About PhD (and Research)

Over the years, I’ve read a couple of blog posts and books about pursuing a PhD and doing research more broadly. Here, I’ve collected some suggestions and hints, those I’ve personally found the most helpful and insightful. While many of them focus on academic research, several are far more general.

Goals

The two most important goals of a PhD are to develop problem discovery and effective communication skills. While elaboration is undoubtedly crucial and makes up the bulk of the actual research work, it is more about solving problems than discovering them. As Freeman Dyson said: "It is characteristic of scientific life that it is easy when you have a problem to work on. The hard part is finding your problem.”

Problem discovery is more than just having good ideas; it also requires the ability to recognize them. Everyone has both bad and good ideas, but some people can't tell them apart until they've already spent a lot of time on the not-so-good ones. One thing that sets very good researchers apart is their ability to distinguish good and bad ideas faster, so they avoid wasting too much time exploring dead ends. They think more about the problems instead of their solutions.

Discovering problems requires creativity, experience, but most importantly, motivation. As a student, your advisor provides the first set of problems, and as you progress, you collaboratively define problems. Ideally, by the end, you should be capable of defining problems independently - a main goal of your PhD. You develop an "inner compass" that guides you in discarding unpromising ideas, of which you will have many more than good ones.

The other objective of PhD is to develop effective communication skills. This means presenting your ideas concisely and clearly , with enthusiasm, so that people (experts and non-experts alike) can easily understand why the problems you are working on are both important and interesting. This is a very important skill that is often overlooked. Good communication is essential for convincing others to collaborate, fund your research, and accept/read your research papers. It also improves your overall cognitive skills.

What is a good problem?

A good problem is simple, as simple as possible, and the easiest one that you cannot solve. No one begins with brilliant ideas out of thin air, and you cannot think only of great contributions. These also require luck, which “happens when preparation meets opportunity” [1].

Good problems should also be recognized by some other people to be novel/useful. That's why you should not only read but also review research papers, and do brainstorming with others! Sometimes, ideas that initially appear less promising turn out to be very brilliant from a different perspective or when applied to a different problem.

Am I talented enough for PhD?

Some people believe they are not smart enough for PhD. However, human cognitive capabilities cannot be measured along one dimension. The key isn't about your level of talent; it's more about the unique combination of skills that shapes your professional identity. Talent and skill are not the same. Skill is acquired by effort, while talent accelerates the development of skills. Collaborating with others helps you recognize your unique skill set. Internships and post-docs, and working with a variety of people, are not only useful because of networking, but to know yourself better. Working with others stands as one of the best ways to discover who you are.

Cognitive performance also improves over time with enough work and motivation, therefore perseverance and willingness to learn are much more important than "gift". Of course, there are certainly less motivated people who learn faster than you, and maybe you have to work more than they do. But this is not bad, and can be quite advantageous in fact; you learn to struggle and cultivate perseverance which is crucial in research: sooner or later everybody will face hard problems, and people who are not trained to struggle will be more likely to give up.

Similar to talent, perseverance is partly innate and partly acquired, yet it is much more important. Still, people tend to have an inherent bias towards talent, possibly because it is more convenient to attribute our failures or lack of effort to something that we don't understand and seemingly out of our control.

How can I be creative?

Creativity is often overmystified and regarded as something that you either have or do not, just like innate talent. In fact, creativity is learnable if you are motivated. It is often emerges through observation and implicit learning, with somebody else (your advisor) serving as a model.

Fundamentally, creativity is just remixing of different knowledge pieces (e.g., techniques, theories, theorems, etc) to produce something new and meaningful that others recognize and value. As Mark Twain said:

"There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope. We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”

You don’t need to come up with something extraordinary to be creative. In fact, nothing seems extraordinary if you have the right pieces to build from. Just like cells, we process the output of others, generating a new - often simple - combination or transformation of them. Some people have more building blocks, some others can come up with better combinations. Either way, you need a sufficiently diverse and large set of building blocks (perhaps from different fields) along with some good examples to follow. Hence it's essential to read as many high-quality papers and books as you can!

Is PhD right for me?

Yes, if you are passionate and persistent enough. You probably have sufficient passion if:

While passion provides the necessary direction and emotional momentum, it alone is probably not enough to complete your PhD. Your passion should also persist over time. Research is usually filled with frustration, and learning to handle it over the long term is necessary. Perseverance, therefore, becomes crucial, demanding that you remain purposeful, don't give up, and always find a way to work things out. However, too much perseverance can also be counterproductive. This is also why less-involved team members (such as advisors) are valuable: because they have spent less time immersed in the problem, they keep a broader, bird’s-eye view of the results and possible directions. In other words, they are the ones who can pull the frogs back out of the mud.

Fortunately, we can also develop passion and perseverance to some degree[2]. One way is through others: if you want to be more passionate and persevering, consider joining a research group with that culture. When you collaborate with passionate people, their enthusiasm can boost yours. If everybody is working hard around you, that becomes your habit too.

You can also grow perseverance and passion from within. Although it is always more self-assuring to do things that we are good at and always stick to what we know, it will not necessarily enhance our perseverance. If you focus on what you cannot do or don't know rather than what you know, and deliberately practice/learn to improve, then your perseverance also strengthens[3].

Besides being passionate and persevering about learning, I think it's totally fine if you don't have a clear idea of why you want to pursue a PhD. Maybe PhD (or research) is not important per se, it is potentially only a good enough path toward more general concerns that you may not know yet. Its sole purpose is likely to give you direction rather than being your ultimate concern.

Why do I feel so frustrated about my PhD?

First of all, frustration is not all bad. It's a result of our brain continually predicting the future, and when these predictions are uncertain, it leads to anxiety. Motivation arises exactly to overcome this anxiety, pushing us forward[4]. However, frustration is like a double-edged sword – it can stimulate but also hinder beyond a certain point. This depends on how certain (and not necessarily accurate) our brain feels about predicting the future and, ultimately, how much control we feel we have over the rewards we expect.

The control

Everything we do, including research, is driven by motivation. This motivation, in turn, comes from more general concerns of our lives, such as a being wealthy, desire for recognition, or simply love for learning. Motivation arises when we feel frustrated because our concerns aren't being met. These concerns can bring either external rewards to us like social recognition, being loved, esteemed, wealthy. "External" means that these rewards are not under our control, but rather depend on others' actions or opinions. For example, if the number of published papers and citations is rewarding to you, you may be seeking approval from others. Ditto if you consider a PhD as evidence of your abilities, or you're doing your parents' PhD[5].

Your concerns can also bring internal rewards such as doing something out of pure love, regardless of what others think. Some people find the value in publications not (only) for external recognition but for feedback on their learning progress toward solving broader research problems. They are not necessarily eager for esteem or recognition, but rather for the joy of problem-solving. In other words, research as a process is intrinsically rewarding for them, and because of that, they have a control over the reward. Most of us value both internal and external rewards, but to different degrees. Which rewards we value more is influenced by many factors like our education, childhood experiences, genetics, age, and more[6].

Why is control so important?

Naturally, your brain tends to make less certain predictions when the reward of your actions is up to external factors because you have less control over it. What drives people crazy is usually not the failure to get the reward but the uncertainty about getting it. If you value your achievement (or "success") based on what others think or do, then you are externally motivated and your happiness is beyond your control. However, if your valuation does not depend on external conditions, then you are internally motivated and your happiness is more within your control. If there are no externally centered values tied to your motivation, you don't question your abilities or compare yourself to others.

Consider solving a challenging problem just for the fun of it; you might experience frustration if you fail, similar to a child frustrated over a puzzle, but crucially, this frustration is within your control. You can adaptively change your conditions, such as the problem you are working on, to overcome frustration while still enjoying the internal reward of pure curiosity.

Finding internal rewards

Research and frustration go hand in hand; you are supposed to work on hard problems, therefore you struggle a lot. However, excessive struggle gives rise to feeling of insecurity that you are not good enough, if you rely on external rewards too much. The lower your self-confidence, the sooner you may seek approval from others that can produce even more frustration.

Finding internal rewards and being internally motivated is therefore crucial in research, providing resilience against frustrations. For example, you can always view struggling as learning, if you are curious enough. Curiosity turns problems into learning chances, because no matter what challenges come our way, we can always learn from our failures. With this mindset, true enjoyment will stem exactly from struggle, and the effort itself will give value to the reward. If you don't struggle, you don't do your research well, because it does not challenge you. It may give you the pleasure of solving problems and the sense of security, but not enjoyment.

The balance of rewards

However, focusing only on internal rewards that are detached from others is not the best strategy either. External concerns are unavoidable to some degree; as social beings, we naturally desire others' approval, social usefulness, and competition. These factors often improved our survival odds more than anything else in the past. Although external rewards tend to cause larger frustration they also produce stronger motivation exactly because they cannot be changed so easily.

Therefore, the key lies in finding the right combination of concerns that counterbalance each other such that the total frustration serves as motivation without overwhelming[7]. This optimal balance of concerns, which depends on your personality and situation, results in a 'flow' state, where your abilities align with challenges, and every failure becomes an opportunity for development rather than evidence of incompetence. The happiest people know when to adapt their concerns to their circumstances, not just the other way around.

In summary, overwhelming frustration may suggest passion for what research provides, rather than a love for research for its own sake. While perseverance is crucial to overcome frustration, too much of it can delay understanding your true concerns and self-integration. Therefore, it's always good to scrutinize your passion and honestly reveal what you truly love, even though practicing self-honesty can be quite challenging.

References

  1. From Seneca, but has been observed by many others; you need luck for the right social context and environment with good peers, bosses, timing, supportive family, etc. Everything that you may not always be able to influence. But, just like in the case of talent, this can also serve as an alibi not to try things, or explain our failure, as Hamming said. ↩︎

  2. Passion and perseverance (often called "grit" together) are not the only way to characterize the optimal functioning of people. See Positive Psychology for details. ↩︎

  3. Some scientific evidence suggests that perseverance may be transferable; engaging in enjoyable yet challenging activities, such as sports or playing an instrument, for long enough fosters perseverance in general. ↩︎

  4. For example, when we drink water, we start to feel relief immediately, even though it takes a few minutes for the water to reach our cells. Our brain is confident that things will improve soon, and as a result, frustration (thirst) disappears after the first few sips. ↩︎

  5. When others spark your interest, and you then develop intrinsic motivation, it is different from doing something only for the purpose of gaining someone's attention. ↩︎

  6. We all begin with a strong drive for exploration when we are born in order to learn quickly and survive. As our life concerns change depending on our environment, some people become more focused on external rewards if it is better for their survival, while others keep their natural curiosity. From evolutionary perspective, we probably need individuals who receive positive re-inforcement of discovering something new, even if it's not immediately useful. Otherwise, we would be unable to effectively react to future events that are hard to anticipate. ↩︎

  7. This is not as easy as it sounds, since most of us are not exclusively internally or externally motivated, but rather both. This is what makes self-reflection challenging, along with the difficulty of being completely honest with ourselves. Take the example of feeling frustrated because your theory is wrong or your code isn't working – it might indicate internal motivation with self-imposed conditions, or external motivation, such as the desire to impress others, say by publishing a paper. More often than not, we feel the mix of the two, with their proportions shifting depending on what matters most to us at the time, namely, our concerns. ↩︎