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5W1H – Uncovering Useful Information

How do you approach problems?

Whenever I get stuck on any kind of problem, typically my first thought is “Cup of tea?” – and actually there is a really neat and direct way to start examining the problem and figuring it out.

Whenever we start to think about problems we are often thinking about EFFECTS: we see symptoms, but we may not know what the root cause is. It may be that when we come to solve a problem that if we can treat the symptoms, that will be enough; more often though, we need to address those root causes if we are to have some lasting solution.

We see a similar situation if our problem is more along the lines of not knowing what the next step is in a process or piece of research. How many times have you sat down to do something but not known what to do? How many times have you wondered what you should do next but just gone blank?

Above all other acronyms, mnemonics and mental shortcuts, 5W1H is the thing for you.

Is that even an acronym?

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SMART – Setting Great Goals

How do you make plans?

Setting goals – and planning for how to achieve them – is important. So important that there are books and courses and gurus and people on the internet who will scream at you telling you how to do it. “My way is the best!” “Fail at failing!!” “No Credit Card Required!!!”

I’m going to be one of those people today. I’m not going to ask you for any money but I am going to tell you that what I’m describing is the best. Time after time over the years I have just seen it work. I’ve seen people who couldn’t get a thing done turn around their productivity, just by remembering five words when it came to setting their goals.

These people had learned what it was to be SMART.

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INTRO – Getting Talks Started

Start with a Factoid

Did you know that over 99% of PhDs experience difficulty with their research at some point of their studies? There is a real need, in my opinion, for researchers to be exposed to helpful concepts and tools to simply allow them more time to get on with the really important stuff. So I want to share with you a selection of really useful tools – the Beginner’s Guide To Useful Acronyms (BGTUA). Over the next two weeks I’ll be sharing eight posts to illustrate ideas that I have found really useful, both in my PhD and working with PGRs. I really want to hear your comments as I share these, and I’d love to know what your most useful acronyms are too! My aim with these posts is to show that acronyms are not just jargon – they are helpful constructs that can have big benefits.

That first paragraph, as well as being an introduction to upcoming posts, is a demonstration of the first idea that I want to share with you. It’s a neat little concept for starting talks that I’ve seen work really, really well in many settings. My good friend Dr Aimee Blackledge, a researcher-developer at the University of Liverpool, shared it with me, and now I pass it on to you. This tool is called INTRO.

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Schedule

I’m doing this blog for a number of reasons:

  • I want to share thoughts with people;
  • I want to hopefully help PhD students;
  • I want to build up a good writing habit for myself;
  • I want to develop my own writing.

My first goal is to be consistent though: I want to publish one post, Monday to Thursday, every week of the next year (with the exception of holidays!) at a minimum. Quick back of the napkin calculation says that’s around 210 posts. Yikes.

So I’ll be writing and preparing some posts in advance, and I have a slush pile of ideas. I’m also keen (like I said yesterday) to hear what people think, and see what topics people are keen to hear about.

I’ll be starting the blog properly next week with a two week series of posts on acronyms.

Wait! Come back!

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