“I keep setting myself deadlines, but I never seem to be able to meet them- what should I do?”
There are two ways to approach this problem. The first is to look at the way we set self-imposed deadlines in a PhD, the second is how we respond to them.
When we make plans or set deadlines, the natural temptation might be to set the most ambitious possible goals, doing as much as we can in the shortest possible time, especially if you feel you aren’t getting enough done, or if you want to impress your supervisor with your plans.
And while it’s good to be ambitious and to push yourself, in a PhD you might be using techniques you’ve never used before, meaning it’s very difficult to predict how long things will take. And if you’ve never done something before, it’s likely that you’ll make a few mistakes or have to take some time to figure out what to do.
But even if you’re highly skilled in the techniques you’re using, things can and will go wrong and very often take longer than expected.
So we have to allow for the unexpected, and use plans to decide what to prioritise and what problems to work on, without necessarily putting yourself under the pressure of a deadline.
This allows you a bit of freedom to explore, to play with different approaches and to make mistakes.
But if you stay in this open, playful state too long, you can end up exploring options forever, always chasing the next new idea without making any decisions or finishing anything.
This is when a deadline becomes useful, but only if you use it to help you make clear and confident decisions about what to do and, just as importantly, what not to do.
The only way to meet a deadline is to make decisions based on the time available. Often this means dropping things you initially planned to do, making compromises for the sake of practicality.
You might worry about doing this, but very often it will make your project stronger and much more focused than it would have been, had you tried to include everything.
And remember, a PhD is just the first step in a potential academic career, it’s a good thing if you have more ideas than you can implement, and you don’t have to do everything now.
PhD: an uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life is your essential guide to the basic principles every PhD student needs to know.
Applicable to virtually any field of study, it covers everything from finding a research topic, getting to grips with the literature, planning and executing research and coping with the inevitable problems that arise, through to writing, submitting and successfully defending your thesis.
All the text on this site (and every word of every video script) is written by me, personally, because I enjoy writing. I enjoy the challenges of thinking deeply and finding the right words to express my ideas. I do not advocate for the use of AI in academic research and writing, except for very limited use cases.
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