PhD lessons #1: To-Do lists are amazing!
5 lessons I learned during my PhD
Starting a PhD means learning to become a lonely captain. Ideally, your supervisor guides you— and I was very lucky to receive strong support. But most PhDs get limited guidance, and even with regular meetings, you are still on your own most of the time. You won’t get daily homework like in school. You won’t get regular grades like at university.
A PhD means pushing the boundaries of human knowledge. It means sailing out in a ship into uncharted waters. When your family starts asking you, a few years in, when you’ll return from your journey, you’ll likely still see no land and give an unsatisfying answer. It can be scary but I found a simple tool that acted like a compass: To-Do lists.
I ended each working day by writing my To-Do list for the next day—ordered by priority and difficulty, so I would start every day with the most challenging task. I made tasks precise and broke them into smaller steps. This helped me mentally prepare and estimate how long things would take (which I noted next to each task).
During busy weeks, I used a timer to sharpen focus. For a 1-hour task, I set 30 minutes and aimed to complete half. Then repeat. It’s simple, but genuinely stressful—repeated 30-minute artificial deadlines force a level of focus I couldn’t sustain every day.
Alongside my daily list, I kept a weekly To-Do list for larger tasks. At the end of each week, I crossed off completed tasks and carried over the rest. While I overwrote my daily list, I kept all my weekly To-Do lists. Looking back at them showed me how much I actually got done—and what I could realistically plan for a week. In my experience, we strongly overestimate what we can do in a day or in a week. But we underestimate what we can achieve long-term by consistently starting each day with the most important task.
The system only works if you actually use it. I set two calendar reminders: one in the evening to plan the next day, and one each week to plan the week. I always included ‘check weekly To-Do list’ among my first daily To-Do’s. Reviewing the weekly list before the daily one kept the bigger picture in focus when unexpected tasks came in—and reminded me that hitting weekly goals matters more than completing every daily task. In addition to meetings, reading papers, and answering emails, I would also include my social life.
I would recommend every PhD student not to postpone meaningful experiences until after the PhD ‘when you have time’. You will never get there. Most people close to death regret having worked too much. Every year of our life should be balanced.
Sit down once and think carefully about how much time you want to spend on 1) daily work, 2) long-term growth, 3) family & friends, 4) health & wellbeing.
If your daily To-Do list does not reflect your values, it is time to change the course of your ship.
