Time management tips for PhD students
Here’s a situation you might find familiar.
You feel like you’re not getting enough done, so you decide you need to get organised and manage your time better. You sit down and make a timeline with key deadlines, then you set yourself a timetable for the week, perhaps even planning to wake up earlier to achieve something early.
This always feels good… it gives you the reassuring feeling you’re in control… and maybe it works for a day or two if you’re lucky… but then you fall behind.
The routine and the deadlines start to slip, and that detailed plan starts to become more of a burden… a demotivating reminder of the standards you’re failing to live up to… rather than a useful tool.
So in this video I’m going to share some thoughts and tips on time management for PhD students, but with the caveat that it’s really complicated. It’s not just about setting up a plan or a system and following it, because there are so many complicating factors in PhD research and in life. There are no universal easy fixes, and different people might have different circumstances that affect their ability manage time effectively.
For example, someone who has ADHD might face different challenges to someone who someone who’s doing a PhD while working a full time job and raising kids, who might face different challenges from someone who has no other major commitments, but has just been ground down by the PhD and has had their confidence drained.
So I’m not going to pretend I have perfect solutions, and I’m not going to pretend that I've mastered my own time management.
But there are some principles you can work with and adapt to your own needs.
The unpredictable nature of PhD research
One of the reasons why plans often fall apart is that, in research, it’s often impossible to predict how long something will take. As a PhD student, you’re probably learning new techniques, meaning you’re unlikely to do it perfectly first time. And then of course there are other factors like equipment breaking down or administrative delays that are outside your control and can delay progress for months
But even when you have everything you need, including a lot of skill and experience, experiments rarely work first time around. And some experiments, even if you do everything right, never work at all. This is just what happens when you push at the boundaries of knowledge.
But when planning, we tend to guess the minimum amount of time; assuming a perfect version of the future where everything goes smoothly.
While some tasks—routine procedures that you’ve done many times before—might be predictable, many of the most important research tasks—the ones that lead to new breakthroughs in your research—simply aren’t.
So these two types of tasks need to be treated differently. For the routine tasks you can just make a checklist and follow the steps. Once you’ve done it a few times you’ll know how long it takes, and you might get quicker with practice.
But not everything is routine, and we also have to allow for the inherently unpredictable, chaotic, messy nature of research. We have to allow for mistakes, delays and dead-ends and let go of the idea that we can make a perfect plan and stick to it.
We also need to let go of the idea of doing everything as fast as we can, because you’re never going to be able to do your best work this way (and things often end up taking longer when you rush them).
So instead of thinking in terms of a to-do list where you aim to complete a task within a set time, it might be better to plan for problems to work on.
When you do this, the goal isn’t necessarily to solve the problem straight away, or guess how long it will take. Instead, it might be better to simply try to understand the problem, because it’s often only when we start work on something that we begin to appreciate what’s required.
You can then think about different approaches and try different ways to solve the problem, accepting that some of the things you try might not work, and that you might have to go through several false starts before you can make real progress.
It’s not always about productivity
If we accept that many of the things we try won’t work, that mistakes and dead ends are necessary and unavoidable, then we also have to accept that much of the time we spend working won’t be measurably productive or produce immediate results; and that’s OK.
The goal should be to spend time on a problem, whether or not it’s productive, focusing on the process and doing the work to the best of your ability, without overly worrying about the end result.
No matter how carefully you work, you will face problems, but what matters is how you react to them.
You might be tempted to switch to work on something else in order to stay productive. This might work in the short term, but what happens when you face another block in that other task?
Do you switch to something else again? This guarantees that you’ll stay busy, but without actually solving any of the problems that you face. It’s a guaranteed recipe for overwhelm.
Or maybe, instead of switching tasks, you go online because you aren’t sure what to do. This was my habit… my coping mechanism… through most of my PhD, but checking email (no matter how I justified it at the time) was just a way of avoiding the issue.
But towards the end of my PhD, I started taking walks around the university campus whenever I faced a problem in the lab, just to give myself time to think. This wasn’t productive time in the traditional sense, but was one of the key habits that ultimately saved my PhD; staying engaged with the problem, but in a relaxed way that allowed me to slow down and think calmly and creatively.
You don’t have to go for a walk, but I do think it’s important to slow down and give yourself time to think instead of rushing on to the next task or distracting yourself online.
So if you set aside time to work on something, just try to stay with it. Even if you’re not being productive, you’re giving yourself a chance to figure it out.
Staying focused
Slowing down to think about a specific problem in your research means temporarily shutting out all the other things you could be doing.
You’ll always have competing demands on your time, and you’ll always have other things you could be working on, but you can only ever really work on one at a time.
But as you work on one task, whatever you’ve decided to prioritise, your brain will probably try to divert you to something else (especially in those moments when you’re not sure what to do).
One trick I’ve found useful is to keep a notepad next to the computer and make note of all the times I’m tempted to do something else.
So let’s say I start working at 9, and by 9:01 my brain wants to check email, I’ll write down; “9:01, tempted to check email” and then turn my attention back to the work. Then at 9:02 my brain will tell me I urgently need to go online and look up how to make sourdough bread.
But then some of the things I think of might actually be important, but I can just write them down and tell myself, it’s OK, I’ll deal with that later. And then, gradually, my brain settles, the self-distraction gets less frequent and I can relax into the work.
Dealing with urgent tasks
But what if you suddenly realise there’s something you have to do right now?
Well then maybe you have to do it… but it’s also a sign that something’s gone wrong if you’ve forgotten about it until the last minute. If you find yourself in this situation all the time, constantly putting out fires, it’s going to be even harder to manage your time and attention.
The simplest thing you can do to avoid this is to take time at the end of each day to plan and prepare for the next. This means you always start each day knowing what your priorities and commitments are and there are no surprises.
This alone can make a big difference, but it also helps to think on a slightly longer-term basis too, and deal with at least some tasks before they become urgent.
Now I fully acknowledge that this is one of those things that’s easy to say, much harder to do. If you’re anything like me, you’ll want to put things off until the last minute… Because why would you do something now if you don’t have to?
When there’s no immediate reward for doing something, and no immediate consequences to putting to putting it off, it can be hard to get motivated.
But the longer you put something off, the heavier it gets… so by the time something becomes urgent you’ve trained your brain not to do it and it’s even harder to overcome the resitsance
So one of the best habits you can adopt is to recognise when you’re putting something off, something you keep meaning to do, and make it an absolute priority before it’s urgent. If it’s a single task or decision you’re putting off then you can just do it. Or make a list of tasks you’ve been putting off and work your way through them. You might have to fight a bit of resistance, but you’ll probably find they get easier the more you do, and it’ll feel really good to take those tasks off your mind.
For more complex tasks or longer term projects you’re putting off, you might have to set aside some regular time, and make it part of your routine
Routine
When setting up a routine, the most common mistake is to lay out a plan for the whole week, where every hour of every day is mapped out. This gives you very little flexibility to cope with the unexpected, and is also really difficult to stick to.
So it might be better to establish a foundation by focusing on just one point in the day, preferably the morning because what you do early sets the tone for the rest of that day.
For example, right now I’m trying to get some writing done every day, because I want to publish YouTube videos more often. Now I could say I'll set the routine of publishing a video every Friday, for example, but it’s often better to focus on the process, not the outcome, and the critical part of the process limiting factor is the time taken to write the scripts.
Now I could say I’ll take time on a Thursday afternoon to write, but I want to give priority to the task I’m putting off.
So the routine I’m establishing is to dedicate an hour and a half to writing first thing in the morning, focusing on the process and the time spent engaging in the problem, rather than the result. I get up, make coffee and start writing.
If I make that a non-negotiable commitment and follow through on the plan early, then I find that I’m much more motivated and disciplined throughout the rest of the day because I’m building on a win.
So instead of having a rigid plan for the whole week, I’m creating a simple routine for the start of the day. From there I can add others… for example, I could say that after writing for 90 minutes I’ll go through my emails… but I want to establish that one habitual routine first before adding more complexity.
And if I slip up in my routine, or if it’s disrupted, I have a simple, clearly defined routine to go back to.
A few quick notes here.
I’m not strict about the start time. So if I get up 15 minutes later, I’m not going to beat myself up about it. I just start as soon as I can.
Second, even though I start working on writing straight away, I never, ever, just write as fast as I can just to get words down. I take my time to think about what I want to say and how I want to say it, and most of the time when I’m writing I’m not actually typing. The time I spend thinking isn’t measurably productive, but it’s essential to solve the problems that arise.
I’d also say that this is just an example of setting up a simple regular routine as a foundation. Not everybody has to write every day… and for you the foundational routine might be that you arrive at the lab and take 15 minutes to go over your plan for the day and gather what you need (ideally away from the computer so you don’t immediately distract yourself with email).
What if there’s just too much to do?
All this might sound good in principle, but what if there’s just too much to do? Or what if you have constantly changing demands on your time, making it impossible to establish your own routine?
I’d say the best thing to try to do would be to carve out a little bit of time somehow. This will often mean communicating with others and rearranging or renegotiating some of your commitments.
So if, for example, you’re doing a PhD while working a part-time job, what I’d try to do is set clear boundaries where you have clearly defined and protected time when you’re unavailable; when your phone is off and you’re not reachable by email, so you can focus on your PhD work.
If that’s not possible on a regular basis, something has to give, whether that’s changing jobs to one where you have fewer hours or more flexibility, or just not doing the PhD (which is also fine as an option, and a lot of people are are a lot happier not doing a PhD).
If you’re doing a PhD while raising kids it’s more difficult, because, especially when they’re very young, sometimes you might have to drop everything, and it might be hard to carve out that protected time on a regular basis.
In this case, if you have to just work when you find the time, then it’s important to have a very clear priority. You’ve got to know that if you get an uninterrupted 30 minutes today, THIS is what you’re going to work on. This will be easier if you’ve taken a little time at the end of each day to plan and prepare for tomorrow, because if you sit down and then try to figure out what to do, especially if you're sleep deprived, it’s going to be impossible.
Self-care, social contact and sleep
And speaking of sleep deprivation, this brings us to the issue of self-care during your PhD.
When the work piles up and you’re struggling to make progress, you might be tempted to work longer hours and cut back on sleep and social contact.
And, to be honest, sometimes that’s necessary just to get something done— but it just isn’t sustainable as a long term strategy.
Sleep and social contact are fundamental to good mental and physical health, which are also important if you want to do good work.
PhD research is cognitively demanding, and if you’re exhausted and miserable then it’s going to be extremely difficult to think clearly and solve the problems that arise, meaning everything takes longer, which, in turn, might tempt you to work longer hours.
But sacrificing more of yourself doesn’t always increase your chances of success, so I think an important aspect of time management is also protecting some time for self care, social contact, and, above all, sleep.
Deadlines
Throughout this video, I’ve talked about how it’s hard to predict how long things will take and how we need to slow down and think and try things that might not work.
But what if you have a deadline and have to deliver work on time?
The only way to meet deadlines is to narrow your focus and make clear decisions about what you’re going to do and how.
So I’m talking about two different ways of working. One being very open and exploratory and creative, staying focused on problems without worrying too much about immediate results, the other being very decisive and prioritising getting things done on time.
This decisive mode also means deciding what not to do. This can be challenging because you’ll probably want your project to be as impressive as possible, but sometimes you have to let go of some ideas simply because of practicality.
And this can, potentially, make your project stronger, because it frees up time and energy to do a better job on the essentials.
But sometimes, even if you simplify, it’s just not possible to get it done in time.
If this is happening, you’ll usually know before the deadline arrives, in which case it’s best to communicate with others and renegotiate any deadlines or request extensions in advance, rather than leaving it until the deadline has passed.
