Unplug. Exercise. My only good research was done during the time when I was physically and mentally fit. There is a tendency (especially in CS programs) to think that more hours will help you solve the problem. This is not always the case.
The other thing is to prioritize long-term tasks first. The biggest problem with a dissertation is that it is a large, complicated project, on a scale most students haven’t experienced before, even in a communal setting like software engineering. You really do have to wake up and start writing in order to get the work done. I found the old productivity blogs that championed 3 Most Important Things to be a decent way to frame the world.
For tooling, I found Todoist and Trello useful. Zotero for citation management. Having a lab that uses Slack (or another collaborative space) really accelerated my work.
Final note: don’t avoid your advisor if you don’t have the work done. Be up front about what you do and don’t have done. Your success is their success. When you succeed, you prove that they made a good selection. No one wants you to fail. Research is a moving target and you’re not always going to make deadlines. Figure out how to keep everyone in the loop so that you keep a mindset of learning at the front, rather than a mindset of “falling behind”.
The other thing is to prioritize long-term tasks first. The biggest problem with a dissertation is that it is a large, complicated project, on a scale most students haven’t experienced before, even in a communal setting like software engineering. You really do have to wake up and start writing in order to get the work done. I found the old productivity blogs that championed 3 Most Important Things to be a decent way to frame the world.
For tooling, I found Todoist and Trello useful. Zotero for citation management. Having a lab that uses Slack (or another collaborative space) really accelerated my work.
Final note: don’t avoid your advisor if you don’t have the work done. Be up front about what you do and don’t have done. Your success is their success. When you succeed, you prove that they made a good selection. No one wants you to fail. Research is a moving target and you’re not always going to make deadlines. Figure out how to keep everyone in the loop so that you keep a mindset of learning at the front, rather than a mindset of “falling behind”.