Today I attended a session provided by the Griffith Graduate School entitled ‘How to Plan Your PhD’ workshop with Hugh Kearns from iThinkWell. The workshop was directed towards PhDers who are in the early-mid stanes of their HDR candidates and covered a range of topics. After having a bit of a flat week and not achieving as much as I had hoped, this 2. 5 hour session was the perfect remedy, as it reaffirmed what I have already been applying and finding useful, as well as suggesting a few clear and productive strategies to identify next step goals, stay focused and chart progress.
7 main themes from the Thinkwell workshop
Without providing too many details as I appreciate the content presented is part of Thinkwell’s core business, in a nutshell this workshop covered 7 main themes:
- looking at the big picture
- breaking down big tasks into detailed plans of action
- addressing aspects of Supervisor meetings
- some helpful ideas to track and monitor writing progress
- working on parallel specific projects that might be undertaken concurrent the dissertation
- a few tips regarding setbacks (l really liked the Tim Tam analogy)
- finances
Clear and useful
The presentation was well-paced, thoughtful and very accessible. The few key main ideas were developed well with enough detail to be quickly understood and interesting, but not too overwhelming that it required extra work and thinking. I liked how each idea was explained, and for the goal setting/time management tasks, there were handouts to fill, followed by time to confer and share ideas with others before moving on. The session was engaging and productive, and the content was immediately useful and applicable for each student. I’m now super clear on what I am doing first thing tomorrow morning!
I have my 6-month meeting with my supervisors in 2 weeks, so the planning aspect of some of the handouts gave me some good ideas about what to bring to the table to ask the right questions at the next meeting. I also got some more ideas about the next steps to complete leading up to the meeting as well.
Free online planning resources
I had looked at some of Thinkwell’s online resources last year and had actually downloaded the PhD tool kit then – now having attended the workshop and being immersed in my studies, the functionality of the Thinkwell planners and forms now have context and are more practical. I remember thinking that it was great that they provided so many free time management resources and templates for free (check them out here), which is one of the reasons I was interested in attending this session as I liked the range of time planners, guide, lists and prioritising tasks and really appreciated that they were offered for free for others to use.
I was glad I made the effort to go. It was good to connect with some of the other researchers I had not seen in a while and to meet some new faces. I came away with some good ideas and most importantly, I’m reinvigorated to start tomorrow a fresh – and dive back into my research routine – that in itself was worth the effort!
