7 ms·

There's another (slightly kinder) version of this: When people go to grad school, then during their studentship get married and have a kid -- suddenly their pr

There's another (slightly kinder) version of this: When people go to grad school, then during their studentship get married and have a kid -- suddenly their productivity goes up dramatically and output per time increases by many factors. What happened? It turns out when you have self-motivating reasons to get out (and a target on your head from your spouse to earn some money for godssake), you find ways to focus on what's important and drop the rest. No more idling away for hours on silly ideas that don't get you closer to handing in your thesis. No more trying random libraries that get your code to run 2% faster. No more goofing around after 6pm with other students just because you have the time -- you have to get home and be a breadwinner for your family. You have to get shit done. You start to ask, "even if I don't know exactly what the thesis will say, how should it be organized and what kinds of conclusions will make up the writing? And what experiments do I need to fill in those charts/paragraphs, and no more?" What's the minimum I need to do to get out of here? Not, "What amazing interesting thing could I explore?" Limits and constraints sometimes free the mind dramatically. The side effect is maybe you don't get to explore ideas that go nowhere, but that's a discussion about the purpose of the PhD and for another topic I guess. (And sometimes, if you think, well I don't have a kid, so what's the rush? Well, someday you might have a spouse, a kid, and every day of time you left in grad school is a day for your future self -- and family -- and $$ -- left behind in time. Work to free your future self... now, while you have the time.)

supernova87a 6y ago
I might offer a corollary as an practice to adopt (in the absence of the above possibility) -- learn to enable your research to have visible incremental gains on a known path every day, rather than hoping (hoping!) for some amazing breakthrough at the end. Amazing breakthroughs have high risk, and make it highly likely you'll have a crisis when it doesn't happen. And what I mean is that, even if you don't know what the answer is going to be at the end of your research, you must think about, or have an idea about, the format of what that amazing answer is going to be. Write the outline of your thesis and "ghost out" what the major charts will be. Write the intro sentences of each chapter -- what are they? (and I don't just mean the boring review of the field part, but your findings part) You should know what major finding, plot, or table your research is going to output. What are the columns and rows of that table, or axes of that plot? How many data points are required? How many of them can already be guessed? Where is the surprise going to be? What is the conclusion going to be? For most graduate research, the finding is not an amazing field-changing big bang. Few grad students are that fortunate. Or at least most of the bulk of the work will be of that sort. You should be able to predict what the answer is going to look like from past work, and the error bars. Draw out the answer you're aiming for, now. If you can't even articuate what the answer will look like, you may be in for a bad time, so work on fixing that. It will also push you and your advisor to be specific about what the output of your thesis will be. Your future self will thank you.
- newen 6y ago
  One of my professor's recommendation was to write the actual paper that you want to write, introduction, related works, methods, discussion, conclusion, leaving the figures, tables, etc. blank, before you actually start doing the experiments.
  - supernova87a 6y ago
    Many advisors don't push their students to do this, and they should. Or they haven't had enough practice to know to do this. Or they're not taking their responsibility seriously enough. An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. If your advisor doesn't know this, maybe time to find a new advisor...
    - Twisol 6y ago
      > An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. If your advisor doesn't know this, maybe time to find a new advisor... You don't know me, but I really needed to hear this. I left grad school essentially because of a dearth of coaching. Thank you for framing this so succinctly.
  - mensetmanusman 6y ago
    This is amazing advice I hadn’t heard before, it rings very true. I remember after my first paper was finished and submitted, and wow, it seemed easy to bang out papers after that, all you needed was four to five figures :)
  - mkl 6y ago
    This reminds me of Simon Peyton-Jones's (of Haskell fame) seminars on How to Write a Great Research Paper: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/write-great-research-paper/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/wr... There are multiple slightly different versions of the seminar (another is linked below that one), but unfortunately they all came out after I'd finished my PhD, and I didn't hear that advice from anyone else. The process I arrived at after losing time on failed projects was basically "fail fast": find the simplest quickest way to demonstrate that your idea won't work, and do that. Then find the next simplest, and so on, until either it works or you've proven it doesn't and moved on.
QuercusMax 6y ago
Before I got engaged to my wife(who was a year ahead of me in college) I had plans to do some kind of individualized honors project across 2 or 3 different majors (physics / math / CS). I very quickly found myself reprioritizing how quickly I could graduate and find a job (since my wife's field didn't have many lucrative career prospects).
ColanR 6y ago
> What's the minimum I need to do to get out of here? Not, "What amazing interesting thing could I explore?" I totally get it, but it makes me sad. That line, right there, probably explains why it's so few people who actually get to make the big discoveries.
chrisseaton 6y ago
Lol my wife had a baby while I was doing my PhD... was a less-than-ideal way to structure your life I'll admit. Do not recommend.
cacois 6y ago
This rings so true to me. I got engaged during the last 6 months of my PhD student tenure, and lo and behold, I defended my thesis in the same month we got married. In the same vein as above, the added perspective and fire under me resulted in a number of novel solutions to problems that probably would have been major issues in the past, including a full change in direction of my research conclusions after realizing a substantial issue in the practical application of the technology. I credit my now wife with the (passive) motivation to shave at least 6-12 months off my time in grad school.
mensetmanusman 6y ago
This was me, had a 1 year old at my thesis defense on Mass Ave :D
JamesBarney 6y ago
Hmm this is different than my experience when my co workers had kids. Usually their productivity dropped due to being sleep deprived and not having the time on nights and weekends to come up to speed on any new technology. Not that I minded, just saying that time constraints and sleep deprivation seemed to have the effect you'd except from them.
- alfonsodev 6y ago
  productivity at work is harder to measure than academic achievements, also different setup and motivations in play.
- iateanapple 6y ago
  > Usually their productivity dropped due to being sleep deprived High levels of sleep deprivation is only common for the first few months. > not having the time on nights and weekends to come up to speed on any new technology. This tends to be a problem on teams that don’t properly evaluate costs of new technology and so churn like crazy for very minor productivity increases.
- keithnz 6y ago
  it wasn't about coworkers.... when people are working they often get paid the same no matter what their productivity is, so the motivations are different
- hprotagonist 6y ago
  grad students and coworkers have very different priorities.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  What's your productivity measure? "I won't do that" can be worth $100k.
bigfudge 6y ago
This happened to me. I typed the last paragraph of my thesis shortly after my wife went into in labour. It was very satisfying to hear it printing while I was filling the birthing pool in our living room!
firstplacelast 6y ago
This is so spot on. I work for a biotech start-up that is obviously very research intensive. It's amazing to see the CEO, who has an undergrad in bio and an MBA, corral the PhD researchers and get them on track. He understands about 40% as much about the biology, yet he's very good at getting people to drop/trim things that are not going to be worthwhile. He often adds tons of constraints that allow our researchers to hone in on what's going to drive the company forward instead of languishing in a million possibilities.
ummwhat 6y ago
You've convinced me that finding a wife would be a great move for my productivity right now.
- benibela 6y ago
  Dating is also very time consuming That is why I did not do any dating during my PhD

supernova87a 6y ago

I might offer a corollary as an practice to adopt (in the absence of the above possibility) -- learn to enable your research to have visible incremental gains on a known path every day, rather than hoping (hoping!) for some amazing breakthrough at the end. Amazing breakthroughs have high risk, and make it highly likely you'll have a crisis when it doesn't happen. And what I mean is that, even if you don't know what the answer is going to be at the end of your research, you must think about, or have an idea about, the format of what that amazing answer is going to be. Write the outline of your thesis and "ghost out" what the major charts will be. Write the intro sentences of each chapter -- what are they? (and I don't just mean the boring review of the field part, but your findings part) You should know what major finding, plot, or table your research is going to output. What are the columns and rows of that table, or axes of that plot? How many data points are required? How many of them can already be guessed? Where is the surprise going to be? What is the conclusion going to be? For most graduate research, the finding is not an amazing field-changing big bang. Few grad students are that fortunate. Or at least most of the bulk of the work will be of that sort. You should be able to predict what the answer is going to look like from past work, and the error bars. Draw out the answer you're aiming for, now. If you can't even articuate what the answer will look like, you may be in for a bad time, so work on fixing that. It will also push you and your advisor to be specific about what the output of your thesis will be. Your future self will thank you.

newen 6y ago
One of my professor's recommendation was to write the actual paper that you want to write, introduction, related works, methods, discussion, conclusion, leaving the figures, tables, etc. blank, before you actually start doing the experiments.
- supernova87a 6y ago
  Many advisors don't push their students to do this, and they should. Or they haven't had enough practice to know to do this. Or they're not taking their responsibility seriously enough. An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. If your advisor doesn't know this, maybe time to find a new advisor...
  - Twisol 6y ago
    > An effective PhD advisor/thesis isn't wandering the woods to find something. It's a guided coaching exercise, with an outcome in mind. If your advisor doesn't know this, maybe time to find a new advisor... You don't know me, but I really needed to hear this. I left grad school essentially because of a dearth of coaching. Thank you for framing this so succinctly.
- mensetmanusman 6y ago
  This is amazing advice I hadn’t heard before, it rings very true. I remember after my first paper was finished and submitted, and wow, it seemed easy to bang out papers after that, all you needed was four to five figures :)
- mkl 6y ago
  This reminds me of Simon Peyton-Jones's (of Haskell fame) seminars on How to Write a Great Research Paper: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/write-great-research-paper/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/academic-program/wr... There are multiple slightly different versions of the seminar (another is linked below that one), but unfortunately they all came out after I'd finished my PhD, and I didn't hear that advice from anyone else. The process I arrived at after losing time on failed projects was basically "fail fast": find the simplest quickest way to demonstrate that your idea won't work, and do that. Then find the next simplest, and so on, until either it works or you've proven it doesn't and moved on.

QuercusMax 6y ago

Before I got engaged to my wife(who was a year ahead of me in college) I had plans to do some kind of individualized honors project across 2 or 3 different majors (physics / math / CS). I very quickly found myself reprioritizing how quickly I could graduate and find a job (since my wife's field didn't have many lucrative career prospects).

ColanR 6y ago

> What's the minimum I need to do to get out of here? Not, "What amazing interesting thing could I explore?" I totally get it, but it makes me sad. That line, right there, probably explains why it's so few people who actually get to make the big discoveries.

chrisseaton 6y ago

Lol my wife had a baby while I was doing my PhD... was a less-than-ideal way to structure your life I'll admit. Do not recommend.

cacois 6y ago

This rings so true to me. I got engaged during the last 6 months of my PhD student tenure, and lo and behold, I defended my thesis in the same month we got married. In the same vein as above, the added perspective and fire under me resulted in a number of novel solutions to problems that probably would have been major issues in the past, including a full change in direction of my research conclusions after realizing a substantial issue in the practical application of the technology. I credit my now wife with the (passive) motivation to shave at least 6-12 months off my time in grad school.

mensetmanusman 6y ago

This was me, had a 1 year old at my thesis defense on Mass Ave :D

JamesBarney 6y ago

Hmm this is different than my experience when my co workers had kids. Usually their productivity dropped due to being sleep deprived and not having the time on nights and weekends to come up to speed on any new technology. Not that I minded, just saying that time constraints and sleep deprivation seemed to have the effect you'd except from them.

alfonsodev 6y ago
productivity at work is harder to measure than academic achievements, also different setup and motivations in play.
iateanapple 6y ago
> Usually their productivity dropped due to being sleep deprived High levels of sleep deprivation is only common for the first few months. > not having the time on nights and weekends to come up to speed on any new technology. This tends to be a problem on teams that don’t properly evaluate costs of new technology and so churn like crazy for very minor productivity increases.
keithnz 6y ago
it wasn't about coworkers.... when people are working they often get paid the same no matter what their productivity is, so the motivations are different
hprotagonist 6y ago
grad students and coworkers have very different priorities.
quickthrower2 6y ago
What's your productivity measure? "I won't do that" can be worth $100k.

bigfudge 6y ago

This happened to me. I typed the last paragraph of my thesis shortly after my wife went into in labour. It was very satisfying to hear it printing while I was filling the birthing pool in our living room!

firstplacelast 6y ago

This is so spot on. I work for a biotech start-up that is obviously very research intensive. It's amazing to see the CEO, who has an undergrad in bio and an MBA, corral the PhD researchers and get them on track. He understands about 40% as much about the biology, yet he's very good at getting people to drop/trim things that are not going to be worthwhile. He often adds tons of constraints that allow our researchers to hone in on what's going to drive the company forward instead of languishing in a million possibilities.

ummwhat 6y ago

You've convinced me that finding a wife would be a great move for my productivity right now.

benibela 6y ago
Dating is also very time consuming That is why I did not do any dating during my PhD