Finish on Time - The Doctoral Student Handbook

by Åsa Burman

As academics, we spend a great deal of time focusing on the content of our work, but sometimes we forget to pay attention to the work process, or how we work, think, and act. However, the process is important to finishing our academic work and managing stress levels. As individuals, we often have one main strategy, or a certain way of thinking and acting, for dealing with a variety of situations. For many doctoral students, the main strategy is to work harder. Our main strategy often works perfectly well, but as we encounter new situations we may need a greater variety of strategies.

This book shifts the focus from what to how and provides you with strategies and hands-on techniques to finish your dissertation on time and feel good along the way. You will learn about units, the weekly schedule and the 80/20 principle, and apply these concepts to your own work situation. These effectiveness techniques are closely connected to stress management techniques: the demand-control-support model both explains causes of stress in the academic environment and supports you in shifting from negative stress to positive stress.

Genres: Nonfiction

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

Reviews

[Clàudia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good book! It's full of hands-on techniques and exercises to manage one's PhD time more effectively and not being too stressed on the way. It helped me have a holistic perspective on working as a PhD student and even made me reflect deeper on why I'm doing my specific PhD project, setting personal goals. It also clarified some concepts such as negative and positive stress and emphasized the difference between high workload and high control and high workload and low control. Åsa writes very clearly and very straightforward, which is bliss when working in academia.

[Joana Campos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice book to have along your PhD. It has valuable concepts, testimonials and exercises. The last part of the book only makes sense to use in the last part of my PhD, so I will return to this book. I also participated on their workshop and it was both interactive and well structured!

[KimNica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is probably the best handbook for doctoral students I have come across. It is very hands-on and practical, and it is written in a tone that gives you the assurance that there are always concrete things you can do to move your dissertation project forwards. Where other handbooks spend a lot of time on how to identify a topic, how to delineate a research gap, how to write an initial topic etc., this book takes seriously the day-to-day concerns of students, e.g. what to do when you are stuck, how to overcome motivation problems, and how to manage the sense of being overwhelmed that comes with a four-year project.
Not all the techniques in this book are going to be for everyone, but there are enough here for everyone to take away something and potentially improve their working method beyond just their PhD project. I highly recommend it!

A weakness of this book is that it sticks very close to the Swedish context, e.g. when discussing milestones or practices like the higher seminar. Here a more general approach, or a greater awareness of practices elsewhere, could have broadened the appeal I think.
If there is ever a second edition of this book it should also pay greater attention to the stages students might find themselves in. An exercise that is meant to motivate you, like the dissertation binder for example, can be quite demotivating if attempted at an too early stage when even the topic is often still in flux. Personally, I think this book as it stands now is great for doctoral students who are within their last two years, but a future edition could pay more attention to which exercises are helpful at an early stage and which ones are more relevant when you are nearing the finish line.

[Agnese Kocere · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I read this before my PhD!