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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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…