How to balance your part-time PhD with other work

doing a phd even if you have no other major commitments on your time and you're just working on the phd full-time is quite a daunting and demanding task so what can you do if that's not the case and you have other demands on your time whether that's part-time work or something else which is demanding your attention now one of the reasons why it's so difficult to balance phd work with these other demands is that the consequences of your actions with regards to your phd on a daily basis are generally speaking not that great in comparison to other work so if you don't do anything on your phd today if you don't do any work at all probably there will be no major consequences likewise if you have an amazingly productive phd work day and you do everything that you plan to do again it won't have that much positive effect because it's such a tiny fraction of everything that you need to do so because there aren't many consequences to either either positive or negative consequences so either not doing anything or having an amazingly productive day it's really really easy for the other demands in your time to push the phd completely out of the way because if you have some paid work for example if you don't if you don't do that at the time when it's due then very quickly you will lose that paid work there are immediate or medium-term consequences to your to your decisions so what tends to happen is the phd gets completely pushed out of the way on a regular basis and that trains the habit of deferring the phd work so then maybe when you do have some free time it's really difficult to get back into it because you've not been engaging with it and you've again developed that habit of putting things off so i think it's extremely important to maintain contact with your phd on a regular basis and set aside some time every single week and protect that time as a non-negotiable commitment and what i mean by that is treating the phd with a higher level of priority so that it can compete with those other tasks during that set time so if somebody says to you can you produce this report for me on monday and monday is your phd day then you have to say um no i'm not available during that time and then fit the other work around it you've got to make that phd time a non-negotiable commitment as soon as you start moving it putting it off to fit the other things in then you know that is the habit that you're going to develop and it's always going to lose that particular battle so you've got to get into the habit of setting that time and telling people that you're not available now you can do this because you probably do it with other things in your life so if there was a medical emergency for example and then someone was emailing you and saying you know can you do this on monday you would say no i'm not available i have to go to the hospital because of whatever reason or if you were sick or if you had a doctor's appointment or something else if you're a moving house whatever it is you know people generally do this from time to time in terms of setting a priority and then fitting other things other things around it so you have to apply that to the phd otherwise there is simply no way that it can compete with those other other demands on your time now sometimes people are worried about this they're worried about how people will will react but if you always say yes to everything then they will expect you to continue to do that they will always trample over any boundaries that you set because they're used to getting you to do whatever they want at whatever time because you always say yes but if you start saying no to things or rather saying i'm sorry i can't do it at that particular time but is it okay if i do that for you on wednesday now generally speaking people will adapt and they will respect your time a lot more they will give you more notice to do things because they know that they can't just drop things on you at the last at the last minute now if people react badly to this if they say well you know you need to do this work needs to be your priority then you have a decision to make because if that continues if you simply cannot set those boundaries or people will not allow you to set those boundaries or they don't respect those boundaries then you have a decision to make about which is the greater priority for you is it more important that you keep that job or that specific job or is it more important than you get the pa that you get the phd if the phd is more important to you than that job then switch jobs find a job where you have a little bit more flexibility in terms of your in terms of your hours otherwise it is simply not going to happen it might be a difficult choice to make but this is the choice that you have to make you cannot simply stay in the same situation and expect things to change now sometimes of course it is a little bit more complicated because your part-time work might be for the university where you're trying to get your phd so you might be doing teaching assistant work you might be producing reports for your supervisor those kind of things in that case maybe instead of completely quitting that work perhaps renegotiating some of your some of your commitments i see this all the time with phd students who feel that they cannot say no to anything that they're asked to do by their by their supervisor but then what happens is they lose years and years and years of their time and the whole reason why they're doing this part-time work is to stay in the institution and get their phd but then they're not able to do the phd and so it's just doing work for the sake of doing work so saying clearly and openly to your supervisor or whoever else you're working with um i need to start prioritizing the phd work at the moment i cannot take on this amount of teaching from next semester would it be possible to you know do one less course for example to free up some time so renegotiating some of those commitments starting to say no to some things there will be other people who can take on a lot of a lot of that work again if people don't respect those boundaries if they just keep piling on more and more work then you have to make a decision is it actually possible to put in the hours which are required to do your phd in some cases there are supervisors who simply want people to do free administrative work for them and they want to keep the students back as long as possible to keep them keep them doing that so they're not working in the interests of their students that's a difficult situation to be in and again you have to make decisions about whether that path is actually going to lead you to ever completing your phd and possibly make some make some difficult decisions so sometimes in that case it's it's complicated it can be political there can be all sorts all sorts of other things going on but starting to set some boundaries and negotiating some of those commitments instead of saying yes to everything is a as a really important step so i'm very aware there can be a lot of complications but whatever the situation is you need to have some ring fenced protected time that you dedicate to the phd if that's not possible then you may have some difficult decisions to make but do not expect that it's all going to somehow change unless you start changing some of the decisions that you make on a daily and weekly basis so if you have any comments on this or if there are any particular situations that you're that you're dealing with please do comment below and i'll do my best to help out if you want more tips or if you want to know more about what i do check out my websites there are two of them there's jameson phd.com where i have hundreds of blog posts on all things phd related and also the phd academy where we have a little bit more detailed guidance we've got recorded courses a forum we also do weekly zoom calls and we have a whole community of phd students as well i'll put links to both of those websites in the description below that's it from me best of luck and see you next time

Channel: James Hayton PhD

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Length: 8min 36sec (516 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 08 2021