By investing one day of your time, you can save months of drifting in the wrong direction.
Doing your PhD can feel like navigating a small boat across a vast ocean — with a broken compass and no map. You’re rowing hard every day, working on something. You aim for publications as intermediate milestones — small islands that give temporary relief. But most of the time, the research doesn’t work out as planned: no wind, just waves. You’re also busy fending off pirates — teaching, supervising students, administrative tasks. And you're doing it alone. No one else is on the boat.
You know you want to reach your PhD — but you can’t see how or when that’s going to happen. The mainland is nowhere in sight. Somewhere along the way, you may start asking yourself whether it’s still worth it — whether you want to get up every morning and keep rowing.
You can see this situation either as a feature or a bug of the PhD process. But either way: you can change it.
This workshop is a chance to pause, reflect, and realign. You'll fix your compass and draw your map. You will:
- Determine your current position – where you stand in terms of supervision, infrastructure, funding, and progress
- Rediscover your personal “why” – the reason you began this journey
- Understand the psychology of motivation – and learn how to use it to keep moving forward
- Develop personal strategies that work for you – your internal compass
- Set clear, motivating goals – your mainland on the horizon
- Create a concrete action plan – the map that will guide you there
Learning results:
- Promotion – Between myths and reality
- Clarification of common misconceptions
- Clarification of realistic expectations regarding the duration of the PhD and the final outcome
- Assessing the current status
- Identification of relevant dimensions (e.g., supervision, infrastructure, funding)
- Personal self-assessment based on individual evaluations
- Find your personal “why” – the foundation of your motivation
- Importance of meaning and intrinsic motivation in the PhD daily routine
- Individual reflection on the original and current reasons for pursuing a PhD
- Understand and strengthen motivation
- Basic understanding of the psychology behind motivation (“move away from” and “move toward”)
- Creation and visualization of an individual desired state
- Developing effective strategies for the PhD
- imparting strategies in the context of personal goals and motivation
- individual development and selection of suitable strategies (e.g., working with students, collaborations, open research)
- Set clear goals – provide orientation
- What are effective, well-defined goals? (SMART principle)
- Creation and prioritization of personal goals based on the individual status assessment
- From goal setting to concrete implementation – creating a realistic action plan
- Practical creation of a concrete plan to achieve the defined goals for the remaining PhD period
- Verification of feasibility, resources, and potential uncertainties (including peer feedback)
- Collegial networking and mutual support beyond the workshop (optional)
- Formation of “success groups”
- Coordination on the nature and extent of future communication
If things are going smoothly for you right now — great! Let’s make sure you stay on course and pick up even more wind along the way.
P.S. I promise to go easy on the sailing metaphors during the actual workshop :)
Contact
Tatsiana Radziyeuskaya
Qualification management