Recently, our lab members have started using Trello boards for project management. For collaborative projects, we have been using something like this for a while. Recent improvements in Trello make it easier to use than alternatives.
In the course of using Trello, I noticed several typical patterns in micro failures. These failures tend to happen when the members:
1) do not estimate of when to finish an item in “To Do”,
2) overestimate what they can do at a given period, and/or
3) do not plan for the time or possibility of failure.
1) is something I have noticed myself over the years. A certain percentage of items in my “to do” list remain there forever! This has put me under some stress. These accumulated items make me feel that I can’t achieve many things. But I’m not an exception. Psychological studies seem to have shown that ~40% of the items in the To-Do list are never completed!
These studies also point out several disadvantages of the ToDo list. One obvious disadvantage is that all items on the ToDo list look similar in priority.
A pretty effective way to deal with this is to put a self-estimated “time to complete” for every item. This also allows one to realize how much one can do a given task at a given time, which relates to the 2nd problem.
We are pretty bad at estimating how long any project will take. This is known as Planning Fallacy.
Combined with 1 and 2, 3 makes things worse. Many ambitious members have estimated the time to complete as if they are a perfect person. No failures are planned. This makes the planned date to be never achieved.
There are two ways to reduce your planning fallacy. One way is to ask other people to give the estimate. Other people’s judgement seems more registrant against this fallacy.
Another way is for you to estimate the time as if your colleagues were to do it.
There are two great practices that I’ve tried, which worked very well for me!
I) Know thyself. Record as many activities for at least 2 weeks. Get an estimate of how fast you can do a given task per unit time. I recommend a combination of “the Pomodoro technique”.
II) Include ~15% of CHEAT time / day for your schedule. Planning roughly 1-2 hours per day and 1 day per 2 week as a CHEAT day. This seems to improve the success rate of timely achievement of the project.
From a student’s (=your) and a PI’s (=my) viewpoints.
From a short-term and a long-term timescales.
1) A student’s short-term viewpoint
Including myself ~20 years ago, we tend to be very short-sighted when young. Students who are finishing the final year of university are, in particular.
In Australia, 4th year undergraduates do a Master-equivalent Honours thesis project. It tends to be very intense. Usually, it is the first time for students to spend >6 months on one thing and write >10,000 words. While doing this, they don’t have the luxury to think about the future.
At completion of Honours, they tend to think “when to start PhD” by looking at other students, who haven’t thought about it properly too….
If you are at that stage, I recommend you to “take off” at least for several months.
Travel. Read books. Do anything (e.g., volunteer) that you wanted to do. Join a company as an intern and see how the world (outside academia) works. Try to become a Youtuber. Test yourself and gain experience to make you unique.
All these activities will help you identify if it’s worth doing a PhD or not.
Currently, life expectancy is quite long. And you will retire 5 to 10 years later than your parents do / did!
There is no rush to decide when to start your PhD. Delaying it for a year or more doesn’t matter for you in your life. A hasty decision will cost you 3-5 years (depending on programs).
In fact, in my experience, the more mature students tend to do well for PhD. (There may be some stats on this, but I’m not aware of it).
Having said that, it’s important to secure the money. If you don’t have economic security, you might want to work for a while to save the money. Actually, you can gain experience from work, too. If you want to join my lab, working in some company that allows you to learn programming will be a huge plus.
If you have already decided to do a PhD 100%, then try to find well-funded research labs, which interests you the most. They might have TA or RA positions for you. Gaining experience in that domain will be useful for you in a long-term (See #3).
2) PI’s short-term viewpoint
By PI, I’m going to talk about myself. (I recommend that you talk with your future PI.)
I want to make sure you have great TIPS. Techniques, Intelligence, Personality and Speed.
In short, Techniques include various knowledge and skills (e.g., programming). Intelligence includes communications skills and mindsets (e.g., growth-mind). I want to work with someone who fits with the existing members, including myself! Speed includes adaptability upon feedback.
The best way for us to find these out is to work on some projects. It can be several months. It can be a Honours project. etc.
I need to make sure TIPS because I want to have a happy supervision experience. 3.5 years is short-term for me, but a long investment from my viewpoint!
What projects you want to pursue matters. But that’s something we can also figure out better if you do some projects with us.
3) A student’s long-term viewpoint
Students tend to have vague long-term plans, especially after PhD. Roughly, those who want to do PhD with me have 3 plans.
a) academic jobs, including research and teaching
b) jobs outside academia (e.g., clinical or industry)
As I don’t know the reality for option b), I can only give some realistic advice on the pathway a).
The most important thing that students don’t know is that the day you get a PhD will matter in the future. The date of PhD conferral matters. Not your age. This is true for almost all scholarships, fellowships, awards, grants, and promotion.
(In Japan, I know some fellowships/scholarships that use “age” as one of the criteria. But that won’t continue given the current worldview. It’s age based discrimination…)
Your CV at the time of PhD conferral will constrain where you can go next (e.g., postdoc, scholarship, etc). The better your CV is at that time, the better options you have.
This means, the later you start PhD, the better. In fact, the best strategy I usually recommend is to publish a paper before you start PhD. If you can do that, that will increase the chance of your success in the long-term.
4) PI’s long-term viewpoint
From my viewpoint, choosing which PhD candidates to work with for the next 3.5 years is quite important in the long run. Having great PhD students shapes the lab in a sustainable manner.
I, as a PI in Australia, generally want to take PhD students. If you, the student, can get a scholarship, I don’t have to pay you. This is important for my long-term viewpoint.
If I were in the US, I would generally have to cover your stipend in some way. If I were in Japan, I would like to take students who can get a JSPS fellowship so that they can focus on research. I may write on these issues later. Specific details differ for each country.
Roughly, mid-sized labs like mine tend to consist of PI, postdocs, PhD candidates, RAs. Some other short-term students (like Honours, interns, etc) also join in and out.
Hiring postdocs is pretty expensive in Australia. Generally, one grant can hire one postdoc for 3 years in my field. So, relying on a postdoc is quite stressful (as the grant success rate is not that high ~10-25%) and not stable.
So, I would be very happy to work with PhD students, who can contribute to the lab in various ways. That’s why I pay attention to TIPS. In particular P: personality.
5) Conclusion & Summary
I hope that what I wrote here has some capacity to generalise to other fields and PIs, but I’m not sure.
At least, if you want to join my lab as a PhD, this is pretty much what I will ask you to think…
1) Take off and think about long-term plans.
2) Delay the start of PhD to maximize your chance in the future.
3) Think a bit from the PI’s perspective as well.
I have also posted some videos answering related questions from a student who is thinking of applying for US/Australian PhD (English), a high school student thinking of going to US University (Japanese) and a student thinking of US grad school (Japanese).
科学者はみんな新しいことやるはずだから、現状維持バイアスは低いはず。と思うかもしれないが、実際はどうか？ 私の経験では、科学者は一般に、ある特定の分野、特に自分が専門とする分野に関しては、現状維持バイアスは少ない、かもしれないという印象がある。しかし、一歩自分のcomfort zone を出た途端、ゴリゴリの現状維持バイアスの権化みたいな人は多い。全般として、現状維持バイアスの度合いは、おそらく、他の職業の人と変わらないのではないか？
On any dark side, there is always a sunny side as well. Initially, there was some stress in my family. In retrospect, the fact that I was at home all the time was the biggest source of the stress!
As for myself, I actually appreciated the fact that I gained more time. (We were lucky as our children are big enough to be able to control themselves etc.)
Using this additional free time, my life has changed so much in a better way over the last 1.5 years. After many things settled down, I started various life hacks at a faster pace since this year, probably after around April. There was no single magic bullet that changed everything. But accumulation of many changes have culminated in substantial changes.
In some meetings, I have been suggesting some life hack techniques to my lab members. Some seem to have liked it and have been implementing it. It seems to have improved their life as well. Hope to see their improvement in productivity soon!
As I talk with these younger people, now I realise how bad my style was in almost every aspect of my life 10 years ago. Food, exercise, sleep, time management.
And I have now realised how wrong I was 1 year ago, almost about everything. I mean, the way I was doing things was definitely not the best for me. I’ve found a lot of better alternatives now.
In the course of these events, one key factor that I learned was 50% of our everyday life consists of automatic habits. So, knowing the way to change habits is pretty efficient as a starter.
Die With Zero という本は、死ぬときに貯金を０にするように、貯めて貯めて、アリのように生きるのはこれからの時代にはあわないという本だ。寿命が伸びること、伸びた分の年老いたときにお金を使っても、対して楽しめないこと、人生の目的は思い出づくりだ！ など、読んで考えられさせられるところが色々あった。
Die with zero を読んでいるうちに気になって、自分の寿命予測をしてみた。https://www.arealme.com/when-will-i-die/ja/ というサイトを使用。多分生年月日・性別などで予測してるんだろう。運動・食事・睡眠についても聞かれたが、どれだけ精度が高いのかは不明。 そして、出た私の寿命予測はあと４５年！
最近やっているライフハックを続けて、更に健康を高めるような生活すれば、楽に１４０歳くらいまでは生きれるかなぁと思っていた。なので、突如、予定より５０年くらい私の人生の残り時間が短くなる宣告を受けた。（なので、今週から食事も改善することに着手。Eat To Live という本がおもしろい）
Life Shift や Life Span でも言われているように、今後確実に寿命は、全人口を通じてさらに伸びるだろう。問題なのは「健康寿命」がみんな一様に伸びるのかということ。私の世代だと、どうやら女の人で平均１３年、男で平均９年、最後の人生を「不健康」に生きる確率が高い。
Nao Tsuchiya's conscious blog 