Don't look back look forward

'Tis the season to review the year in order to plan the upcoming year. PhD work requires me to motivate myself. This is harder than it seems. Once removed from the traditional work space I quickly found the things that normally motivated me to move forward had disappeared. I had to find a way that would make me work. So I set myself some ground rules.

1) Its work. I know obviously, right....but not so much. When you work from home and there is no one to check up on what you actually spend your time doing. The temptation is to peruse Twitter, Facebook, do house work, etc...followed by a flutter of panicked activity before a supervision. Not a successful plan. So treat your PhD days like a job. Have a dedicated work space arrive there on time, have a lunch break and a finish time. While it won't work everyday it helps to keep you on track and to work more efficiently and effectively.

2) Set goals. Not the big goal of finishing the PhD as in year 1, 2, or 3 this may seem completely un-achievable and overwhelming putting you in a state of inability to do anything. I personally found that even focusing on a smaller goals (e.g. writing a protocol or chapter) too overwhelming, instead I set tiny goals once I can achieve before the end of the day (e.g. I will spend two hours writing, I will screen 20 papers, etc...). This has helped me get through the toughest days as it gives me a sense of accomplishment at the end of every day. Soon those little goals meant the big goals were accomplished.

3) Intentional task switching. A PhD project is multi-faceted. I found this a really positive thing, as it allowed for me to do different things depending on my mindset. Spending an entire day screening abstracts, writing, coding, or analyzing data will cause anyone to go mad. So split your day up across all the various things that need doing. There are days where the thought of working on my protocol or a given document, makes me want to run away. But rather than force my self to work on something by brain is screaming, "not today", I switch gears an work on another aspect of my PhD. This gives me the time to let things that I still need to think about simmer, but without my project coming to a standstill.

These guidelines have helped me in the past year achieve a successful first viva ahead of my planned timeline. I have hopes that they will continue help me as I move forward in my second year which is looking much busier.

So my resolutions for 2018?

1) Spend every PhD day working on the tiny goals that I have set for that 8 hour day,

2) Don't allow the big goals of 2018 to overwhelm me,

3) Be balanced and take care of myself physically and mentally.

Hopefully this will mean these big goals are accomplished:

1) Get my protocol for my empirical study written and through ethics,

2) Submit my first article for consideration for publication

3) Complete my systematic qualitative literature review

4) Successfully pass my second viva confirming my status as a PhD candidate.

Stayed tuned as 2018 will show if these rules help me achieve these goals. Follow me @RosalynnAustin for regular updates on my progress.