6 Ideas to survive a Doctorate Thesis
Years ago I started to study astro- and geophysics. Bachelor thesis. Master thesis and finally the doctorate studies. Years of learning, research and, of course, self-organisation and writing. What were useful habits to focus and motivate myself to pursue my academic goals?
No, I do not want to write generic tips, motivational speeches about life and academic research or supportive ideas to prevent procrastination. It is not about finding the right supervisor or working group. You may have already started or you stumbled across this article to get new impulses for a new working framework.
In this article, I would like to share my own experiences and methods I actually used and that helped me for years! I would like to provide ideas that are not all an “own creation”. I tried a lot, adapted, modified and derived my own working and motivation frameworks that helped me to achieve, amongst other things, my doctor in engineering.
But before we dive deeper into it, let me describe you my academic and professional background, since some methods may not be useful or applicable for all personal and professional settings.
A short introduction
My academic track can be easily summarized in 3 steps:
- Bachelor of Science (Physics) in a small town in Northern Germany
- Master of Science (Astro- and Geophysics) in a town in Central Germany
- Dr.-Ing. in a larger town in Southern Germany (wait, I think I see a pattern here)
I knew already in school that I would like to study my passion: astronomy and space science. Our cosmic neighbourhood, foreign planets and fundamental questions about our Universe drive me since my youth. Questions that will not be answered, if at all, in my life. But at least being a part of it, contributing something, a mosaic piece of the vast cosmic tessellation. That’s what drives and humbles me. During my studies I was really lucky to work on amazing projects like the comet mission Rosetta/Philae and the probably most ambitious and successful space missions until now: The Cassini-Huygens mission that explored the ring planet Saturn and one of its moons called Titan. My scientific interests had always to do with small rocky bodies like asteroids, comets, meteors and cosmic dust in general.
Several projects, sometimes in parallel as well as writing my thesis and supporting students required some kind of organisational habits and skills that helped me to achieve my goals. Over the years I adapted, modified and also dropped concepts that were either helpful or not. The following list is a condensate of methods that I used during my last academic research step: my doctorate studies.
1. Working Diary
Do you know the feeling that you did not achieve anything at all? I am talking of small time frames, like a working day, or week. What did I do this week … was it even helpful at all for my thesis? Did I waste time? My work progress is a joke!
I know this feeling. Either after a short working session or a long one I was sometimes wondering whether I achieved anything at all. Generally, this is a good habit. Asking oneself, criticising and challenging oneself is a good way to reflect one’s own work. Optimising and improving work are either triggered from outside (by a supervisor, colleagues etc.) or from the inside. The last one however is purely intrinsic and can be achieved by having a good self-criticism attitude. However, criticism (either about one’s working attitude or scientific topic) should not be a pure “gut feeling”, but rely on hard facts. Quantitative measures allow one to get a good objective overview and a fundament for any self-criticism.
For this purpose, I started from the first day of my doctorate studies with a daily Working Diary. At the end of a day I opened a simple text file with an editor, added the current date and wrote some bullet points of what I did. The rule: not spending more than 5 minutes. I wrote down e.g., literature work about certain scientific topics, exchange with my supervisor and the discussed topics, my programming work (where I started, bugs, errors and achievements) as well as questions and ideas for the next working day. This helped me a lot. I saw progress in the work I did. My research and thesis grew and I was able to recap my working progress. During my 3.5 years of doctorate studies I was able to see how everything evolved and I was also able to identify progress mistakes and “wrong paths” I took. Either I cancelled them or re-adjusted my scientific goals.
It requires some dedication to open this diary everyday and write something. The diary actually helped me to see that I had no chance with a certain research project and I gave it up (around 6 months of work). But using the diary helped me, to identify new methods and derive some “lessons learned”.
Personal anecdote: I had my final defense on the 1st April 2019 (yes I was a victim of April fools jokes THAT day) and wrote later after the celebration party:
- What a journey. Done. The End. I loved it.
2. Lab-Reports
“Thomas, 3 or 4 years of studies are a very long time. Some students get lost during that time. Write Lab Reports from the beginning on!” That’s what one of my supervisors told me to do in the first week. A … what … Lab Report?
You can rename it if you like. The idea is very simple: Finish intermediate research projects and steps in a dedicated, written report! During my research time I wrote around 1 report every 2 to 4 months. Some covered only some theory, some described and analysed data and some had almost the size of a bachelor or master thesis. Lab Reports helped me to set an endpoint for a certain task, contained literature research work and allowed me to go back to it months later for another project. Finally, I did not have to start writing my final thesis from scratch.
3. Non-Digital Kanban
Well the picture above says it all. Use a small Kanban board for your daily or weekly work loads. My work was 90 % digital: Data analysis, database maintenance, writing, E-Mail correspondence and so on. Having something “in your hand” especially something for organization purposes helps one to start and end the day without digital noise.
Take an A4 paper, write three columns: ToDo, Doing, Done and use differently colored stick notes for e.g., different topics or priorities. After moving notes to Done keep them there for a few days. Your Working Diary and your Non-Digital Kanban will help you to keep track of your work and show you also that you achieved more than your initial “gut feeling” would tell.
4. Conference Deadlines
Your Working Diary, Lab Reports and also the Non-Digital Kanban require one thing: intrinsic motivation and discipline. If you neglect too often your materials they will lose their purpose.
Additionally, extrinsic pressure is a good add-on to stay focused with your research and writing. To add this (maybe needed) pressure apply for conferences. Submit a small abstract + title and prepare a presentation with your current research status. Conferences help you in many ways:
- Presenting something for a broader audience requires you to focus on the key elements of your research: What did I do? What is relevant to understand the data? What is the key message or interpretation? While preparing your presentation you will see whether you understood your research at all. This may sound trite, but if you are well prepared and don’t want to embarrass yourself, think about upcoming questions, confrontations and comments.
- You won’t stay in your research group’s bubble. Views and opinions from the scientific communities can be extremely helpful to get another perspective of your research. However, check the member list. Who is there? With whom would I like to talk about my work? And also very important: Who might be friend, who might be foe (sometimes you encounter researchers with the same interests and scientific goals as you do)?
- Pick conferences where you have to submit a mandatory (!) conference proceeding paper. Conference proceedings are mostly not reviewed. However, use this opportunity to write a Lab Report — like proceeding paper.
5. Weekly Status Updates
How is your working group structured? I was very lucky. The group I was being part of consisted of less than 10 people. My doctorate father and research group lead had always an open door policy. There was no need to setup regular meetings to discuss the development of my thesis.
For my students, who had also lectures, other tasks and exams I always setup at least 1 meeting per week (there was of course E-Mail correspondence, Skype etc.). 1 meeting a week does not sound like much … but they told me that it helped them to stay focused with their thesis and work load. They wanted to present something new each week. Or at least add some more pages for their thesis. I was not judging how much they did. After all I knew the work-load they had. But somehow it helped them to finish their work in time.
If you have a supervisor who is busy, travels and organizes a lot, ask him for this weekly meeting. Whether in person or via video communication. It does not matter. A weekly setup will lead to some kind of … positive pressure. You want to show something: slides, some analysis, new data, whatever. And even if you did not achieve anything at all. Well, maybe there are issues? Problems your supervisor knows how to handle it?
6. Literature maintenance
Last but lot least, every student’s most favourite part (in a parallel universe): searching for literature and maintaining it properly. This point goes hand in hand with the Lab Reports. You read something that is useful for your thesis? Bookmark it and add it immediately to your literature reference tool of choice. Personally, I used JabRef since it allows one to add references manually, or import them e.g., via a DOI. Try to keep it clean and maybe a literature share point with your working group would have an impacting benefit for everyone.
Some points may have been trivial to you, some may gave new impulses and ideas. I can recommend what I did: Trying new things. And also small organizational changes may help one to improve oneself. If not, well, get rid of it. Without any attempt you won’t know it for sure.
Thomas
