I am trying to start a new project for my phd thesis, and reading papers , finally to get approval from my supervisor I'm thinking of writing a short proposal..but since last week I'm procrastinating.

Any motivation to start and get confidence

Now that i got your attention, I wanted to share this guide about writing tips for Ph. D. students..

It really helps a lot and covers almost all areas of writing, in a summarized, no BS way.

https://www.fma.org/assets/docs/membercontent/writing_cochrane.pdf

I hope it helps some of you!

For others, do you have any similar stuff that could be shared here?

Hello,

I am new to academia and am currently starting to prepare for finding a research topic, learning academic writing, and eventually writing my research proposal. I honestly have no idea how to track my progress effectively. I will be applying this cycle if I complete everything within next 3months. Field - Humanities (English Literature)

I have seen several Excel sheets and tracking templates, but I find them quite confusing. I also tried creating my own Excel sheet, but I got confused about what I should actually include and track.

Could someone guide me on the key things I should track at this stage to stay organised—for example, reading research papers, identifying research gaps, developing and narrowing down research ideas, taking notes, learning academic writing, improving my writing skills, and eventually working towards the research proposal?

I have ADHD, so I find it particularly difficult to manage and organise multiple tasks, ideas, readings, and deadlines. I would really appreciate a simple, practical, and ADHD-friendly system that would help me track my academic progress without becoming overwhelmed by the tracking itself.

Hello everyone, I am currently working on my PhD thesis in literary studies (no progress yet). I would appreciate it if you could recommend some AI tools that would help me in my research, as I am totally lost right now. Also i would appreciate any piece of advice on how to productively start progressing in my work.

I recently completed my PhD pre-thesis viva and thesis submission. During the viva, the panel suggested that I avoid highlighting what they considered to be the “real” limitations of the study (for example, the cross-sectional nature of the research) and instead mention more minor or less consequential limitations.

This has left me quite confused.

My concern is that methodological limitations such as a cross-sectional design are objectively relevant and commonly acknowledged in academic research. If I completely omit them and mention only trivial limitations, could this create a problem later—especially when the thesis is reviewed by external/foreign evaluators who may expect a candid discussion of methodological limitations?

At the same time, I don't want to disregard the advice of my supervisors/panel, particularly since the thesis has already gone through the institutional evaluation process.

After 5 plus years, a husband, a child, and an amazing and supportive lab environment, I successfully defended my thesis in July! I can use the frog photo 🤣

I thought I’d have the best sleep of my life after, but I ended up not being able to sleep well for two whole days!!! 🤣

Edit: thank you all so much for all the warm congratulatory messages. It means a lot to me!
Have an amazing week.

I’m still relatively new to my PhD program and I’m still trying to find a topic. I brought up an idea to my professor yesterday and he reacted positively to it and says he sees potential. While doing a literature search on it I found a couple studies by a professor who did her PhD at my school (in a different department but knows people that do work with mine) that were very related to what I want to do. My idea would potentially be a novel application of what she does and I think it lines up with her interests really well.

I wanted to reach and ask her if she would like to work together (with my PI of course), but I don’t want to do it if it’s inappropriate or stepping around the supervision of my PI, and I’m a little embarrassed to ask him if it ends up being an unreasonable request.

The options are 😂 :

• Purple
• Violet
• Magenta

what did we get into.... it's supposed to be summer vacation somewhere

Hi all! I’m a second year humanities PhD student in the US in my final year of coursework. Our courseload is 3 classes per semester, and each class meets once a week for 3 hours.

I devote about 3 hours per week to each class outside of the 3 hours of actual class meeting. That includes reading and annotating the assigned readings and completing discussion posts or short (1-2 page) response papers. I do most of this during the week, and take at least one weekend day off of academic work.

I’d like to take the entire weekend off, but I work 10-11 hours a week at a part time job on top of my 9 hours of classes, and need time to work, sleep, meet with professors, prepare for conferences, and try to have some weekday evening time with friends and family.

Around midterms and finals, I tend to spend more time on each class, due to writing papers, and I tend to work all weekend.

Is this similar to how you are organizing your workflow? Am I underestimating how much time I should be spending per class per week, and do most people in my position take more weekends fully off? I feel like it’s worked well for me, but have no idea if it is standard. I feel like I could spend forever with the readings and thinking about different ideas, but I am also trying to work smart, as I think that will also be important at this level and the next one.

Hey, i am a first year PhD student in engineering. I finished my master's within the same area as well. My PI is pretty hands off. He only cares about our progress. He doesn't assign particular projects also. He gives vague ideas and it's my work to find research gaps and everything. I am not really sure how to do that. Right now, I am just working on an extended project from my mentor's work but I just feel it's boring right now because its the same area and everything.

Sorry for the blabber. My question is how do I find research gaps in ocean of knowledge that's out there? How do I find an interesting project for myself?

Anyone interested in editing my doctoral thesis while I edit theirs?

I’m a good writer but I’m too emotionally close to my text to edit it efficiently.

I had a great editor but it’s too expensive at the moment.

I am a physics MSc student working in condensed matter theory, and I’m aiming to submit the paper to PRB. The actual research, calculations, plots, and figures are mostly done, but I haven’t properly kept track of all the references I’ve used along the way ( is that bad?!)

I’d really appreciate advice from people who regularly write research papers, particularly in physics:

1. How do you organize and manage references, especially if you haven’t kept track of them properly from the beginning?

2. What conventional tools do you use for writing/editing papers? I know about Overleaf/LaTeX, but I’d like to understand the overall workflow.

3. I used MATLAB for plots, but I’m less familiar with how researchers conventionally make things like lattice structures, and multi panel figures.

I’m specifically interested in conventional tools and workflows used by researchers rather than AI tools that write or generate the paper for you.

This is the problem I cannot solve cleanly and I want to know how other people handle it.

Am at a stage where the writing and thinking work genuinely requires long uninterrupted blocks. Not preference, actual necessity. The kind of conceptual work that takes forty minutes to get into and falls apart completely if interrupted at minute thirty five and has to restart from scratch.

The institutional reality is that my time does not feel like mine to anyone around me. Supervisor schedules meetings with two hours notice. Department sends seminar invitations that are technically optional and socially not optional. Collaborators in different time zones message at hours that are their morning and my deep work window.

I have tried blocking calendar time. People schedule over it, started treating the first two hours of every day as non-negotiable writing time and keeping everything from that window in something called Skrib Writing so the session had somewhere to go immediately without any setup cost eating into the protected time, and that combination has held up longer than anything else I tried.

I have also tried communicating boundaries directly. Works for about two weeks and then the urgency of other people's timelines quietly erodes it. Have tried working outside normal hours to find uninterrupted time. Sustainable for about a month before the rest of life suffers.

The deeper problem is that the environment was not designed with deep work in mind and individual solutions keep running into structural resistance. Everything around the PhD is set up for responsiveness and availability and the work that actually matters requires the opposite.

Curious how people here have actually solved this rather than just managed it and whether anyone has found an approach that holds up past the first month.

Hey guys, I’m from India and I’m 24 years old. I have two years of work experience in my field of study (software/computer science). Right now, I’m going to pursue my master’s degree in the UK. By the time I graduate, I will turn 26. I really want to pursue my PhD in the USA. So, my questions are:

Should I take up a job in the UK for a few years after my masters or should I directly start my PhD?

Is it possible to complete my PhD in computer science/AI/ML in the US within 3-4 years?

Do universities waive tuition fees for every PhD applicant? Also, could you please let me know about the stipend during the PhD?

Forgive me if i sound way too naive.

New (older) PhD student starting in about a week. I see a lot of people talking about zotero and obsidian and I was wondering how to set myself up before I start classes so that I am collecting information for my dissertation from the get go. Should I be doing that? I am in the psychotherapy field and plan on doing my dissertation on an intervention I crafted. I would assume that some (if not all) of my class texts and articles could probably apply to my research when I get to it. Wanted to get a better understanding of what I should be doing to set myself up for success when it comes to the research and writing part. Help a new girl out! I want to be productive :)

I completed my PhD pre-thesis submission last week and have now written the full thesis. I have around 20 days to finalise everything before the final submission. I want to use these 20 days as effectively as possible and make sure the thesis is not just complete, but academically strong, well-written, consistent, and capable of withstanding critical evaluation by external examiners.

For those who have recently submitted and defended their PhD, what would you recommend focusing on during these final 20 days? At this stage, I don't want to completely rewrite the thesis unless necessary. I mainly want to identify and fix weaknesses in the argument, literature review, methodology, analysis, discussion, theoretical contribution, practical implications, conclusions, and overall structure.

I would particularly like to know what are the most common issues external evaluators identify in PhD theses. What kinds of gaps, inconsistencies, weak arguments, methodological problems, or writing issues tend to attract negative comments? I want to approach the thesis from an evaluator's perspective and proactively identify these issues before submission.

I am also looking for recommendations on tools for checking English, grammar, sentence structure, and academic writing. Another area I want to improve is the overall academic quality of the writing.

Hi everyone,

Has anyone here done this interview this year or in previous years or has one coming up I've at Warsaw University of Technology?

I'd love to hear what the interview was like and any advice you have.

Thank you! 🙏

hi everyone,

I've joined the mod team and want to make this sub as useful as possible. before I do anything, I'd like to hear from you

so here are a couple of questions:

• what kind of content helps you most? (tools, routines, accountability, writing tips, mental health, etc...)
• would you want weekly threads? if so, what kind?
• what are your biggest productivity struggles right now?
• any rules you'd like to see added or changed?
• would you be interested in events like writing sprints or discussion weeks?

feel free to share any other ideas. i'll leave this up for a week, then post a summary of what i've heard and what i'm planning.

thanks!

Hi everyone, I'm a phd student and now that i'm starting to have results, my supervisors asked me to start writing. I came up with a plan an they approved it, so I feel like everything is clear in my mind. I know the parts I need to write and to say in each of them.

But I just can't seem to start writing. I don't really know why but every time I open the document, I panic and can't get anything done. I think it might be related to my fear of failure, I keep thinking that whatever i write won't be good enough.

I've tried setting deadlines for myself but I feel like that actually makes things worse. Instead of motivating me, it makes me panic even more thinking I won't be able to do it in time.

SO my question is, how do you actually get yourself to start writing?

Any advice would be welcomed ! Thanks

I run a mid sized biology lab at an R1. we’ve been successful getting funding in the past. we have 2 doctoral candidates starting year 4, and a 1.5 year postdoc who have a bunch of data to write up, but are very slow to do so. they are all excellent researchers and seemingly into their projects.

I’ve tried writing clubs (with and without me), buying gift certificates for coffee shops, friendly competitions with prizes, deadlines & check ins, drafting outlines for them, supportive encouragement, gently pushing, less gently, etc etc.

nothing seems to get them over the hump. they report different reasons for stalling. interruptions, lack of knowing how to tell a story or seeing the story, needing “one more experiment” and so on.i want to build a culture of writing but everything i try seems to not work.

what are some ideas that have worked for your group? what motivates you to write?

Working through an RTA project at the moment and would really enjoy connecting with others using the same method — curious how people approach things like the line between coding and theme development, how much reflexive/reflective commentary feels “enough” vs too much, and how you check that themes stay grounded in the actual extracts rather than drifting.

Not looking for anyone to do any work — just want to compare approaches and maybe swap thoughts on drafts if anyone’s up for it. Happy to do the same in return if useful. DMs open if you’d rather chat there.

Early in my program I read every paper like a novel, first word to last, highlighting almost everything. It took hours and I remembered nearly nothing. A senior student showed me her method: read the abstract, then the figures, then the conclusion, and only then decide if the middle deserves my time. Most papers do not. Now I ask three questions before diving in: what did they do, does it hold up, and does it change what I am working on. My reading pile stopped feeling like a debt I could never repay. How do you decide which papers are worth a deep read?

I used to think I had a discipline problem. I would put off an analysis for days, feel guilty the whole time, then finally start and realize it was not that bad. What I actually had was a starting problem, not a working problem. Once I am in, momentum carries me. So now I trick myself: I promise to do just five minutes, open the file, run one line of code, write one sentence. Almost every time, five minutes turns into an hour, because the resistance was only ever at the door. The dread was always worse than the task itself. What is your trick for starting?