Speaker 1: I asked five of my really successful scientist friends to give me advice they wish they had learned through their PhD that would have made their success even more likely. This is what they said. They've given me the nitty gritty and some of the things even I was surprised about. Let's have a look at the first thing. And I've put this into a PowerPoint presentation. There is nothing better. This is what they said about grant funding and career stability. Success depends heavily on the ability to win grants and award applications. You have to push for that yourself. So push and push early. Apply for everything, travel grants, self-nominated awards, etc. So this is about making sure that you have a body of evidence during your PhD where you have applied for something and won. Because then you can say to wherever you're going next, oh, you know, I bought in this amount of money into the university and they love that. The two things that universities really love, money and peer-reviewed papers. If you can prove you can bring in that dosh, nice. There's no doubt that doing a PhD and a career in science has its limitation in terms of that money that you earn for yourself. So this person says living with a meager PhD wage is one thing, living with short-term contracts is another. But his philosophy is to put life first and work second. I think we need to take a long sort of like view at what a science career is. In the past it's been hustle. It's been really sort of like putting off adult things like having kids, like getting a mortgage, like choosing a duvet cover set that's really nice, that isn't sort of like just horrible. Anyway, all of those things we've delayed because we're students, we're working towards something. But no, sometimes this cannot wait. Someone said to me, and this is someone else said to me, I had children during my PhD because there was no better time. And that's just it. A PhD makes us delay big things, but this person is, I'm going to have all of the big things first. I'm going to make sure that I satisfy my life and I'm going to put my work second. That's an important little tip if you want stability and long-term success in academia. Now this one is really juicy. The academic incentive structure is self-interest governs all. This is not necessarily a problem because if you learn this early on, it can inform your own decisions and understand why academia and academics behave in certain ways. It took me a while to work this out, but this is what I learned, is that I could use this to my benefit. Instead of going to an academic with an ask, I went to them with an offer, an offer how I can improve their career. So you've heard of paper bait. That's when you say to someone, hey, I'm going to put your name on a paper if you do this thing for me. Sometimes it can distract you, it can distract others, but if you have a genuine offer to someone else that betters their career or their life in some way, then that is always better in academia than going to ask for something. People don't like to give. It's all about self-interest. So turn up and work out what you can do for them first. Then we had some nice tasty tips on project management and direction. So here, research without a thesis at the end of a project is hard to keep on track. So during your PhD and even in your undergraduate, it's really easy to kind of keep on track because you're like, I'm working towards a thesis, I'm working towards a thesis, I'm working towards a thesis, and it just kind of keeps you focused on the end point. But the thing is, when you're an actual scientist doing science as a career, there is no end point. You look out into the horizon and it goes on forever. This is a marathon with no finish line. We talk about a PhD being a marathon. This is the ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra, ultra marathon of your career. And it doesn't end. So it is very easy to get sidetracked when there isn't really an end date to the project. So you kind of enter this mode where you're like, oh, I'll do this, I'll do this, just because it's more interesting than focusing on your project. So this person said, I'm still struggling with the idea of maintaining project direction and having timelines that are fixed can help. So making sure you have your own timeline and your own dates can really help. But ensuring I don't move the timeline, if I want, is very, very hard. Absolutely. Now, you need to become a warrior, an expert at self-discipline, at just sort of like making sure that you are honest with yourself and disciplined enough with yourself to say, I'm going to finish this project at this time and I'm going to submit whatever. I like to have a commitment device in my life. So it could be I could say to someone, if I don't submit my blah by this time, I'm going to give you $200. And they wouldn't accept that. But just knowing that, having that pressure on the back, having that commitment device really, really helps. Create one for yourself and you'll be amazed at how easily you can stick to a deadline when you've got a little bit of pressure, even if it's self-imposed, bearing down on you. Data and file management, something that can be a little bit boring, but your project is likely to be passed on or taken over by someone. Make sure everything is coherent. If you save anything to the desktop, you're doing it wrong. Absolutely. All right. Even if you're not going to pass your project on to someone else, but you probably will at the end of your PhD and you probably will at some point during your academic career. You'll take a project so far, then you'll get on some help, you'll get someone else. But you need to make sure for yourself, if no one else, that you can go back and find that bit of data, that bit of research you did two years ago really easily. I love having folders on my computer that were chronologically ordered. And then I would just put in there all of the meetings that I had, all of the results that I've got, like the raw results, the analyzed results, and the meetings were the backbone to my project. Every meeting I made sure I had tables, figures, analysis of the data, where I'm going next. It was a story that I was filling out as I was living and creating the story. That way, if I had an idea, I was like, oh, I did that a while back. I would go back through my files and I'd find it because it was so easy. I knew roughly when I did it, I knew what I said, and I could go back through the meetings and say, it was that meeting, that was where I talked about it, and then that would link me to the data that I needed to find. So simple, but it's so important. Make sure that you have a coherent system for saving and storing your data, if not for you, for the person that's going to take over your project. Professional relationships and networks, that's where it gets a little bit spicy. So here we are. It's important to choose an advisor with actual networks and who will advocate professional development for opportunities post PhD. This is so important. I've actually got a course at the moment on choosing the right supervisor for you. It's the Ultimate Academic PhD Kickstart. Go check it out. I'll put a link in the description, but ultimately, this is one of the most important decisions you need to make. Your advisor decision or your supervisor choice is so important, and making sure they have a network that you can tap into is so powerful. It is really like a step up, and if they have good relationships with scientists or other researchers outside and inside the department, you know you're on to a good thing. This person goes a little bit further to make it spicy, and the professional development needs to be non-academic as much as possible because of the pyramid scheme nature of academia. This person isn't holding back. Another thing you've got to decide relatively early on in your PhD is to niche down or not niche down. This person has hit the nail on the head. If you choose a niche field or technique, you should find a place or person known for that niche if possible. You need to get the best person for that niche if you are going to niche down because if you're going to niche down, you need to be the best in that niche. If you make yourself known in a particular niche, you can find great success. I have seen it personally. I have known someone who did ionic liquids on surfaces. All they did was use atomic force microscopy to measure the adhesion of different molecules and ionic liquids to surfaces, and they built a massive career. That is like niching, niching, niching, niching, niching down, and they found great success. This is a double-edged sword because once you have niched down, it will be hard to break free of this niche, especially if it doesn't eventuate, so choose carefully. If you are going to niche down, you want to make sure that you have chosen the right advisor because they can open up opportunities for you afterwards. You need to look to see if there's opportunities after for you to be working in that niche. You can't just be niched down with one person who does that one thing because there is no sort of career movement for you after you graduate, even if you are the best in the niche. So, niching down can be great if you know there's opportunities beyond your PhD advisor. However, if there isn't, you got to be very, very careful. Academic politics and dynamics, my favorite topic. So, here we go. Never piss off the finance department. They can make your life hell by triple-checking every single transaction you make. Brilliant. So, this just talks to the fact that there are so many dynamics within academia that even if you annoy the wrong person in the wrong department, they will have it in for you. So, it's not just about the academic environment, but grudges exist everywhere. You don't want to be the person with all of the grudges against you because it will slow you down. It will be like slopping through mud to try to make any advance, and then when even the finance department is against you, it makes for a horrible career. Understanding academic dynamics. Your PhD advisor is the main beneficiary of all of your work and will receive the majority of the credit regardless of how much input they have had. And this is the worst thing about the supervisor-student relationship, is that this pyramid structure where all of these people, all of these PhD students are slogging through, all of that academic kudos will rise to the top, and unfortunately, it is the nature of academia and being a PhD student. When you're in that position, which is very, very rare these days to get a full-tenured position with loads of PhD students and postdocs underneath you, obviously it's great. So why would they, the people in charge, want to change the system? So you need to go into it knowing that you are going to be the workhorse for someone else's career, which is why you need to move out of postdoc life and look for tenureship or move out of academia altogether to make sure that you are in control of your career and you receive all of the benefits from your work, because otherwise you get trapped just giving up academic kudos every year, saying, here we are, sir, there's more. Can I keep some for myself? No, it's mine. The last thing that was so important for these people to get across to you was skill development and personal growth. So here, maximizing impact, understand metrics and how to maximize your own. So very, very important, maximizing your own metrics. It is a game in academia and it's not going away anytime soon. Even if we get rid of the H index, even if we get rid of the M index, you are going to have to sort of like look at another metric, because we love metrics, we love making the metrics to game. So you need to be really careful about understanding how the metrics work and how essentially to game the system. That is just the unfortunate reality of learning how to get on other people's papers, how to get collaborations so you get your name on work that's being published in high impact factor journals, and how to build that network, and how to get people to cite your work. That is what it's all about. Actually, go check out my recent video where I talk about writing abstracts with ChatGPT, because I talk about how to turn an abstract into a citation magnet. Broaden your experience, teach, tutoring and demonstrating are good, but if you can get any kind of actual lecturing experience, do it. This is true whether or not you want to stay in academia or not. I think the ability to teach anything means that it is a valuable skill that you can take to nearly any job outside or inside of academia. So teach if you want to, obviously. Teach if you enjoy it. I found it a very fulfilling experience. I looked for opportunities to teach, but if you want to stay in academia, the way you yourself from others is by asking to do lecturing, asking to do demonstrating, asking to do these things that really just show that you have the ability to teach in front of hundreds of people. My first ever lecture was in front of about 300 students, and I was so very nervous, but it looks so great for the next things that you're going to do, because those communication skills are very rare to hone, and the only way you can hone them is by doing it. Do it. So there we are. That's what the five most successful scientists I know want you to know about your PhD and the skills you need to develop that you won't learn through your PhD unless you are the driving force to learning those skills. Let me know in the comments what you would add, and if you love this video, go check out this one where I talk about PhD student advice and the hidden aspects of the doctoral journey. I think you're going to love it. Go check it out here.