Don’t Get Hindered Your PhD by Personal Life

Your master’s is done and now you’re planning to start your PhD. You’ll be pretty excited about it. You will get a title of Dr next to your name. Very exciting, isn’t it? Well, you don’t need to be over the moon. PhD is a long journey, and you should consider pros and cons before taking a plunge.

PhD calls for work, life and supervisor management stage when you have work and family, and you have to balance this with your academics. You can’t brush aside workload, deadlines, and family responsibilities though you wish to. You should brace yourself while starting your PhD studies for the pain and ordeal you’ll go through. Here are some tips that can help you balance your personal life with your research.

Make your priorities

You would have lots of things such as your children’s education, parents’ health, your job or business, and skills enhancement. Below is a list of prioritizing your responsibilities. Enlist them down an stick to it. It would help you fulfilling your responsibilities on the basis of prioritization, the perfect way to balance your studies and life. This is just an example. You can find other ways to enter your happy PhD by balancing your life and academics. 

S.NoPriority NameRemarks
Priority 1

Priority 2

Priority 3

Priority 4

Priority 5

Consistency

Consistency is extremely crucial to complete your projects successfully. This is not surprising when you are into your studies and besides running family and business, you’ll face difficulty to concentrate and devote sufficient time on your studies. You should have slots for productive and non-productive activities. However, over a period of months you’ll realize these slots keep changing. Most PhD scholars have faced that their productive time vanishes with time. So to avoid this problem you need to figure out what works for you and when you work best. For instance, if you have to devote six hours in research and the best time is 8.00AM to 2.00PM, work within those hours. 

So now the question rises how you’ll organize your PhD work within scheduled hours. 

Plan in advance

PhD students are generally trained to make effective planning for their research work. For instance, if you are about to do an experiment in your lab, you should have already done all preparations. Everything should be arranged already before starting the experiment. This will save your time. You should have a plan for days, weeks, and months. You should prepare a template weekly note consisting your goals, and arrangements schedules for the week such as meetings, other stuff, and practical work. This will help you divide your time for each tasks, and achieve your goals in time. 

Be selective to avoid time waste

You need lots of research papers to review and find out the communication gap that could help you select a topic for your research. This is a lengthy process, but a smart move can execute it in less time than you expected. Quickly read research papers, improve your scanning ability, and pick the crux and highlights. Leave out what’s not relevant to your research area, and pick up the one that is worthwhile. 

Don’t compromise with eating and sleeping

Many PhD scholars fail to take into account the basic needs of their body. Most time they run on empty. You’ll also go through this phase, but remember this will end up with hazardous consequences. Eat healthy food and take rest. As long as your body is healthy, you’ll be happy and able to concentrate on your research.

To summarize the crux:

  1. Prioritise your responsibilities and be consistent
  2. Plan and avoid distractions
  3. Spend more productive time and do smart work
  4. Eat healthy and take rest

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