Greetings! This is the third blog in a series of four blogs Inspire Yourself and Fulfill Your Potential in Graduate School. In the first two parts, I showed you how you can inspire yourself and jump-start your motivation by realizing your true purpose and long-term vision. Today I want to show you how to keep your mind focused throughout the day, every day, to bring you closer to your desired results.
One of the advantages, as well as challenges, in graduate school is the freedom offered by a loosely-structured lifestyle. When you are in college, or working at a job, you are constantly pressured by external deadlines. There is not much chance for slacking off, or taking a breath for that matter. Once you finish your coursework in graduate school, however, you might find yourself with an abundance of unstructured time, and little guidance on managing your project. There are exceptions, of course, if your PI is a devout micromanager, but even then you probably have some authority over the direction of your thesis.
Many students thrive in a hands-off environment. Others, however, lose focus and motivation. Being isolated without a regular support network can be especially tough on students who excel in a structured, social environment. Take for example a day that was supposed to be devoted to writing your thesis proposal. .You might come in the morning with eight hours ahead of you to focus on writing. With the best of intentions, you begin writing but after an hour you need a break. Perhaps you take a walk, or get a snack and then get back to writing. Later on you decide to spend some time on social media, but before you know it half the day, or the whole day has gone by with little progress. You beat yourself for logging into Facebook or texting, and decide to be more focused the next day. The next day you try harder, but as soon as you start writing your mind begins wandering again, and you feel like an underachiever for not being able to focus long enough to attain your writing goal.
Now here is another question. Let’s say that instead of working on a thesis proposal that’s due a month from now, you had to study for a final exam that was the following day? What if you found out today that the exam was tomorrow? How focused would you be? Would you still respond to all your texts?
The level of focus that can be attained by external deadlines is enormous. If your mind is focused, you can write more in 1 hour than during in an entire unstructured day. What if you could bring a high level of focus to your thesis work every day? There is a simple strategy available to all of us to raise our level of focus almost instantly.
In the first blog of this series I discussed the importance of remembering your true purpose and long-term vision. The graduate student in cancer research had a picture of her grandmother on her desk as a reminder of the importance of her work. Another student had a picture of a graduation ceremony as his screen background, knowing that every productive day would bring him a day closer to his degree. Another student had a picture of her children next to her computer. Every time she lost focus, she glanced at her daughters. She knew that the more productive she was the sooner she could go home and be with her children. What immediate or long-term benefit would you gain by increasing your focus?
The key to maintaining your focus throughout the day is to remind yourself of your purpose and to imagine how you will feel when you achieve your goals. Just think for a moment how relieved you will feel when you get your diploma while being surrounded by your family. How excited will you be when you receive your job offer and a more secure financial future? If you give yourself these positive feelings daily (or better yet, many times daily), then the avalanche of text messages or friend requests will seem negligible in comparison with your true purpose. Give yourself this feeling every morning when you get out bed, on your way to work and when you get ready for bed. Soon your productivity will turn into a positive upward spiral. The more excited you are about your goals the easier it will be to wake up, and the more productive you will be. Of course, the more productive you are, the more excited you will be and eventually your productivity will sky-rocket.
The strategy of visualizing your goals and reliving the sense of accomplishment daily has worked many students and professionals, and I sincerely hope that it will help you achieve the level of focus that you desire. Please let me know how it goes!