

Fri, 07 May 2021 08:42:19 +0200

Being the “cognitive athletes” they are, PhD students (and researchers) should take rest very seriously, to perform at their best. Yet, not all breaks are created equal: timing and other factors affect their effectiveness. Continuing previous dives into chronobiology and taking holidays, this post goes over evidence-based tips and tricks to make your breaks the most restorative and energizing.

Supporting different types of students to complete their PhD (Study report)

Thu, 08 Apr 2021 08:50:08 +0300

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. In the continuation of last week’s “study report”, we discuss how different kinds of supervisor support relate to those motivational factors and, eventually, the finishing of the doctorate. We will also see how supervisors could foster these motivational aspects and help their students complete the PhD.

What kind of doctoral student are you? Motivational profiles and completing the PhD (Study report)

Wed, 24 Mar 2021 10:33:56 +0200

Many factors seem to play out into whether we complete our PhD, or drop out of it. Some of them are external and largely uncontrollable (like financial or family problems), while others relate to our thesis project and motivation. In this new type of blog post (the “study report”), I dive into the results of a recent research study that defines five types of doctoral students, in terms of their motivational profile.

A Monday Mantra to face uncomfortable emotions (#2 productivity challenge sneak peek)

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 08:26:34 +0200

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. In preparation for a longer series of posts on “emotional first aid for the PhD”, I have found a short mental exercise that has helped me face those difficult emotions lately. Here it is, in the form of a card-based “Monday Mantra”.

Defusing task conflict in the PhD

Mon, 01 Mar 2021 09:38:35 +0200

As we saw in a recent post, “task conflict” is a common productivity challenge of doctoral students. As PhD students, we often have to juggle different identities, priorities, jobs, projects… along with doing the thesis itself. Yet, so often, it is the thesis-related tasks that keep getting pushed back. In this post, I will go over tips, practices and techniques that might be useful if you find yourself struggling with this particular challenge in your PhD.

The three most common productivity challenges of PhD students

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 19:52:14 +0200

Do you ever feel, during your PhD, that you are not “productive enough”? Guess what, you are not alone. In this post, I share the three most frequently-appearing productivity problems voiced in doctoral workshops we have run in Estonia and Spain. I hope this shows PhD students that they are not alone… and gives PhD supervisors hints about the hurdles their students often face (whether they mention them explicitly or not). Also, I will give a couple of simple rules to know if these are a problem for you particularly.

PhD tool: Map out your PhD

Sat, 16 Jan 2021 18:32:52 +0100

We know that steady everyday progress is a crucial factor in finishing a PhD. In previous posts, we have seen productivity techniques to support us in taking more of these daily steps. Yet, a lot of walking does not necessarily get us anywhere. We need to know that we are actually getting past key reference points, closer to our final destination. In this post, I propose a diagramming exercise to map out key obstacles, milestones and the “everyday fuel” that propels us past them in our journey towards PhD completion.

Micro-breaks and two Monday Mantras to supercharge them

Fri, 11 Dec 2020 16:29:18 +0200

When we are writing a research paper, we need to find long stretches of focused time to get that writing done. Yet, even if we find them, can we really sustain intense focus during two or more hours? Today’s post looks at a research-backed and often overlooked tool in our productivity toolbox: the micro-break. To top it up, I provide two “monday mantras” to make your micro-breaks even more effective.

Notes on chronobiology for the PhD (I): Circadian rhythms

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 13:56:27 +0200

Have you ever felt, after lunch, that your mind cannot focus? or that, later on, writing suddenly feels effortless? If you have noticed trends in when these experiences happen, you have stumbled into the importance of chronobiology for your productivity. In this and following posts, I provide advice on how to organize your research work, based on chronobiology research. Today, circadian rhythms – i.e., when to do what during the day.

Writing exercise: sitting with uncertainty

Fri, 13 Nov 2020 16:57:21 +0200

Have you ever had this feeling, while writing, that your prose is leading nowhere? that right now it would be a great moment to defreeze the fridge? to check your phone, because someone may have texted? In this post, I offer a simple exercise to use next time these internal interruptions assail you during writing.

Supervisor Quickie: the Post-It Feedback Method

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 16:49:59 +0300

Have you ever spent hours providing feedback over a colleague’s (or a student’s) paper? And have you ever found afterwards that many of your carefully-crafted, thoughtful comments had been ignored? In this “quickie” post for supervisors (or for anyone giving internal feedback), I share a small trick that I use lately to avoid these situations… and get better outcomes for everyone involved.

Latest News from A Happy PhD

Sat, 24 Oct 2020 17:24:44 +0300

Just a quick update about what’s been going on lately at the ‘A Happy PhD’ headquarters. Expect a change of pace in the next weeks: shorter, more regular posts, our new ‘Twitter Tuesdays’, and much more!

More effective group decision-making meetings

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 23:26:49 +0300

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? In this post, I go over a simple pattern to organize more effective meetings when a group decision or proposal has to be made. Don’t be fooled by its simplicity: it’s much more effective than “business as usual” meetings, but people (including ourselves) will resist it fiercely, because it feels unnatural to act against our internalized meeting routines.

Making important decisions about the doctorate (II)

Sun, 20 Sep 2020 11:59:28 +0300

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 continuation to last week’s post, we see how to go about the actual decision-making, to choose the option that has the best chances to satisfy us in the long run.

Making important decisions about the doctorate (I)

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 18:59:31 +0300

In the PhD (and beyond), we sometimes face a difficult situation, and we have to take a hard decision: do I leave my PhD? do I take an unrelated job to earn more money while I try to finish the PhD? do I seek a new supervisor that better supports me? do I accept the change of direction that my supervisor is suggesting? In this two-part post series, I will not give the answer to those hard questions, but rather provide a decision process that can help us find the option that is right for us, in our particular circumstances.

Take your holidays… the right way

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 12:01:52 +0200

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!). Yet, what does the research say about taking holidays, is it really good for you as a doctoral student? Are there better or worse ways of taking a vacation? As preparation for the blog’s own summer hiatus, this post goes over the benefits, pitfalls, and optimal dynamics of taking a longer break.

A Monday Mantra duo: The best advice about research that an artist never gave me

Sun, 28 Jun 2020 22:33:36 +0300

We tend to think of research as rational, mechanistic, sterile, orderly. However, there are many things about research that are random, chaotic, and require loads of creativity (writing papers being only one example among many). Thus, it sometimes makes sense to think about research as an art… and sometimes we can reuse tricks and advice from the arts, to make better science. In this brief post, I give you a couple of those, from a well-known artist and writer, in the form of two Monday Mantras.

Navigating authorship: a condensed crash course in setting authors for your paper

Sun, 17 May 2020 11:28:31 +0300

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). As novice researchers, we may operate under conjectures or assumptions about how scientific authorship works, which may not necessarily be true. In this post, I go over several factors that often weigh in into that decision, and I provide a couple of tips and resources about how I would go about taking that decision, ideally.

Am I normal? An intro to mental health in the doctorate

Fri, 08 May 2020 09:04:40 +0300

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. But, how can we know if we have one of these mental health problems, right here, right now? In this post, co-authored with colleague, friend and therapist Paula Odriozola-González, we go over a few basic concepts of psychopathology, and propose criteria and simple practices to help separate internal experiences that we all go through at one time or another, from the more serious stuff.

How to be a PhD student

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 09:33:48 +0300

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. In this struggle, we (yes, I did that too) often forget that the PhD is more of a process (a learning, a practice) than it is an outcome. In this adaptation of a poem by Wendell Berry, I take a stab at what it took for me to become a researcher. I write this as much for you as for myself – to remind myself that, in a sense, we never cease to be students, we remain always beginners in the new knowledge that we (and others) create with our research.

Quickie: How to be more mindful

Mon, 30 Mar 2020 14:11:06 +0300

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. Or, we could choose to be productive. We could choose to develop a new skill. Being mindful allows us to notice, in a non-judgmental way, the richness of life in and around us (yes, even when you’re locked down at home day after day). In this new kind of post (the “quickie”), I give you in brief a few reasons to develop such mindfulness, and three ways to start learning that skill, today.

A Monday Mantra for times of coronavirus

Sat, 21 Mar 2020 11:50:55 +0200

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. Doing anything related to your PhD seems unusually hard, or pointless… even dangerous, compared with being continuously in the lookout for the latest news or advice on what to do. In this post, I share a mantra and a few other tips that I use to help myself stay sane and (kinda) productive in these difficult times.

How I revise my journal papers

Sun, 15 Mar 2020 13:12:31 +0200

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. This complex act of scientific communication involves balancing diplomacy with integrity, creativity and systematicity. In this post, I go over the concrete (and, sometimes, counter-intuitive) steps I follow to revise my journal papers upon receiving peer-review critiques, as well as some basic principles to increase your chances of success and avoid unnecessary suffering.

On Sleep

Sun, 23 Feb 2020 20:34:26 +0200

Is your PhD giving you beautiful dreams or horrible nightmares? In either case, you probably should be getting more of them. Sleep (or, rather, lack of sleep) is one of the best-known and most consistent risk factors related to depression, anxiety, and host of other mental and physical health issues. It is also one of the factors (mostly) under our control – even if it often gets the back seat with respect to other priorities like work, social life, family, or the latest season of our favorite TV show. In this post, I review some of the (very extense, and rather terrifying) research about the effects that lack of sleep has on humans in general, and PhD students in particular. The post also points you to practices and resources to help you in sleeping not only longer, but also better. Keep your delicate mind and body machinery in optimal working condition!

Advising for progress: tips for PhD supervisors

Wed, 05 Feb 2020 09:46:51 +0100

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. While this recognition (and the practices to “make progress visible” we saw) put a big emphasis on the student as the main active agent, PhD students are not the only actors in this play. Is there anything that doctoral supervisors can do to help? In this post, I go over some of the same management research on progress and our own evidence from the field, looking at what supervisors can do to support their students in perceiving continuous progress that eventually leads to a finished doctoral thesis.

Cultivating the progress loop in your PhD

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 11:30:48 +0100

Have you ever felt like you are “stuck” in your PhD, making no progress, or going in circles? If so, you are in good company – most PhD students report such experience at one time or another during their doctoral process. The normalcy of this experience, however, should not make us dismiss it as unimportant. In this post I review research that speaks to the importance of this sense of progress (or the lack of it) to our engagement with work and the eventual completion (or dropping out) of the PhD. The post also reviews several everyday practices to cultivate your own sense of progress.

One year of 'A Happy PhD': What happened in 2019

Fri, 10 Jan 2020 09:00:00 +0100

Wow, does time fly by! During the Christmas and New Year’s hiatus, I had the chance to pause and review what has happened with the blog since I started it about one year ago. Read on if you want to know which were the most popular posts of 2019, where does this blog’s readership come from, and what lies in waiting for 2020…

Monday Mantra #4: On attention

Sat, 16 Nov 2019 10:49:04 +0200

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 this month’s “Monday Mantra”, I give you not one, but two sentences that you can use to remind yourself to manage this resource wisely. Choose your favorite!

Report from the trenches: of calendar tricks and time scarcity

Sun, 10 Nov 2019 17:41:51 +0200

In a previous post, I proposed the use of your favorite calendar app to store all your TO-DOs and avoid over-committing. I’ve been trying this productivity trick on myself for the past few months. In this new kind of blog post, I report on the results of this self-experiment, and the effect it has had on my own productivity and wellbeing. I also provide some practical tips and tricks, in case you want to try it out for yourself. TL;DR: It works… if you are a bit careful.

Productivity tip: How I do weekly reviews

Sat, 19 Oct 2019 12:54:50 +0300

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. In this short post, I guide you through what I think is the centerpiece of my own personal productivity system: the weekly review.

Monday mantra #3: When you have too many open fronts

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 17:01:51 +0300

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? You are not alone. After closing the long series of posts on “happiness in the lab”, a bit of a lighter read this week. In this post I give very short advice that you can use as a “mantra” for this and the coming weeks, somewhat related to staying productive – but with a twist.

Happiness in the lab series

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 16:59:14 +0300

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. In this series of posts I look at the flip side of that, diving into the research on thriving at work, to find out which practices may help us be a little happier during our research, and how to diagnose ourselves about what aspects of our research activity can most be improved.

Writing research papers series

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 16:59:00 +0300

Writing research papers is one of the most dreaded (and most unavoidable) activities for many people during the PhD. In this series of posts I explore some of the reasons why writing research papers is difficult when one arrives at the PhD, and explain what concrete writing process I find myself following after more than a decade of academic writing.

Happiness in the lab, part 5: Kindness

Sat, 28 Sep 2019 19:12:54 +0300

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. This week I look at the final missing piece in our search for a happier (research) workplace: the quality of our social interactions with others. Particularly, how positive connections and prosocial behaviors can help us thrive at work (not just survive). In this post, I examine some of the main components of a prosocial workplace, how to assess them for yourself, and a few research-backed practices to make your lab a kinder place.

Happiness in the lab, part 4: Resilience

Sat, 14 Sep 2019 19:58:29 +0300

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. Papers get rejected, proposals are not funded, data gets mangled and needs to be collected again… plus all the non-research-related stumbling blocks that life throws at us, from sickness to accidents or family tragedies. How fast and how well can we recover from those setbacks that throw us off balance? This fourth post in the series goes over the concept of resilience as an important pillar for staying happy and fulfilled while working in research. Read below for instruments you can use to gauge it, and practices to help you stay resilient in the face of difficulties.

Happiness in the lab, part 3: Engagement

Sat, 07 Sep 2019 19:10:43 +0300

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? Then you might have some problems engaging with your research work. In this third post of the series on finding more happiness in your research, I look at how engagement at work is defined, how to assess your own levels of engagement, and some research-backed practices to help you engage better with your work and find your “flow”.

Happiness in the lab, part 2: Purpose

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 09:45:01 +0300

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. Read on to learn to self-assess your sense of purpose at work, and get some ideas on how to make your research work feel more meaningful.

Happiness in the lab, part 1: What is happiness?

Sun, 25 Aug 2019 16:43:50 +0300

Being a Ph.D. student and being happy sometimes feel like two incompatible states. However, we all know someone that seems to enjoy greatly their work, even their dissertation work (heck, I have to confess I’ve been one such annoying person myself sometimes). What things make people love their work? Apparently, an entire branch of positive psychology has been delving into this question for decades. This post is the first of a series that adapts insights and practices for greater “happiness at work” from a massive open online course (MOOC), to the work life of doctoral students (and academics more generally).

Monday Mantra: On scientific communication and research in general

Sun, 30 Jun 2019 19:35:02 +0200

When we present our research to others, in a conference or in writing, we often feel insecure: is what I found obvious? is there a fatal flaw in my reasoning or my data analysis? will the audience finally unmask me as the impostor I am? This week’s short “Monday Mantra” goes at the heart of such unproductive self-talk. What is all this really about?

Tips for attending scientific conferences

Mon, 17 Jun 2019 18:03:07 +0200

Going to an international conference, to present your own work or to better understand a scientific community, is usually an intense (even stressful) experience. As a doctoral student, probably even more so. In this post I share a selection of advice and tricks to make your next conference more pleasant (and useful in the long-term). Go forth, and enjoy a few days of “geeking out” with fellow researchers!

A small hiatus, and a Monday Mantra

Sun, 26 May 2019 21:28:44 +0200

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 the first exercise in this format, I propose you use the best shortest productivity advice I’ve ever read.

PhD tool: Pitching your research with the NABC model

Mon, 20 May 2019 09:00:00 +0100

As a Ph.D. student, you very often have to present what your research is about. Maybe you want to get quick feedback from a visiting professor. Or you need to give a talk at a conference or doctoral consortium. In this post, I go over a technique adapted from a large US research lab I once visited. I will walk you through its simple four- (or five-)part structure, including real examples from my own work.

On cultivating (and reining) curiosity

Mon, 13 May 2019 01:01:58 +0300

One would think that research, as the pursuit of new knowledge, is mostly based upon curiosity. However, the daily grind of research life can erode that sense of excitement students have about delving into the unknown. In this post, I explore the role of curiosity in doctoral studies, and look at a few practices and tricks to keep the flame of curiosity alight (without burning the village!).

How to deal with to-do list overwhelm

Sun, 05 May 2019 12:00:00 +0100

The to-do list is an essential staple of an organized, reliable doctoral student (or academic). Yet, have you ever looked at your task list and felt anxious, certain that you have too much to do and too little time? In this post, I review several routines that have helped me overcome this ubiquitous feeling. I have been working (in the industry and in academia) for about twenty years now. Yet, periodically, I look at my to-do list, or at the list of “projects I’m doing”, and I feel my heart rate rise.

Ask A Happy Ph.D. - Student edition

Sat, 27 Apr 2019 09:00:00 +0100

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). What would you like to know about doing a Ph.D., or being a (happier, more productive) PhD student?

Choosing not to drop out: a view from self-determination theory

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0100

In last week’s post, we established that dropping out of a Ph.D. (or thinking about it) is surprisingly common, and we saw demographic and socio-economic factors that seem related to doctoral attrition. In this post, I dive into another strand of research that relates doctoral dropout with a general theory of human motivation: self-determination theory. This research helps explain why you may persist and finish your doctorate (and even have fun doing it), despite having such socio-economic factors playing against you. Or vice-versa. The post also gleans practical advice from the literature on doctoral attrition, in the hope of helping students and supervisors avoid this common pitfall.

Who drops out of the Ph.D.?

Sat, 13 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0100

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? This post digs into research about doctoral attrition and completion, and what factors seem to make dropping out more likely. Do not give up!… unless you really want to.

My Ten Commandments of scientific writing

Sun, 07 Apr 2019 12:00:00 +0100

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? should I think of the target journal now or decide once I have the finished draft? et cetera. To finish this mini-series of posts on writing (why writing papers is hard, how I write papers, and the second part of that writing process), I review here the main principles and lessons that I have learned after more than 10 years of writing scientific papers. I hope they help you navigate these decisions if you are in doubt, or if you have to step out of the usual writing process due to unexpected events.

How I write papers (Part 2)

Fri, 29 Mar 2019 11:00:00 +0100

Writing a paper is one of the hardest, but most creative parts of a Ph.D. Very often, we do not know where to start, what to do at what point, or when to get feedback from our collaborators. In a previous post, I started describing in detail the process I normally follow to write my scientific papers. This post explains the rest of the process, from the outlining until you send your manuscript off to the journal/conference. One would think that this is straightforward, just scribbling and scribbling, right?

How I write papers

Fri, 22 Mar 2019 09:00:00 +0100

There is plenty of advice out there on how to write academic publications, from general stylistic tips to field-specific guides. Yet, I’ve found most of that advice tends to be abstract, or focused on the final product, never giving you a step-by-step account of the process. In this post, I share the writing process I find myself using after 70+ academic publications. This will give you an idea of where to start writing your paper (especially if you have never written one), and it will show you that all polished papers have humble (even crappy) origins. Kill perfectionism, and the dreaded “academic writer’s block” will eventually disappear.

Baking papers, or why scientific writing is so difficult

Fri, 15 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0100

Writing (papers or the dissertation itself) is one of the activities that many doctoral students hate the most. Why is this act of communication so difficult for us? As a prelude to my post on “how I write papers”, I expose some misconceptions we seem to have about scientific writing and what are good ways to learn it.

Risk factors for depression and anxiety in doing a Ph.D.

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0100

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. I hope that the awareness of these factors (from gender to other things you can actually change in your everyday life) will help you understand why some people struggle doing a PhD, while for others it seems a piece of cake. Change what you do and put the odds on your side!

The second reason why I write this blog

Fri, 01 Mar 2019 12:00:00 +0100

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. But at some point, I realized that other, more selfish, reasons were playing out as well. In this personal account I reflect on a chronic problem of academics and Ph.D. students alike, and how I face it through this blog.

Productivity tip: the Pomodoro technique

Fri, 22 Feb 2019 12:00:00 +0100

This is one of the most basic, flexible and effective productivity techniques, which I’ve been using for many years. I know many PhD students and academics that swear by it, but I am still surprised by others who do not know about it. In this post I come back to its origins, how to do it, and how I have combined it with other routines to keep me on track. Essential in this age of smartphones, social media and other constant distractions!

PhD tool: The CQOCE diagram

Fri, 15 Feb 2019 12:00:00 +0100

By far, this is the tool (as in, “thinking tool”) which I recommend most often to PhD students. This diagram summarizes your main research questions, thesis contributions and evidence of their usefulness. While painful to make, this brutal synthesis exercise is also a powerful communication tool. In this post, I explain how it works, its origins, and how making 18+ versions of it helped me through my PhD. Copy the provided template and use it in your PhD supervision meetings or even in the PhD defense!

Contact

Fri, 04 Jan 2019 09:59:00 +0100

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. Now you can also leave me a good-old voice message, using the side button on the right. If you want to be notified by email every time a new post goes up, sign up to the blog’s newsletter! Your Name Email Address An email address is required. Message (function(d){ var app = d.

Is doing a Ph.D. bad... for your mental wellbeing?

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 15:47:47 +0100

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. Is this problem real and, if so, how bad is it? In this post, I review several recent studies, some of which also offer insights about potential risk factors. This also kickstarts the whole idea of this blog, as a way to increase awareness about these difficulties, and offer practical tips and tricks to survive such a difficult period.

About

Thu, 03 Jan 2019 15:41:55 +0100

About A Happy PhD Are you doing a doctoral dissertation and feeling a bit lost, or unworthy, or just not knowing where to start, how to order your ideas and work effectively? Do you feel like everyone else is finding their path “naturally”, but you don’t? Are you supervising doctoral students, but feel like you are basically “improvising”, or following whatever behaviors your advisors applied with you, and wonder why nobody teaches you how to do this, why there is no handbook on how to give effective advice?