Is it just me or does time just seem to fly by? I feel like I've achieved very little although I've been doing my PhD for 5 months. Does anyone have any time management tips?? Or is anyone else going through the same?
:-s

Hey you!

A good idea is to sit with pen and paper and meticulously write down everything you have or have not achieved over these days. Like : XXX number of words written. YYY read by sup. Or task B not done.

You ll feel loads better after that!

i feel exactly the same, i'm 5 months in too. haven't achieved anything of note yet other than lots of reading and learning a couple of new practical techniques. however i have been assured (by my sups and by other phd students here on the forum and elsewhere) that this is perfectly normal. only now do i feel i have a clear (ish!) idea of the initial direction i want my project to take, and i am just starting some actual 'work' that will produce results.

as for time management, i personally think its quite difficult at the beginning to manage your time super-effectively, as there seem to be so many things you need to do. i am in the sciences, so for me i have both lab-based and computer-based things to be doing, hundreds of articles to read, loads of meetings/lectures i have to attend, and i have been away to a conference. it feels like just as i get stuck into one thing, something else comes along to distract me from it. however, as i said before this seems to be perfectly normal and hopefully things will calm down a bit soon and i can focus a bit more on the important things.

having said all that, i am quite enjoying the chaotic nature of things at the moment as i am certainly never bored! although i am looking forward to really making a start on my phd work and achieving something that will actually be used in my thesis at the end of all this!

i'm sure everyone feels the same at this point so try not to worry! good luck
:-)

cheers guys, picking up on what you said smoobles, my main supervisor seems to be getting a bit pissed off that i haven't produced any data yet.  I've done shit loads of work but nothing ever works the first 2 or 3 times in science research (as you're probably aware) so i spend most of the time trying to optimise protocols that don't work. other PhD students assure me that this is normal and from what I've read here I would tend to agree with them. It's just quite demoralising having spent 5 months in the lab and produced very little data. I have a clear idea of where my research is going and I understand why I'm doing what I'm doing.

most days i don't leave the lab til after 8pm and I've come in on the weekend a few times but still no good results!! I guess it just needs time and everything will fit into place, I'm just worried my supervisor thinks I'm a total waste of space!

Re. data - yep, in the Sciences at least you'll work really hard for no reward, then all of a sudden you'll have an avalanche of data (to analyse though, which takes another 3 months). Those days are worth waiting for! A lot of it is testing and refining, or spotting the errant . or / in a long piece of computer code.

Re time management - I have a small white board I write all my tasks on with deadlines, then wipe them off. On the other side of my monitor I've got my chapter deadlines in big font, just within my eye view so I feel guilty when checking facebook...