motivation

What is a PhD Thesis?

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A PhD thesis is a written scientific work between 9 [source] and 2000 [source] pages. The average page count varies for  different scientific fields as depicted  in this nice diagram from Robert T. Gonzalez Blog

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The question what a phd is, should be of interest for a phd student. If you cannot find or formulate your definition of a phd, then it will be hard for you to perform well as a phd student. How can you do something if you do not know what you are doing or for what you are doing it for?

You have to find your definition of a PhD thesis. A search leads very fast to 2 great blogs about what a PhD is and what the difficulties in academia are:

A must see talk of James Hayton is http://youtu.be/4MkRMp3roKQ . He’s not only explaining how you do not go insane, he also provides you with the big picture. Another must see is The Illustrated Guide to a Ph.D. of  Matt Might.

I hope you find some of the provided information and links helpful for your decisions.

Leadership

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The 99U Website is very inspiring. I watched the talk from Teresa Amabile Track Your Small Wins to Motivate Big Accomplishments about creativity and how to improve work. I wanted to read her book The Progress Principle and so one of my XMas presents in 2013 was her book. I could not let go reading it because it reminded me about my feelings and my every day events at work. Because it is of great value for me, I want all of you to read her book.

  • It helps to define good and bad leadership
  • It helps to become aware of good and bad events
  • It helps to better distinguish good and bad behavior
  • It helps to improve your (inner) work life and your skills
  • It helps to define yourself

She describes very profound the properties of a good and a bad work environment and the events, which boost your inner work life to the bright or the dark side.

For all of you, which are more comfortable watching videos, here is a awesome talk from Simon Sinek: Leadership Is Not a Rank, It’s a Decision. His talk is strongly related to the Progress Principle book Teresa wrote but from another perspective.

I hope you watch the videos and start to get curious about your work environment and your place in the food chain ;-)