Reflections on the first 100 PhDays

It's accidentally been a while since I last blogged. Oddly, I didn't think I had anything specific to blog about day by day but looking back, there has been lots to reflect on. "Big" milestones have crept by more or less unmarked (starting to read, starting to write, submitting my first iteration of some literature review to my supervisors...) So easy to lose sight of progress already when it doesn't feel like objective progress at the time. 

Yesterday was my 100th day of PhD! 

Which is vaguely arbitrary but felt significant enough to comment on. This second semester has felt very different to the first, which was mostly quite chaotic and ended not in a great place. I had to hit the ground running in January in order to submit coursework, but after that there was no longer any excuse that I could really use to avoid starting proper reading. So I did. Not without difficulty and some metaphorical kicking and screaming; but there was a definite day when I remember thinking 'I am reading!' I might then liken it to a child learning to ride a bike - the moment when they realise they're actually doing it, look up, get distracted and fall off... That has happened, more than a few times. Likewise, during the past month or so, I have started writing. Actual, proper writing. This too has been difficult; much more tempting to just write reflections on my own experience in practice, rather than bothering to ground what i'm saying in academic or even grey literature. But that is exactly why i'm doing the PhD: to make myself do that leg work because I am inherently lazy and won't otherwise. (But i'm allowing myself 'lazy' writing time too, where I just spend time writing what I want to.) 

So, the 'how I feel' graph at 100 days... 

The linear trendline is actually now sloping upwards! But with ups and downs.

In fact, on the subject of cycles, I think I am realising that PhD life is very much driven by cycles. I have a few days of feeling productive, followed by several of not knowing what to read and finding my attention dissipated all over the place. I wrote for a while, motivated by a supervision meeting, but now i'm struggling to revisit it and update it. I never was any good at drafting and editing. 

Watching a never-boiling kettle

I am also gaining more insight into what I think could be some of the root causes of the mental ill health that seems to pervade so much of PhD researcher experience. My main struggle currently is just not knowing what's enough. There is no limit to what I could read. Therefore there is no way of reaching any point of satisfaction at the end of a day. I have been trying so far to do more or less 9 - 5 (or 10 - 6) working days; sitting at the desk, in the office, reading until i've sat there for 7.5 hours or it is past time to go home. Often I have been very unproductive, then felt like I need to make the time up in the evening. But then finding that i'm stressed about trying to fit normal life stuff in, like cooking and eating. Then realising that despite sitting and mechanically reading for an extra hour, nothing has gone in. I thought the answer to this would be setting a defined amount of pages or chapters per day but again, the volume I was aiming for was arbitrary and reading really differs depending on the type of material and how I feel. So I was never really reaching any of my 'targets'. Plus, I was reading mechanically to just tick off chapters.  

This has really started to get to me these past couple of weeks, floating in the ether between supervision meetings, with no definite sense of what to be focusing on. I accidentally left the lid off the kettle when boiling it the other day and I realised that if you do that, the kettle just carries on boiling and boiling because it never reaches the 'satisfaction' point it needs to switch off. Watching it made me realise that's how I am feeling. Burning out due to never reaching an objective stopping point and never feeling able to entirely stop without guilt. I can see that this, alongside the lack of any objective progress to measure or celebrate, could very easily lead to poor mental health very quickly. Because when you're not feeling very resilient, the niggling doubts creep in too - the "did I make the right decision?" thread and the "what am I doing this for?" narrative. It feels important to be honest with those thoughts; to consider them and sit with them. But there's the other part of me that doesn't want to let them in because they're uncomfortable. 

Experimenting with new regimes

So yes, lots of learning, as it turns out. I am starting a new regime as of this week; a sort of research experiment within my research experiment. This week it is involving doing anything required at any given moment to stay calm and never (not even a tiny bit) trying to monitor how much I have 'got done'. I also think I will trial a week of not setting an alarm and seeing if I can work with my body, rather than against it, to see if that helps with the overall sense of calm. I have other ideas too. But I need to get away from trying to do 7.5 hours in a 'normal' working day because that's not working. I will report back! 

I am also focusing more on linking back to the practitioner world: going to professional events, growing my practitioner network here, lecturing on a couple of MSc courses with a practitioner hat on. That's helping. I wrote a blog about menstruation, active travel and big data. And i've been chatting to other PhD folks, especially those who are pretty much at the end of their research. I'm very grateful to have a supportive community round me here and good supervisors.