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Focusing on the highest payoff activity in graduate school is well-advised as doing a Ph.D. is extremely overwhelming and daunting. It is normal to have difficulty managing all your responsibilities. The good news is a comprehensive understanding of your responsibilities and priorities will help you get through anything, including a Ph.D.

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Tasks during a Ph.D. include but are not limited to:

• Taking (and passing) classes: Graduate classes are hard and sometimes professors don’t tell you what you are going to be tested on. Or, they tell you that the exam will be so long that you definitely won’t finish. There is generally a requirement for maintaining a minimum grade point average in classes, such as B or B+. Homework for graduate classes takes 40+ hours to finish or attempt to finish.
• Doing several research projects: Even only managing your own research projects is very daunting as research always goes wrong and is impossible to finish or make fall perfectly on a predetermined timeline.
• Teaching: Teaching assistantships involve teaching labs and recitations, as well as holding office hours. Not to mention, lots of grading duties, proctoring and attending meetings and training.
• Managing people: Senior graduate students manage all the tasking of junior team members, including undergrads and newer graduate students in the group.
• Outreach & Service: Graduate students are regularly called upon to serve in outreach, such as hosting, planning, and volunteering at science camps for middle and high school students in the summer.
• Department Leadership: Graduate students are expected to take on service roles in the department, such as accepting office on the graduate student council.

There is only the ONE you and many things you have to do. So, PRIORITIZE the most important tasks and minimize the rest.

How to prioritize during your PhD

When prioritizing, think about the highest payoff activities. You should be spending MORE time doing higher payoff activities than doing lower payoff activities. Free of guilt and as simple as that.

Let us retake a look at the list above:

• Taking (and passing) classes: You can’t avoid taking mandatory classes. Prioritize this activity. But don’t feel like you have to take every class just because you can. Prioritize being DONE with class requirements and move on.
• Doing several research projects: Doing research is the highest payoff activity during graduate school. But, not just any research. Prioritize research that can become CONTENTS IN YOUR THESIS. More on this in a second.
• Teaching: If your funding comes from teaching, you don’t have a choice but to teach. Teaching provides valuable experience, so prioritize learning to get better and more efficient as well as leveraging this activity as described in this post.
• Managing people: Prioritize delegating and empowering people. Find a way to efficiently multiply your effort so that there is not a giant vacuum when it is time for you to graduate. However, don’t let this activity derail you from getting your thesis work done. Invest in people who have a good work ethic. If they are not going to learn, don’t spend precious time and energy trying to teach them. Recognize that not every new undergrad or grad student is going to end up being your next superstar.
• Outreach & Service: Minimize. Be strategic and don’t prioritize this activity. This is the low payoff stuff.
• Department Leadership: Minimize. Be strategic and don’t prioritize this activity. This is the low payoff stuff.

The highest payoff activity during your PhD

I said above: Doing research is the highest payoff activity during graduate school.

What I really meant: WRITING about your research and conveying its (high) impact is the highest payoff activity during graduate school.

Writing is going to be the highest payoff activity during your Ph.D. Therefore, you would be well-advised to spend a major chunk of your time in graduate school doing this. Whether you go into academia or industry afterward, publications are the measure of success for a scholar.

I don’t want to sound like you should be submitting crap articles to journals in order to publish for the sake of it. However, I do want to stress this point, as I am not sure you will hear it as loud and clear anywhere else. If you don’t publish, you are not considered successful.

Now, I am not a fan of the “publish or perish” school of thought. However, I do believe in writing things down.

Even if everything you write doesn’t lead to a journal publication, there is a lot of value in documenting your work. Indeed, I don’t see any other way to effectively do research, unless you are documenting in a systematic way.

How would you know what you have done if you can’t revisit your notes? Document for yourself, if not for others. I have noticed that whenever I keep good notes, it generally benefits me the most, followed by whoever might be taking up the work after me.

Keep a good lab notebook, and write down your methods and results. Additionally, keep digital notes by using LaTeX or the editor of your choice to regularly write down what you are doing.

Make a habit of this and you will see it all paying off like none other. Even if you are not going to submit it to a journal, pretend you are writing a journal paper. This will keep things straight and help you get things done.

Write It Down Or Perish

People who don’t write things down are their own worst enemy. It’s like: what was your plan? Were you thinking you could just remember it all and keep it straight in your head?

I have worked with talented people who like the technical work of doing research but don’t like writing papers. These people may be perfectly happy doing what they are doing but, in my experience, they are less successful than their counterparts who have mastered the art of writing regularly.

As a researcher, I think it is best if you think of daily documentation and eventual publication as part of the job. It comes with the territory of being an academic scholar.

The most important thing to realize is that a written document such as a paper meant for a journal shows that you have results and that you have made progress.

Even if the paper does not make it to a journal, it is important for it to exist. If you don’t write it down, it does not exist. Period.

It is important to demonstrate progress by documenting your work because, otherwise, it is not clear what you have been doing with your time.

When it comes time to wrap up your Ph.D., then pointing towards the papers you have written, even if they are not yet accepted by a journal, will greatly enhance your chances of successfully graduating. It will also make putting your thesis together much, much easier.

The bottom line is that a Ph.D. is a job, not a hobby, so you are expected to deliver results. It is not just about your learning and self-improvement, although those things happen too during a Ph.D.

Always have the mindset of delivering something because this will make you more productive and push you to do better.

Lastly, if you can show results without writing papers, by all means, go for it. For example, getting a patent would be an awesome result and something you could show off on your resume. But that, too, would require regular documentation.

If you hate publishing in journals, document thoroughly and self-publish. Heck, you can do this by creating your own website and putting results there. Your school might already have a system in place to create websites quickly.

Whatever you do, have clear and substantial contributions that you can lay claim to.

Doing great work is NOT enough. You need to own it and tell the world you did it.

This will also reduce the chance of getting “scooped,” although it is not the end of the world if you do. Don’t sit on papers forever – write them, and get them out there. Don’t go by your own feelings on the paper; let the reviewers decide whether it is good enough or not.

Even if the journal has not accepted your paper yet, you can make it public by putting it on something like arxiv.org. This is the norm in physics and astronomy.

Putting it all together

During graduate school, focus most on research and make daily documentation a part of your routine. Do research, write about it, publish, repeat. THAT will make you successful. Not taking on a bunch of service roles like sitting on the graduate school applications committee. Fuck that.

Don’t do outreach. Don’t help anyone. Just help yourself. Most people end up doing zero outreach and service anyway, this is mainly intended for the tiny fraction of people who end up doing 100% of the outreach and service.

Here is the thing. You have zero power as a graduate student. You NEED to focus on getting yourself to a better situation by graduating as quickly as you can. Do the thing that will make you graduate. Put research out there that will make your portfolio so strong that no one can freaking question that you have made contributions to your field.

Before you go!

Share your graduate school accomplishments in the comments below!