How to avoid procrastination during the research phase of my PhD?

Question

I just finished all of my coursework for my PhD program, and am entering the research phase of my degree with a topic already in mind. I've already started the research, but I'm already finding that I end up procrastinating a lot of my time away. When I was taking courses, I felt like i didn't have time to procrastinate because of the pace of the classes and I felt like I had to always keep up with the pace. But now that I have no specific constraints, I feel like its harder to pace myself.

Of course, I know it's a bad habit to procrastinate and I should probably devote most of my waking hours to my research. Sometimes, (especially when I get stuck) I find it's so easy to get distracted on the computer (websites, youtube, text messages, etc.).

What are some effective strategies to avoid procrastination during this research phase? How do you stay on task, especially when you get stuck?

Answer 1

I write both weekly and daily 'to do' lists if I'm stuck in a procrastination routine. The weekly lists are more general, the daily ones as detailed as possible, with essentially everything I should do that day, however small it seems. It feels good to tick things off - it shows me that I made progress and gives me incentive to go on. Usually there's one or two things on the list that I really should not postpone for tomorrow, and many less important ones. I sometimes do the big stuff first, sometimes last, it really depends on my mood that day. I also allow myself to push the smaller things to the next day if I don't feel like doing them. That way I feel that I have some wiggle room, but it's constrained to the stuff that doesn't matter much anyway.

I also noticed that I tend to be more efficient when I have something planned at the end of the day, i.e. I know have to leave the office at five and stop working until tomorrow. This gives me a feeling of a small deadline, and deadlines are good at eliminating procrastination.

Finally, as someone mentioned already, nothing beats working with people. Having weekly meetings with my supervisor, where a decision is made on what I will achieve until the next meeting, tops it all.

Answer 2

I have found (and continue to find) two kinds of strategies that have some success in preventing me from procrastinating.

Silly, but scarily effective:

• As silly as this might sound, implement a blocker like Leechblock or Chrome Nanny and block sites that you waste time on. I used to scoff at such things, but once I installed them, I found myself being forced to spend more time working.
• Along the same lines, disable email alerts. Once I did this, I found that I could spend many hours working without getting distracted by random emails.

Less silly, and also less effective

Much of the procrastination when starting research in grad school comes from the lack of clear structure (as you indicate). So the trick is to create structure. For example, if you're working on one problem, and you've spent a little time generating a few ideas, write them down, and methodically start working through each of them one by one, going as deep as you need to go in order to test out an idea. When you're doing so, try to forget about the larger problem, the context, your Ph.D, your future career, and all other "big picture" matters.

More likely than not, the idea won't pan out (most don't!). In that case, move on to the next one.

The problem with early-stage research is that it doesn't look like you're making any progress, so it's easy to slow down and waste time. But if you can measure progress not in terms of "papers published", but in terms of "ideas tried", you'll get some sense of the amount of effort you've put in, and that can help motivate you to try more ideas, and so on. All these failed ideas are teaching you valuable things about your project, and they will eventually be useful because of what you've learnt.

Answer 3

IMHO to keep the pace, the most important thing is not to work alone.

First, when I talk about my project on daily basis (which, sadly, it's not the case now), it naturally makes me working (as I don't want to make others wait, and it would be kind of awkward to say "I did nothing, because I was reading blogs").

Second, often getting stuck happens for a reason - and just 'working harder' does not help. Then it's important to have some other "seed", or a broader perspective, or just to learn that "it is not me who is stupid - this problem is hard for everyone".

But in case you cannot yourself from procrastinating (sometimes I know that it is not a day when I am good at thinking), try do some "white procrastination" - i.e. procrastinate from your duties, but in a way, which is constructive (e.g. learning a new programming language, reading papers in a different discipline, mastering your skills in something else, etc).

EDIT: In a longer run, it turned out that some of "white procrastinations" were more valuable than my "standard stuff". Remember, that not always you know in advance what will be fruitful in the future.

Answer 4

A strategy to try is to create/set a "work" environment in a specific location.

• Remove as many distractions as possible from this location (e.g., if you can get away with no internet connection, do that, don't put any decorations or distracting electronics in the area unless they're specifically work related, etc.)

• If you're going to put anything in that location, make it motivational to work. One of my officemates put a background on his work desktop that said, "Don't be stupid. Do your work."

• Create a "work schedule" now that you don't have classes. Set a time when you're due at "work" and a time you get to go home. During your work hours, you go to your work environment/office/lab and you stay there until your work hours are over.

Having this separate location will put you in the mindset of working while you're at that location. Setting a schedule for going to that location will force you to sit somewhere where it's hard to distract yourself and where you'll start to form a habit of being productive.

Answer 5

In addition to the other excellent answers, spending most of your waking hours on anything is not good in my opinion. The amount of hours you can really concentrate on research is probably around 8 (maybe even less). I think working 12 hours or more per day (6 days a week) on your research is not really effective. Working these kinds of hours is going to lead to procrastination.

To be more effective (and less procrastinating) you could focus less time on research, but try and impose more structure and be more effective in those hours. This will make you feel more effective, and preserve a better balance between research and your private life. Especially with hard problems, you'll find that you don't need to spend more time researching, but some time runnng/reading/etc to clear your mind.

Answer 6

I am in the same situation as you are and tried several things to improve my situation in my PhD. I am sharing few ideas that work for me:

• Time Slots: I use the concept of time slot or chunk of time (say 1 hour each) for a task where I will only focus or do that task or work. Single-entry-single-exit, no distractions allowed. I know, it's not easy not to get distracted, but I convince myself by reminding that I have other slots for other activities. Large slot of focused work helps me more than small chunks.

• Most valuable task first: Doing the most valuable and productive task early in the day makes a lot of difference and it feels great. I observed that as the day progress, I also do better at other tasks.

• Leverage on self: I have found few ways to make me act. Some of my favorite ways are: letting the person I hate most (and who would be most happy in my failures) know about my state; being an example of such habits to my most loved ones (say kids) etc

• Change physiology and tone : I found the way I sit (posture) and the tone of voice with which I speak to myself has lot to do with procrastination. Changing the posture or position, and tone of my internal voice makes a difference. I just emulate a posture and tone when I had been most productive in my life.

• Divide and conquer : I divide large task to manageable small tasks (of 1 hr or less). When I brainstorm, I list them in reverse order (with the goal/final result in mind). To get results, only taking actions will matter.

Answer 7

To the many excellent answers, I will add:

• "Just get started," which is a prerequisite to "Just do it." When a task seems too difficult at first, if you start trying to solve it, you often find it's a lot easier than you imagined.
• Not all procrastination is bad. It can sometimes be good to delay important decisions until you have enough information. It can be good to work on the more pressing things, and put off the things that are less important.

Answer 8

Oh, you think you're in trouble now? JUST WAIT TILL YOU ARE WRITING IT! Or worse, doing revision #523...

My strategy was switching time zones. I went to bed at 8pm, woke up at 2 or 3am, got a ton done while it was dark and everyone else was asleep. You may think it hard to go to bed at 8pm - but that is just because you didn't wake up at 2am. :)

There are a ton of other motivational hacks; like starting the day with an easy task (warm start) you could have done the night before. And yes, email/internet off.

Take explicit time wasting breaks. Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pomodoro_Technique or whatever. Mostly, be clear about when you are working and when you are having a break.

Mostly, though, I think you need to find your groove. If you are bored now, maybe you need to reconsider your topic and find something that lights you up.

This book is pretty awesome (also, the cover lies), but the main point is you need to get at least a solid 15 (actually +1 hour) of time working on your topic a day. The main idea is that consistent momentum gets you done - working on it one day a week will get you absolutely nowhere. http://www.amazon.ca/Writing-Your-Dissertation-Fifteen-Minutes/dp/080504891X

Answer 9

Here is one thing that helps me:

Block out work time and allocate relaxation time for each day (relaxation does not mean sleep). You cannot work 100% of the time, but you need to be vigilant about not engaging in leisure activity during a work time block.

Intersperse designated play time in between work times, but do not let the two types of time periods overlap and become blurred. If you find an interesting website during working hours, bookmark it and come back to it during the next play time period.

Basically work during the work time, play during play time, and maintain consistent waking/sleeping patterns (try to go to bed on time).

Another thing I forgot to add was don't squander your prime time hours, whether it's by self-distraction or by others distracting you.

So for example if you get your best work done in the morning before noon, schedule all appointments and meetings in the afternoon. Minimize breaks during your prime hours, since you probably don't need as many. If you're an evening type of guy, then take care of events and social activities earlier in the day whenever possible.

Answer 10

I agree with most answers above. It IS important to create a working environment. I, for instance, simply can't work at my home computer without being distracted. Here are the simple techniques that worked for me:

1. set up a 'home office.' For me it was the simple fact of getting-out-of-my-comfort-zone that kept me going.

2. try working from a coffeeshop. Apparently, it was discovered that the ambient noise of 75 dc (approx. the pleasant buzz in a coffeeshop) is the best for productivity.

3. schedule the breaks. Breaks are as important for your productivity as the intensive work, so I found it most helpful to actually set an alarm clock for a 10 min break every 1.5 hrs.

4. keep a "success diary." Basically, it's a to-do list where you can tick the items you've completed. So, first, break down your workload into smaller tasks (for me it was smth like "write min 3000 word today," "finish that damn introduction already," and so on) and then tick them one by one. I guess, you can do it in an actual paper diary, but I used a task management app. It kept me on my toes.

Good luck!

Answer 11

I come with one special technique.

The procrastination may have many causes, but often it is from fear of failure, or because the task looks too long / too hard / too boring.

The special technique is to train for your performance like an athlete. Your mind can be trained into knowing for sure you will crack any such task like nothing.

One way of training is to face all your fears. What is the nastiest, most horrible, worst possible task you have been avoiding for ages? DO IT!

You won't believe how much easier the task is than you thought.

Now the hardcore part. Sign up to the most hardcore gym in your area, near your house, and start working out through the limits. Soon you become good at breaking physical limits which gives you a lot of fuel to break any psychical limits. You can try weight-lifting, running, boxing, military training (i.e. warrior classes in a top gym / club), and more.

This strengthens your body and your mind so much, that there will be nothing that makes you procrastinate. Procrastination is in other words "giving up".

Hard training is the best option. The best is one workout early in the morning and one after work.

EDIT: If you get stuck, go for a workout. It won't help you with the task, but at least you are building your physique and a tougher mind for this challenge to figure it out. (Otherwise, ask your advisor if you are really stuck)

Answer 12

I personally found this link to be really really useful.

The main point of procrastination is procrastination is easy, and hence, it is difficult to do not do it. But that automatically implies that avoiding procrastination is a high-energy thing, and it is then obvious that you cannot keep up that high energy forever, and hence, you end up minimizing procrastinating by consuming large amount of energy, and hence then you need a break or you end up actually increasing procrastination.

However, as the author of the link suggests, you can use procrastination to your advantage by using it do important things at relevant times. However, one problem with this is that you have to keep in mind thousands of to-dos and that is very exhausting. My solution to this is to use some very good calendar/to-do system and integrate it with your phone/laptop. This way, you can easily track your to-do list and suddenly, you will find that you have a lot of time to actually do stuff rather than thinking of what to do, which will help a lot in preventing getting distracted and avoid procrastination.

How this works is as follows. Everytime you have a deadline or work, make an entry of it in your calendar with an appropriate date and then reminders. Also, some calendar software allow you to put priorities on your to-dos. Kontact/KOrganizer also allows you to attach files to your to-do or events. So, you note everything you know at the time you get info. And then, whenever you open your to-do, you see a list of all the things you have to do.

Then, there is atleast some which interest you, pick the one with the highest priority and the most strict deadline, and do it. This way, you don't have to worry about keeping track of your deadlines since that task has been now transferred to your computer. Also, having all the options of to-dos available in front you always, make you more efficient.

Some people use the post-it notes in their office, but it is an inferior solution as compared to mobile/computer/cloud sync as you can access the latter anywhere, even when you are waiting for you doctor's appointment etc.

Answer 13

Time accounting is a good way of making yourself aware of procrastination and consequently reducing it.

Here is how I do time accounting. I have an Excel document where

• lines are for different activities (working on thesis, teaching, studying stuff that isn't directly related to my work, useful pauses (walking outside, eating lunch, etc.), and "fun time" (watching Youtube, chatting with colleagues, etc.)); the last couple of lines are sums of lines related to productive time and total time
• columns are days of the month
• sheets are months

Every day I register the time when I come to work and when I leave work. I register everything I do at work up to a precision of 15 minutes. I do that approximately once every hour so that I do not forget when I did what. I put comments to cells in which I describe more precisely what I did (e.g. when working on thesis, did I read, write, program or what else).

In the progress of the day, I look at the bottom lines that sum my productive and total time to see the proportion of time I have spent productively. When the proportion drops, I try to work harder and take fewer breaks and especially spend less time unproductively. Sometimes when I have successful days I would leave early once my average amount of productive hours is reached. Sometimes I would stay at work longer to reach that average.

I have have monthly averages in the rightmost column. That helps see long-term trends in time use and assess whether I am heading in the right direction.

E.g. last Monday

• I came to work at 08:05 and left at 17:20.

I spent

• 4 hours 15 minutes working directly on my thesis (there is more detailed information in the comment there),
• 1 hour discussing research with a colleague (which was not directly related to my thesis but still productive),
• 15 minutes printing things,
• 2 hours 30 minutes walking outside, having lunch, etc.
• 1 hour 15 minutes "fun time" (e.g. visiting Academia Stach Exchange)

That was a relatively OK day, but I know I could have cut on "fun time". Once I see figures above 1 hour in the line "fun time" I feel I need to control myself better. (Yes, this month I have been wasting too much time!)

My point is, just knowing how much time you waste and being forced to admit it multiple times per day may help.

Answer 14

first of all, you are not alone in this, as many other people already wrote. I have procrastinated to read your post and opened five other tabs. so this means, we procrastinate, even when we are utterly interested. procrastinating an exciting task resembles pleasure delaying. when i discovered this, it helped me a lot. try to take procrastination as a game you play with yourself. Devoting all waking hours to research is somehow not realistic and in my opinion not necessary. Having a long chat with a friend may seem like procrastination but you never know how your mind wants to unfurl: a friend of mine discovered the topic of her masters thesis during one of our chats. now she has a full grant.

Answer 15

The unpleasant feeling of procrastination comes from feeling you have to do something but not being able to do it. This creates a feedback that reduced your ability to do things. One trick to deal with this is to have smaller more specific goals. Finishing them creates a positive feeling that leads you to feel confident that you can do things. But there is the trap of feeling good about doing things but those things are not helping you in any way to move towards your bigger goals. So these small steps should move you towards your goal and as time passes they should become more challenging.

My second advice is that it is difficult for humans to hold themselves responsible. It is a mental conflict of interests and as it is known people are not good at handling conflicts of interest well. An external party who checks what you do and gives advice on your progress is much more effective. Someone who can regularly check your progress without a conflict of interest. Your supervisor is ideally supposed to be your mentor (like coaches in sports). In reality most supervisors are not up to this ideal. Most of them are either reactive in place of proactive or don't have the success of their student as primary goal (e.g view students as a means of publishing papers). Find someone you trust to care about your progress to keep you up to your plans. It is OK if you don't completed your plans sometimes as long as there has been good reasons for it.

Answer 16

If you are doing a PhD, I can recommend you to read the book "The clockwork muse". This book has good pieces of advice to progress in your writing and avoid procrastination.

It is true most of the things that other have written to you. It is not good thinking that you have to spend all your waking time studying because if you do not have time for yourself, you will find that your body will take it by itself.

So, work 6-8 hours per day (roughly 40 per week), it is good time. So, you can relax your body without feeling guilty.

I read all the comments and it is helping to me too. Thank you for writing about that.

Claudia

Answer 17

Read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig. Read the whole thing. But pay particular attention to the discussion of gumption traps.

You will spend many hours reading the book. However, if you absorb its lessons, you will save many more hours in the future.

You must learn to understand your problem before you can hope to understand the solutions

Answer 18

You should figure out the reason behind your procrastination and set up a time management to overcome it. You're an engineering student, you should engage yourself to an organization and create projects and portfolio, it'll would make you more productive and it'll help you gain network of friends and develop your skills. Find the motivation to do this and I’m sure it'll be easy for you to overcome procrastination.

Answer 19

I use a tool to block certain applications (like Facebook and Twitter). Furthermore I set goals for myself and hold myself accountable (created a weekend project for that).

Monthly meetings with my supervisor help as well.

Answer 20

Here is a concrete piece of advice I have heard recently, which has been surprisingly helpful:

Try to allocate 2 to 3 hours every day of unbroken time to devote to your most pressing task.

I like this advice because it simultaneously does a few things:

• It keeps your expectations realistic. Like many graduate students, I have often find myself plagued with the thought that (as you put it) I should probably devote most of my waking hours to my research. This attitude is not only discouraging, it's completely unrealistic and actively harmful. Even very successful professors end up with so many meetings, emails, teaching duties, etc., that 2-3 hours of time to devote solely to their research can be rare, and is always very welcome.

• It helps you prioritize. Unwisely, I often start out the day with a list of 3-5 big, pressing things to do. Then I feel like a failure if I do not accomplish them all, or (just as likely) I manage to procrastinate and accomplish none of them, which fuels further discouragement and procrastination. Thinking of it in terms of 2-3 hours of unbroken time makes me realize I cannot do all of them at the outset, so I pick 1 or 2 things to get done, instead of 3-5.

• It ensures a little bit of progress every day. Ensuring merely that one 2-3 hour task gets done is often enough to prevent a project from standing still. I would rather make a little bit of progress every day than spend a week procrastinating followed by some long late-night hours trying to catch up.

It is a hallmark of chronic procrastinators that we start out with vastly inflated expectations, followed by long periods of no work and short bursts of way too much work. We would get more done if we just set our expectation consistently at 2-3 hours per day.