54 4 Making a Strong Start
to settle to the task when they sit at their desk, but that, once settled, they can write
fluently. Some work best in silence; some use background music;^2 some like a quiet
corner in a cafe; a friend of mine wrote large chunks of a book sitting in a sheltered
corner of the stands overlooking the local sports ground. The thing each of these has
in common is that the student found a routine that works, and managed to stick to it.
For the main write-up phase of your thesis, a nine-to-five approach is probably
not appropriate. You need to be immersed in your work, with a ready knowledge
of what bits of your research are discussed where in your thesis, and with a clear
grasp of how the work flows. The more time you spend with your work, the easier it
will be. This is a contrast to the first two-thirds of your research, PhDs in particular,
where the simple fact of the length of the marathon you are engaged in means that
you need to balance work and life, and a nine-to-five working style avoids burnout
while ensuring that you make steady progress.
I noted earlier the strategy of working on several activities at once, that is, keep-
ing open a range of tasks that can be worked on. This isn’t limited to writing; you
may well, for example, have a routine that has you at a desk in the morning, doing
some writing, and interviewing survey respondents or compiling data in the after-
noons. If you have a topic that lets you do the research at a computer, you may be
able to fluidly move between a wide range of tasks. In such an environment, though,
it is important to be disciplined. The presence of email and the web can be fatal to
productivity; when I write, I often physically unplug my computer’s network con-
nection. It’s unplugged right now.
I ask my students to keep a ‘progress log’ of how much time they are putting in
and what they have accomplished every day, and to be honest with themselves, so
that they can use it to recognize when they are not making progress. Everyone has
a balance of commitments; it is up to you to get this balance right, and the first step
is to recognize that there is a problem. I suggest that you get a notebook and keep
it with you. As well as recording progress, jot down thoughts as they come to you,
and don’t worry about whether they might be silly or irrelevant—this is how you
get your thinking started.
As a supervisor, you can’t help but be aware that, during their candidature, PhD
students lead busy lives. Some marry (or divorce), or have children, or buy homes;
or make a substantial commitment to activity outside study. Among my full-time
students there have been musicians who are active in bands and orchestras, a sports-
man competing in weight-lifting contests, software engineers with their own busi-
nesses, and a dedicated volunteer firefighter. Some students exploit the flexibility
of a PhD to learn other professional skills, or to study other fields. The best PhD
students, after all, have a strong intellectual curiosity and it hardly surprising that
their interests are wide-ranging. Nor is it surprising that these interests occasionally
become a serious distraction—something that, obviously, should be avoided.
(^2) Let me emphasize the word ‘background’—you are kidding yourself if you think you can be at
your most productive while listening to music that consumes your attention, or while watching
television for that matter.