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PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

nextscientist.com

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Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#61

Post by noir_lord »

kchoudhu wrote: post #52
joncrocks wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain what you mean? In terms of time spent? Level of knowledge in the subject area?

Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge. I'm not sure it's justified, but there you go.

ETH Zurich would like a word with those folks.

It's the first university I think off for engineering, I mean they have 20 odd Nobel prizes from students and profs.

Not to mention the hundred or so other world class universities.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#62

Post by tedsanders »

otakucode wrote: post #37

Essentially every single aspect of our cultures understanding about how to accomplish things and do work is a direct outgrowth of assembly-line manufacturing. Mental work is fundamentally different. But we continue to treat mental work as if its the same thing as mindless physical rote repetition. Humans aren't capable of extended periods of mental exertion. 40 hours of work a week was fine when moving sheet metal in…

I'm open-minded, but find this hard to believe. Look at investment bankers or management consultants or doctors. These professions require very long hours, and the work is clearly mental, not physical. I myself work as a consultant, and my work is 100% mental, but I don't feel that working 40 hours is cruel. Even working 70 hours is a pain, but I wouldn't call it cruel.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#63

Post by ylem »

vazamb wrote: post #60
eanzenberg wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, unless you are at Cambridge or Oxford, getting a PhD in Europe about equates to a masters in the US.

At least in Germany you need a masters to start a PhD and I think this is true for most of Europe. Actually, I always thought America is one of the few countries where you can start a PhD right out of undergrad.

This is true in physics--I never bothered to get a masters along the route to getting my PhD

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#64

Post by Bartweiss »

otakucode wrote: post #43
naturalgradient wrote: post #24

As a current PhD student in a highly competitive program, I wish I could say this is reasonable advice, but it's wishful thinking in the hyper-competitive environment at top tier universities (where the goal of a PhD student would be to graduate as faculty material). There is just no way around grinding out the experiments. You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate agai…

>You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate again and again until you figure it out. Or instead of iterating 5 times, you take your time and do it right on the 2nd attempt, figuring it out in 1/3 of the time. Hurrying only leads to mistakes. It makes no more sense than attempting to continue working when you really need to go to the bathroom. You are are a human being an…

> Or instead of iterating 5 times, you take your time and do it right on the 2nd attempt

You're assuming the majority of failures are human-error induced.

Academia is infamous for only rewarding positive results, even when the underlying is exploratory and planning couldn't have saved you. "X does not cause Y" is a legitimate outcome of asking "does X cause Y?", but it's (usually) not an acceptable result for a thesis. It's all too possible to end up needing all of those iterations even when you don't make mistakes.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#65

Post by naturalgradient »

otakucode wrote: post #43
naturalgradient wrote: post #24

As a current PhD student in a highly competitive program, I wish I could say this is reasonable advice, but it's wishful thinking in the hyper-competitive environment at top tier universities (where the goal of a PhD student would be to graduate as faculty material). There is just no way around grinding out the experiments. You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate agai…

>You literally have to will something to work in multi-month long pushes where you iterate again and again until you figure it out. Or instead of iterating 5 times, you take your time and do it right on the 2nd attempt, figuring it out in 1/3 of the time. Hurrying only leads to mistakes. It makes no more sense than attempting to continue working when you really need to go to the bathroom. You are are a human being an…

My answer from the trenches is that it just does not work that way. You have to try out if something works. Something can make sense forever in your head until you try it in the real world.

I'd say not testing your ideas and instead spending forever overthinking/planning them is actually a leading cause of procrastination for PhDs.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#66

Post by nolite »

eanzenberg wrote: post #44
throwawayaway12 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Doing a PhD in the UK helps, in and out before the funding dries up in 3-4 years is expected along with no class requirements and no masters needed (can go in straight from Bachelors) I think this is the key sentence for a US perspective. 2 years of course work + 3 years of research for 5 years total is common in STEM fields.

Yeah, unless you are at Cambridge or Oxford, getting a PhD in Europe about equates to a masters in the US.

Have you done PhD level research in either continent? This is utter horseshit...

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#67

Post by throwaway287391 »

a_e_k wrote: post #56
SubiculumCode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I logged in to HN to make the same grammar correction. Fewer/Less grammar errors bug me badly. I don't know why this particular grammatical error bugs me so, but every time I encounter it, I have an inner voice that yells 'fewer.' My family hates me for it.

Same here. I think the reason it bugs me so much is because my mind views it as a type error: int fewer; float less; is how I tend to remember the distinction. (Fortunately in my family, my wife is the language nerd who first called me on my misuse many years ago. Now I notice it everywhere too. It's weirdly viral.)

I don't think that's quite right. For example, hours can be non-integer-valued (as in "three and a half hours"). The distinction is that "less" is used only for mass nouns (e.g., "less water").

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#68

Post by SubiculumCode »

a_e_k wrote: post #56
SubiculumCode wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I admit I logged in to HN to make the same grammar correction. Fewer/Less grammar errors bug me badly. I don't know why this particular grammatical error bugs me so, but every time I encounter it, I have an inner voice that yells 'fewer.' My family hates me for it.

Same here. I think the reason it bugs me so much is because my mind views it as a type error: int fewer; float less; is how I tend to remember the distinction. (Fortunately in my family, my wife is the language nerd who first called me on my misuse many years ago. Now I notice it everywhere too. It's weirdly viral.)

I generally go by 'If it is countable' which in the end may just be the difference of being singlular or plural.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#69

Post by munin »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #59
munin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Humans aren't capable of extended periods of mental exertion The humans on my thesis committee are definitely capable of extended periods of mental exertion. I don't know if it's something you're only born with or if it's something you can train but I bet I'll find out in a few years.

How would you know? It looks difficult, maybe even impossible to measure academic productivity.

Well, we could use a crude metric which is, how much of the day do you spend doing intellectual work? Right now, my advisor spends about ten or twelve hours. And it is pretty deep intellectual work, most of it is paper reading or discussion, via e-mail or in person meetings. Between watching when/how they reply to e-mail, make check-ins, their calendar, and talking to other collaborators and other students, they genuinely seem to fill 12 hours a day with work, six days a week, and have for the last fifteen years.

We can quickly get into some no-true-Scotsman territory here by asking "well if they're so smart how many Nobel/Field/Turing awards do they have" or something, but that's not the original question. The original question was, how much can you work at a high level a day? I have a measurement for both the ceiling and the floor and the ceiling seems high.

Re: PhD Productivity Strategy: Do Deep Work in Less Hours

#70

Post by ylem »

chrisseaton wrote: post #57
kchoudhu wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans tend to look down on anyone who has a doctorate from anywhere in Europe that isn't Oxford or Cambridge. I'm not sure it's justified, but there you go.

If you spent seven years doing something someone else did in three you're be bitter about it as well :) I think the European approach is proved sound, since people do managed to produce top-tier publications in that time.

I think the question is rather they are equivalent. For example, let's suppose someone does a quick PhD in 3 years, no masters, then all things being equal, they are likely to have less breadth than someone who took say 6 years (including masters). Exceptions abound. A rather difficult study might be to see how many postdocs a person with a 3 year PhD does compared to one with a longer PhD, or survivorship, but teasing out other factors would be a nightmare.
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