When to start writing phd thesis
How to write your PhD thesis (without going insane)
no matter what stage you're at or no
matter what field you're from stress
when writing is incredibly common and
even the smartest most hard-working
students can find it incredibly
stressful or even completely
overwhelming so why does this happen why
is it so hard why do so many people
struggle well there are a few reasons
the first and perhaps most obvious is
the sheer scale of the task so for most
people it will be the longest thing that
you've ever written and for a lot of
people it will be the longest document
you write in your entire life and that
long document it comes with a huge
amount of pressure so the way that a PhD
is examined everything rests on that one
document so it's not like when you were
an undergraduate where you could afford
to screw up one exam and then your
average grade would kind of you know
make up for it so is a huge amount of
pressure on this enormous document and
also of course writing is quite a
difficult complicated skill and even
professional writers can struggle
sometimes but in addition to these kind
of basic circumstances you might also be
writing in a second or third or even
fourth language you might be writing
while you're still doing the research so
you don't quite know how it's going to
pan out or you might have so much
knowledge about your subject you might
have so much to say that you don't know
where to start and you might also have
other unique circumstances that make it
more difficult so when you combine even
just a few of these factors it isn't
really surprising that so many people
find it so hard but just because there
are a lot of potential difficulties that
doesn't mean that overwhelming stress is
inevitable and just because a lot of
people suffer through the writing that
doesn't mean that we have to so to
illustrate this point
let's compare thesis writing to another
difficult skill for example brain
surgery so brain surgery is obviously
incredibly delicate and difficult work
it demands intense concentration and in
some circumstances you might have to
work very quickly with very little time
for preparation and the slightest
mistake can have devastating
consequences but most brain surgeons are
not so overwhelmed or so stressed that
they can't do their job it might be
stressful but they can manage the stress
to stay calm under pressure and get the
job done and there's a really simple
reason for this so if you or I had to
cut someone's head open it would be
absolutely terrifying
but brain surgeons are trained to do the
job so they've built up a range of
skills which mean that they recognize
the kinds of problems that are can arise
and the complications that arise and
they have a range of solutions that they
can adapt and apply quickly and this is
really the key to managing the stress of
a difficult situation it's just a matter
of building up the skills and all of
that knowledge all of the knowledge that
brain surgeons have is built upon
generations of brain surgeons who've
gone before so people who have figured
out the solutions to those common
problems and the complications that
arise they then pass on that knowledge
to the next generation and so every
subsequent generation then has a
slightly higher level of skill so the
first person to do something finds it
very difficult but then what was once
pioneering and incredibly risky work
becomes standard practice now I'd like
to ask a quick question so of all the
people in the room how many people have
had any kind of formal training in
writing zero literally zero there was
one kind of like maybe okay so one kind
of maybe out of 6070 people we have this
situation where even though there are
tens
thousands of PhD students graduating
every year and every single one has to
write a thesis in order to succeed and
nobody has any training in how to do it
there is no standard consistent way of
teaching academic writing so the vast
majority of students have to just figure
it out on their own so everybody is in
that position where everything feels
kind of risky everything is kind of
pioneering everything's going into the
unknown instead of having a situation
where generation by generation the
writing actually improves so this means
when you face any kind of difficulty in
your writing and you will inevitably
face difficulties you have no training
to fall back on
you have no principles to guide you and
no framework for figuring out what to do
and of course it is possible to work it
out on your own and lots of people have
done that and basically it's a process
of facing the same kind of writing
problems again and again so you figure
out common solutions to the kinds of
problems that arise so then you can
recognize the problem when it comes up
and you have solutions that you've
already worked through that you can
adapt and apply to this new this new
situation and it gets a little bit
faster and easier every single time so
good writers are basically just people
who have spent enough time solving
writing problems that they recognize the
kind of problem that they're facing and
they have a range of solutions that they
can adapt and apply quickly so these
people exist but the problem is a lot of
people who have this level of skill
don't necessarily know how they're doing
it and don't necessarily know how to
teach other people to do it
so they might recognize good writing
when they see it but they don't know how
to help somebody get to that level or
they might recognize that this is bad
writing but they don't know how to how
to fix it and so generation after
generation just struggles and struggles
and struggles so for me writing my
thesis was one of the easiest parts of
my entire PhD so there
which was really difficult and once I
had the results it was just a matter of
getting it all down on the pat down on
the page and I wrote my entire thesis in
just three months
I passed my advisor with zero
Corrections and I actually enjoyed the
process so I then went on to do
postdoctoral research and I noticed that
there were countless PhD students who
were much better physicists than I was
but when it came to writing they were
terrified so I figured that if I'd
written well and I'd written quickly and
I'd enjoyed the process maybe there was
something that I was doing that was
different that could help other people
but of course I was in that same
situation where I didn't know exactly
what I was doing I didn't know how to
help people so over the last nine years
I've worked with more than 400 PhD
students from all kinds of different all
kinds of different backgrounds and I can
tell you that the problems that you face
in writing they are not unique no matter
what subject you study the fundamental
problems that you're trying to solve are
exactly the same problems that everybody
else faces and there are common
solutions to these common problems so
what I'm going to try to do over the
next 30 40 minutes or so is to share
with you some of these common solutions
to these common problems so that you can
build up your skill so that you
recognize the situations that come up
and then you can apply some of these in
your writing and write your thesis
without going insane so what are we
trying to do at a basic basic level so
fundamentally writing is all about
taking the information and knowledge
that you have in your head and putting
on the page in a way that somebody else
can follow but the problem is that
writing is linear so you have one page
after another you have one paragraph
after another we have one sentence after
another but the knowledge that you have
in your head isn't stored in that nice
neat linear order it's more of a kind of
tangled mess of in-turn interconnected
ideas and insights
one of the first things that you have to
do is figure out a way to take that
tangle up mess and put it on the page in
some kind of structure that somebody
else somebody else can follow so let's
start with just the introduction so a
lot of people say that you should write
the introduction last but the
introduction sets the context for
everything else that you're going to
that you're going to do and it also
contains some useful principles that we
can apply to other sections as well and
here's the structure that works for
almost any project regardless of the
discipline first you describe a
situation of some kind or an event next
you describe a problem or a question
that arises from that situation and then
you can describe how others have
approached that problem or question you
explain the need to approach it in a
slightly different way or expand upon
what has already been done and then you
say what you're going to do this works
for as I said for almost any projects
and I'll give an example so let's say we
have a situation where worldwide the
number of PhD students is increasing
okay but there is also evidence of
disproportionate levels of stress among
PhD students so we have a situation and
then a problem that arises and rises
from it then we have some kind of
response to that how other people are
approaching it so while there have been
a limited number of studies to date
which have highlighted the scale of the
problem and individual institutions have
made efforts to provide better supports
there's been little research into the
effectiveness of different interventions
this research will do this so you can
adapt this to almost anything so once
you have this basic structure you can
then add details to it so once you've
got an idea of the flow so we can expand
upon some of these points so instead of
saying you know the number of PhD
students is increasing you can say over
the last ten years there's been a huge
increase in the number of students
enrolling in doctoral degree program
worldwide you can back it up with some
kind of statistics so recent UN
statistics estimate that and then you
can even say why this is happening why
governments and trying to trying to
increase the number of students so you
can say while the increase in the
numbers of doctoral students is seen
globally it's even more marked and inner
developing nations such as this is in
part due to the concert to a concerted
efforts at government level to do
something and then going further
although increasing engagement in
doctoral research has a number of
benefits recent evidence has shown
evidence of disproportionate levels of
stress among PhD students so we have the
same basic structure but we're adding
detail we're hanging detail off that
structure even though we're adding extra
information we don't need to change the
underlying narrative and what this does
is it makes it so much easier to edit
your writing than if you have no
structure at all
so if you were to just sit down and
write whatever comes to mind which some
people advise then you have no links so
everything's just this tangled mess so
how do you know way where you can move
something because if you take one piece
and move it somewhere else
what are you moving it relative to
you're moving it relative to all this
tangled up mess so it still doesn't work
but if you have a basic structure in
place it's like a scaffold that you can
hang ideas on and if you have a solid
structure solid scaffold then you can
take bits off and you can move them
around and the rest of this structure
doesn't fall apart okay so we can
generalize this okay so it's no good
just giving you a format for the
introduction we need to generalize this
and look at the underlying principle so
what we have is a cause or a stimulus to
start with so worldwide the number of
PhD students is increasing so it's a
situation okay from that situation you
get a problem or a question that arises
from it and then you have certain
effects so you have people responding to
it either in the real world with some
kind of response or an academic response
investigating what's happening and then
you end up with partial answer
and other consequences which in turn
leads to more problems or questions and
so you always want to be aware of
whatever information you're presenting
how it fits into this kind of structure
is it a new situation or a new event
that you arrive at is it a problem or a
question that a right arises from that
or is it some other some other kind of
effect okay and we can apply this to any
section of the thesis okay now if we
take this further and so expanding upon
the introduction once you've set out the
basic aim of what the thesis will do and
what it's responding to you might want
to give some extra background
information and what a lot of people do
is in this new section they will say
they will repeat the aim of the thesis
so they will say this thesis aims to the
previous section introduced some of the
background and why this research is
interesting this section will present a
detailed description of Theory X Theory
X is defined by Simpson and the reader
at this point is basically going to
sleep okay so if you try something like
this instead and describe a situation so
we've set up the context we've set up
what the research is trying to do and
then we set up a new situation so until
the late 1960s it was widely believed
that so you have some situation that
existed and then it was only with the
discovery in 1967 of something by
somebody that so we have some kind of
change some kind of response some kind
of new information and then this led to
so we have an effect the development of
an entirely new theory of X based on the
idea that whatever whatever it happens
to be so the theory instead of just
defining it instead of saying a theory X
is defined by this person as this we
have a reason why that theory exists
okay we have we have the theory as a
response to this this discovery in 1967
or it could be a response to a problem
with a pre-existing pre-existing theory
so everything is placed in context
everything is placed within a kind of
narrative narrative structure so moving
on to literature reviews because that's
one of the areas that people
struggle with the most there are three
key things that you need to know first
of all you do not need to show how much
you have read so a lot of people when
they come to writing a literature review
they see it as kind of being like an
undergraduate an exam where you have a
syllabus you have this massive
information and your job in the exam is
to reproduce as much of that information
as possible if you miss anything you
lose marks in a literature review that
doesn't work because you might have
10,000 or 20,000 papers on a particular
particular subject so it's inevitable
that you'll miss miss things so your job
is not to worry about trying to show how
much you've read but rather to put
together an interesting narrative
selecting the best and most relevant
sources to support that narrative okay
so it's an important change in in basic
mindset in terms of the way that you do
you approach it
then in terms of how you frame the
information that you do select the
easiest way to do it is to think of
every single paper as a response to
something to either a problem or a
question or a situation or a previous
paper and then you can set these within
the context of a general situation of
something that's happening within within
the literature so instead of starting by
just trying to summarize papers we can
start by describing a situation that's
happening within the literature within
your academic field so you can say
something like research into insert
subject here has gained pace in recent
years so it's a situation that's
occurring especially since the
development of new techniques allowing
something one of the main aims of this
research has been to so we're describing
what's happening and then you say this
chapter will outline the most recent
developments key discoveries in current
state of the art so we're setting the
kind of the scope of what you're what
you're doing another example so
following the discovery of something
there has been some kind of activity so
following the discovery of this kind of
phenomenon this kind
the effect this kind of technique there
has been something or you can say this
has led to a great deal of debate in the
field so again we're describing things
that have happened so it's all about
setting up this setting up this context
ok another a quick example so while it's
been some interest in something in
academic literature since the early 20th
century a concerted research effort only
began in earnest in the last decade in
our time however there have been
remarkable breakthroughs in both our
theoretical understanding and practical
applications so again we're just
describing something's happening the
field some kind of some kind of
situation or you can divide the
literature and you can make an
observation of how the literature is
divided so these if it's can be divided
into two broad categories then you can
have that as a starting point then when
you're describing individual papers they
fit into this context and they're all
responding to some problem which is in
which is just a part of this broader
context that we're talking about so a
good example would be how do we define
or measure X ok what happens is you
start with this problem or question and
then one author proposes a solution so
you can say the first the first major
attempt to study this or solve this was
conducted by Smith who developed this
technique and then that initial paper it
has some kind of effect maybe the I the
idea gains influence in the field or
maybe it sparks a debate or maybe maybe
it's widely adopted until something else
better comes along so then you have the
problem or the question you have a
response to it and then the literature
that follows on from it responds to that
in some in some way ok so might be that
that original technique is really good
in some circumstances but then it has
some drawbacks so then somebody else
develops develops something else so we
create a narrative around these around
these around these sources ok so it's
all about putting it into a structure
rather than just focusing on the
individual
individual papers themselves okay this
is just another example of variation on
the same on the same thing if you can't
identify one initial source that
everyone else responds to you could
divide it into different approaches so
there are three main ways this is
approached the first and perhaps most
widely used was proposed by this person
and then you you have kind of a partial
solution which then other people kind of
refine and respond to an approach
approach in different in different ways
okay
so again just want to reiterate you do
not have to show how much you've read if
your narrative makes sense and it
accurately reflects the trends and key
events in the literature or in your
field it will be obvious that you've
read a lot so if you go in and your main
aim is I want to show the examiner how
much I've read that's not interesting
for the examiner but if you put together
a good structure and you select the best
sources the examiner will automatically
be aware that you've read a lot and you
understand understand where you're what
you're doing another part of this as
you're selecting what to include as part
of your narrative is to focus on your
strengths not what you think the
examiner wants to see so as a PhD
students you will always be aware more
than anybody else of your own
limitations and that creates this
natural worry about what if I get found
out in this particular thing what if the
examiner wants to see you know this
detailed explanation of this kind of
theory which I don't really know about
so then because of that fear a lot of
people focus on trying to fill that gap
in their writing so then what you're
doing is you're putting most of your
efforts and putting lots of extra words
into an area that you don't really know
about so then if the examiner knows more
about that subject and you're a little
bit weak then you're attracting
criticism you're attracting difficult
questions so one way of thinking about
the writing in this sense is you're
selecting your own syllabus you're
deciding your own syllabus you're
choosing the ground that you're going to
defend so it makes sense to set you
ground set the area that you're going to
defend and your strongest your strongest
areas so if you write the things that
you know the most about you're bringing
the examiner onto your strong ground
instead of going onto onto that okay so
it may be that you know who your
examiner is going to be anything I so I
need to write all about what they what
they know they're not interested in that
they want to know what you're strong in
and you bring them onto your ground and
you can show them something that maybe
they don't know so this same idea of
structuring information in terms of
problems or questions or responses to
situations or events it also applies to
writing about your methods so you can
think of every experimental or research
method that you use as a response to a
problem so having set the aims of your
thesis you then have new problems to
solve
in order to answer your research
questions so you might need a way of
measuring a particular particular
variable so that's a problem or a need
that needs to be solved so in order to
solve a we need a way of doing B and
then you have various different options
you might have various practical
constraints and then that becomes the
starting point for then describing
describing what you do so I'm not going
to spend more time on this but we can
come back to it indeed and the QA but
really the key point is just that this
idea of structure applies to everything
and once you get that idea everything
else becomes much much easier okay so
once you have some idea of how to
structure your ideas and put together
these kinds of narratives how do you
actually put it together what's the
process so I always advise starting with
the introduction this is a little bit
controversial some people say that you
should write the introduction last
because it's only then that you know
exactly what you're going to what you're
going to do but then if you write the
introduction last where you actually
start
so I think if you start with the
introduction you don't need to think
about where you're going to start so you
have this specific problem how am I
going to introduce the reader to this
particular this particular topic okay
and as we've seen if you know how to
structure your ideas if you know how to
structure an introduction it's not that
difficult not that difficult to do so if
you focus on the starts your challenge
is to get the reader get the reader
interested and it's a matter of staying
with that problem until you find an
appropriate solution you find the
situation or the context that you want
to that you want to set up and then the
challenge is how to then move this
forward so if you start on page one with
the introduction and then you'd work in
sequence you work in the same sequence
that the reader is going to read then
you always know where your focus needs
to be so you have this unbroken chain
from the very beginning up to whatever
you're writing now and that's where your
focus needs to be and if you jump around
if you hit some kind of block here at
this point it's very very tempting to
just leave it and start writing about
something else and if you're focused on
increasing the word count if your focus
is on productivity that's kind of the
natural thing to do it's the obvious
thing to do but what then happens is you
start writing about something else you
maybe get a little bit more momentum but
then you hit some other kind of block
and then what do you do you start
writing about something else so all of
those problems that stopped you in your
tracks
suddenly you end up in a situation where
you've run out of easy things to say and
all you're left with is all the
difficult stuff that you left for later
when you're under the most time pressure
and what's happened is because that's
become your default response you haven't
developed the skill of solving those
problems that have arisen so it's
absolutely crucial to spend time with
those problems as they arise so the
challenge if you're at this point is how
to link this idea that you've written to
the next idea and
the next one and the next one it's all
about narrowing your focus onto one
problem at a time considering your
options and then making a decision and
this forces you to deal with the
problems that arise but it's just one
problem at a time so instead of jumping
around you've got all your attention on
one on one problem and it becomes it
becomes solvable so when you're in this
kind of situation you have a number of
options so what you can do is if you
have this unbroken chain and then you
have this idea that you want to put on
the end of the chain sometimes it's a
matter of just finding the right words
it might be a difficult idea that you
just have to play around with words
until you find the right way of
expressing it but sometimes that doesn't
work and what you have to do is consider
is this idea even going in the right
place does it belong to it does it fit
into this context into this narrative
that I'm trying to set up so then what
you can do is hold that idea back say
okay I'm not going to put this here and
maybe try some other idea in its place
and often what you find is when you put
something else in there then it helps
you to make that make that step forward
okay
so just just deciding not to include
something at this point can be a
solution to that block but it's only
possible if you slow down to think about
it other times what might happen is you
realize that this idea it's actually
more fundamental it's something that you
need to say earlier in the process so
sometimes you need to go back and find a
place to insert that particular idea in
order to in order to keep things keep
things moving okay sometimes it's a case
of deleting the last thing you said
because that's where the block comes
from because it's kind of it kind of it
did it okay so you have these various
various different options now sometimes
you might hit a block where you just
can't you know find your way forward and
you need to step away from it but that
should never be your first option okay
you can always need to spend a little
bit of time give yourself the space so
you try to solve it so the way I think
of this process is a bit like digging a
tunnel through
Mountain so you can go back over a
section and reinforce it or insert
something but you can't jump forward you
have to find a solution to the problem
that you're facing that helps you helps
you to make progress it's not always
easy to do because it means that you're
in that uncomfortable state where things
aren't necessarily moving you have to
slow down relax and give yourself time
to solve that problem so when I talk
about this people ask well what about
perfectionism because this can be a real
real issue I think that you need to
think of perfectionism as being a scale
so on the one hand you have total
carelessness where you just write as
fast as you possibly can you defer all
thinking for later and you abandon all
problems as soon as they arise and only
focuses on getting words down as quickly
as possible the natural consequence of
this is that you give zero attention to
detail zero thoughts to the clarity of
communication and the writing is
guaranteed to be rubbish so you can end
up in a situation where you've got tens
of thousands of words but none of it's
actually finished none of it's actually
really any any use the other end of the
scale you have total perfectionism where
you have this kind of excessive revision
or hesitation and you feel like nothing
you write is ever good enough you have
this fear of judgment fear of what the
examiner will say and so nothing ever
gets nothing ever gets completed nothing
ever gets submitted so the two extremes
are obviously pretty bad but it's not a
question of total carelessness or total
perfectionism the solution to total
perfectionism is not to just write as
fast as putt you possibly can but to
adjust where you are on the scale so you
can find kind of a sweet spot where
you're giving a bit of care and
attention to your writing but without
overly worrying too much about the end
result and as you're writing you can
adjust where you are even within this
within this range so if you find that
you're going way too slowly that
nothing's really happening that you're
overly worried then you can go a little
bit
faster you can set yourself the target
of saying okay in the next hour I'm
going to write 150 words so it's not
going as fast as you possibly can but
it's taking the focus away from the
perfectionism tap to this to this other
goal at other times you can make
yourself a little bit more perfectionist
so if you have a point where you're
saying for example the aim of this
thesis is that's a point where it's
really important to be accurate in what
you're saying because that determines
what the examiner is going to judge they
judge you against the aims that you
state so at that point is really
important to slow down and take a little
bit a little bit more care so you want
to be operating somewhere here so it's
sort of leaning toward perfectionism
it's taking time and care but without
being so worried about it that you never
actually never actually do anything okay
so most problems are solvable if you
slow down and give them time focus and
this is where you develop your skill so
this model it's the flow model by
Csikszentmihalyi it tells you how your
level of skill in relation to the task
affects your mental state so on the
x-axis here we have skill level so high
skill or low and then on the y-axis we
have the level challenge so if you have
a very high level of skill in relation
to the challenge so it's kind of a
medium level of challenge a high level
of skill then you feel in control of the
process so this will be where you have
ideas that you know really well things
that you've spoken about before things
that you've written about before you
know you feel kind of in control and
process it goes much faster but if you
have an area where maybe the difficulty
is quite high but your skill level is
low so this could be some some idea
where you're not entirely familiar with
it where you know you're not quite a
hundred percent sure about what this
what this particular thing thing means
then you can feel anxiety
and possibly the most important state is
this one here where the difficulty level
is high but you have a medium level of
skill so you're almost good enough to
solve the problem right so it's good but
it's very very difficult to do so it
requires your full attention now in this
as csikszentmihalyi call that this
arousal state this is where if you put
all of your attention and focus on that
problem and you work at it and work at
it and work at it then you find a
solution this is where you improve so
this is where your skill level is pushed
just beyond where it where it currently
is but not to the extent that it's
overwhelming right so it's possible with
your full with your full attention this
is where you improve so a lot of the
time when you're writing you will be in
this very uncomfortable state where it's
just beyond what you can do easily but
with your full attention you can
actually solve the problem and then it
speeds up again so part of the writing
process is accepting that discomfort
becoming okay with that discomfort and
not kind of getting distracted not
working on something else
the same thing applies by the way in
your research you know it's not just not
just related to writing this could be
related to any kind of research or
analytical analytical skill as well so
it's being able to slow down take time
to think and give yourself time and
opportunity to solve to solve that
problem okay so we're going to get into
the QA pretty quickly because there's a
lot of people here and have covered a
lot of ideas quite quite briefly sort of
all kinds of things that you can ask
that I've just touched upon or not
mentioned and not mentioned at all but
before we get to that just want to kind
of kind of sum up a couple of key things
so as I've mentioned if you slow down
and you can develop the skill and we can
we're working towards this this state
we're having solved the problems that
have arisen you then recognize the kind
of problems that are
next time you get faster and you have
this range of solutions that you can
adapt and apply quickly this helps to
build confidence which is really crucial
to being able to write quickly and write
well but skill is not the only factor if
you want to be confident then you've got
to consider the outcome and how that
affects your mental state so if you want
to be certain of the end result then
you're never going to have confidence
because it's not like the undergraduate
exam where you knew what the syllabus
was and you knew that basically the
answers to the questions in advance so
with a PhD you cannot be certain of the
end result but what you can do is have
confidence in your ability to cope with
whatever happens so if you're terribly
worried about what the examiner will
think and that's taking up all of your
attention that's going to affect your
ability to actually do the work that's
necessary to pass but if you accept that
maybe it might not work out maybe the
examiner won't like my work
maybe there's something I've missed but
I'm going to accept that if that happens
however bad it is I will cope with it if
I fail my PhD vie ver then you know I'll
have all these problems I'll have to
deal with I have to find a job you know
I'll have to you know explain to my
family all of these kind of things but I
can deal with it I'll find a job somehow
you know I'll get through it's not gonna
be the most important thing that happens
in my life so if you take that attitude
when you're writing I don't care what
the examiner thinks it frees you up to
just focus on the ideas instead of
thinking about what they will think and
that is where the confidence comes from
accepting that things might not work out
the way you want they're giving it your
best shot anyway okay so we'll get into
the Q&A my name's James Titan thank you
very much
[Applause]
so any questions
okay so first of all I'd say there is no
perfect solution so if you can find an
adequate solution that accurately
reflects what you want to communicate
then that's good enough
so with when you're facing one of these
problems in your in your writing you can
think of it as kind of a problem of
expression which has multiple valid
solutions and what you're trying to do
is put together something that helps you
link to the next thing leads you in the
direction that you want to go so often
what happens with perfectionism is
you're assessing your own writing which
is a good thing but you don't know
what's good enough or you haven't
decided what's what's good enough and so
you get kind of stuck in this stuck in
this loop where you don't make a
decision where you don't where you don't
make forward we don't move forward too
so when you look at it just say well you
know does this accurately communicate
the idea the idea that's it that's in my
head one way to force yourself to do
that as I said is to give yourself a
timed word count target so you still
want to communicate communicate clearly
you still want to write well but it's
balanced against this against this other
target so if you say in the next hour
I'm going to write 150 or 200 words then
if you aim for that target then it stops
you worrying quite so much about is this
exactly the right word to use in this in
this in this particular case
so yeah it's altering where you are on
that on that perfectionism scale I would
never say some people advice just write
as fast as you can I never advise that
because you just end up with a mess
you've increased the word count if you
do want to just get words down for you
to give yourself something to work with
give it use pen and paper so do a
mindmap dump everything down and you can
still select ideas so yeah just go a
little bit faster with that time - word
count target try that out and it should
it should help
yeah so I think it's good to have a
daily target so that you can have an
objective measure of whether it was a
successful day or not okay so when I was
writing my own thesis I had a target of
500 words a day as a minimum and I knew
that you know if it was going well that
wouldn't take me very long at all you
know it might take me a couple of hours
to write 500 you know reasonably
reasonably okay words so I set myself a
target that I knew I could beat every
single day so some days I would write
2,000 words you know a fantastic day so
wow I've smashed my target other days I
might really struggle to reach that 500
so those days when I'm writing about you
know some aspects which I maybe don't
know so well but I work through until I
reach that 500 500 target and then if
it's really difficult you can break it
down into smaller targets so before
lunch I'm gonna get hundred words and
then you know so you've got this success
to build upon if you set the target as
something that you can barely achieve
then most of the time you're not
reaching that and so you just feel bad
it might have been a really good day you
might have written you know 900 words
first I didn't meet my target so you're
gonna be that little bit less a little
bit less motivated so some people write
faster than others so if you're a native
speaker then probably it's going to be a
little bit faster if you have a bit more
writing skill if you've practiced it
more if you've just got whatever natural
talent you may be a little bit faster so
set a target that's appropriate
appropriate for you and you can work
that out over over a couple of days if
500 is too much you low lower it's a 300
set a target that you can that you can
smash
so in terms of the depth that you go
into no matter what subject no matter
who it is you should vary the amount of
depth that you give on each individual
idea so you will have some areas where
you're really really really strong and
generally speaking those should be the
areas where you say a little bit more
but in order to get to those points
maybe you need to mention some other
areas which are not exactly your your
main strengths so what you can do is
mention them relatively briefly refer to
other sources and then that frees you up
to give more space to the things with
which you're really interested in so one
example of this from my own from my own
thesis as I was very very much an
experimentalist so my maths for a
physicist was you know pretty
embarrassingly bad but I was pretty good
at the practical side but in order to
talk about the practical side I needed
some theory right the the basic problem
that I was working on in order to
explain it I needed a little bit of a
little bit of theory so what I did was
had basically one paragraph that said
something like in 1928 this person came
up with this theory for overcoming the
diffraction limit you know etc etc but
then brought it very quickly to the
practical side so you had this theory in
1928 and then I think it was only in the
1950s that it was proven experimentally
but it was only in but it was then in
the 1980s with the discovery of scanning
tunneling microscopy that this other
thing became practical so I covered that
ground so from 1928 to the early 80s
more than 50 years in one paragraph and
then just focused on the practical stuff
okay so there's almost no depth to the
theory at all it was just this is this
is the equation this is the consequence
and then straight into straight into the
practical so very the amount of depth
and the guiding principle is say more
about the things that you know more
about and do it that way sometimes you
can give almost zero detail at all so
another example that
technique that I used it also had
applications and say biology so all I
did was say you know this technique has
found applications in a number of
different fields including biology and
something else in something else and for
each one I just had a quick reference
and all I was doing is naming the fields
where it's been applied no depth at all
but it sort of indicates that it makes
the point that this has a lot of
applications and then bring it right
back to to the area that I was actually
actually interested in so don't lose
time going into depth on areas that
there you don't know don't know so much
about
so if you're writing a literature review
for example you need to have a base
level of knowledge of what is happening
in the field before you write anything
so what some people do is they take a
stack of papers first paper and then
they try to summarize it in one in one
paragraph okay but then you don't know
how that paper fits into the context of
everything else which is happening in
your field you don't know what role it's
playing so it doesn't quite fit into a
into a narrative and then it's very hard
to edit that when once you have all
those all those all of those paragraphs
so you need to have the very minimum
enough knowledge to say well there's
this general trend in the literature and
that could be there's a lot of debate
about this subject or you know there's a
million different applications of this
particular technique or this is a
long-standing problem in the field which
has had all of these different all of
these different approaches you also need
to know what are the kind of key
influential papers within that field
okay so that the highly cited things
that you can broadly divide the
literature into two categories so you
have the groundbreaking stuff that has a
massive influence on the field so if
somebody invents something or discover
something new that then triggers a whole
load of other research by other people
okay so if you know who the
groundbreaking people are you can then
set that up as kind of like an event you
know there was this discovery which then
triggers other things so then all of
those following papers they fit within
the context of that initial discovery as
a sort of consequence of that initial
initial discovery so you need to have
kind of a broad picture of more or less
what has been happening within within
the field okay which just comes from
come from reading and a little bit of
little bit of experience then what you
can do is read specific papers to fill
in some of the gaps as you're writing so
if you're putting together this
narrative
so let's say you want to talk about the
development of a particular technique so
you kinda know who made the big
discoveries you sort of know you know
what the different variations of that
technique are so then you can look at
look at different papers for specific
for specific details to fill in some of
those some of those gaps so it's not
quite as simple as saying right as
you're reading or do all the reading and
then write I'd say do a lot of reading
and then as you're writing refer back to
the literature multiple multiple times
on this point I have seen some people
say I saw one person say I only believe
in ever reading an article once and that
was just kind of blew my mind because it
made no sense whatsoever and basically
the idea being if you take good enough
notes then you never need to look at it
again but the thing is that different
papers will be useful to you for
different reasons at different times so
if you read something in your first year
and you might not be ready for it or the
thing that they say maybe it isn't quite
relevant to what you're working on at
the moment but then two or even three
years later maybe you remember oh yeah
there was that paper that I read or you
stumble across it again and then it
becomes very very very relevant so you
all constantly be kind of referring back
to literature time and time and time
again you know that just that just never
and never ever ever stops but it all
comes from there having this sort of
contextual knowledge of what is
happening in the in the field and sort
of broad strokes thing and then the
individual papers kind of serve as
examples of a lot of things that are
having
okay so the mindmap it's kind of an I
see it as sort of an intermediate step
so you guys big tangled mess of ideas in
your head and then you ultimately want
to put it in this in this linear fashion
so that's basically what I what I use
you can do you can do it online I'd
prefer to do it with with with pen and
paper and then what you have is kind of
a stock of ideas it may be that you have
too much for one sheet of paper in which
case you kind of try and focus in on one
topic and then mindmap around that
around that particular topic but then
what you can have is sometimes an entire
chapters worth of ideas on one page and
it's very very quick to to look at that
and review it and then pick out ideas or
as you're writing refer to it and say oh
yeah I need to I need to remember to put
that particular thing in the next
intermediate step that you can do has
just create some some bullet points so
from that mind map you can plan okay
this is the basic problem that weird
that we're addressing this was kind of
the first major discovery
this was the consequence of that
particular that particular thing the
other intermediate step is that the mind
mapping might expose some gaps in your
knowledge so you might think I think
there was that paper by this person I
can't remember who exactly it was or
when it was I need to double-check that
so so in addition to the bullet points
for what you're actually going to put in
sometimes it can help you to identify
things that you need to look up or other
other preparation work that you need to
that you need to do as well so basically
you're from mind map to bullet points
figure out where the gaps are and then
only then can you I would suggest
starting starting so starting to write
and again you can repeat that process
multiple multiple times that's really
quick and really really easy
when you're at a relatively early stage
of the PhD you don't necessarily know
what literature is going to be most
relevant to you at their very end so the
the literature review that you put
together will almost certainly change by
the time you get to your final year or
when you're when you're preparing to to
submit so what you can do is take some
of these difficulties that you have with
the literature and turn them into useful
observations about the state of the
field so if lots of people are
approaching this problem from all kinds
of different different angles and maybe
there are lots of contradictory theories
or maybe in some areas there's a total
lack of literature what you can do is
instead of saying in this area there's
like 10,000 papers and in this area
there's none what do I do just make
those into into statements that you put
in your literature review so you can say
this problem has been approached from a
multitude of different different
perspectives in different in different
fields including a and B and C and D
okay
then you can say one of the most
influential approaches or one of the
most commonly used approaches is is this
okay and then you so you can explain you
know who the big thinkers are in that
area but then maybe there's a problem
with that approach okay
so or it doesn't take account of some
other aspects of behavior in your case
so then you can introduce another strand
of research which addresses that problem
so again we're trying to frame the
information as a response to a problem
so we have one approach you know which
is used by some people that's pretty
good at some things but less good at
this so in order to address that
deficiency we can approach it in this in
this other way so you can make these
kind of these these these observations
about the literature and then figure out
how to put it into
kind of structure where everything is a
response to a particular problem or or
in need and at the moment honestly I
would say see it as just praxis this is
not the final literature review that
you're gonna that you're gonna do get an
idea of the kinds of things that are
happening get an idea if the key papers
and then as you as you go about your
research you will find some things which
are absolutely gold dust you will find
some papers that really influence the
way you think and then later on you can
work those in you can work those into
into the final version of of the
literature review as a more sort of
general point when you look at the
literature in addition to different
pieces of literature being useful to you
at different times some papers will be
massively more useful to you than others
so if you have like a stack of ten
thousand papers maybe ten of them
actually influence the way that you
think and so you can sort of filter the
literature according to its usefulness
and relevance so on the one hand or at
the top rather you have so that the
aerated papers so these are things which
had a massive influence on your field or
a massive influence on you okay so there
may be be sort of 10 or 12 possibly 20
of these which would you find throughout
the course of your PhD then there will
be some things which are sort of
relevant they provide some useful
background information it's good quality
research so there'll be more of these
but you'll say a little bit less about
them in your literature review and then
you have even more papers which are
possibly relevant but you don't really
see how they fit into the big picture
they don't have a big influence on the
field they don't directly influence your
your research so these are kind of the C
rated papers and then you have the D
rated ones which are either poor quality
or just irrelevance and they'll be
thousands of these so it's recognizing
as you're going through the literature
of this one's really good and you want
to spend more time with those papers
and in terms of understanding them and
also in the literature is literature
review as well in terms of emphasizing
those in your in your writing
so so balancing the sort of reading and
learning and basic stuff against getting
and getting results okay so I think that
obviously the reading is really
important but you you need to know what
has already been what has already been
been done partly to provide context for
your for your work but also because a
lot of the practical problems that you
struggle with they're already solved in
in the literature so you can find find
useful you know useful information but
in order to fully understand the
literature you can't just read you need
practical experience as well so this
happens a little bit more in the in the
social sciences I think but a lot of
people spend too much time reading and
reading and reading and trying to get
you know a complete theoretical
understanding before doing any practical
work and you have to be willing to just
try doing some experiments and making
mistakes and letting things go wrong so
that you know you gain a lot of that a
lot of that skill in order to get your
get your results so you mentioned in
terms of getting results to show your
supervisor I think initially it's about
getting the skill to get the results
okay so don't put yourself under
pressure to have a result immediately
it's more about getting the getting the
basic techniques down learning making
mistakes and then you can you know
you'll find you get you get more results
later in my own case I'm in my in my own
PhD I made exactly this this mistake I
was constantly frustrated by the lack of
results and when things went wrong which
they did pretty much constantly I got
kind of dispirited but because the
equipment that we were that we were
using it was breaking down all the time
I could see kills my smiling at the fact
he remembers it well because the
equipment was breaking down all the time
and I was constantly having to solve
these problems what was happening was I
was developing pretty good level of
skill and understanding of how the
equipment worked but I
wasn't getting results and it was only
in sort of towards actually at the end
of the third year that things started
coming together and once I had some
results I had the skill to kind of
exploit them quickly okay
so focusing on getting the skill
allowing yourself to make mistakes
rather than having results to show
initially their balance with reading you
know that will change throughout that
throughout the course of the PhD that we
times when you're doing more practical
stuff times when you're reading more but
the reading never stops you don't want
to be too much focused on one or the
other so you don't wanna be doing all
practical stuff and no reading you don't
be doing all reading and no and no
practical stuff so they're very it
depending on on what you're trying to
boy you're trying to do
okay so writing in a second language
this is extremely common because pretty
much every PhD students with some
exceptions pretty much everybody
worldwide has to write in English
because English is the language of
academia okay so you know that what
stage you at what year are you in almost
second year so you have time so it's not
a surprise to you that in two or three
years you have to submit a thesis in
English so what you can do is work on
that basic skill so work on your work on
your written English and the best thing
to do is get a tutor right who can work
through with you so see your common
mistakes and and correct those if you
leave it another year or two years it
gets harder and harder and harder
because you're under more time pressure
you can't and you'll have other things
other things to do so I would say start
now start taking taking those English
lessons you'll you know there are plenty
of English tutors around find one who
can who can help you specifically with
writing and yeah it's just another skill
that you can that you can that you can
add you know it's coming up so you know
you you know that it's a point of stress
so yeah start working on it
I think it's better to
multiple times than to try to say
everything about a paper you know the
first time the first time you mention it
so as I said different papers will be
useful to you at different times and
sometimes the same paper will be useful
to you in different ways at different
points throughout the throughout the
thesis so maybe initially you can set it
up if you're giving a bit of background
about your field you can you can mention
that paper and say you know one of the
one of the most influential papers
regarding the subjects is the paper by
whoever and give a quick overview of
what they what ate what they said and
then later when you're perhaps
presenting your results you can say this
is similar to the results observed by
you know that person you know whatever
whatever it happens to be this yeah
that's absolutely absolutely fine you
can refer to the same once multiple
times
so the short answer is that writer's
block doesn't exist and the reason why I
say that is that there is no there is no
single thing that is right as writer's
block it's an effect that has multiple
different causes okay so if you think of
just solving writer's block in terms of
I'm not producing enough words or no
words at all then the obvious solution
is just we'll write more words right but
instead you have to look at the
underlying cause why you're struggling
to find those find those words so it
could be simply that it's a difficult
idea that you're trying to express so
it's just a matter of taking the time to
first of all fully understand the idea
to make sure that you know what you want
to say about it and how it fits into it
into the context so that's one kind of
problem which is basically you know just
spend a little bit more time with it
think about it don't take the pressure
off in terms of in terms of writing and
writing what writer's block could also
come because you're tired right so if
you've been writing all day and you're
just to kind of end up at this point
where you just can't think straight then
the solution is not to carry on working
or to slow down it's just to take them
take a break it could also come because
of fear so it could be that you're
really worried about what your
supervisor will say about a particular
particular thing in which case it's just
working on that all that confidence of
saying well okay I don't know what my
supervisor is gonna think but I'm gonna
give it by giving my best shot anyway
there were all kinds of different things
so you've got to figure out what is it
that's actually causing the writer's
block and then address address that okay
so figuring out what you're what you're
what you're feeling it could be as it
came up in a in a different question it
could be perfectionism in which case
setting that sort of timed word count
target is it is a good thing to do it
could be that you need to do some other
preparation work so you need to complete
your analysis or double-check your end
they so look something up whatever you
know whatever it happens to be so yeah
don't think of it in terms of in terms
of writer's block but think of writer's
block as a symptom of some other
underlying thing than if you can
identify that then you can find you can
find a solution
there's two aspect to aspects of it one
is organizing your time in turn in terms
of what you decide to read at a
particular time the other aspect is how
you organize the the literature itself
and the copies of the papers that you
that you have in terms of organizing the
copies of the papers that you have the
way that I did it or the way that I
eventually did it was I had this at this
huge stack of paper on my on my desk
that was completely disorganized I also
had a bunch of stuff stored
electronically and basically what I did
was I took this stack of papers and I
sorted them into folders by subtopic so
I had ring binders and ever so
everything on hydrogen termination of
silicon surfaces for example was in one
folder so I could then just reach out
and grab it and I had everything on that
topic in one place
there were some papers which spanned
multiple topics so I just had more than
one copy or I had a note in there saying
see also this one in this in this folder
if you have physical copies then what
you can do is you can highlight
important papers by just drawing a star
on the front so as you scan through you
know it's really easy to find and also
any notes or anything that you want to
highlight you keep it in context with
all of the information so instead of
taking separate notes like in any in an
Excel spreadsheet or something where
you're extracting the information from
its context instead you keep everything
and you just highlight the highlight the
important parts that you want to want to
remember okay so if you organize it into
physical folders you can do the same
thing digitally
I think physical is better so if you
have that if you have that option in
terms of organizing your time in terms
of around reading it depends what you're
trying to do at any given at any given
point so if you're embarking on some new
kind of sub projects or some new branch
of research then a lot of it will be
focused around getting getting to grips
with basic principles or basic basic
techniques then you have to identify the
papers that will help you to do that the
difficulty is that most papers are not
written
to teach they're written with the
assumption that you you're already kind
of expert so sometimes what you have to
do is you find a paper you identify the
kinds of ideas that that paper or lots
of papers are talking about and then you
go somewhere else for an explanation
sometimes going to Wikipedia is really
good Wikipedia is fantastic for academic
subjects because the only people who all
writes 10,000 words on some obscure
statistical technique are the nerdy
academics who are obsessed with that
particular topic
so sometimes Wikipedia is way better
than any any individual paper sometimes
or you have to look at a textbook or
just ask somebody other times you'll be
looking for specific results so you know
you're looking at papers for those kind
of for those kind of things to compare
your results to or just to see what's
been done sometimes you're just trying
to get an overview of the kinds of kinds
of things that are that are happening in
which case focusing on on pre-existing
literature reviews is the best the best
way to do it but it really depends on
what you're trying to do at any at any
particular time and whenever you're
looking at the literature having that
idea in mind what are you looking for is
is really really helpful otherwise you
just get lost in this in this massive
massive paper okay so I think that's
about all we've got all we've got time
for so if that's it for me thank you
very much
[Applause]
