2023: Happy New Year!

Welcome back after the Christmas break – I hope you had a restful one, and are feeling refreshed. Have you chosen your New Year’s Resolutions yet?

Photo by Engin Akyurt on Pexels.com

It’s traditional at this time of year to resolve to make positive changes to our lives – or at least, the media would have us believe this is what we “should” be doing. We’ve talked before about setting achievable goals, simply focusing on milestones, and how wellbeing is the bedrock of successful research resolutions. This year, I’d like to think a bit about deadlines.

One of the reasons I think New Year’s Resolutions are both so appealing and so intimidating is the timescale – you have a whole year for this. “I’m going to re-decorate my whole house” seems totally manageable when you’ve got 12 months to complete it (despite you knowing full well you didn’t manage to find the time or inclination to re-decorate any of the rooms last year). On the flip side, “I’m going to do full meal planning every week” quickly seems like a mountain when you realise you’re going to have to keep it up for 52 consecutive weeks.

This illustrates nicely the power of taking timescales and deadlines into account when you’re planning – whether that’s putting together a short or longer term research plan, or thinking about changes to your lifestyle or wellbeing. Be realistic about what you can achieve and set yourself clear timescales with interim deadlines to help you monitor your progress. Ideally, share those deadlines with others so you can be held accountable, or make sure you establish a monitoring process to hold yourself accountable (don’t break the chain!).

So whether you are a keen resolution-setter, or a reluctant research planner, take your time to set realistic, achievable goals with clear timelines and accountability to help keep your 2023 on track.

Or maybe the most appropriate approach for you is to timetable another date on which to think about these kinds of things, when there’s a bit more light in the sky and fewer chocolates in the house.

Taking Stock

As we set out on a new academic year, Kate Spencer-Bennett, an Academic Writing Advisor in the Academic Skills Centre, reflects on her experience of taking stock at the start of her research programme.

Will you be ‘taking stock’ at the start of this term? Whether this new academic year finds you starting out on your PhD or continuing your studies, could it be useful to take stock?

The Yellow Books, 1887 (oil on canvas) by Gogh, Vincent van (1853-90).

In the autumn of 2014, I had my first PhD supervision meeting. Having just tied up the loose threads of my Master’s dissertation, I was now wondering how I go back to the beginning. What I should be doing with my time? Where should I begin? Friends setting out on the same path reported leaving their first supervision meeting with long reading lists and longer to do lists. To my relief, I recall my supervisor telling me in that first meeting that the run up to Christmas should be a period of ‘taking stock’. I liked this phrase and, despite – or perhaps because of – its lack of any sense of urgency, I found it very motivating.

Productivity and motivation together? Try Kanban.

A couple of weeks into the first lockdown, in 2020, I started keeping a list of the things I had completed each week and e-mailing it to my manager before I shut down my computer on a Friday afternoon. The reasons I started doing this were created by lockdown, but I’ve carried on doing it ever since because it had a rather glorious side effect; it is motivating.

Instead of trying to make progress through a to-do list which never seems to get shorter, I am now measuring my achievements through a “done list” which gets steadily longer over the week. Sometimes it stays stubbornly short for the first few days, if I’m working on a longer task, but then I get to add something substantial to it, and it starts to grow again.

I’m not the only one who thinks a done list is a good way of doing things, but if you can’t quite see how it would work for you in isolation, then you might like to try a technique called Kanban. Kanban comes from the Japanese for signboard, and is a way of visualising progress, including what you have already done.

A simple Kanban board
Photo credit: Kanban Tool

The only way out is through (part 1)

Sara Corpino is a distance learning PGR in the Department of Modern Languages and in this first part of a two-part post, she gives her tips on how to overcome difficulties and get through the PhD.

If I only had listened…

I have thought about applying for a PhD in Modern Languages for years before being brave enough to send my first proposal. I remember my academic colleagues telling me how difficult it would have been doing a PhD, but I was really motivated. Plus, I was not scared, as I thought that obtaining the PGCE in Modern Languages – which I had just finished – would have been the toughest experience in my life, until…I started my PhD first year. If I only had listened to those people preparing me, would I have changed my mind? Not at all! And would I have been more psychologically prepared? Possibly yes, but I could have been even too scared to take my first step into what has been the most rewarding – and of course challenging – experience of my life so far.

New year, new lockdown

Happy New Year! This isn’t where we’d hope to be at the start of a new year, but there is relief in having got through 2020 and in knowing that vaccines are on their way. While we wait, 2021 will have to be about being kind to ourselves, leveraging the self-knowledge we have gained in 2020 to cope with local restrictions, protecting our mental health, and taking steps forward with our work.

England is in the process of entering a third national lockdown. Those of us living on or near campus must stay at home except where necessary (necessary activities include work, grocery shopping and exercise). We’ve done this before, and the familiar rhythms of daily exercise, meal planning and Zoom calls are already established. Think about what worked and what didn’t work for you during previous periods of restrictions and use that knowledge to get through this one as best you can. If you’re not in England, check your local restrictions.

Being remotely productive

In this post, AlAnood Alshaikhsaad, a PGR from the Department of Theology and Religion, shares their advice on remote working from their experience as a distance learning PGR.

AlAnood’s home workstation

To me, remote working is all about time management and prioritizing your tasks. What people tend to miss after jumping from their on-ground non-stop jobs to remote working is the predictable tasking structure a corporate or institution provides. While the flexibility of remote work is one of its most appealing benefits, people are used to a certain routine, and routine can still exist within that flexibility. For example, waking up at a consistent time, getting dressed, fixing a pot of coffee, running through your to-do list, breaking for lunch at noon, scheduling virtual meetings in collaboration with fellow peers or supervisors. Once you define your routine more clearly, stick to it.

Spotlight on the RDF: “Project planning and delivery”

In this series of “Spotlight on…” posts, we’ll be delving into the detail of the descriptors in Vitae‘s Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Each one of the sixty-three descriptors is a characteristic of an excellent researcher, and we’ll be looking at how UoB PGRs can develop these characteristics.

Effective project planning and delivery involves a wide range of skills and strategies which underpin a multitude of research activities.  In research, projects can vary from small-scale activities (such as a pilot study or organising a research-related event) to very large-scale, multi-team endeavours (such as clinical trials).  While smaller projects can be successfully delivered with ad hoc planning, larger projects require a more rigorous approach. 

Mapping your ideas for planning, writing and more

When you are faced with a blank page, consider creating a mind map.

Photo credit: Fernandosca

A mind map is a visual way to capture thoughts and ideas as they occur to you, and to indicate relationships between those ideas.  Because they do not need to be created sequentially, they are ideal when you are just getting started and your brain is full of stuff.  Examples of when you might find a mind map particularly useful include: writing a new chapter/article; project planning an activity for your research; and creating your to-do list.  There are many more examples of PhD researchers using mind maps on Twitter.

Happy and productive 2020!

Happy New Year and welcome back.  Or just welcome, if you’re starting your research programme this month.

It’s traditional at this time of year to make (and perhaps break!) a few resolutions.  The media is full of articles about diet and exercise, but what about resolving to make lasting improvements in your research processes?  It’s easy to say “I will do more” or “I will do better” but what exactly does that look like in practice and how can you make it stick?

Visualising your PhD: the big picture

We’ve talked before on this blog about the value of proper project planning to complete specific (writing) tasks and how to create a Gantt chart to manage a project, but detailed project plans can be tricky to create for your whole PhD.  Although it’s possible to create plans despite uncertainty (e.g. around research methods or likely results), it can be time consuming.  What’s needed is more of an overview.