By Charlotte Kramer
You’ve discussed with your supervisor that the next few months you’re working on a paper for which data collection is already complete. It’s not urgent, but it’s a time-consuming, longer term task that needs consistent work. But every day, other tasks take up priority: planning data-collection, answering emails from collaborators, ethical committees and supervisors, making a presentation. If you’re lucky, you might have an hour here or there to work on the paper, but that doesn’t work in practice.
PhD trajectories can differ a lot, but the above situation seems quite common, especially in health research involving human participants and collaborations with different disciplines or organizations. If this happens every now and then it might be fine, but if you’re structurally neglecting the paper, you might run into delays later on.
In this kind of project, PhD candidates are both executor of the research as well as the project manager of a bigger project. Complex projects require more structural time and project management. To some this might come fairly naturally, but for most a conscious approach to improve the project and time management skills can be very helpful.
When I did my own PhD, this was one of the main challenges and through a project and time management course, as well as trying out things for myself, I learned approaches that might also be helpful to others.
It all starts with a plan
Time estimates
Whether you like it or not, useful time management does start with a plan. Anyone can make a plan, but can you make a good plan? I would say that a perfect plan is impossible – things will always go different than planned -, but a useful plan is attainable. One of the most important features of a useful plan is realistic time estimates. A key lessons from my Project and Time management course for me, was that if you’re doing things for the first time, you should take your time estimate and at least double it, if not more. Because you will have to learn how things are done, run into issues that you’ll have to fix, or redo things, etcetera. The hardest part may be to feel bold enough to actually apply this time estimate to your planning, even if the little voice in your head says it is too much.
Project plan formatting
The format of you project planning is something you can decide for yourself. The world wide web should offer many ideas and templates. I think a more general overview that shows multiple months or your whole PhD is handy. Additionally, plans for a smaller scale might be handy for yourself to update weekly for example.
For the main overview, I’d advise to make an overview of the larger milestones and create a visual overview. These milestones you can either come up with yourself (e.g. from your PhD plan), or perhaps some are available in the project file agreed with your funder, such as the ethical approval, start of data collection, finishing data collection, etc. A very common way to visualize this is to create a Gantt chart, which you can make in excel or powerpoint. You can do this for a single project, but it can also be helpful for all your main PhD activities to plan in one document. Overall, make sure it is about the general lines and deadlines, do not waste your time on details in the overall chart.
Project plannings benefit from periodic reviews. This could for example look like discussing the project plans every quarter, or every few months, with your supervisors and maybe also collaborators, and update the plan according to the situation you’re in. This keeps you and others up-to-date, and gives a good starting point for discussing how things are going with the project and progress. It might also inform you on how accurate your time estimates have been.
How to structure your days
At least as important as a project planning, is how you structure your time. By default, email notifications pop up or people might walk up to you and ask things. This, however, is really inefficient use of time and energy. It can take up to half an hour to find your focus again, and you’ve probably noticed it yourself. Setting apart time for focused work is in my humble opinion the most important time management tool available. Perhaps you have heard of the Eisenhower matrix. If not, you could look it up, but in essence it categorizes tasks based on the 4 combinations of important/unimportant and urgent/not-urgent and how to deal with them. The problem of not being able to write your paper is a task that is not urgent, but it is important. According to Eisenhower, that is a task that should be scheduled. Although I am not one to usually agree with US presidents, in this case I do concur.
Writing a paper requires focus time. Most people I’ve come across prefer to have full days to work on this, with minimal distraction. I would suggest to block a day – preferably a set day of the week – in your calendar to work on that. Ideally, you want to discuss this with others you work with, such as your supervisor. This is for two reasons: one, so that when they have agreed you might feel emboldened to stick to the day. And two, so that others know you’re not available for other tasks that day. They will probably not remember, but it should help you stick to the scheduled work. If they ask for meetings or tasks on that day, you can say no.
In practice, a whole day is not always possible. At least half a day should usually be possible. What should this look like? The main thing is to limit distractions as much as you can. Turn off your email, teams or other messaging apps. Make sure you have turned off the popups that appear by default. Personally, I think that is a criminal default setting and should be turned off forever.
Additionally, in some projects you might have to check emails or other things at least once a day. In that case: schedule email time. Maybe at the end of the day and/or at the end of your morning you can plan an email half/hour. Ideally, you want to first have a few focused hours before you check your email, to start of on the right note, without worrying about email content. For many people, it seems like this time structuring and turning of email is not easy. We have been conditioned to feel like we need to be available all the time. This is however not efficient, nor required. If you think that people need to reach you for urgent, important things, I suggest to give them an alternative way to reach you, such as calling your phone or on Teams. This way you can rest assured that if really necessary, they can reach you. If not urgent, you’ll see their email a few hours later.
Not everyone is a morning person though, so it could also be helpful to identify when you focus best, and see if you can modify your day to have the most focused work scheduled for when you focus best.
If you are interested in learning more, it might be worth signing up to the Project Management course that you can find on the Doctoral School website (https://www.amsterdamumc.org/en/phd-student/courses.htm)
This article might also be an interesting read: “Exhausted and Not Doing Enough? The Productivity Paradox of Contemporary Academia” by Ferreira, 2022. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405872622000181 It is written from the perspective of faculty staff, but I think a lot applies to PhD projects too.
Bonus tips
My personal bonus tip is: if you are going to focus for the day, make sure to get some fresh air or movement in. A habit I picked up in covid-lockdown times, when I first started to work from home, is to take a (≥15 minute) walk before sitting down at a desk. This wakes me up, makes me feel good, and helps to focus afterwards. A lunch walk, or a walk at a time when you’re not feeling focused might also be useful.
Additionally, people often say that human attention span is only about 25-45 minutes. I don’t know if it is true, but I do know that giving yourself a small break after a time period like that seems to sustain focus in the longer term. Stand up and stretch, make a cup of tea, dance to a song if you’re at home, water your plants or whatever you fancy. Try to avoid screens though, as this will still tire your mind and eyes. If helpful, you could try the pomodoro method that sets alarms.
Last but not least: be kind to yourself. In life, and in PhD trajectories, things hardly ever go to plan. Whether it is through external factors, of factors in your own mind: things will often not work out the way you want. Allow yourself to be upset about things, but then move on with kindness, as feeling angry or ashamed etcetera will actually make it harder to move forward and make progress.
Do you recognize yourself in this article? The PhD advisors are here for you. Get in touch with us for a consultation (phdadvisor@amsterdamumc.nl).