Series: Graduate School Productivity - Introduction

Time flies in graduate school! Having spent 3.5 years as a PhD student, one thing I’ve learned is that I should be super-efficient in managing my time and energy.

I’m not someone you’d label as “born productive”. I’m a typical “P”-type person according to Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)–indicative of a spontaneous and flexible nature. As many P-type people do, I’m prone to distraction and have difficulty in sticking to routines. Daily to-do lists or planners are ways to self-torture by confining free will into a fixed schedule. I also sleep a lot and have a hard time waking up early.

In my undergraduate years, I’d often find myself pulling all-nighters to finish assignment projects and study for the exams. Yet, despite this approach, I managed to get average grades and was lucky enough to join an awesome research group for my PhD.

Research, however, is a different game. It demands consistent and sustained effort–ideation, problem-solving, experimentation, and writing a paper. Especially when you are targeting top-tier conferences, they would require creativity and novelty in your work, which cannot be achieved over a single night. Speed is essential too; the review process takes months and there’s always a chance that you are not the only one who thought of the same idea.

What’s more, graduate life is not only about research. There are classes, seminars, TAs, meetings, conferences, paperwork, and so on. Of course, you also have to study English and maintain your health and social life.

In the first two years of PhD, I was either busy working overnight to meet the deadlines or wasting my time on random things that intrigued my interest yet were not so important. I was constantly stressed out and felt that I was not productive enough. I was also nervous about my academic performance and my future career since I was not sure if I could finish my PhD with good publications.

In 2022, my third year, I decided to bring some change to my life. I experimented with various productivity strategies from experts to find what worked for me. Today, while I’m still in exploration, I discovered several ways that boost my productivity. While there’s no assurance that they’ll bring me a list of high-quality papers, at least I feel I have done my best of what I can do. No more regrets.

Through this series, I’ll share some productivity insights that have proven to work for me. I hope this series helps some readers who are struggling with their productivity concerns.

Side Note: Took the MBTI test again and I’m now 57% J-type. I guess I’m going in the right direction? :)