Middle-of-Grad-School Slump, II
I wrote before about some of the reasons that I think grad school gets difficult in the middle. Now I'd like to document some of the tactics I've been trying to keep my momentum up.
It's been clear to me for a while that I need a better understanding of the literature relevant to my project, but I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out where to start. Part of the problem is that there are many very different topics I need to read up on (techniques, theory, our biological system, etc). Recently I've started keeping annotated bibliographies for each topic, with the top ten papers and a short summary of each. Nothing earth-shattering, but it has helped immensely.
Without structure, I can fall into a trap of sort-of working all day, without ever working or having fun effectively. As an experiment, last week I decided to work ten hours each day, then go home, even if it was still relatively early. I set the timer on my watch, and turned it off when I took a break. The idea is to focus more on my work, since I have a limited amount of time to complete my goals for the day, and also to be more conscious about the time I spend doing non-working things. In practice, I wound up working nine hours on Tuesday and Thursday, and ten on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I had my most productive and enjoyable week in a while. I hope that, at some point, working this way will become habitual, and I won't have to rely on the timer, but, for now, I'll keep doing what I did last week.
It's been clear to me for a while that I need a better understanding of the literature relevant to my project, but I was overwhelmed with trying to figure out where to start. Part of the problem is that there are many very different topics I need to read up on (techniques, theory, our biological system, etc). Recently I've started keeping annotated bibliographies for each topic, with the top ten papers and a short summary of each. Nothing earth-shattering, but it has helped immensely.
Without structure, I can fall into a trap of sort-of working all day, without ever working or having fun effectively. As an experiment, last week I decided to work ten hours each day, then go home, even if it was still relatively early. I set the timer on my watch, and turned it off when I took a break. The idea is to focus more on my work, since I have a limited amount of time to complete my goals for the day, and also to be more conscious about the time I spend doing non-working things. In practice, I wound up working nine hours on Tuesday and Thursday, and ten on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I had my most productive and enjoyable week in a while. I hope that, at some point, working this way will become habitual, and I won't have to rely on the timer, but, for now, I'll keep doing what I did last week.