I'm a couple of months into my third year of a chemistry PhD, but in the last few months I've gone backwards. Part of this was because I was chasing an order that they got wrong, but most of it has been my own fault. Either I didn't understand what my supervisor wanted and therefore made silly mistakes or I lost interest and wasted time doing pointless things. I don't feel like I still deserve to be doing a PhD.

In my progress meeting in July I was told I needed more of a long term plan on how to finish my project but I'm no closer to having it; every time I try and plan I just feel overwhelmed and make a long list of vague tasks. I'm not sure I know what my project is about anymore, the plan has changed so much because I couldn’t get things to work or my supervisor changed his mind.

I need to take back control; any advice on setting goals and staying focused?

Hi there, firstly my PhD and employment is in education and not science, so my support will only be of a very general kind. I am mainly a qualitative researcher, with some mixed methods, of a very basic kind involving descriptive statistics and simple quantitative data gathering. (Saying this so it doesn't raise any high expectations about the kind of support or advice I might offer-which is mainly of a feeling and process type).

Having said this...

1 innate beliefs we hold about our ability can be very powerful and they can work in both ways-to motivate us and as significant demotivaters. Don't buy into the 'deserve or not deserve' phd myth that bugs many of us. It is just a vague and unhelpful sort of shadowland thought. Go on the evidence. You are in your 3rd year of a PhD and 'deserve or not deserve' is irrelevant. You are doing it. So when these shadowy negative thoughts come up, say to yourself 'that is just one of those shadowy negative thoughts $55! off thought!)' and ignore it or put it to one side while you focus on the 'facts' that you are doing a PhD and have survived almost three years of one-so clearly you must be doing something right and you have a right to be where you are.

2 Can you take your long list of vague tasks to your supervisor or someone else (who you trust and are not in direct competition with) and get some support about which ones will be helpful to you? If not, do what PhD students do best and research...look for books and materials (online) written to support people such as yourself in science phds. There will be masses of stuff out there.

3 There seems to be at least one point towards the middle or beginning of the last stage of the PhD where it becomes once again really confusing. You are fighting your way through this forest of data and have no idea what the hell is relevant and what isn't. Don't lose heart, this stage passes after a bit and somehow, some of those trees and some of that foliage becomes recognisable and before you know you are naming and collecting bits of it for your final thesis basket. Perhaps the chaos is where some of the fertile thinking is born-not sure but keep moving as you will start to make sense of things again.

I think that there will be many people on this forum who can give some very specific advice about how to make good lists for chemistry phds, etc and hope that they give you some great advice. In the meantime, this is just to give you some 'heart' while you wait and keep moving through that forest.

Sorry, fairly general too - for more indepth analysis of your problem I also recommend someone who can be trusted with your data if you don't see the "needle in the haystack". ;-)

For me, what always helps is thinking about what story I want to tell. Clearly, I have a long row of experiments, some of them unrelated, some related, but what do I want to tell people when they ask me what my work is about? What do you want to achieve? Is it an improvement of something that already exists? The characterisation of something completely new? Are there troubles on the way to the goal? How have I overcome them / do I need to overcome some more?

In the end, what people want to read is a good and sound "story" - you have an interesting question (at least for you) that you want to answer - what have you done to answer it and have you achieved your goal yet or did new questions appear on the way?

Btw, a "story" makes it easier to write papers, too ;-)

Thanks for feedback. The problem is, I don't have a large forest of data, I only have a few months worth. I need to be able to plan future experiments; I only have 3 weeks before christmas and then I'll have about a year to get all the data for my PhD. I guess the same principle applies though.

Hi Tomlyle, maybe putting a more specific subject title might help you with getting more relevant tips. Something like "Help-not much data from lab results, time running out-need advice for final year planning?" It just might hook into all the people who are or have been in similar situations and there will be plenty. Some of them though might not read your post if they think it is about general phd stuff. Best of luck with this, data collection, whether experimental or using people can be a really difficult experience and don't give up...there will be a way through, there always is.