Are you feeling unmotivated at the moment and perhaps a little distracted by the ongoing global pandemic? It can be challenging to maintain PhD motivation at the best of times, even without a world-wide crisis to contend with. So, it is perfectly understandable if you’ve been struggling to sustain your motivation levels at the present time. In this post I will highlight three steps for maintaining PhD motivation during the coronavirus.

Step 1 is about getting set up and it takes place before you even begin working. Among the most important elements of this step is reconnecting to your ‘Why’– that is, your underlying reasons for pursuing a PhD in the first place. Given that the PhD lasts for several years, it is easy to lose sight of what first inspired you to pursue a doctorate, particularly when the world may now appear very different to when you began. Yet your ‘why’ is precisely what you need to try and hold on to in order to sustain motivation.

Step 2 takes place during your working hours and is primarily about cultivating the necessary focus and concentration to make the most of your working time.

Step 3, often overlooked, but perhaps the most important in terms of sustaining motivation, is detaching after work. This is about carving out non-work time for yourself on a daily basis. This final step has become particularly important in the current climate when people are essentially living in their work space.

The above steps work together in a virtuous cycle. For instance, when we are connected to our deeper level motivation and feeling excited about our work, it’s easier to focus and maintain progress. This in turn enables us to take a proper break, such that when we are ready, we can return to our work feeling re-energised and motivated.

Here are a few tips relating to each phase of the cycle:

BEFORE | Getting Set Up

• Find a way to represent your ‘why’ in your work environment
• Create a collage with inspiring words and images for your desktop
• List your top distractions and deal with them in advance (whether it’s social media updates, your email notifications, clutter, watching or reading the news, Netflix or your family/flatmates)
• Find an accountability partner that you can check in with on a daily or weekly basis
• Do some pre-writing before you start working
• Establish a daily routine with the same wake up time
• Get showered and dressed every day even if you aren’t seeing anyone
• Walk around your block first thing in the morning as though you are walking to your office
• Identify your incentives and rewards – keep a list of them
• Prioritise your daily tasks for the following day

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DURING | Making the Most of Your Working Hours

• Set an end to your working day in advance and stick to it
• When establishing your hours remember that less can actually be more
• Listen to inspiring background music | use a noise app to create an atmosphere
• Instead of focusing on the long road ahead, focus on the next step in front of you by breaking tasks down into small, manageable pieces – one section at a time, one sentence at a time
• Take the pressure off by shifting your language around work and your expectations (e.g. sketching, drafting, outline, preliminary).
• Organise a virtual writing session with one or more peers for mutual motivation
• Try a modified version of the Pomodoro Technique, especially when feeling stuck
• Allow for ebbs and flows in productivity

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AFTER | Detaching from Your Work

• Draw your work to a close at the time you had planned rather than waiting until you are too exhausted to continue or feeling burnt out
• Try transition activities to ease your way into downtime (exercising, going for a walk, grocery shopping – online or in person)
• Find ways to keep track of progress aside from word count (‘PhD Process Journal’/ Pomodoro rounds)
• Check in with your accountability partner
• Keep track of your wins
• Cultivate gratitude for what is going well
• Volunteer to help someone in your community who has been affected by COVID-19
• Reward yourself with an item on your list
• Make time for a new hobby or pastime that you’ve been postponing (learning a language, playing an instrument, drawing, painting, listening to music, reading a novel)
• Set up a regular video chat with family or friends
• Maintain the same bedtime | adopt a wind down ritual in the evening to boost your sleep quality
• Since ideas or thoughts may come to you when you least expect it, have a notebook on hand to make space for these insights and commit to return to them the following day