in this video I will tell you five daily routines of a PhD student to get a PhD
in time and we are starting right after this short break
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students start a PhD degree they feel a freedom freedom from stressful
professional life or if they are coming from a coursework program they feel free
and this is the time when they start developing some bad habits
for example using social media a lot watching movies or hanging out with
friends for long period of time the time lost in the beginning of their PhD will
never be recovered and they will regret it so what they should be doing instead
in this video we are going to discuss five daily routines or activities which
they should be doing on a daily basis I am NOT saying that they should only be
doing these five things but these five things must be part of most of their
days and these five activities altogether should not consume more than
forty to sixty percent of their day so keep this bigger picture in your mind so
now let's talk about what are the activities so the first thing is look at
your notes and to-do lists I have discussed this in many other videos that
when you start a PhD you must start taking notes whether on your own diary
or any web-based diary or any application and in note-taking app so
you decide a note-taking app or get a diary and stick to it
I have also developed a diary for PhD students which is called digit idea
diary one which is available on Amazon if you want but this is not a sales
pitch for that diary you can use your own diary I just have put some columns
and if you fill those columns and follow those prompts your PhD will be under
control but using any dairy or note-taking app is sufficient so the
first activity is look at your notes and your to-do list
no to-do list I am NOT talking about here because you understand how to use
it but what to look at your notes and what you should
keeping your notes in the first place so the things you should be keeping in the
nose of your diary is for example if any idea clicks into your mind you just put
that idea in your notes if you are reading a paper and you think that you
might be doing an experiment you put that experiment idea into your diary so
a note can take anything which is related to your PhD so every morning you
first have a look at your notes because what happens sometimes we got a very
important idea we put on our diary but then we forget about it
so when you have this routine of having a look at your notes so you should be
able to focus and Link all those because this is the problem when you start PhD
there is a chaos everything is looking very complex and everything is
unorganized but with the passage of time all things will fall into places then
your PhD will become organized so this is very important that you have a look
at your notes everyday no the second activity you should be doing is reading
at least six pages of a paper so there are few things you should be taking into
consideration and these are my five tips for a reading as I mentioned in one of
my other videos that you must first of all create a bank of keywords related to
your field of research you must have a comprehensive list of keywords which
relates to your field of research because these keywords you will be using
to find the literature so find a literature by using those bank of
keywords this is your first step to select the paper and think twice before
you select this for reading because when you are reading you are spending time
which is valuable so don't just select every paper see the title read the
abstract and then select it or reject it now when they say read six pages are for
paper so some papers are only six pages most of the conference papers but
general papers are long enough not just read six pages but also comprehend those
six pages try to understand what is written in there now the second tip is
don't make a long list in the beginning of your career because in the
you don't know what paper is important or not tip number three is that you
should send the titles of these papers which you have selected to read to your
supervisor because this is the job of supervisor to tell you whether it's
relevant or not he will be a better judge so send the title to your
supervisor or show him in the meeting and the fourth tip is don't print any
research paper I have seen PhD students who have piles of papers on their desks
which they never read again they just print and never read again this has
happened to me as well I have printed a lot of papers which I never read later
on so don't print anything the last tip is that while you are reading you must
take notes you highlight the important things and you can use some app for this
purpose for example Evernote Web Clipper I have a separate video on Web Clipper
you can watch that video so these are five tips so you must read six pages and
comprehend those six pages every day at least now the third activity which you
should be doing on a daily basis is to learn skills for data analysis data
presentation and presentation presentation means presentation in
seminars which is the most useful activity for a PhD student I have a
separate video if you want to watch about data analysis but shortly I will
tell you that when you when I talk about data analysis you should be looking at
the techniques which you can use statistical linear algebra or some other
techniques which you should be using to analyze the data when we stayed at a
presentation then we are talking about how to draw technical-scientific
diagrams which package are which library you should be using and when we talk
about presentation skills you understand what I mean that how to present your
work to other scientists so this is the third activity now the fourth activity
is that you decide everyday that what is by task of today what is the important
but small task which will bring me closer to my PhD so this task could be a
very small task for example designing an experiment
designing the questionnaire or arranging an equipment anything like that which is
important are which your supervisor tells you any tasks at least one
important task for your PhD you must be doing on a daily basis think about it
put it on your notes and do it now the last activity which you should be doing
on a daily basis is writing writing is very important for scientists and you
cannot learn writing just by attending a writing class although that will help
but you become a good writer by writing so therefore every day you must write at
least 200 words in the beginning and as you become a little bit experienced you
should increase these words so from 200 to 300 to 400 and now I would like to
give you three quick tips about writing but one important thing to note here is
that these reading and writing tips are not just enough for you to understand
writing or reading people have made videos of hours on writing and reading
because these topics deserve a lot of attention but these three tips will
still help you to understand the bigger picture so the first tip is that avoid
bad writing now what is bad writing the bad writing is which reader cannot
understand so after you write something give it to your friend or some colleague
or even to your supervisor and ask for a honest feedback and try to accept the
criticism in the beginning of your PhD this is very important when you are
asking for honest feedback then you have the ability to accept the honest
feedback so my bad writing for example if you are emphasizing on a particular
thing whether they understood that part of the writing or not so these kind of
things reader must understand what you are trying to say so this is one thing
from readers perspective the second tip from your side is that you must be
writing with clarity clarity is very important in writing
don't use fancy words if you don't know how to use them
just try to write clear simple plain English and the third important tip
which is a little bit hard in the beginning but I would like to give you
here because it's very important that you must understand how to provide
evidence to something how to provide the evidence to your scientific claim and in
order to provide the evidence you need to have some scientific vocabulary
you must understand some scientific terminology in order to support your
claim and this vocabulary is hard to achieve and remember one thing
scientific writing is a foreign language even for native English speakers if we
are talking about English here so this is not a foreign language just
for you if you are from a non-english speaking background like myself this is
a foreign language for native people as well because the scientific vocabulary
is totally different than the normal everyday English so therefore try to
increase your vocabulary and this vocabulary will again be increased by
reading a lot when you read a lot of general papers your vocabulary your
scientific vocabulary will definitely increase and this will help you in
writing so try to write everyday and better if you try to start writing your
thesis very early in your career this I have mentioned in other videos so these
are some of the activities which you can do on a daily basis to get a PhD in time
so I hope you like this video if so please give it a thumbs up thanks for
watching and see you next time
you