Motivation and productivity hacks made it for me. It all started with a traumatizing event and I ended up developing technics to make it last.
I started a PhD because it was a great opportunity, and I observed two types of PhDs : those who work a lot but not always efficiently, and those who work less but very efficiently. A study shows that women who become mothers during the PhD work less than others but much more efficiently because their time is very limited. Conversely, many people have lots of time (all day) to work on it and get maybe 3-4 hours of productivity maximum because of all that time.
It took a shaking event—being almost fired—to learn to be hard-working. 6 months in the PhD my supervisors told me that I had to redo the report I had worked on until then. In half the time. Otherwise they would fire me. Fine, I did it. Worked 9-12 and 13-17, then 18,30-21. Taking breaks was essential. Work, walk, eat a thing, repeat.
Now I organize my life to work efficiently, as I often realize that I do 80 percent of my work in like 50 percent of my time. So I have deep-work time (3 hours every Tuesday and Thursday), and light-work time where I use pomodoros and most specifically https://www.focusmate.com that is the best productivity I have ever used! Focusmate allowed me to finish my PhD in covid time (read : no motivation at all).
+ one last tip : if you can, put one thing you like to do in your day. Reading an article on the forum, talking to this kind co-worker...At least one thing. It helps a lot mentally.
It was a classic topic at lunch when I was doing my dissertation and people often cited this study but it’s been a few years now. I found a study that shows that organization and determination were the first factors for pregnant women to succeed
‘Discipline and organization. Many participants (n=18) described a high level of internal discipline and organization that helped them to manage the competing demands of pregnancy/parenting and doctoral work. Participants described carefully organizing their responsibilities and their time in order to be able to complete all required doctoral tasks. For many participants, this organization began during—or even before—their pregnancies. In planning pregnancies, participants looked ahead at program milestones to ensure that a pregnancy would not delay their progression.’
Determination ‘In fact, many participants described an increased determination after they had a child, which motivated them to reorganize their lives or give up leisure time to complete the necessary tasks’ [...] ‘For participants like this one, persisting in the program became not just an individual achievement, but something they were doing for their children as well’ [...] Negative experiences, such as the stress and loss that accompany infertility and/or pregnancy loss, also had the potential to motivate participants to persist
In Mirick, Rebecca & Wladkowski, Stephanie. (2020). Making it Work: Pregnant and Parenting Doctoral Students’ Attributions of Persistence. Advances in Social Work. 19, p. 358.
Motivation and productivity hacks made it for me. It all started with a traumatizing event and I ended up developing technics to make it last.
I started a PhD because it was a great opportunity, and I observed two types of PhDs : those who work a lot but not always efficiently, and those who work less but very efficiently. A study shows that women who become mothers during the PhD work less than others but much more efficiently because their time is very limited. Conversely, many people have lots of time (all day) to work on it and get maybe 3-4 hours of productivity maximum because of all that time.
It took a shaking event—being almost fired—to learn to be hard-working. 6 months in the PhD my supervisors told me that I had to redo the report I had worked on until then. In half the time. Otherwise they would fire me. Fine, I did it. Worked 9-12 and 13-17, then 18,30-21. Taking breaks was essential. Work, walk, eat a thing, repeat.
Now I organize my life to work efficiently, as I often realize that I do 80 percent of my work in like 50 percent of my time. So I have deep-work time (3 hours every Tuesday and Thursday), and light-work time where I use pomodoros and most specifically https://www.focusmate.com that is the best productivity I have ever used! Focusmate allowed me to finish my PhD in covid time (read : no motivation at all).
+ one last tip : if you can, put one thing you like to do in your day. Reading an article on the forum, talking to this kind co-worker...At least one thing. It helps a lot mentally.
Enormous +1 for FocusMate, which transformed my (limited) ability to do cognitive work and improved my mental health a bunch.
Thanks for sharing, Vaipan!
Feel free to link the study.
It was a classic topic at lunch when I was doing my dissertation and people often cited this study but it’s been a few years now. I found a study that shows that organization and determination were the first factors for pregnant women to succeed
‘Discipline and organization. Many participants (n=18) described a high level of internal discipline and organization that helped them to manage the competing demands of pregnancy/parenting and doctoral work. Participants described carefully organizing their responsibilities and their time in order to be able to complete all required doctoral tasks. For many participants, this organization began during—or even before—their pregnancies. In planning pregnancies, participants looked ahead at program milestones to ensure that a pregnancy would not delay their progression.’
Determination ‘In fact, many participants described an increased determination after they had a child, which motivated them to reorganize their lives or give up leisure time to complete the necessary tasks’ [...] ‘For participants like this one, persisting in the program became not just an individual achievement, but something they were doing for their children as well’ [...] Negative experiences, such as the stress and loss that accompany infertility and/or pregnancy loss, also had the potential to motivate participants to persist
In Mirick, Rebecca & Wladkowski, Stephanie. (2020). Making it Work: Pregnant and Parenting Doctoral Students’ Attributions of Persistence. Advances in Social Work. 19, p. 358.