Speaker 1: The first step to being productive as a PhD student is to combat overwhelm. Overwhelm is when you have this massive goal and you're like how do I get to the end? And you're just paralyzed by fear or overwhelm of all of the tasks you need to do. Now I've heard this advice. You should break down all of the tasks you need to do. And I don't get it. I've never really been able to relate to that advice because I'm like at what point do I stop breaking it down? Now I've just got all these other little things to do which is just as overwhelming. So I actually reframed it and created my own version of this which is this. That you need to focus on the three tasks that will get you to your goal. That's it. So for example in the early stage of a PhD you may have to do like reading. You may have to do some writing and you may start to explore experimental ideas. Those are the three things you should be doing for the first few months of a PhD. Nothing else. If you only did those things you'd get to a PhD. But far too often we're often thinking about like oh I should try this and try this and then other things pop up. Seminars, meetings and all that sort of stuff. No. Focus on the three things that will actually get you to the end of your PhD. That is thinking about results, collecting results and analyzing results. And that's it. So if you only did those three things for the majority of your PhD you would win. So break down the tasks not by thinking about all the minuscule little things that you gotta do. Think about the three tasks. If you only did these three things would they get you to the end of your PhD or whatever goal you're after. And if yes just focus on those three things. Easy. Far too many people over complicate their day. Now I see loads of like productivity advice. I see loads of productivity hacks. And the thing is is that they end up doing a load of stuff but it's not the important stuff. So don't over complicate your day. Right. I have two things I need to do a day. One in the morning and one in the afternoon. When I wake up I make sure that my priority is this one thing. And if I haven't done this one thing I don't do anything else. So in a PhD it's like okay you do that one thing. I'm going to go straight into the lab and start that experiment because that is an activity that like I said in the first part is actually an activity that's going to get me to the end of my PhD. And then in the afternoon I'm going to I don't know read some papers or I'm going to analyze the results or I'm going to produce two graphs. That's it. At the beginning of every day as long as I've got the three tasks that I'm really doing I think about the two tasks that I could do that are really really important. Now I know me that in the morning I need something that you know is a little bit more energetic. So it'll be much more physical going into the lab doing experiments and in the afternoon it's much more writing much more sat at my desk. But that's fine. Those are how I actually sort of like organize my day and believe it or not once you've got these two massive boulders of activities oh they're so heavy everything else slots around it. Because if you start with the little minuscule things like oh tick off the list all the little things all the things. The problem is they become the big boulders and nothing else is fitting into your day. So once you've got these big things the stuff just works around it. If you got an email to send no worries you can do that you can find the time. But only if you've done these two massive things one in the morning one in the afternoon and also please don't get distracted by the minutiae of life when you first sit down at your desk. That is the number one thing I think everyone should know about which is like don't just sit there and start typing emails or browsing the web or convincing yourself that you need to go to this particular website to do this thing. No. Focus on those two big tasks. That's it. Easy done. That is how you stay productive. There is still one thing that has really kept me motivated and productive to this day and that is the thing that gets measured or celebrated. That's my edition celebrated. It gets improved. So for example if you want to finish your PhD you should start celebrating because that's all really you've got like is in your control or measuring how many graphs you produce a month for example. If you've got loads of graphs of data then you can actually finish a PhD by talking about that data. If you've got a conference coming up you need to actually make sure that you're celebrating producing figures for that data. Now one thing I used to do all the time is if I had a good result I would celebrate that result. If I had a graph that was thesis worthy in my opinion then I would celebrate that. I would measure it. I would tick it on a box. I would have somewhere to mark down the progress I'm making and that's it. That's the stuff. So think about the things in your PhD or in your life or you know the things you need to do to get to your goal and celebrate those. Celebrate the little acts along the way and measure them. If you think you need for example I don't know a hundred diagrams for your thesis start thinking about celebrating each individual diagram you need to get to the end of your thesis. That is how you make progress and that is how you make yourself feel good about progress. All too often we measure the wrong things. How much time I've been sat here. Time doesn't mean anything. You could spend hours sat there. That's not something to measure. You need to measure output. You need to measure something that's actually going to help you. So measure the important things. What gets measured or celebrated gets optimized. Use that to your advantage. Like most people I've got a pretty bad procrastination problem. If I don't trick myself somehow I'm going to end up in a weird place in my mind which is like oh we'll do this at like half past. Oh we'll just do this at like the hour. Oh we'll just do this at half and the day will just go. So I found that the only way to really get around this weird procrastination death circle is to trick myself by saying I will spend five minutes doing this and that's it. I trick myself into thinking that it will only be five minutes and you'll be surprised at how effective that is. I sit down and I think I'm just going to plan this video for five minutes even now or in my thesis I'd be like I'm just going to go to the lab for five minutes and just start this little thing and once you're there you start that momentum. It's so much easier to keep up the motivation after you've been over that little activation energy barrier because then you are in the flow so to speak. You've done all the hard things. But the problem is we convince ourselves that if we don't start it right now we'll do it in a little bit and it'll be better but it won't. Just there is some force. The one thing I learned about all this is that there is some force that you need to kind of like force yourself just to take that first step and then you're into it and you tumble down the hill the other side and you're like oh that wasn't so bad I should do that more often. But you don't. You procrastinate. So just trick yourself. Just tell yourself I'm only going to do five minutes. You'll find out you'll be doing more than that. Trust me. The last thing I want you to know is that I firmly believe that routine is better than inspiration. 100% no doubt in my experience. That is because I often in my PhD used to wait for the inspiration to strike. But the problem is inspiration is something you don't control. You don't sort of sit there and you sort of like feel it bubble up like some sort of superhero thing. You're like here it comes. Here it comes. I can do this. No no no no no no. It never works like that. In fact routine has got me through more hard patches than inspiration ever will. So what are you doing each day? What are you doing after watching this video? Like what are you doing on Monday mornings? On Tuesday mornings? On Wednesday? Like having a simple routine and just having a really easy calendar where you have each day of the week and you have morning and afternoon. Morning and afternoon. If you were to only do that week over and over again would it get you to your PhD? And make sure you've got all of the important sort of like activities slotted in. Morning, afternoon, morning, afternoon. It takes away the thought process. It really does. Having a routine because you kind of turn up and it's like it's Wednesday that means I go do the blah thing in the lab and that's it. It just means that you're so much more productive. So having a routine is 100% better than wait... Actually infinitely better. Take that maths. It's infinitely better than having to wait for inspiration because trust me inspiration is fleeting but don't get me wrong actually. If you feel inspiration, embrace it. Hug it and say thank you for the gift and do whatever you're inspired to do as long as it's aligned to your end goals obviously. You can't just be like I feel inspired to go and eat loads of cookies because that's what I want to do today. Look, use the inspiration that is directly applicable and useful to your project as soon as it rises up. Nibble it up. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. Inspiration. But you can't rely on that all the time so making sure you've got a routine that is very simple. Morning, afternoon, morning, afternoon, morning, afternoon. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Make sure you have it off. Have some break times in there as well. That's all I'm saying. All right then, routine is better than inspiration. Take that. If you like this video, I think you'll like this one where I talk about stop trying to be productive. It's really old and I've got a really rubbish thumbnail for it. Check it out.