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.

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).

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?

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 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.

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.

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!).

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.