This is my last Creative Thinking Tuesday post for 2014, and I thought it might be good to do something short, simple and hopefully helpful. In October I shared two posts of questions for PGRs, and when I was thinking of ideas for this today’s post it struck me that this might be a neat framework for this post. So: Ten Questions To Help With Creative Thinking!
Tag: phds
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Catch Up, 8th December 2014
Hello! How are you doing? This is the last catch up post for this year, although on 31st December I plan to share a “year in review” post that will summarise what I’ve done this year, some of the most-read posts I’ve written and other projects I’ve been involved with. And on the 1st of January I currently plan to talk about my goals and big projects for the year ahead!
The last few weeks have been good, a mix of working from home – which is lovely because I get to play with my daughter more – and workshops in Sheffield. I’m at Liverpool for most of this week, and starting to plan ahead for January’s workshops. I’ve also been doing a fair bit of writing too!
It would be very easy for me to say that PhD candidates shouldn’t worry about being nervous. After all, I’ve finished my PhD, and any negative things I remember about the experience are in the past. I’ve also got several years of experience of talking to candidates and graduates: I can’t say “don’t worry” except in a reassuring I-know-you-won’t-believe-me way. If you are prone to nerves, there is very little I can do in a piece of writing to help you avoid nerves entirely.
But perhaps I can share some things with you that could minimise their impact. I’ll do my best.
In case you didn’t already know – like I don’t talk about it enough – I produce the Viva Survivors Podcast. It’s an ongoing project of interviews with PhD graduates about “their research, their viva, and life after the PhD.” It came out of a desire to share the stories of what the viva was like for people; I had an idea that the horror stories that everyone seems to know about were, for the most part, myths – I wanted to share real stories. I was, and still am, delivering viva preparation workshops, and I thought as well that by learning more about what people had done to prepare for their vivas I would be able to help PhD candidates more.
I also thought it might be a lot of fun to do! And as time went on I realised what a tremendous learning experience it was for me too.
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Common Qs About The Viva: Can I Make Notes?
Common questions I get asked during viva preparation workshops often relate to what candidates can or cannot do during a viva. Can candidates take time to think? (yes!) Can they call friends for advice? (no!!) Can they record their viva? (tricky one; ask your graduate school for guidance) Probably the most common question of this type is candidates asking if it is OK to make notes during the viva.
I not only think it is OK – I think it’s almost essential that candidates make notes as they go through the viva.
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Making the Viva Survivors Podcast
I’ve been producing the Viva Survivors Podcast for around two and a half years now, and every now and then I get asked questions about how I do it and how everything works. One side of it is the interviewees and their stories, and I ask (a lot!) for volunteers to come and share their stories. Then there is the nuts and bolts of how I produce episodes. Podcasting is often seen as a useful means to communicate research and ideas about doing research, so I thought I would take an opportunity to talk about the tools and services that I use. Hopefully this is helpful to someone reading!
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Catch Up, 24th November 2014
Is it that time already? Seems like only yesterday that I was writing one of these posts, where does the time go… It’s been a busy couple of weeks for me, delivering more than a few workshops and keeping a few plates spinning. I was very happy to facilitate on a KESS Grad School recently; I’ve been involved with the programme for a number of years now, and it’s great that that’s continued on. Long train journeys to get to south Wales though, but perfect for lots of reading!
On This Blog
Almost two weeks ago I shared a favourite idea generation process of mine, which resulted in me coming up with some more Christmas presents for my wife! I reviewed The Path Of A Doer, and answered a common question about the viva (“what’s the worst question they can ask?“), before sharing a series of posts that started with me thinking about to do lists. I shared some experiments that I’ve run on myself to try to find things that work for me. In fact this week I’m doing another, capturing things in three columns on a big sheet of paper. Column headings are Tasks, Short and Emails (Short is for the little tasks that are not urgent but need doing at some point OR need doing soon but are not important). It’s just another little test to see what works. What works for you?
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To-Do Lists: Odds and Ends
So far this week I’ve shared some thoughts on to do lists, why they didn’t work for me, some experiments that did work for me and how I have tried to keep organised. Today’s post is a sort of collection of related points and ideas. As you can probably tell, I’m still thinking my way through a lot of things like this. Experiments to see what works for me are the key – so I have to keep experimenting and finding what is effective.
Effective and Efficient
I like Tim Ferriss‘ distinction between actions and behaviours that are effective and those that are efficient. The definitions of these – as he gives them – are totally objective, but their applications to individual circumstances could be subjective. Effective actions are actions that deliver results for a goal better than other actions that are aiming at that goal (and the award for bad paraphrasing goes to…); efficient actions are just that, they do things well – but crucially with no thought as to whether or not the actions need to be done at all.
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To-Do Lists: Pseudo-Scheduling
In yesterday’s post I introduced a few little experiments that I had tried as a means to hack the to do list: putting tasks on separate pieces of paper, using dice as a means to prioritise and also using a nail stuck to my desk with blu-tack! These have all worked well for me at different times, I use them in rotation; some weeks I have a gut feeling that dice will be more helpful than the spike – I guess I like variety in my task organising.
Another piece of the puzzle
All of these things help me with the day-to-day, but it can be a bit of a chore to sit down every day and write anew my to do list scraps. And while it helps me organise on a particular day, it can also still mean that I reach the end of the week and find that not everything I wanted to achieve has even been considered. This thought helped me to start looking ahead – not in the long term, but on a weekly basis.
Yesterday I talked about how I started using to do lists during my PhD; I mentioned how they didn’t work that well for me and why. When I started working for myself I fell back on to old habits, but earlier this year I decided to do things a bit different. I had an instinct that to do lists were helpful for my work preferences…I just needed to make them work for me.
First Things First
The most useful thing that I realised – I think it was after leafing through Getting Things Done again – was that I was way too optimistic about the scope of work that I could get done. In particular, I was often too focussed on the outcome to the detriment of seeing all of the steps in a project. My to do list would have “Book 2” written on it to get me tuned in to the big outcome, when what was much more helpful was to be specific about what I needed to accomplish that day.
Obvious in hindsight, right? By being really clear about the tasks that you want to do, you’re more likely to be able to engage with them. If you put the headline down, which has fifty-seven steps to get to it, you’re unlikely to tick it off that day.