The internet contains a wealth of information – we are all aware of that. But this enormous amount of information can make us feel overloaded and overstimulated. Our brains turn jittery, wanting to check the news again, or wondering what’s new in our Twitter streams. We become afraid of missing out on information, [...]]]>

The internet contains a wealth of information – we are all aware of that. But this enormous amount of information can make us feel overloaded and overstimulated. Our brains turn jittery, wanting to check the news again, or wondering what’s new in our Twitter streams. We become afraid of missing out on information, or addicted to stuffing bits and pieces of random articles into our brains.

Ideally, our information streams deliver us a lot of great contents, and little random side-information that sets us up for some unnecessary surfing or distracts us. We want a lot of signal, and little noise.

If you feel like your digital arteries are getting clogged, then it is more than time for a pre-summer cleanse of your digital information streams: your newsletter subscriptions, blog roll, social media channels, favorite websites and everything else you stuff into your brain.

Below are six steps that you can use to clean-sweep your digital information habits, and help you to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of your information streams:

Step 1: Go cold-turkey

If you have a bad case of infobesitas, drastically cut back on your information channels. Commit to a weekend or week without reading stuff on your regular information streams. Instead, refuel your brain by reading analog books, spend time with friends and family, practice sports and immerse yourself in creative work.

Ideally, you take this cold-turkey approach when you go on a holiday, or when you want to create a thesis-writing retreat for yourself.

Step 2: Reintroduce the essentials

After this period, evaluate what you really missed, and what you *really* feel curious about, and simply discard all the rest. Unsubscribe, delete, unfriend – clean out all those time-sucks and make space for your treasured set of inspiring blogs, tweeps and more. If you’re in doubt, throw it out – you can always reconnect at a later point in time should you feel like you want to receive updates again.

Be mindful about every single subscription you keep. Ask yourself what its contribution to your life is, what you are getting out of it, and if it’s worth the expensive investment of your time and interest.

Step 3: Introduce an evaluation period

Whenever you subscribe to a newsletter, blog or other information channel, make sure you take some time after 30 days to evaluate this subscription, and decide if it’s worth your time and the investment of your interest. You can simply put a reminder in your calendar to evaluate this subscription after a while. On that given day, simply ask yourself how much you are learning from this subscription and if you want to stay informed or not.

Step 4: Limit your time

The best way to get more efficient at soaking up useful information is by knowing that you have a limited amount of time to weed through whatever has piled up in your information channels. You can play the email game to sift through an exploding inbox.

We all know that we should limit our use of internet and e-mail to given time-slots in each day – commit to truly making this change. If you want to focus, put that bleeping, flashing smartphone in a drawer and work on your important tasks. Have a fixed moment during the day to batch-process your information channels. Don’t feel obliged to do anything – and delete or unsubscribe to whatever is not of your interest.

Step 5: Consider the internet as a tool

Imagine the internet as a giant drawer full of keyword cards. If you’re old enough to remember how libraries worked before their digitization, then use that image as a reference. If you want to know something, if a thought crosses your mind during the day, don’t immediately go and look it up online. Jot it down, and leave it for “when you go to the library”. Your trip to the library is a daily short slot of time in which you allow yourself to speed-search online for the answers to your questions.

Don’t have your information streams open all the time, don’t be connected to the internet all the time – you don’t have to. You are perfectly able to make the choice of considering the internet as a tool, which you only pull out of your mental drawer whenever your need it.

Step 6: Re-evaluate, and re-evaluate again

Whenever you get an email from a list you are subscribed to, whenever you sift through your blog roll, take a moment to evaluate the value of the information you are getting. Is it worth to remain connected, or time to move on? Schedule a monthly moment for evaluating your digital streams, preferably when you carry out your monthly progress analysis.

How do you deal with the constant stream of information? Share your thoughts in the comments by clicking here.

We receive many positive comments regarding our GradHacker posts, but we also receive advice that warns us (and our readers) that some of our tips will provide people with procrastination mechanisms rather than ways to move their work forward. Think of how [...]]]> “Planning without action is futile, action without planning is fatal” – Unknown

We receive many positive comments regarding our GradHacker posts, but we also receive advice that warns us (and our readers) that some of our tips will provide people with procrastination mechanisms rather than ways to move their work forward. Think of how many blogs and books provide advice to graduate students. If you implemented all the techniques that you learned you’d be working towards a degree about completing a degree rather than actually finishing the research work you wanted to do in the first place.

As an example, I’ve been reading a lot about writing over the past year. It has been extremely informative and I have learned a lot about the process….BUT, sometimes I spend a lot of time reading when some of that time should be pointed more towards the ACTUAL writing. It’s great that I’m learning about the process of writing, but it means nothing if I don’t apply it towards moving my writing forward.

You can tell if you are “meta-dissertating” in three ways. The first is determining if you are making more lateral than forward shifts with your work. This can be setting up a new elaborate system that accomplishes the exact same thing as your previous simpler system or re-doing your work without putting your plan into action to test it if works at all. The second is to see if you think you need to apply a new technique to make a decision or if you are avoiding making a decision. Lastly, determine if you are optimizing everything but getting nothing done. There is a time and a place for optimization, but just like an elaborate system that doesn’t make you more efficient than your simpler system, it is a waste of time.

To get out of this meta- slump, first acknowledge that there are a lot of things you can do in that in theory will help your dissertation move forward and spending time planning ways to make sure you are efficient and effective is extremely important. The second is to take action! You’ll never know if your plan will work until you take action. Maybe it will, and maybe it won’t, but at least you know that and you can move on. A lateral movement like that isn’t a bad thing; you just need to make sure that you are moving laterally for the right reasons.

What is your advice to people who spend more time thinking about how to do their work than actually doing it? Was I “meta-dissertating” or promoting it by writing this post? Sound off by clicking here.

[Image by flickr user jurvetson and used under a creative commons license]

One of the major aspects of academia is sharing your research through public presentations. While public speaking can be stressful, it is a great opportunity [...]]]> Katie Shives is a PhD candidate in Microbiology at the University of Colorado. During her free time she writes about microbes at kdshives.com and on Twitter @KDShives.

One of the major aspects of academia is sharing your research through public presentations. While public speaking can be stressful, it is a great opportunity to communicate your research and ideas to a wider audience and can be quite satisfying.  No matter what kind of subject matter you are covering, there are a few simple hacks that you can use to improve you public speaking abilities.

Project your voice: Even with common mic technology, it helps to speak in a clear, confident tone for presentations. In order to achieve this, it helps to slow your normal speaking pace and slightly lower your tone of voice. While different from your normal speaking voice, making these changes will help the audience follow what you are saying.

If there is no speaker system it can be somewhat difficult to gauge how loud you need to be for a room. An easy way to determine if your voice is large enough for a room without a microphone is to have a friend sit near the back beforehand and have a conversation at a level where you can hear each other. Once you’ve gotten used to that tone and level, you’re ready to go.

Monitor your posture: When presenting it helps to stand up straight with both of your feet flat on the floor. This kind of body language conveys confidence to the audience and can help bolster your own feelings of confidence before beginning your talk. It also serves to open up the rib cage so that you can breathe evenly and deeply, which brings me to the next point…

Breathe: Never underestimate the power of proper breathing in improving your speaking ability. When you breathe deeply, you don’t have to force your voice from your throat, which can lead to you sounding tense and higher-pitched. Another way to loosen up before speaking is to yawn, as this can help relax the throat as well.

Learn your verbal tics: The most common is “um” and we’ve all seen this word take over presentations and become a distracting tic. During your next talk ask a friend or colleague to note any tics that you may be abusing so that you can minimize them in the future. Your audience will thank you!

A note for the anxious: You are not alone! Public speaking isn’t a skill that appears over night, and repeated exposure is the best path to proficiency.  Practice whenever you get the chance so that over time you can become desensitized to the stress of presenting.

In closing: The communication of research and ideas through presentations is one of the cornerstones of academia, so the sooner you become comfortable with this skill the better it will serve you. Hopefully, after enough practice you can come to enjoy aspects of presenting and come to look forward to these opportunities.

Do you have any other tips for improving public speaking skills? Share them in the comments by clicking here.

[Picture by Flickr used SparkCBC and used under a creative commons license]

I am really bad at saying no.

When someone comes to me asking for a favor, or looking for help with a project, or needing a body for a committee, I always say yes. I have a hard time knowing what projects are worth my time, and I hate disappointing people. I want [...]]]>

I am really bad at saying no.

When someone comes to me asking for a favor, or looking for help with a project, or needing a body for a committee, I always say yes. I have a hard time knowing what projects are worth my time, and I hate disappointing people. I want to be known as a positive person, and I hate to miss out on opportunities. But as I worked frantically to finish my dissertation I found that I didn’t have the time, energy, or brainpower to edit that paper, chair that panel, or cover that class. Saying no became the only way I could focus on my own work and get through my degree.

Learning when and how to say no to other people is an important skill for any graduate student. You have unique skills and talents that many people will try to use (and sometimes exploit). There are a number of different articles online which provide tips for how to effectively say no (this lifehacker article is my favorite), so this post is going to focus on when to say no by providing questions to ask yourself to help determine whether or not you should say no.

Should I Say No?

• Can I fit this into my schedule without sacrificing my own work, timeline, or goals? Your own work and responsibilities should always come first: make sure that you have all the time and energy to complete your own tasks. Sitting on a committee is great experience, but that experience is only worthwhile if you manage to graduate.
• Can I fit this into my schedule without sacrificing my own free time, personal health, or sleep? Will covering a class for a friend cut into your sleep schedule? Will writing that blog post get in the way of going to the gym? Your own personal wellbeing should come before everything else, so think about what you might have to give up if you say yes.
• Am I being fairly compensated for my work? What do you get out of saying yes? Experience? Money? A favor you can call in later? There are lots of different ways a task can be beneficial to you, but you need to make sure that you are getting something in return. Say no to tasks that ask you to use your skills without compensation.
• Do I know enough about this project? Before you say yes or no, you should make sure you have all the details and have a good sense of the scope of the commitment. If a colleague asks you to cover their class, are you expected to write and deliver a lecture? If you join a task force, do they meet once a month or one a week?
• Will doing this make me a more well rounded person or scholar? Getting different kinds of experience is important, so doing service, research, and teaching activities are good ideas. Try to diversify the activities you say yes to, and say no to repetitive tasks.
• Will there be similar opportunities in the future? Just because you may have to say no right now doesn’t mean that you will always be busy. Think about whether or not  this is a truly unique opportunity, or if you will be able to garner similar experience in the future.
• Am I able to complete the requested task? I will sometimes say yes to things I don’t know how to do to prevent being seen as ignorant or unskilled, and I then find myself having to learn how to bake chocolate marble cheesecake at 3am. Don’t be afraid to say “I don’t know how” or “I can’t do that” if someone asks you for something outside of your wheelhouse.
• Can I help someone else say yes? If you usually say yes, then you may develop a reputation for being a go-to person in your department, and you may find people come to you first. Can you direct them to other students or staff who may have more time or more applicable skills? When my friends ask for help with their writing, I always send them to the writing center first, and I will recommend colleagues for seats on committees. Then I don’t have to worry about the task not being completed, and can help spread the work around!

What are your strategies for choosing projects and knowing when to say no? Share your thoughts in the comments by clicking here.

Sarina Kilham is a guest writer for GradHacker and a Phd Scholar at the Institute for Sustainable Futures- University of Technology Sydney. You can follow her on twitter at @SarinaKilham.

We’ve all been there- the beginning of our PhD journey, when we were still naive enough to believe [...]]]>

Sarina Kilham is a guest writer for GradHacker and a Phd Scholar at the Institute for Sustainable Futures- University of Technology Sydney. You can follow her on twitter at @SarinaKilham.

We’ve all been there- the beginning of our PhD journey, when we were still naive enough to believe that our research would somehow change world and that all the PhD students who’ve gone before us were clearly just as not organized, efficient, experienced or professional as ourselves. Over-runs? I love a deadline. Writing despair? No worries, I’ve written dozens of reports/papers/articles. Interview participants? The more the merrier. And thus begins a journey of much heartache as yet another generation of Phd students under-estimate the demands of a PhD and over-estimate the importance of a PhD as their ‘major life work’.

What many supervisors and universities struggle to communicate to PhD students is that your PhD is just an apprenticeship in research.  Apprentices in any other trade are not given the biggest most important job in which to learn their skills. Apprentices take on small, achievable tasks and get really good at them first, before moving up the chain.  The difference in a PhD is that as an apprentice- you have a large say over what your tasks are & unless you’ve got a great supervisor (and sometimes even if you do have a great supervisor) then it seems that the natural bias is to swing towards creating large Phd research projects rather than the small and compact.

So, if you are just starting out in your PhD- how can you avoid this trap? My suggestions would be:

• Think depth not breadth. You’ll have to grapple with the epistemologies, ontologies and theoretical frameworks at some point. Don’t plan for dozens of case studies/participants/surveys. Plan for the minimum number that you can get away with- even if it seems too easy at this planning stage!
• Talk to other PhD students or graduates who’ve gone before you. They will give you a big reality check. Interrogate them about how long it actually took to do each part of their PhD research. You’ll find often that field work is short and sweet whereas write up, transcripts, analysis and actual thesis writing takes years. Yes, years.
• Participate in as many workshops & presentations centered on managing your PhD as possible. My academic institute has a “12-month-in” compulsory assessment (formally known as a Doctoral Assessment but should be known as Reality Check 101) to present a literature review and research plan to peers and a few invited academics.  I attended at least 4-5 other students Doctoral Assessments before my own. Even then I had my head in the clouds (“what do they mean reduce my number of interviewees?”)
• Read this:  Mullins, Gerry,& Kiley. “‘It’s a PhD, not a Nobel Prize’: how experienced examiners assess research theses.” Studies in higher education 27.4 (2002): 369-386.  After you’ve read it and as you’re planning your research, read it again.
• Think about how many case studies/participants/interviewees you’d like to do. Half it. Aim to do <70% of this number.
• Remember that a PhD is not the same as your professional work/consulting job/teaching.  What you can achieve in your work life is not the same as what you can achieve in a PhD. You’ll need more time for reflection,exploration, introspection and creative thinking.
• Accept that changing the world is a lifelong goal and don’t try to squeeze it all into your research apprenticeship.

Thanks to Nicole Thornton & the ISF Post-graduate program for helping me to keep it real in my PhD.

Do you have any advice on managing expectations in your graduate studies? Let us know in the comments by clicking here.

[Image by flickr user tracktwentynine and used under a creative commons license]

While my last post focused on the written aspect of comprehensive exams, for many graduate students there is another, [...]]]>

Facing down the examination committee.

KD Shives is a PhD candidate in Microbiology at the University of Colorado. During her free time she writes about microbes at kdshives.com and on Twitter @KDShives.

While my last post focused on the written aspect of comprehensive exams, for many graduate students there is another, equally dreaded component: the oral examination.

For even the most prepared students, this can be an intense and difficult experience. However, with enough preparation and the right mindset the oral examination can actually be an enjoyable experience where you get to talk about your ideas in depth with members of your committee.

Having just completed this hurdle myself, I’d like to go over some of the things that worked and those that I wish I had known before undertaking this process. This advice is the most relevant for those of you defending a written document that you’ve had time to prepare, but some of this will be applicable to more generalized oral examination formats.

Before the exam:        

• Schedule the examination during your mental “peak” of the day: If you have the ability to set the day and time of your exam, I highly recommend scheduling for the part of the day when you are most alert and focused. This meant my exam was at 9am since I become useless during the afternoon, and it worked out much better than trying to fight my natural rhythm. If you’re a morning person, schedule early; if you are at your best in the afternoon, schedule your exam for that time.

• Get enough sleep the night before: Do not stay up late to cram- what you’re about to do is too large to prepare for in one evening, so chill out. Hopefully you did your studying in consistent daily blocks beforehand and are familiar enough with the material that you don’t need to turn the last day into a cramming nightmare. However, while outright cramming of your primary sources is not recommended, I do recommend the following:

• Go over your notes briefly: The best thing I did while preparing for the oral examination was take hand-written notes while studying to review later. In the end I had a study guide that covered my most important sources and summed up multiple concepts and techniques in my own words. This little notebook was extremely useful for a couple of last-minute reviews during the day before and early morning hours leading up to the exam. I also highly recommend re-reading your written comprehensive exam at least one more time before the oral examination so that your proposal and all the details are fresh in your mind.

During the exam:

• Speak slowly and remember to breathe: It’s not uncommon to speak rapidly when under stress. If you find that you are getting stressed during the examination and sound like you’ve had way too much coffee, take a moment for a deep breath or two to center yourself. If you can sneak this in while a committee member is speaking no one will even have to notice you collecting yourself and you will be able to respond in a much more calm, measured tone.  These examinations take a certain degree of stamina, so make the effort to remain relaxed so that you can maintain your energy through the whole event.

• Don’t be afraid to ask for clarification: If a committee member asks you something that you don’t understand, there are two ways to deal with this. You can ask the committee member for further clarification, or you can attempt to rephrase the question to your committee member to make sure that you understand the major point. In either case, you should be able to get a better idea of what is being asked. However, there is always the chance that after clarification you still can’t answer the question. If that is the case…

• Never forget the words “I don’t know”: In many cases, the oral examination is a test to failure; your committee will be actively looking for the limits of your knowledge. You will at some point hit this wall and won’t have an answer. If that is the case it is perfectly acceptable to say you don’t know. Don’t try to lead your committee, instead admit when you don’t know and use it as an opportunity to explain how you might test the idea or interpret it based off of what you do know. Either way, your committee should respect you candidness on the subject, which is a much better alternative than being caught.

After the exam:

• Follow-up with any necessary paperwork: Don’t forget if your program has formalized documents that require signatures.

• Take time off! This is the most important piece of advice I can give. Sometimes the best way to avoid burnout is to get out, and after all of the effort that goes into successfully completing comprehensive exams can be extremely draining.  Do whatever works for you- you’ve put in the hard work and have earned a break!

Do you have any tips and tricks on surviving the oral examination? If so, share them in the comments by clicking here.