Long time learning

The PhD Journey

Overview

Most people think a PhD must be difficult and worry about whether they will cope.   In my experience, the PhD is the easiest qualification I have taken.  It requires the most work and the greatest attention to detail, but it is NOT difficult. &  Thinking it is difficult means that you waste a lot of time looking for what you must have missed (which you have not) instead of just ploughing on.

Most people agree that it takes one to two years to get the hang of what is wanted. &  This section may speed up that process for you.  As a colleague of mine said, if he had known at the beginning about how the process worked, he could have completed the PhD in a year.  This may be a bit of an exaggeration.  I think 18 months would do it.

Most people are eager.  They have some idea of the main papers or books in their area and so they start there.  This seems like a good idea ... until later.  Later you realise that the REALLY useful paper cannot be found.  It is the one which underlies everything else you are doing.  Someone who was completing as I started had to delay submitting for three months because they could not find that all important reference.

So, the first step is to get organised from the start.

Get Organised from before you start!

Find some software that lets you keep track of ALL the literature.  There are many of these reference managers.  My favourite is Paperpile.   Go for the Academic Plan (currently, about £3/month as of Sept. 2026).  Then get used to using it by entering those starting references you knew about in the beginning.  Add tags.   You soon build up a library of tags and that makes finding things MUCH easier.  I had my tags arranged in hierarchies.  This meant I could cross-reference papers easily.

 

YOUR PhD

One of the surprises is that whatever you thought your PhD would cover is not what you will end up doing.  This makes sense when you think about it.  If you knew the outcome for your PhD, it would not be new and therefore would not be a PhD.

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