My take on how to complete a PhD (in Computer Science): 1.

Learn and use a version control system for everything you do (code, datasets, text etc.) o Useful for backup o Useful for versioning 2. Learn statistics and experimental method (e.g. factorial design) o Universally useful, and makes you critical to what you read o T-tests seems to popular in CS-papers :) o Prefer confidence intervals over "significantly different" and p-values o Be aware that the difference between significant and not significant is not statistically significant :) o It isn't embarrassing to read the cartoon guide to statistics! 3. Learn scientific writing, take a course! o Always, and I do mean always support your claims when writing (e.g. with references proofs, empirical support or good rhetoric writing). Consider dangling claims in papers as paper-eating bugs, if you don't feed them with support they will eat your paper. And augmenting why the research you are presenting is important doesn't hurt. 4. Submit papers early and often (to conferences, workshops and journals) o The likelihood that external reviewers provide complementary input on your work compared to your advisor and grad student colleagues is probably significantly close to 100% o Demand to be a "slave" co-author for your advisor on the first paper, e.g. do all ground work (experiments etc.), but you learn the skill of writing and review process. o As my father advised me half-seriously: "even write on the toilet" o Figure out the most important research events in your field o Do at least 1 unlikely-to-get-accepted submission in order to get a reject early just to get heat. It is way better to get a reject (with explanation why it was rejected) from a great conference or journal the first year, than getting it for the first time from a medium quality conference a few months before you are going to defend your thesis. 5. Submit code early and often. o Writing code keeps you sharpened. Spending several years developing some kind of framework, model or algorithm sketch (without any implementation) and then try to implement it in order to evaluate is likely to cause trouble. By then your coding skills are about as sharp as a spoon, and the model or whatever you are trying to evaluate with implementation is probably way too abstract and requires a lot of massage in order to be implementable. And if that isn't enough, you probably are about to run out of funding. o You are way more marketable when you are finished than if you don't write code o Learn at least 1 new language that is not too close to those you know during your PhD o The fundamentals of Computer Science are still software (and hardware). 6. Least Publishable Unit papers are not bad because: o It is like code, concise and shorter methods that do one thing well are preferred over longer methods that try to a lot of stuff, don't get me started on

testing. 7. Try to get involved in the research community as a reviewer (probably not the first year) o You'll be surprised how unpolished submitted papers actually are, and how different the first submit and the final polished,.. eh published paper actually is. 8. Learn at least 1 drawing, 1 presentation, 1 word processor and 1 statistics tool o Leslie Lamport knew what he was doing.. o Google Docs&spreadsheets for notes and calculations 9. Teach! o Being thrown in front of hundreds of students with the expectancy that you are going to teach them something useful and interesting is an extremely valuable lesson (and quite scary too I must admit). And this can save your career if you forgot to code (read 5.) ;-) 10. Oh wait, create interesting MSc topics and get MSc students o The payoff can be great (e.g. get you more productive by helping you concretize your ideas into code and get them to do experiments). o There is usual an at least linear (probably exponential) relationship on the PhD relevant output you get and the input/support you provide the MSc students. 11. My experience is that "doers" are more likely to finish their PhD than "smarties". o Thinking doesn't create your thesis, but writing might! o Hopefully you are both a "doer" and a "smartie" :) Hm, can't think of anything else, and no guarantees about that you will manage to complete your PhD if you follow these advice :) Note: I don't think these approaches will help you complete any large project (as Shane Lindsay's recipe claims to), but it probably won't hurt either.

How to complete your PhD (or any large project): Hard and soft deadlines, and the Martini Method
January 7th, 2008 by shane

Having recently completed a PhD, I will share with you three indispensable nuggets of advice for how to get the monster vanquished: use hard deadlines, soft deadlines, and the Martini Method. With a small amount of imagination these can be applied to any large project. Perhaps the most important determiner when a PhD gets finished is the HARD DEADLINE. While hard deadlines are supremely important, giving advice to have one is somewhat pointless, since they are also a factor that you have little or no control over. The main hard deadline is that which your institution has determined your maximum amount of time allowable for completion of your PhD. At my institution, this was four years. And without fail, graduate students would be frantically printing their thesis the day before this deadline

for binding and submission. Other frequent constraining deadlines are when your money runs out, or the start of a new job. While these arent quite as constraining as the ultimate deadline, life can be made considerably difficult if you are left with writing your PhD when starting a new job, or when you cannot afford to pay your rent. As any normal human being knows, deadlines are important for many reasons. One of which is Parkinsons law: which stipulates that the time you take to complete a task is strongly determined by the time you have to complete that task. Deadlines which you have more control over are SOFT DEADLINES. These are those deadlines which you determine yourself. One advantage over hard deadlines is that you can choose how many of them and when they occur. The disadvantage is that the consequences of failing to meet them are usually not severe, and can be safely ignored. One solution to their softness is to create real consequences from deadlines. The method of doing this will depend on your personality, and whether you are best driven by the carrot or the stick. Perhaps the most common method in a PhD is externalisation of the deadlines by forming a contract with your supervisor. Many supervisors will set deadlines to their students, but if you do not have a supervisor that does this I would urge you to engage your supervisor in the process of setting soft deadlines. I had an arrangement in the later stages of writing up my thesis to have a piece of work for him to read every week or second week (depending on the size of the work), which helped immensely. You may not like these deadlines, but I believe they are essential, following Parkinsons law, amongst other reasons. What I call the Martini Method is named after an anecdote I once read about the novelist Anthony Burgess (of Clockwork Orange fame). Burgess was a very productive writer, which is attributed to a system where he would force himself to write a 1000 words a day, 365 days a year. When he had completed his word count, he would relax with a dry martini, and enjoy the rest of the day with an easy conscience, and normally in bar. A friend of mines version of the Martini Method was to come into the office everyday, and not allow herself to leave until her word target had been reached. Most days she left before 5pm, though on occasion she would stay as late as 6 or 7. She would also set herself mini Martinis, such as allowing herself an ice cream in the summer once she had hit half her daily word count. Though we started at the same time, she finished her PhD a lot earlier than me! A PhD is a huge project, which has to be largely self managed, and its size can lead to anxiety which leads to procrastination as a coping mechanism. If you spend a few days without working on your PhD, anxiety or guilt can build up, which consequently make it even harder to get started, and days can easily turn into weeks without meaningful work being undertaken. The Martini method also encapsulates the well known idea that a large project needs to be split up into small chunks, and quantifies those chunks into specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound goals (what management books call a SMART objective). The Martini Method works by the carrot, which personality psychologists have generally have found to be more effective than the stick. 1000 words is an arbitrary number, and you might find it too much or two little, but I think that somewhere between 500-1000 to be optimal. Writing a 1000 words a day doesnt take into reviewing and editing time. What I used to do was to start the day with the editing of the text written on the previous day. This makes for an easier way to get started, as editing existing text is less cognitively daunting than starting afresh, and warms up the mind for the writing to come.

The new version of MS word makes word counting much easier - when you select text it shows you the word count at the bottom. One tool that can be used to stick to a daily habit is the chain method. The comedian Jerry Seinfeld marks a cross on his calendar every day, and aims to create an unbroken chain of crosses. Online daily goal tracker and habit maker Joes Goals now implements the chain method, which could be used instead of a paper calendar if you are that way inclined.

Jerry Seinfeld's Productivity Secret

He revealed a unique calendar system he uses to pressure himself to write. Here's how it works. He told me to get a big wall calendar that has a whole year on one page and hang it on a prominent wall. The next step was to get a big red magic marker. He said for each day that I do my task of writing; I get to put a big red X over that day. "After a few days you'll have a chain. Just keep at it and the chain will grow longer every day. You'll like seeing that chain, especially when you get a few weeks under your belt. Your only job next is to not break the chain." "Don't break the chain," he said again for emphasis. Over the years I've used his technique in many different areas. I've used it for exercise, to learn programming, to learn network administration, to build successful websites and build successful businesses. It works because it isn't the one-shot pushes that get us where we want to go, it is the consistent daily action that builds extraordinary outcomes. You may have heard "inch by inch anything's a cinch." Inch by inch does work if you can move an inch every day. Daily action builds habits. It gives you practice and will make you an expert in a short time. If you don't break the chain, you'll start to spot opportunities you otherwise wouldn't. Small improvements accumulate into large improvements rapidly because daily action provides "compounding interest." Skipping one day makes it easier to skip the next. I've often said I'd rather have someone who will take actioneven if smallevery day as opposed to someone who swings hard once or twice a week. Seinfeld understands that daily action yields greater benefits than sitting down and trying to knock out 1000 jokes in one day. Think for a moment about what action would make the most profound impact on your life if you worked it every day. That is the action I recommend you put on your Seinfeld calendar. Start today and earn your big red X. And from here on out... Don't break the chain!