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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.