How to PhD in a pandemic: A guide to prevent coronavirus from infecting your thesis

By Jacques de Satge (jdesatge.wordpress.com)

Society has gone into underdrive, universities have become glorified call centres, and your colleagues are confined to Zoom’s prison blocks. In this dystopia, how on earth do you work on a PhD?

From one postgrad to another, a PhD regularly feels dystopian. We are often disconnected from the world, hunched over a desk, trying to tip-tap out the words that will give us a magic certificate in three to seventeen years’ time. In many respects, the PhD skillset is well-suited to a pandemic: independent thinking, determination, self-doubt, overcoming self-doubt, and caffeine. But Covid19 has changed the game. Not unlike the job market, we now need more skills than ever to be successful (and a minimum of 5 years work experience).

When the going gets tough, I make lists. To-do lists, priority lists, pros-and-cons lists, shopping lists, equipment lists, goal lists, and now, a PhD list. Ironically, I’ve probably put more effort into my PhD list than my actual thesis during lockdown, but I like to think it helps me navigate through this period of change and uncertainty. Perhaps this list can help you navigate your dystopia too.

1. Switch your focus

Covid19 has locked onto my thesis like it has ACE-2 receptors. My PhD timeline is in disarray, my lab is inaccessible, my fieldwork plans lie in tatters, and I’m stuck with hugely expensive GPS tags (designed for tracking birds) whose only use is to prove that I’ve been staying home. If any of this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. But there is an opportunity among this chaos, a new method for the madness. Normally, I’m thinking about six thesis chapters at once, juggling fieldwork, lab work, analyses, writing, meetings, grants, conferences, and the rest of life. However, coronavirus means we have a unique opportunity to focus — uninterrupted — on specific elements of our work. My approach is to use lockdown to target thesis elements which usually fall by the wayside; like writing chapter introductions, catching up on relevant literature, and trialling new analyses. Covid19 has forced my hand here, but I’m sticking by the saying “try to stress about the things you can control, not the things you can’t”.

2. Set goals

Setting goals is standard practice in a PhD. However, being under lockdown can create a sense of timelessness which disorients your focus. First step in fixing this — remember what day of the week it is! To keep my thesis work on track, I set daily, weekly and monthly goals. Try to keep these goals realistic, otherwise you end up with the “disheartened by a lack of progress” syndrome. While I write up my daily tasks in a notebook, and I do miss my trusty office whiteboard for tracking the bigger picture. Somewhat strangely, I’ve gone with a colour-coded Excel sheet to chart my long-term goals (guess I’m a sucker for spreadsheet pain). If pain’s not your thing, perhaps go with purpose-built programmes like Trello or Remember the Milk if you miss your whiteboard. Although, remember, don’t spend all your time creating beautiful plans and none of your time working on them (guilty as charged).

3. Stay accountable

It’s all well and good making homemade deadlines, but unless you’re inhumanely self-disciplined, they often go unfulfilled. Under normal circumstances, you may be held accountable for your work by a supervisory panel, a team of colleagues, or general office-based motivation. In the Covid climate, these factors have likely taken on strange new forms: my colleagues are now my office plants (I didn’t abandon them!); my supervisors are figments of an alternate virtual reality; and ‘office-based’ motivation has new meaning when working in the kitchen. Given these changes, it’s handy to create some accountability when it might have fallen away. For example, I text my brother every morning with my daily to-do list (and yes, this blog post was on the list this morning). He duly returns his to-do list to me, and we check in on each other’s progress at the end of the day. If tasks are left unfinished, we either have a good justification or receive a berating as only brothers can do. If you can, reach out to a friend, colleague, or supervisor — perhaps they can help you bring those to-do lists to life.

4. Structure your day

You have goals, an accountability buddy, and a mindset full of good intentions. You sit down at your desk at 9am, the hours tick by, 5pm arrives (ok, 9pm) and you have written three sentences. What happened?

If I don’t give my day structure, my good intentions often turn into the ashes of too many coronavirus news articles. My current solution is to set up my working hours like a school day; ‘lessons’ are hour-long periods where I am working on a particular daily task, interspersed with food breaks and online meetings (sadly no playgrounds). Many of my colleagues also swear by the Pomodoro technique, but that’s a blog post in and of itself.

5. Maintain (digital) contact

While coronavirus has stripped us of our physical networks, meeting rooms, and departmental tea-times, the virus thankfully can’t be transmitted via Zoom (although other malware might be). Take advantage of the digital realm to maintain meetings with your supervisors, your colleagues, and your friends and family. We’re all in the same boat and preserving contact with our networks brings a much-needed sense of normality and solidarity (particularly for the now socially suppressed group known as extroverts). In short, I’d recommend staying in contact with more than just your university’s IT department during this period.

6. Procrastinate well

You’re at home. There are endless possible distractions at your fingertips (*cough* snacks *cough*). Instead of feeling guilty about distractions, try and benefit from them. If food is your thing, improve your cooking. If it’s social media, learn about science communication and try blogging (e.g. the https://thesiswhisperer.com/ is all about blogging your way through your PhD). If you redefine procrastination, you can feel less guilty about it. And if you’re not up for productive procrastination, then at least allocate specific times of day for your guilty pleasures and try to stick to them.

7. Be kind to yourself

Working from home can be tough even in normal circumstances. Under Covid19 conditions, you are very unlikely to get as much done as usual, and I think that’s OK. You may snack more than necessary — that’s ok too. You may feel disheartened by a lack of progress — that’s normal, and something you should factor in to how much you expect of yourself during this period. You may be daunted by facing analytical problems — you’re used to this one already.

Here in New Zealand, where I am doing my PhD, the Tertiary Education Union hit the nail on the head when they said: “Remember, you are not ‘working from home’, you are ‘at home, during a crisis, trying to work’. Your personal physical, mental, and emotional health is far more important than anything else right now.”

I couldn’t agree more. While we try our best to adapt to corona-chaos, work efficiently, update goals, restructure timelines, and be more resilient than water bears, there is little point in doing so at the expense of our health. Lockdown can bring anxiety, disconnectedness, and disorientation. Addressing these is more important than a literature review or maintaining high work expectations. For myself, I’ve added a few home workouts, yoga stretches, meditation sessions, and healthy meals to my weekly schedule. I’m also trying to follow my own PhD list, and not just write it. Hopefully this list is helpful to my fellow postgrads on lockdown; with any luck you can come out of this time with your health intact, and a few bonus sections of thesis to boot.