As a way to kick things off - I am reposting a post I had on my old blog - how to survive graduate school. Below are a few tips for being successful as a grad student on a day-to-day basis.
Be Consistent- I often relate aspects of my life and career to sports, and I apologize to non-sports fans for when this permeates my thoughts, as in this case. Often the differences between great and good teams or athletes is not overall talent, but rather the ability play talent on a consistent basis. I think the analogy extends well to graduate student life, except a student's effort is measured in workdays and semesters/years rather than games and seasons. Many students are great under pressure; they can pull all-nighters the night before a presentation or to prepare for a trip to the field. While these short bursts of effort and productivity are important (and often necessary) during graduate school, I believe that to be truly successful, students need to find ways to be productive throughout their degree. Aim to be productive each month, each week, each workday. Being consistent will improve your confidence (by getting things done!), and reduce stress (by removing all-nighters from your schedule!). Many of the following points are related to how to be consistent in your effort.
Work efficiently - This tip goes hand-in-hand with the previous. To be consistent, it helps to have efficient work habits. What do I mean by work efficiently? Simply, when you are allocating time to working, work. That's the tip? Really, Nathan? Work when you are working? Let me explain. With graduate school, you are often on your own accord to determine what you do on a day-to-day basis. While this independence is great for your intellectual creativity, it can also lend itself to being easily distracted (i.e. the internet: youtube, facebook, twitter, etc). As best as you can, eliminate distractions, and when you are "working," actually work!
Create timelines - One of the best ways to ensure consistent effort, and minimize distractions, is to continually assess your research in terms of your responsibilities and accomplishments. It is often easy to only focus on the larger aspects of your research (your thesis proposal, that experiment next spring that HAS to work, your month-long field expedition in a year, etc), and therefore it becomes really easy to forget about the little things that are still important (that manuscript your advisor asked you to review, the papers you found last week that need to be read, organizing sources, etc). In response, I suggest you create lists (yes, write/type them!) of what needs to get done. In fact, I suggest you make a few lists that detail when things need to get done. One exercise, which my MS advisor required (yes, this idea was blatantly stolen from him), is to create a timeline for the year; for 12 months write out what you are going to accomplish, being as specific as possible. This good (and terrifying exercise) will force you to think ahead, and realize that not everything can be "put off" for future months. Use the timeline for your "major" goals, relating to your degree requirements and research projects. Make sure to put on your timeline the entire research process, including analyzing results, and writing (and submission!) of manuscripts.
Create to-do lists - While the timeline is good for keeping track of the major requirements of your degree, how do you maintain consistency across weeks or within a week? For this I find simple to-do lists (yes, like the ones your mother would give you when you stopped doing chores around the house) really helpful. During "slow" work weeks, I would create a to-do list for the following workday. Try to be specific (i.e. quantify!) with tasks, as well as realistic (make goals valuable, but realistic. If it isn't attainable, you won't feel the need to stay on task). These lists keep me focused on days where it feels like I could work on "anything" but don't have anything specific that needs to get done that day/week.
Always have something small to work on - I know what you are thinking; "Isn't the definition of a graduate student 'always having something to do?'" I think the tip is important, however, and is closely tied to the previous point (having to-do lists). Again, during "slow" periods of your research, it may be easy to stay motivated and efficient. On the other hand, when deadlines for large projects are looming, the sheer quantity of work that needs to be done is overwhelming. In the past I often battled with feelings of "wow, there is no way this can all get done," and I would end up working lessbecause I was so discouraged! My remedy for these situations is to simply be aware of the small projects/tasks that I could complete on a short time scale to progress my research. This works for "slow" periods by always having something written on the to-do list to keep you motivated. In addition, this method can be used to break large, overwhelming projects (read - thesis!) into smaller chunks (i.e. the Methods section, those three graphs that never seem to come out quite right no matter how much R code you play with, the first paragraph of your Introduction, etc) so that you feel you are working on something manageable. Always breaking larger projects, even if they aren't stressing you out, into smaller, quantifiable chunks, will improve your efficiency, as you will feel accountable for the tasks you specified for the day/week. For example, if you simply have the goal of "work on running statistics from my first experiment and creating appropriate figures," depending on the design, your statistical know-how, and software used for figures, this could take weeks or more to accomplish, and it would be quite easy to not progress from day-to-day. However, if each day has specific goals like "write out a step-by-step for data analysis" or "create histograms and boxplots of all variables of interest and examine" you are more likely to make progress each day. You won't always make the deadlines you set, but at least you're aware of what needs to be done.
That's it for now - I'll post some more grad school tips later!