Thread by @TivadarDanka

The reason PhD school is difficult is not because of the research.

Besides that, there are several key choices whose importance is underestimated by the students. Most of them are unrelated to your hard skills.

Here are the most impactful ones. ↓

1. Picking your advisor.

Young researchers usually value fame and prestige over personal relations. However, your advisor and your fellow labmates will determine your everyday work environment.

Don't sacrifice this for some scientific pedigree.

A healthy relationship with your advisor is essential for your professional performance. Pick someone who is not only a good scientist but a good person as well. Avoid abusive personalities.

Interview students and lab alumni about your prospective advisor if you can.

2. Picking your research topic.

This will set the direction for the rest of your career. There are several aspects to be considered.

▪ Are you interested in the field?
▪ Are others interested in the field?
▪ How difficult is it?
▪ How big is the competition?

Find the balance between popularity and what is interesting for you.

For instance, I chose a really niche field that I was really interested in, but it was hard to get new results. This held back my research career for years.

Competition is also good (because it signals interest and keeps you sharp), but too much competition can make it difficult to get results.

Going into extremely competitive fields can set you up for failure. Try to strike a good balance.

3. Picking the problems to work on.

Regarding the research problem difficulty, there are two ends of the spectrum. On one end, there are problems so simple that they don't even worth a publication, and you won't get any awesome scientist points for solving them.

On the other end, some problems are so hard that they have remained unsolved for decades.

Do not - I repeat - do not attempt these as a young scientist. Only a few succeed, but the vast majority fails and throws away their career. Don't fall for the survivorship bias.

The best strategy is to always keep a difficult problem in the back of your mind, working towards it with smaller problems that you can solve within the foreseeable future.

Once you become familiar with your field, you'll be able to form the problem hierarchy quickly.

4. Focus on communicating your results.

You can have fantastic results, but no one will care if you can't communicate them properly.

Science is a team sport. If you can raise interest in your work, your opportunities to build relations will increase exponentially.

Your visibility heavily influences your success as a researcher.

Grants and awards are given out based on this.

Don't automatically assume that people are going to be interested in whatever you do. You have to earn it.

5. Don't take failure personally.

I know, making mistakes hurt. You have to stop letting them get to you.

Fear of failure is one of the biggest demotivators. Moreover, every failure is a learning opportunity. Use it.

(But learn from the mistakes of others if possible.)

6. Don't equate your self-worth with your CV.

A shiny CV doesn't mean that you have done something notable. A light CV doesn't mean that you haven't done anything either.

It is easy to "overfit" on building a pretty CV, doing nothing significant meanwhile.

7. Stop working on weekends and holidays.

I know you think you can do it. Trust me, you can't. If you learn how to rest, you are going to burn out very soon. Once you do, it'll be tough to get back on track.

To summarize, as a PhD student, you have quite a challenge ahead of you.

With some smart choices, you can make things much easier for you. On top of your research, you don't want to deal with stress and burnout.

Besides technical topics such as mathematics and machine learning, I am passionate about helping students making the best decisions in their life and career.

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