why is getting a phd so hard

What’s Actually Hard About a PhD

If you’ve been enquiring about doing a PhD you’ve probably heard time and again how hard it is, whether that’s from online articles or actual university staff and students. But what’s actually difficult about it?

I’m a History PhD student coming towards the end of my third year and I’m here to give it to you straight. No matter your department, students struggle with these things universally. That doesn’t mean these difficulties can’t be overcome, but it’s good to go in prepared. So let’s get started.

#1 Maintaining motivation

Every PhD student will agree that the hardest part of the degree is maintaining motivation. You start a PhD because you’re passionate about a subject. What could be better than spending all your time researching your favourite topic? But as soon as you make it your nine-to-five (and sometimes longer) for at least three years the passion eventually becomes shrouded by stress and deadlines.

I’m not saying you won’t have fun in your PhD, or that you’ll lose interest in your topic (although, truthfully, sometimes this does happen). I’m saying that three to four years is a long time to commit yourself to one thing. It takes dedication. Sometimes motivation will be hard to find but you’ll still need to write 80,000 words by the end of it.

#2 Writing (a lot)

Usually it’s during the writing-up period that people’s motivation starts to dwindle. That’s because writing isn’t easy, particularly academic writing. Turns out saying exactly what you mean isn’t all that simple!

Starting is always the worst. The cursor blinking on a blank page teases you but you can’t seem to find those first, punchy words. The best way is to push through. The first draft is for your eyes only so it can be as terrible as you’d like! Editing is inevitable anyway, and often easier than getting the initial words down. Then, once you’ve drafted one section, you get to write another, and then another, and another, oh and then another.

#3 Receiving criticism

One of the things that can make writing difficult is receiving criticism from your supervisor . This is a very necessary and useful part of the process. You will never improve without someone showing you your weaknesses and mistakes. You will also never write a perfect thesis first time. Always receive criticism with open ears.

But that doesn’t mean it won’t hurt sometimes. You might have spent months on a section of research, pouring your heart and soul into it. Hearing that it’s not good enough yet can be a knife to the heart of your motivation. That’s ok. It’s important to take time to process any emotions before going back to the feedback. Then you look at it from a more detached viewpoint, take the comments on board and continue to improve. Always remember, your supervisor is on your side.

#4 Isolation

A different aspect that makes the PhD difficult is the isolation it can bring. Unless all your friends and family are also academics, chances are people won’t really understand what you actually do. Some might not even understand why, and you may question this yourself sometimes. My parents are prime examples of this. Neither went to university and while they’re very supportive they don’t really know what a PhD is all about.

Get togethers might feel a little isolating when your friends and family talk about their normal office careers, something most people understand. But as soon as you get into the nuances of fish in seventeenth-century English thought, you tend to be met with blank faces. Of course you’ll be able to find lots of understanding people in your university department, but adjusting to this change isn’t always easy.

#5 Knowing what to do next

The last thing that truly makes a PhD hard is knowing what to do with it. Do you stay in academia or do you get a job in industry ?

Many prospective PhD students assume that you’ll go straight into a cushy academic job after graduation. This isn’t often true. In the UK, PhD graduates usually apply for postdoctoral or fellowship positions. Contracts tend to range from six months to five years. After a few years of additional experience then you might begin applying for permanent academic positions. Finding these roles without having to move can also be difficult.

Alternatively, industry jobs might seem more appealing. They’re more likely to offer job security and, at least initially, higher wages. But then you have to decide what you’re interested in. Many students feel that choosing this route means your PhD was a waste of time. Just because you’re not in academia does not mean your doctorate won’t be useful. The PhD teaches many important soft skills that can benefit a range of careers .

So, the options are endless! Does that make choosing what to do any easier?

The hardest thing about a PhD isn’t the research, it’s the lifestyle. But the lifestyle also comes with amazing benefits such as choosing your own working hours and indulging in your personal passions. There’s a lot of freedom involved which can be both a benefit and a drawback. Do you think you’re ready for the challenge?

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Is it a good time to be getting a PhD? We asked those who’ve done it

Researcher, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University

Postdoctoral Research Associate, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, Flinders University

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Career Sessions was sponsored by a grant from Inspiring SA ( https://inspiringsa.org.au/ ).

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The number of Australian PhD graduates reached around 10,000 a year in 2019, twice as many as in 2005. However, the number of PhDs has been exceeding the available academic positions since as early as the mid-1990s. In 2020, universities purged around 10% of their workforce due to the pandemic, and many university careers are still vulnerable .

Given these statistics, you might wonder if doing a PhD is still a good idea. Based on our discussions with PhD holders, there are still plenty of very good reasons, which is good news in 2021.

Read more: 2021 is the year Australia's international student crisis really bites

In June 2020 we interviewed 12 PhD holders from multiple disciplines for our podcast Career Sessions to investigate the question: why do a PhD?

Why do a PhD?

The PhD is a mechanism for developing high-level research skills, learning about rigours of science or the development of theory. It sets you up with project management, problem-solving and analytical skills that are meaningful within and beyond academia.

“It just taught me all those transferable skills, project management, and also now starting businesses. I’m amazed at how close starting a business is to doing a science project.” – Dr Andy Stapleton

For our interviewees, the PhD is an opportunity to dive deeply into a topic they are passionate about. They also considered contributing new knowledge to be a privilege. The process taught them to be better thinkers, critical thinkers, and to view the world through new eyes.

“The mental fitness to work at a high level, to be able to think at a high level, to be able to write it […] The topic is less important.” – Dr Gareth Furber

The PhD is a voyage of discovery to a better understanding of how things work. It gives them a credible platform from which their voice can be heard and respected, and they can contribute to change.

“I think it’s definitely like a springboard or something. It launches you into a whole other place and it gives you […] more of a voice. It’s a political act for me. It’s about making change.” – Dr Elizabeth Newnham

The PhD is a tough and sometimes painful journey, but ultimately rewarding. The extraordinary was tempered by frustration, and the experience shaped their lives, increasing self-confidence and leading to new self-awareness.

Read more: PhD completion: an evidence-based guide for students, supervisors and universities

When asked whether they would they do it again, no-one hesitated in saying “yes”.

“You will never stretch your brain in a way that a PhD forces you to.” – Professor Kate Douglas.

The PhD is not necessarily a golden ticket to an academic career, but the experience and skills you develop will be meaningful for your future.

“What I’d done in my PhD gave me a lot broader sense than just my own personal experience. There were a lot of people that have heard me speak and a lot of that’s been informed by the PhD. So it might not be direct, but it’s informed who I am.” – Dr Susan Close

Advice from our guests

Keep both your eyes and your mind open. Pick a topic you are passionate about. Speak to people both within and outside academia to find out where this could lead. Think about whether you actually need a PhD to get to where you want to be.

You’ll have to make some judgement calls about how a PhD can fit into your life.

And find the right supervisor! They are the most important relationship you will have throughout your candidature, and they are a solid reference for what comes next. Finding the right supervisor will always enhance your PhD experience .

Read more: Ten types of PhD supervisor relationships – which is yours?

A PhD isn’t right for everyone. Ask yourself, is it the right time for you and your research interests? Are you resilient? Mental health among PhD students is poor

Our podcast guests have witnessed PhD students’ struggles. The pathway of a PhD candidate is not linear. There are many ups and downs. You will meander in many unplanned directions and often take wrong turns.

When you have completed your PhD, the hard work is really just starting. It is a gateway, but there are a lot of PhDs out there. It is what comes next that really counts.

“It’s a gateway. You’re learning how to do research. But if you really want to be successful afterwards, you need to apply that, and be diligent about that as well, and have a good work ethic.” – Dr Mark Krstic

Read more: 1 in 5 PhD students could drop out. Here are some tips for how to keep going

A PhD in any field is an achievement. Even the most niche topics will contribute knowledge to a field that is important for many people. The reward is intrinsic and only you can identify how doing a PhD will contribute to your life. It gives you a great toolkit to identify the doors that are appropriate for you.

“The first paper was the most exciting thing. […] at that time I thought of papers as like a version of immortality. My name is on something that will last forever. I think this is my legacy.” – Dr Cameron Shearer

Table showing guests of Career Sessions podcast, their PhD thesis titles, and what they are doing now

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How hard is a PhD? What every PhD student needs to know

Embarking on a PhD journey is a commendable endeavour that many consider a pinnacle of academic achievement.

The challenges of a PhD often extend beyond mere intellectual rigour. While it’s easy to assume that the hurdles would involve complex research or profound theoretical concepts, the truth is more nuanced.

Embarking on a PhD is not just an intellectual endeavour; it’s a test of one’s resilience, adaptability, and perseverance through various personal, emotional, and financial challenges. While many assume the difficulty lies primarily in complex research, PhD candidates often grapple with distractions, mental health issues, and the pressures of consistent progress.

Thus, a successful PhD journey involves not just academic rigor, but also effectively navigating these multifaceted challenges.

From battling internal distractions and self-doubt to navigating financial constraints and mental health issues, PhD candidates face a multifaceted journey that demands resilience and perseverance.

In this blog, we’ll delve deep into these often-under-discussed challenges, shedding light on the realities of what people find out when they start a PhD and provide guidance on how to navigate them. Join us as we uncover the true essence of what makes academia and a PhD both demanding and rewarding.

Misconceptions About Why a PhD Is Hard

When discussing the challenges of a PhD, it’s vital to debunk some prevalent misconceptions. Many outsiders often attribute the difficulty of a PhD to its intellectual rigour or the depth of study.

While these aspects are undeniably challenging, they often aren’t the primary concerns of PhD students.

Instead, it’s the blend of personal, financial, and mental hurdles that make the journey uniquely demanding.

The general belief that only the ‘smartest’ can pursue a PhD is a myth.
It’s not just about intelligence but about resilience, determination, and adaptability.
Many PhD students often report that distractions, rather than the actual research work, are their most significant hurdles.
Such diversions could range from personal life events, mental health struggles, and financial constraints, to feelings of isolation.
A PhD demands consistent focus and progress over several years.
Small achievements and advancements compound over time, leading to ultimate success.
While research, ideas, and lab work are crucial, the unseen pressure often comes from watching peers’ progress and unintentionally comparing one’s journey with others.

Common Struggles Faced by PhD Students and PhDs

Work-Life Balance : Achieving a harmonious balance between rigorous academic pursuits and personal life is a perpetual challenge. The constant demand of a PhD can often overshadow personal time, leading to burnout and strained relationships.
Financial Stress : Many PhD students grapple with financial concerns. Whether it’s the looming burden of student loans, insufficient stipends, or the cost of attending international conferences, money worries can often eclipse academic priorities.
Isolation : The solitary nature of research can sometimes lead to feelings of isolation. Unlike more structured academic programs, a PhD often requires long hours of independent work, distancing students from peers and social interactions.
Imposter Syndrome : Many PhD candidates wrestle with self-doubt, constantly questioning their worthiness or fearing they’ll be exposed as frauds. This can be exacerbated by the high expectations and competitive environment.
Time Management : Juggling various responsibilities – from teaching assistant roles to attending seminars and conducting research – can make effective time management a daunting task.
Mental Health : The constant pressure to produce groundbreaking work, coupled with the challenges listed above, can take a toll on a student’s mental well-being. It’s not uncommon for PhD students to experience bouts of anxiety, depression, or overwhelming stress.

In recognizing these challenges, it’s crucial to emphasize that they are as integral to the PhD experience as the research itself.

Addressing these external distractions and personal struggles is pivotal for a fulfilling and successful academic journey.

The Distractions That Impact the PhD Journey – more than time management

While the PhD journey is undeniably about academic rigour and deep research, numerous distractions often act as significant roadblocks. Understanding these distractions is pivotal to navigating the path successfully and ensuring a more holistic and healthier PhD experience.

A. Financial Strains

The Sacrifice of Adult Life Luxuries : Embarking on a PhD often means prioritizing studies over many of the comforts and luxuries that peers in full-time employment enjoy. This can range from vacations to even simple pleasures like dining out or entertainment.
Low Income During PhD Years : Most PhD students subsist on stipends or grants, which can be meagre. The income, often barely enough to cover basic necessities, can make financial independence a challenging endeavour.
The Difficulty of a Self-Funded PhD : For those without scholarships or funding, the financial strain is even more pronounced. Self-funding a PhD means grappling with tuition fees, research costs, and living expenses, all while trying to focus on research.

B. Mental Health

Imposter Syndrome : A common affliction among PhD students, imposter syndrome is the pervasive feeling of being a fraud, despite evidence of one’s accomplishments and capabilities. It can significantly impede progress and confidence.
The Emotional Toll of Rigorous Research : The highs and lows of research, with moments of breakthroughs juxtaposed with periods of stagnation, can be emotionally draining.
The Importance of Support During the Journey : Given the mental challenges, having a solid support system, be it friends, family, or mental health professionals, is paramount to staying grounded.

C. Supervisor Relationships

The Ideal vs. The Reality : While every student hopes for a nurturing and supportive supervisor, the reality can be starkly different. Not all supervisors are a good fit, and some relationships can be more challenging than others.
Personal Experience with a Supportive Supervisor : A harmonious supervisor-student relationship can greatly enhance the PhD experience. When guidance, mentorship, and understanding are offered, it fosters a conducive environment for academic growth and personal well-being.

The Compounding Effect During a PhD

The journey through a PhD program is akin to a marathon, not a sprint. At the heart of this journey lies the concept of the compounding effect: the power of small, daily progress.

Much like the principle where small investments grow exponentially over time due to interest, in a PhD, consistent effort and incremental advances in research can yield significant results in the long run.

The distractions we previously delved into can severely disrupt this momentum.

Financial strains or mental health issues can divert focus, causing days, if not weeks, of stagnation.

Such disruptions can delay progress and even demotivate students, making it harder to pick up where they left off.

The Real Skillset Needed for the Doctoral Journey

The skills that qualify someone to embark on a PhD journey aren’t necessarily the same as those required to complete it.

Getting into a PhD program often means mastering exams, understanding how you learn, and other academic hacks.

However, once in the PhD realm, these skills can feel inadequate.

Suddenly, you are plunged into the unknown, where cramming won’t help.

You’re tasked with literature reviews, experiments, and research, sometimes without having been thoroughly trained in these areas.

This gap in training and the realization that the previous academic accomplishments might not be directly applicable can be jarring.

And though foundational knowledge of a subject is crucial, navigating the uncharted waters of personal research is where the real challenge lies.

Every PhD is a Unique Journey

No two PhDs are the same. It’s an inherently individual journey where each student is uncovering something new.

Comparing oneself to peers, though a natural instinct, can be counterproductive.

Everyone’s challenges, pace, and outcomes will differ due to a myriad of factors, from the research topic to supervisor guidance and sheer luck.

This comparison often leads to feelings of inadequacy and imposter syndrome. But the key is to focus on personal growth, measuring today’s progress against yesterday’s . Everyone has their unique hurdles; the goal is to surpass them one at a time.

Obtaining a PhD isn’t just about academic prowess but navigating a maze of personal and professional challenges. Recognizing and addressing these challenges, along with a clear understanding of the shift in skillset required, can pave the way to success.

Wrapping up – how to get a PhD even when it is hard

Navigating the tumultuous waters of a PhD program is no small feat. As we’ve discussed, this journey extends beyond mere intellectual challenges to encompass personal, emotional, and financial trials. It’s about perseverance, resilience, and adaptability, as much as it is about intelligence and academic rigor.

Key Takeaways :

Acknowledge the Challenges : Recognize that you’ll face various distractions and hurdles beyond your academic responsibilities. By acknowledging them, you’re better equipped to tackle them head-on.
Lean on Support Systems : It’s essential to surround yourself with a community of supportive peers, mentors, family, or professionals. They can offer guidance, emotional support, and sometimes even financial advice to ease your journey.
Celebrate Small Achievements : With a PhD being a long-term commitment, it’s vital to celebrate small milestones along the way. These will act as reminders of your progress and fuel your motivation.
Stay Adaptable : The PhD landscape is ever-evolving, and the challenges you face might change over time. Being flexible and open to new strategies or methodologies can make the journey smoother.
Personal Growth Over Comparison : Remember that your PhD journey is unique to you. While it’s natural to gauge your progress against peers, it’s more productive to focus on personal growth and development.
Invest in Self-Care : Your well-being, both mental and physical, is crucial. Engage in activities outside of your research, practice mindfulness, or even seek professional help if necessary. Prioritizing self-care can make a tremendous difference in your PhD experience.

Embarking on a PhD is indeed challenging, but with the right tools, mindset, and support, it’s a rewarding journey with invaluable learnings.

Dr Andrew Stapleton has a Masters and PhD in Chemistry from the UK and Australia. He has many years of research experience and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow and Associate at a number of Universities. Although having secured funding for his own research, he left academia to help others with his YouTube channel all about the inner workings of academia and how to make it work for you.

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CAREER FEATURE
13 November 2019

PhDs: the tortuous truth

Chris Woolston 0

Chris Woolston is a freelance writer in Billings, Montana.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Getting a PhD is never easy, but it’s fair to say that Marina Kovačević had it especially hard. A third-year chemistry student at the University of Novi Sad in Serbia, she started her PhD programme with no funding, which forced her to get side jobs bartending and waitressing. When a funded position came up in another laboratory two years later, she made an abrupt switch from medicinal chemistry to computational chemistry. With the additional side jobs, long hours in the lab, and the total overhaul of her research and area of focus, Kovačević epitomizes the overworked, overextended PhD student with an uncertain future.

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Nature 575 , 403-406 (2019)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-019-03459-7

Woolston, C. Nature 550 , 549–552 (2017).

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Auerbach, R. P. et al. J. Abnorm. Psychol. 127 , 623–638 (2018).

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Oswalt, S. B. et al. J. Am. Coll. Health https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2018.1515748 (2018).

Sverdlik, A., Hall, N. C., McAlpine, L. & Hubbard, K. Int. J. Dr Stud. 13 , 361–388 (2018).

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The Savvy Scientist

Experiences of a London PhD student and beyond

How Hard is a PhD?

Amongst the general population, having a PhD is often seen as the pinnacle of academic achievements but how hard is it to achieve?

Having passed my PhD viva yesterday I now feel I’m in a position to really judge how difficult a PhD is!

Congratulations to Jeff @savvy_scientist who passed his PhD viva today, remotely! Now we're having a celebration – remotely! #StayHome pic.twitter.com/4rI0ZiCF5z — ImperialBiomechanics (@ICBiomechanics) March 25, 2020

A dive into the unknown

Any time we don’t have experience in something, the element of the unknown can make it hard to evaluate how hard it is.

Coming from your previous qualifications you may extrapolate and think that since your undergraduate degree was a step up from high school in work and difficulty, a PhD must be another step change in difficulty.

With PhDs it’s not helped by the fact that a lot of the time only the most academically capable students are interested in them, which may make you think you have to be really clever to do one. Plus, as they’re not that common it’s not always easy to find people with experience to speak to.

Growing up I didn’t know anyone who had done a PhD degree, heck none of my immediate family had been to university, so I appreciate that gaining an insight about PhDs isn’t available to everyone.

So how hard is a PhD?

The reality is that a PhD can be difficult, but mostly it’s just different .

How hard you might find certain aspects of a PhD really depend on your own working style and to a lesser extent personality. Let’s discuss the factors one by one.

How hard is it to manage the PhD workload?

During a PhD there will be times you have to stay late, or work weekends (every so often) but it’s nothing like undergraduate degrees, with relentless deadlines and all-nighters being a regular occurrence for a lot of us.

Something that studying for a PhD does have in common with undergrad is that there is always more work that you can get on with, which can be disconcerting. Though unlike undergrad this feeling doesn’t stop after exams where you can enjoy a long study-free summer, because there are no term times for a PhD. I’ve previously shared how much holiday I’ve taken as a PhD student .

You need to find a way to switch off, otherwise your mental health will suffer.

Prior to starting my PhD I worked as a research assistant for three years and I found it helpful to view my PhD as a full time job. Even all the way through to submitting my thesis, working consistently 9-5ish every day was enough. I do hear of people working every hour of the week but these are the exception rather than the norm.

For a deeper insight into my typical working schedule check out the post below where I shared my calendar.

How Much Work is a PhD?

PhD depth and breadth of study

If you’ve been in higher education for a while, you’ll have probably got used to learning a wide amount of topics in a short time. Topics are covered at a fast pace, sometimes in not much detail, without much time to build your understanding.

I can’t have been the only person who during undergrad was effectively have to fight fires, not having much time to concentrate and fully understand each topic before having to move on to the next one.

PhDs provide a step-change, where you focus in on a single topic to a much greater depth.

As you go further along your educational career you tend to focus on topics with greater depth. This doesn't necessarily make a PhD more hard though.

For most PhDs there will be a certain amount of knowledge you’re expected to have picked up from your previous degree(s), but the pace of a PhD is undoubtedly much more slow. The reality is that the breadth of a PhD topic is really quite limited, though it can often span several disciplines. It’s common for your project to involve topics you’re not completely comfortable with.

You have a lot of time to focus on just one topic and you’re expected and required to know the topic inside out. The good news is that you’re given more than adequate time to learn the ropes.

As a PhD student there is nothing wrong with refreshing your knowledge of basic topics, especially if it’s something you haven’t studied in years. I still look things up on YouTube and Wikipedia and there is no shame in doing so: you’re in this position to learn and produce scientific outputs, so it’s much better that you’re comfortable with the topic.

I would suggest that for most people a PhD is generally more relaxed than an undergraduate degree. That’s not to say there isn’t work involved, but the pace gives you breathing room to understand the topic comprehensively.

If there’s one key message I’d like to get across, it’s please don’t ever be scared to ask your supervisor questions. You’re not on your own.

That’s assuming your supervisor is interested in supervising, which sadly isn’t always the case. Lack of supervisor support is one of the main difficulties I’ve seen students face (in other research groups I should add!). I wrote some tips here for choosing projects and supervisors .

How to Choose a PhD Project & Supervisor

Essentially as long as you are willing to learn, I wouldn’t worry too much about this aspect of a PhD.

Is a PhD intellectually difficult?

You’ve probably heard the metaphor about standing on the shoulders of giants, and it’s true that as a PhD student you’re building on previous work carried out in the field.

However there usually isn’t an expectation to make massive intellectual strides forwards. In reality you’ll probably be giving a small nudge forwards to a small area of the field. For some people this can be a relief and make the idea of doing original research much more obtainable, whereas for others it may belittle the entire idea of doing research!

The reality of the situation is that PhD students may be seen as a cost effective source of labour to advance science. Although we’re often working on projects with complicated lofty descriptions such as “ nanoparticles impregnated with silver ions for cancer treatment ” or “ biphasic lubrication mechanics of soft engineering materials ” in reality the practical side of them does not require genius level intellect.

Oftentimes you’ll be doing pretty menial things behind these grand topic titles. These tasks require you to know what you’re doing, but rarely will you have devised the whole thing yourself.

Fun fact: at my first job after undergrad, working at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, my boss would sometimes bring in her gardener to pick up any slack, doing the same work as me and some of the post-docs.

A full house for @trayanovalab at the @ImperialBioeng annual lecture. Amazing work & images! #ComputationalCardiology pic.twitter.com/R2dxE7csbg — Jeff Clark (@savvy_scientist) June 18, 2018

Of course you need to be able to understand the concepts behind what you’re doing, but I wouldn’t worry too much if you’re worried that you have to be a genius to complete a PhD.

So is a PhD easy?

In terms of workload and difficulty a PhD isn’t necessarily as difficult as you might think, so don’t be scared off. That’s not to say it’s not without challenges which we’ll now go on to discuss.

How a PhD can be hard

Of course there are differences between projects, supervisors and universities but I’d say generally the main things which can make a PhD hard are:

Self motivation

Looking after yourself, dealing with isolation.

Your ability to problem solve
Fear of public speaking

Prior to studying for a PhD, your studies will likely have been structured by a timetable of contact hours, coursework deadlines and exams. Working towards a PhD is the first time you’re likely to experience fully independent working for extended periods of time. It will also involve work where no one, not even your supervisors, know all the answers. This can be daunting and I think this is where difficulties may stem from for many students.

A PhD is a long-term commitment so you need dedication to reach the end of a PhD.

By the end of your PhD you’ll have to demonstrate that you’ve contributed to your field with a thesis and/or peer-reviewed publications. This can be a challenge and without the regular undergraduate format of deadlines and exams, you may quickly lose focus. Regaining that focus and dedication is key to seeing your PhD through.

If this is something you struggle with check out my post on maintaining motivation during your PhD .

At Imperial we have two progress points throughout the PhD: one at 9-12 months (Early Stage Assessment) and another at 18-24 months (Late Stage Review). These formal progression checkpoints help by giving deadlines and a structure to work towards.

Solution: I believe one of the best ways to keep up productivity, and ensure you’re on the right track, is to meet regularly with the supervisor. I suggest meeting at least a few times per month. I do know some people who meet much less regularly and this can work for some people. However, I personally find myself chatting with my supervisor about far more than the types of things I’d want to ask in an email and this is where the mentorship aspect of a PhD can be made or broken.

In summary, working closely with your supervisor can make your PhD a lot less difficult.

It’s very easy to develop bad habits during your PhD such as:

Eating badly and drinking too much coffee
Getting stressed and working long hours
Not getting exercise and sleeping poorly

From not cycling at all I've now cycled 1k+ miles in London, mostly commuting to @imperialcollege . Great way to get around with so many benefits. Started because of a free course by @RBKC & @Bikeworksuk w/ a refurbished bike! Few words about my experience: https://t.co/rGwSqomikD pic.twitter.com/joyVftxuVn — Jeff Clark (@savvy_scientist) August 30, 2019

Solution: Remember that working longer hours won’t necessarily help your productivity. Instead take time out of your day for breaks and go for walks. Dedicate time to look after yourself. If you’re looking for ways to stay efficient, think of doing things like commuting by walking or cycling. I’d also highly recommend cooking your own meals to stay healthy (and save money ).

When I say isolation I really mean a few different things:

Owning your own project

Every PhD project is different, you may collaborate with friends or colleagues for bits of your work but you are the only person driving forwards your project.

This means that you may face problems other people in the research group or department haven’t encountered. Not only could this be isolating but it may also set your project back if you don’t mitigate the risks.

Solution: Firstly, don’t be afraid to ask people for help. Maybe someone from your group doesn’t have the answer to your problems but they may offer useful advice or know someone else in the department who may help. Coffee breaks offer an opportunity to informally chat with colleagues, which can both be fruitful for your work and your mental health: here is a nice Science article about the positives of coffee breaks.

Imposter Syndrome

As every project is unique it can be very difficult to tell how you measure up to other people. At times you may struggle to understand what other people in your group are working on, but this doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for it! Supervisors have a good idea of what’s required for a project when you’re applying: if you’re accepted you’ll more than likely be fine in this regard.

Solution: Don’t compare yourself to others. This is fruitless, especially when every project is different anyway. Make sure you understand your own project well and you’ll be fine. Having a chat with other students can be a good way to reassure you that everyone goes through difficult times.

Staying social

If I asked you to close your eyes and picture a PhD student, what would you see? Personally I used to conjure up an image of a fatigued student wearing goggles and trapped in a lab, rarely seeing daylight.

That’s not always a hundred miles away from the truth, but it doesn’t have to be the case. We’ve already covered how working such long hours can be counterproductive, but also putting yourself in a solitary position like this can be both demoralising and awful for your mental wellbeing. Please don’t!

Solution: Take frequent breaks, get involved with activities your lab-mates or department are organising: or organise something yourself. Find something you enjoy and can look forward to going along to, you can still join clubs and societies as a postgrad. Being isolated can make a PhD so much more mentally difficult: it doesn’t need to be!

Solving problems

You hear people saying that to be a good researcher you have to be inquisitive and questioning everything. These are certainly good traits to have which can make the work more meaningful, but at the level of a PhD student I believe it’s much more important to work smart.

To me this includes the ability to:

Think on your feet
Don’t be afraid to ask your supervisor questions
Be forward thinking and catch problems early

Solution: Set up a framework to overcome problems and always think of ways to mitigate risks by having a Plan B. For example I work with people who’ve waited six months for consumables to arrive: if you don’t consider risks like this you immediately set yourself up for a less productive and more stressful experience. As before, I really do recommend meeting with your supervisor frequently.

Public speaking

I’m not sure whether presenting your work is a requirement for every PhD but it’s certainly an expectation for most. If nothing else you’ll likely have to present in your viva.

A fear of public speaking is very common and as such it’s a common PhD difficulty to tackle.

It’s completely natural to be nervous with the idea of presenting, however that’s not a reason to avoid public speaking completely. On the contrary you’ll only get comfortable with it by practicing. We’re fortunate as researchers to get regular opportunities to try public speaking.

I certainly still get nervous myself but would rather face the fear than shy away from it: plus you feel great afterwards.

Solution: Take opportunities to give presentations, whether it be at lab meetings, departmental events or conferences. The great thing with being a PhD student is that you get to practice with no expectations that you’ll be perfect. It’s much better to face it now than push the problem back later in to your career. I’ve written some tips for how to keep your presentation interesting.

Presentation Skills for Students: How to Stay On Topic and Keep Audience Attention

Some example issues you might have to overcome as a PhD student

Common phd challenges.

Now that we’ve covered the categories of common PhD difficulties here are some common day to day challenges:

You need to use a technique or piece of old lab equipment and there’s no one to teach you how to use it
You’re scared to ask for help because you think you should already know the answer
You’re not getting the results from an experiment you’re expecting to see
You need to write a code to do something and have never coded before
You’re struggling to understand a concept
You’re bored of reading or are losing interest in the topic
You feel lonely
You’re stuck waiting for something to arrive
You need to create nice looking diagrams
You need to build a rig or piece of equipment from scratch
You’re worried about giving a presentation
Your supervisor isn’t providing support
You’ve no idea what statistical analysis to use
You’re facing funding limitations, meaning you can’t do all the experiments you ideally would
You’re struggling to motivate yourself to write a 100+ page thesis!

I’ve written a separate post covering a range of challenges I faced during my own PhD and you can find that post here: Overcoming Academic Challenges and Failure During a PhD .

Overcoming PhD challenges

It’s normal to face problems during a PhD. It’s how you tackle these problems that will be the defining factor in how difficult you find the PhD.

Part of the joy in completing a PhD is knowing that you’ve managed to overcome these difficulties.

In all these scenarios having a chat with other people will help. Even if other students or staff can’t directly provide assistance, most people are very friendly and supportive which will boost your morale.

I can’t overstate how useful scheduling regular meetings with your supervisor is. It’s so much better to face problems early rather than awkwardly have to deal with it six months later. I meet with my primary supervisor every week and we work together to set short-term deadlines for my work which tie in with the larger targets.

For problems outside of your supervisor’s remit lots of universities provide additional support. For example the graduate school at Imperial lays on courses for PhD students covering how to code, using reference managers, statistics etc.

Plus there are usually facilities for dealing with things such as stress and anxiety via counselling, student support and chaplaincies. Don’t make the PhD more difficult than it needs to be, these facilities are put in place to help you.

Has my PhD been hard?

I’ve been surprised by how manageable the PhD has been. I wouldn’t say that any of the research work was particularly difficult, it has simply required dedication.

Good time management and taking my mental health seriously have helped a lot, as has considering it a full time job. Slow and steady wins the race. Simple steps like always having a backup plan to mitigate the chance of getting stuck if things go wrong has served me well.

I’ve never been a fan of presenting but have learned to expose myself to it in an effort for self improvement. Of the five conference presentations I gave during my PhD, I won prizes for two.

Remember that you may lack self confidence but how you come across to other people may not be how you perceive yourself: this can be very uplifting. If I can do it so can you!

Thesis-writing

I’m currently in the process of writing up a separate post dedicated to my experience of writing a thesis. In summary, for me personally, it wasn’t anything like as stressful as I was thinking it would be.

I gave myself approximately six weeks to write most of it. Mine was 190 pages in total which may sound daunting but I actually only had about 120 pages of proper content and it’s all with 1.5 line spacing. Each chapter was only about 20 pages which sounds much more manageable and really isn’t much for 3 years work!

Things which helped me included:

Having already written up some results.
Using figures I’d made for presentations.
Not expecting it to be perfect.
Setting myself tight deadlines. I gave myself two weeks to write the introduction, literature review and discussion chapters.

Some of us PhD students make things more difficult than they need to be, trying to make everything perfect. I’ve heard some staff say “good enough is good enough” which I’ve found a useful mantra.

I recommend not spending too long on the thesis because:

Papers are what count, put your energy into them instead.
There is no point trying to second-guess what your examiners may want to see, you could spend months deliberating and they’ll still potentially have corrections to suggest.

I was a bit nervous before my viva, which is normal. I was confident in the work I had done for the PhD, but was actually more concerned about being asked any theoretical or technical questions you’d be more likely to encounter in an undergraduate course.

Although it lasted more than five hours, mine was a supportive environment, mostly a discussion to give feedback to improve the thesis and publications. Remember to be honest and be reassured that you know your work better than anyone else.

In summary, how hard is a PhD?

Most PhDs are not intellectually difficult but they do present other challenges
How hard you may find a PhD depends on your ability to self motivate, look after yourself, deal with isolation, problem solve and master public speaking
Everyone experiences challenges during their PhD but it’s how you confront those challenges that matters
Make the most of your supervisor for support and guidance

If you’d like personalised help with your PhD application I am now starting to offer a small number of one-to-one sessions. Please contact me to find out more or click here to book a call.

If you’re interested in doing a PhD but are scared of the difficulty, please don’t be put off.

As long as you’re willing to learn and are dedicated I am sure you can succeed.

Finally, remember to enjoy the experience!

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10 Comments on “How Hard is a PhD?”

I have really been struggling on whether to apply for a PhD. This post has given me the realistic picture I needed. Thank you

Yay, I’m so pleased you found it useful, Ankita! If you can think of any other questions you’d like answered be sure to let me know. Best wishes

Thanks for sharing your experiences and insights, Jeff 🙂 I find this post really helpful in terms of being aware of what’s to come as I start my PhD journey – and more importantly, what I can do to overcome these potential obstacles!

Hey Julie, I’m pleased you’ve found it useful. Best of luck with your PhD!

Jeff, Thank you very much for putting this together. Im a second year PhD student who regularly finds themselves in crisis of confidence. This article really helps to give me a little perspective, empowering me to plough on regardless of nagging doubts!

Thanks very much for your comment, Callum. I’m really glad the article has helped. Best of luck with the rest of your project: you’ve got this!!

I am currently a full time MBA student who will graduate in December. My professor in Leadership actually approached me about whether I would consider becoming a higher ed professor and researcher. She noticed qualities in my writing and research that she said the job would suit me perfectly. I have been back and forth on the idea and your site has truly been a great boost for me in getting the confidence I need to apply for my PhD, so thank you :)!

Hey Sarah. Yay! I’m so glad the website has been useful for you, thanks so much for your comment. Do let me know if you have any other questions or suggestions for other content which would help. Best of luck with the end of your MBA and future PhD application! Best wishes, Jeff.

Jeff, Thank you for taking the time to put this together. I am entering my final term of my MS in Cybersecurity and graduate in May 21 and I was curious on the level of effort for a PhD. When my wife saw me looking at PhD programs however she lovingly made me close the browser so it may not be in the cards right now. Granted I do have 2 young children under 5, a full time job and am an Army Reservist so she isn’t wrong 🙂 However, I do really appreciate you putting this together to help other students interested in PhD programs. This has given me great insight into what to expect and what it will take. Thanks again! George

Hi George, Thanks so much for your kind comment, I’m glad it has been useful for you. In terms of how much effort a PhD is: anecdotally I did mine keeping pretty strictly to normal office hours of roughly 9-5 Monday-Friday and had the official letter confirming my PhD within 3.5 years of the day I started. Admittedly this is in the UK, I expect in the US it would take a little longer overall but the weekly workload doesn’t need to be overwhelming. I think my peers on average worked similar hours. The nice thing about research is that, assuming you have a reasonable supervisor, you are typically much more in control of your hours than in a traditional job. As long as you get the work done a good PhD supervisor doesn’t tend to care how you schedule your time so could fit quite nicely around other commitments such as childcare. Sometimes people think the flexible hours can only go badly for them: being expected to work longer hours than normal, but I don’t think this needs to be the case. Of course chucking endless hours at a task isn’t always useful, better to work smart! Sure some projects may involve intense sets of experiments but these are either usually few and far between or limited to fields like biology with cell experiments. In my experience anything based on a computer tends to be more flexible so you’re good. Basically the level of effort doesn’t need to be any more intense than a normal job. I hope this helps. Let me know if you have any other questions or I’d be happy to jump on a quick call if that’d help. Best of luck! Jeff.

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Is a Ph.D. Worth It Anymore? Cont'd

Three more readers share their critical experiences of working toward a Ph.D. and the postdoctorate that often accompanies it. Here’s Mary:

I spent (too many) years in a prestigious PhD program. During my post-doc, I saw newly-hired Assistant Professors work 60-hour weeks to generate preliminary data in order to secure funding during lean years (early ‘90s). They spent their Saturdays in the lab, bringing their young children with them. (The kids wrote on white boards. One spouse cleaned the lab.) Quite simply, I did not possess the interest or drive for this kind of life. When my son was born, I determined that I would earn a living in a way that provided economic security, as well as time to be there for him. Initially, I was fortunate to secure a non-research position in a government agency. I later moved to the private sector. There is an arrogance about academia that is imparted to doctoral students: that the tenure-track position is “pure” research and the only honorable path for a PhD. Stuff and nonsense.

Begin with the rate at which students for a particular advisor may graduate. One per year? One every other year? In a 30-year career, a lab chief may churn out 20 PhDs. There are far too few academic positions to justify this; rather, graduate students and post-docs are inexpensive labor. I wonder about the thinking that keeps trainees believing that they will be the exceptional ones to beat those odds. I love what I do, and those 10 years were worth the opportunity cost. In my 21-year career, I have used my training, and the way I learned to think, most days. Bonus: I have a life outside work. Look around, students: The academic career is not your only, or even your best, option.

Ilya would agree, and he emphasizes the upsides of the private sector to drive scientific progress:

Bachelor’s degrees are not for all people and all walks of life, and advanced degrees all the more so. I tried to get a Ph.D. in an engineering field. Leaving with a master’s was a great decision, even though it was largely forced on me. Over the ensuing years, I watched my friends who had stayed for the long slog become increasingly bitter. Here’s why. Academic research is the right channel, if not the only channel, for strikingly original, pathbreaking work. Once a field begins to attract private investment, however, academia needs to step back. Once a field has reached a certain level of popularity and recognition, the number of strivers greatly exceeds the number of original directions available, leading to duplicate work and dissertations of little value. In fields (such as mine) that require expensive and temperamental lab equipment, a company can afford to buy the best tools and hire technicians to maintain them. Graduate students waste years fussing over obsolete instruments. And, finally, academia tends to breed faculty with outsized egos who abuse students as a source of cheap labor for their pet projects. Companies, although not perfect, are much better at aligning the interests of frontline workers and management, and at killing projects that aren’t worthwhile. A doctorate remains the minimum credential to be a professor, which is fair. In some fields, though, even companies will not consider applicants who lack doctorates. This is part fetishism, part hazing ritual. In my field, I have found a Ph.D. to be usually valued as much or less than an equivalent number of years of private-sector experience, and we’re all better off for it.

This anonymous reader, like Ilya, will probably settle for a master’s:

All of my comments are in reference to graduate school in STEM disciplines, since I do not have experience in grad school in other fields. As a graduate student considering exiting my program as a 5th year, I can tell you in all honesty that a PhD is not “worth” it—for me, at least . Too many eager students earning a bachelor’s degree in STEM are told that they cannot have a worthwhile career without entering grad school. I saw the PhD as one more hoop to jump before I could land a great job that would provide me with the challenges and stability I wanted in a career. I have learned a massive amount and I don’t regret coming to grad school, but I am increasingly regretting staying . Most of what I will take from the PhD will be things I learned in my first two years. In other words, a master’s degree would have been perfect for me. Unfortunately, master’s degree programs in STEM are not encouraged and sometimes frowned upon. The few master’s degree programs that exist do not usually cover students’ tuition or offer any sort of stipend. At top-tier universities where students can only enter PhD programs, master’s degrees are only handed out as “ consolation prizes.” In other words, a master’s degree is a mere exit option for those not able to “tough it out” through the PhD. From an institutional perspective, this makes some financial sense. Why offer a paid master’s program, where students will be novices in the lab and still refining their techniques, when a PhD student will make up for these formative 2 years by effectively “working” 3+ years after the initial phase of their training? This is certainly the case in my lab. I used to fumble with equipment and make rookie mistakes daily. I now train newer students on instruments, assist with experimental design and analysis, and manage a good deal of the lab. I don’t get credit for it, though; I have the same low stipend that I did as a first year. My experience is the norm. It’s expected that you “pay back” for your training in the form of working more and publishing. In fact, certain fellowships require that you financially pay them back if you decide to pursue work outside of academia. Keep in mind that these fellowships are a trainee’s paycheck. If I was awarded one of these postdoctoral fellowships and decided to quit an unhealthy postdoc in month 11, I would owe back 11 months’ worth of my paycheck . If this isn’t indentured servitude, I don’t know what is. Coupled with emotional distress, not knowing where I might be working in a year, the lack of benefits (will I ever be able to retire if I stick with the PhD?), and an overwhelming desire to do something that I am good at and getting compensated appropriately, I can’t see sticking around any longer. The PhD is not the route to career satisfaction that I envisioned. It is no longer a simple hoop; it’s a long, winding, and seemingly never-ending tunnel.

For further reading, Tim recommends:

This entertaining but serious essay by history professor Timothy Burke was required reading when I was at Swarthmore almost 20 years ago. It begins, “Should I go to grad school? Short answer: no.” The essay holds up today—and the job market worries he touches on have, of course, gotten incomprehensibly worse.

Update from a reader:

Big thanks to your reader who pointed out Timothy Burke’s essay on graduate school in the humanities! It led me to Timothy Burke’s blog , which has some fascinating viewpoints on current events around globalization, Donald Trump, and the like. Speaking of which, I’m intrigued that so many of the responses on the worth of graduate school are about the sciences rather than the humanities. Is this because the story in the humanities is old news by now? Whereas, in science, you get this weird disconnect between “we need more STEM majors” on the one hand, and the same old math about how many more PhDs there are than tenured posts, on the other. Do we really need more STEM majors? Because a lot of us are pretty worried about becoming unemployed, or spending our lives in badly-paid adjunct posts with no job security.

Here’s one more reader, who stands up for the Ph.D. track and brings us back to the theme of government funding that started this discussion thread:

I’m at the end of my 5th year of my PhD and will graduate in the next year. In many ways, I’m lucky. I work in food safety and microbiology. Since everyone wants to know their food is safe, government funding has been cut less, and we can usually persuade industry or trade associations to fund our applied research. However, we’ve been able to do less basic research than we would have hoped, because when funding is tighter, the government funds projects which are more likely to have immediately applicable results (applied research), and industry only funds applied research. So a lot of good basic science doesn’t get funded. Is a PhD worth it? So far, yes. As a graduate student I've had opportunities to teach, write grants and fellowships, mentor undergrads, help manage the lab, and work on international development projects. I’ve also seen mentoring failures, abusive advisers, and nasty department politics. It is a hard road to a PhD (though I think attributing “Navy SEAL-like brutality” to it is going too far), but it does offer a lot of personal growth opportunities and the joy of research along with the frustration of repeated failure and impostor syndrome. I plan to stay in academia because there is no other position I know of which combines teaching and basic research and opportunities for international development projects like academia does. So I’ve mentally given myself a few years to postdoc and try to get a tenure track job. I think I have a decent idea of what I'm getting myself into ... we shall see. Research funding is the thing which worries me the most.

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10 biggest struggles of phd students.

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Starting a PhD is an incredibly daunting task. Normally at least 3 years, there are some challenges that you are almost certainly going to have to face during the program. Below we look at some of the biggest (and most common) problems that PhD students encounter.

If you are considering a PhD program , or just beginning one, advanced awareness of these stresses may help you overcome them if you ever have to make their acquaintance (don't worry, we have our fingers crossed). Plus, knowing that they are frequently experienced and nothing out of the ordinary will hopefully provide you some comfort. Okay, let's begin.

1. Isolation

One of the most common problems for PhD students is the feeling of isolation. PhD candidates often work alone, having few or sometimes no other people on their project. This happens while friends may be working in offices and in teams, enjoying a far more social side to the 9-5. Predictably, this can lead to loneliness, lack of motivation, and the fear that no one understands, or can relate to the problems you are experiencing.

As an antidote to this, it is advisable to make an effort to get into contact with other graduate students. There are many ways of doing this, for instance, through journal clubs, conferences, or networking. Being in contact with other PhD students will give you someone to talk to, complain to, and will help alleviate these disruptive and negative feelings. Simply breaking up the routine of studying can do you a whole world of good!

2. Stress

With looming deadlines, large scale projects, and a huge amount of personal investment, a PhD can be extremely stressful. This is compounded by the fact that everything is always riding on you and you alone - making the highs higher and the lows, well, let's not go there. It has been found that PhD students have high levels of mental disorders - likely related to high levels of stress they have to endure.

For this reason, it is imperative that one finds healthy ways to decompress, whether through exercise, meditation, the arts, or anything else. Any university worth its salt will also have mental health services which can be sought if things get particularly difficult. Regardless of how bad you're feeling, its always helpful to talk it through with someone. No problem is too small.

3. Conflict with your supervisor

Another common problem can be issues arising between PhD students and their supervisors. Supervisors are part-boss, part-mentor , and occasional friend. It's an odd combination, the balance of which sometimes can be hard to maintain.

When disagreements surface - and of course, over 3 years it is only natural that they will - some students can feel that they have to defer immediately to the wishes of the more senior and experienced supervisor. Again, here a supportive network of PhD students around you can help navigate these challenges.

Additionally, familiarity with the faculty in a broader sense (which is encouraged) will allow you to canvass more opinions. This may help you clear up a point of particular contention. Who knows, maybe you were right all along!

4. Funding issues

Most PhD students rely on external funding to support themselves while studying. Unfortunately, this too can be a source of concern. Funding can, at times, be insecure. It has been known, for example, for funding to be reduced while still in the middle of the PhD.

This is a precarious position to be left in and it can be extremely stressful to secure new funding. Ideally, supervisors should be on hand to help with this. One should never think twice about approaching them for advice - it's what they are there for. Still, it's also recommended that students at least have some money saved in case of emergency.

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5. time management.

So much to do, so little time to do it! This is probably the mantra of our age. Learning when to jump at new opportunities and when to say no to extra tasks is a skill which every academic should develop if they are to avoid going mad. This can be honed by knowing how to prioritize. What is absolutely essential that I finish today? What, at a push, could I postpone till tomorrow?

Setting aside enough time in your day to fulfil these tasks will help this process and enable you to, when necessary, say 'nope, I literally do not have the time for that'. Rather obviously, it helps to be organized and to calendar your appointments carefully. And remember, it is better to do a few things well, than a number of things badly.

6. Work/life balance

It sometimes seems like PhD students are expected to study all the time; to be in the office every weekend and to work late every day. But this is not sustainable. You also need time for hobbies, friends, and family in order to function at peak level. This may seem a really obvious point to make, and yet, many students still suffer from the effects of having an incredibly lop-sided schedule.

Students should always remember: making time for activities outside of the PhD is vital for long-term success. A healthy social life, regular exercise, and cultural activities will be stimulating and fun. And, they're likely to make you happier. Even though you might not think about “happiness” when considering your goals for studying, you surely deserve some every now and then.

7. Lack of institutional support

Some universities are better than others at supporting PhD students. The best universities have extensive programs for helping them, through mentoring, workshops, and social events, while at other universities students are left to fend for themselves.

Graduate schools can be helpful here, as they are geared towards meeting the specific needs of PhDs. Try to find out what kind of support is offered by your institution – there may be more than you think!

8. Lack of personal support

Another challenge for PhD students is dealing with a lack of personal support. Friends, partners, and family members may not understand the worth of a PhD, and may not be supportive of the choice to pursue one. Many a PhD candidate has been distressed by a well-meaning relative asking when they will be finished with their PhD and get a real job.

This is another reason to get in contact with other PhD students, who can understand the stresses you are experiencing and give you the support you need. Sharing these commonalities also helps to make light of them. Nothing builds camaraderie like shared experiences.

9. Concerns about the future

In addition to worrying about their current projects, many PhD students feel concerned about their future too. In an uncertain job market , and with academic positions being intensely competitive, there is no guarantee that getting a PhD will lead to a desirable job (we hope it will!).

That said, research does show that having a PhD under your belt hugely increases your chances of getting one. It also increases your chances of being paid better and enjoying greater job satisfaction. Economics PhDs in particular have excellent job placement rates. To help ensure you get to enjoy all of these benefits, it's sensible to start the job hunt early.

Remember, too, all the transferable skills you develop during your PhD studies could help you to get an industry job , if you feel you have had enough of academia.

10. Problems with motivation

When things are not going so well, and motivation is low, you should consider giving yourself a break. A few days or even a week away from your project can sometimes be really helpful, allowing you to come back to your work invigorated and able to look at it from a fresh perspective.

Maybe when you come back, you see something that before you had missed? Or even better, maybe you realize that the work you've done is actually a whole lot better than you had previously thought. THIS can be brilliantly motivating. Plus, you probably deserved a break anyway!

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How difficult Is a PhD Program?

I am a Master's student in math who is doing pretty well so far. I aced my first two classes (real analysis) and my summer session in probability theory is going well, too. Even before my Master's study, I already thought of a PhD. Nonetheless, there are concerns:

My good grades were the result of grit, not brain, meaning that I had to spend time to understand what the book is telling me. Furthermore, a lot of times during exam and homework, I had to try and fail a few times before arriving at the solution.

I did not study math during undergrad. Before my Master's study, I gulped down three semesters of calculus, plus LA and DE in one year. So compared to other students, I am already behind. In the next two months, I will learn complex numbers on my own and review my linear algebra.

I am a professional in a field that has nothing to do with math or research. After the holiday, I will speak to my advisor about taking a thesis class. It's not an insurmountable obstacle, but, in an unrelated field, I do have less time to concentrate on math.

At the end, how big is the jump from Master's to Phd? Especially after what I said in (1), I do worry that it is beyond my ability. I do not hold anyone responsible for my decision. So, please kindly offer your best assessment of my situation.

research-process
mathematics

6 I don't think a bunch of strangers on the Internet can possibly answer this question for you. Do you know a professor in real life who will be honest with you? – Austin Mohr Commented Jul 1, 2013 at 2:17
24 My good grades were the result of grit, not brain — Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome! Everybody has to try and fail a few times to truly learn anything . – JeffE Commented Jul 1, 2013 at 5:28
6 Coursework is one thing; doing a PhD is about doing research . You can be great at coursework and not be a good researcher, and vice versa. Don't let struggles with coursework make you dispirited about doing research. – aeismail Commented Jul 1, 2013 at 6:32
1 Difficult enough that you won't really understand until you do it yourself :) – cartonn Commented Jul 1, 2013 at 21:47
2 I wouldn't worry about abilities. Maybe it is not the right question: the right question what do you want to do (after)? Do you need a PhD or helps to you? Be careful: a PhD doesn't guaranteeing you a job or higher payment. – Greg Commented Aug 1, 2014 at 7:27

4 Answers 4

I'll answer your title question and sub-questions in three words (then add to that): Difficulty is relative.

Noam Elkies finished his PhD in math at the age of 20. The average graduate student would probably take anywhere from 4 - 5 years. That doesn't mean Noam was a god among graduate students when he was a graduate student, and that's the reason he was able to finish his thesis faster than Joe Schmoe (though he is quite exceptional) and Joe Schmoe should just give up. Far from it. The fact that you're doing well in your master's courses is a good indicator you're well qualified for the coursework part. Working on a PhD thesis means producing original research. Producing original research means dealing with not so cut-and-neat problems like ones you'd encounter in your homework or textbooks. It means working with problems that you're not sure are close-ended, open-ended, or neither. In other words, different skill sets are needed for research in addition to the problem-solving heuristics which you've already acquired from your coursework.

Since you've never wet your foot it seems to me you have no indication of your ability to do research . So what do you do? Just go for it! You only live once as far as we know, and it seems to me that your real problem is your self-imposed doubt. Get that out of your head. Research is about staring and thinking about a problem long enough then coming up with an answer which turns out to be completely wrong and in that, the process repeats until you get your "Eureka!" moment.

You should also stop worrying about others being ahead of you. There'll always be someone faster and better than you (unless your name is John Von Neumann :-) especially in academia. A good algebraic geometer from UGA by the name of Roy Smith didn't get his start in advanced mathematics until his late 20's, after working in industry as a meat lugger. He received his PhD at 35. Over 30 years later, he's still going strong. What you should learn from him is if passion calls for it, then there should be no stopping you. If you fail at a career, then that's that. It's not the end of the world. But if you never bother to even try, then you'll never know and you'll always have a "What if?" moment.

So just to sum all of this up : Apply to a PhD program and see what happens.

https://mathoverflow.net/questions/7120/too-old-for-advanced-mathematics/45644#45644 (if you're interested in Roy's post)

There are a few different things going on in this question, I'll try and address them separately.

First of all, heed JeffE's words about the impostor syndrome. The idea that some people are effortly geniuses (which is inevitably followed by "but not me") is untrue and distinctly unhelpful.

Moreover trying and failing a few (or many!) times before coming to a solution is the very definition of doing research! The important question you should ask yourself is if you enjoy the challenge of struggling against a problem; if so, then research would be a great fit.

As for your background, you seem to have a plan to address the gaps in your background, and if you're doing well in your master's programme, I wouldn't worry too much about being behind the other students. Another challenge may be if you have a full-time job; doing a Ph.D. with a fulltime job is by no means impossible, but requires a some great time management skills. Anyway there's plenty of resources on this forum to help with this issue.

Finally, as for the question in the title, I would say it depends the most on what you plan to do with your Ph.D. after you graduate. I'm a recent graduate (in math) from a well-known North American school, and the quality of the Ph.D's varied greatly. I think it really depends on what you want to do with the degree. If getting a Ph.D. is the farthest one wants to go in academia, the standards for graduating are pretty low, and I think can be achieved not too strenuously. If one wants to be competitive in the academic research job market, the bar is quite a bit higher.

As Austin Mohr, pointed out, it is unlikely a stranger on the net fully answer this for you, but what you are experiencing is similar to what I experienced, so I can tell you how it was from my perspective.

Given what JeffE commented, studying through true 'grit', does involve 'brains' as you are developing and applying problem solving skills and stategies - which has clearly been effective, as you mention, you have good grades. So, it seems you have developed effective study techniques.

Point 2 is pretty much not an issue, based on the skills and strategies you developed in point 1.

If you do an unrelated thesis, as you mentioned in point 3 - look at this way, you'll be developing the research and synthesis skills needed for a PhD.

What I found about the transition between the Masters and PhD, was that it wasn't so much of a leap, but a case of using the skills developed a lot more thoroughly.

I hope this helps.

In your shoes, if I were applying for a PhD program, I might be thinking in terms of an "ABD" (All but dissertation.)

From the sound of it, "grit not brain" will get you through your PhD courses. You likely will pass the "comprehensive" examination. And then the fear is that you will "freeze up" when it comes time to write the dissertation because you are behindhand in "natural" (as opposed to synthetic), talent compared to others.

You will have to balance these real concerns against the benefits of "taking courses" and getting as far as you can, before possibly running up against a brick wall with your thesis.

This was basically my story (some decades ago). I was "counseled out" of a PhD program by a dean who observed that I had the preparation and the brains for the program, but lacked the "spark," "thirst," or drive that would see others through, but maybe not me.

What's worse, as a history undergraduate with mostly As, I had trouble finding a senior thesis topic, and spent the first part of my senior year wondering if I would be able to graduate, and thinking about writing a "trivial" paper that would earn a C. In the middle of the first semester, I stumbled on a viable topic that earned me departmental honors.

I can see one of three outcomes for you. 1) A "light bulb" will go off in your head at some point before you approach the end of the PhD program. If this happens, you're fine. 2) You will somehow squeak through, not quite knowing how you did it, and come out of the process a bit shell-shocked. 3) Neither of the above will happen, as you feared, in which case you might "bail out" as an "ABD."

I can't predict the outcome for you, but am sharing my experience. Just understand what the risks are, take into account your circumstances, and (hopefully) make the best decision for you.

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Is Getting a PhD Worth It?

Perhaps you’re finishing up a bachelor’s or master’s degree, or maybe you’ve hit a wall in your career. Now you’re wondering: Should I get a PhD? In the long run, is this the best choice for my career and personal goals?

You may have friends who have completed doctorate programs or even observed coworkers or professors excelling with PhDs but wondered if it’s the right fit for you. There’s usually a series of roadblocks between the initial daydreaming and enrolling. You hesitate, wondering if this is the right time, if it will pay off, or if you’ll be able to succeed.

The short answer: Yes. Most PhD students will tell you the time and effort are worth it. The long answer? Ultimately, only you can decide that but the pros outweigh the cons.

What benefits are there to earning a PhD?

Well, most importantly, you’ll get two new letters in front of your name: Dr. Knows A. Lot.

Reputation Building

Jokes aside, earning a PhD earns you credibility . Employers, whether within academia or off-campus, understand the discipline, knowledge, and tenacity required to complete a doctoral program.

In most cases, completing a PhD program is enough for others in your field to consider you an expert. Pursuing and completing a PhD shows all future employers you know your industry and you have the fortitude to work hard.

Return on Investment

It’s not always easy to calculate the monetary value of a PhD, but many PhDs will tell you that the return they’ve received on their investment (ROI) was more than worth it. When it comes to ROI , it matters where you get your PhD.

Depending on your field and the school you choose, the ROI on a PhD is made significantly higher if you don’t have to pay tuition. Many schools, SMU included, offer fellowships and stipends for PhD students, often in addition to a full tuition waiver. This isn’t meant to convince you that PhD students are raking in cash — just a reminder that tuition isn’t necessarily a burden for doctoral students. PhD students do get paid

Pursuit of Passion

You may have experienced the dread that comes with a job search where you’re under qualified. You see the posting. You notice the employer and job title. Wow, this is your dream job . You skim the description and think, “I could probably do that!”. You get to the bottom, “Preferred Qualifications”. Yikes. You’re not quite there. Your PhD will open those doors, remove the barriers, and welcome you to the highest level of your career. Gone are the days of being under qualified. This is your time to shine.

Remember those doors that were closed before? Your PhD helps you find a network of people who can help you open them. Your classmates turn into colleagues, your professors into trusted friends, and those barriers start to fall down as you surround yourself with people who share your passion.

Oh yeah, that little thing. Your passion. The subject and field you’ve been dreaming about since you were a child. Or maybe just since undergrad. It’s become part of your personal identity. Pursuing a PhD allows you to learn more, dig deeper, and climb higher in the field that you already enjoy. Even if you’re not looking to stay in academia forever, the PhD in your chosen field gives you the ability to stay a while longer and decide how best to use your skills.

What are the Reasons Not to Get a PhD?

Getting a PhD has a lot of benefits, but there are risks to consider, too.

The time commitment : this may take years. PhD programs take an average of 6 years to complete.

The financial commitment: if you’re not in a fully-funded program, this may cost a lot. Not only in tuition, but in “lost wages,” too. Most PhD students don’t have time to work on top of earning their degree.

But, the financial commitment is often offset by the earning potential of a PhD. On average, PhDs make over $30,000 more annually than those holding only a bachelor’s degree, but keep in mind that number varies between the humanities, business, and science industries.

The energy commitment: earning a PhD can be hard work. The good news is you’re not in it alone at SMU. We offer a robust career services office and dedicated student support services for PhD students like housing, counseling, and community connections.

The risk: what if this doesn’t work out? But what if it does?

Have you ever considered that in pursuing a PhD, you’ll be the expert on your chosen topic? You’ll have your classmates to lean on, but your thesis is specific to you. Your dissertation, though a lot of work, will put you as the thought leader of that specific topic. Combining your passion, credibility, network, and dreams to launch into your next phase of life.

So, is a PhD worth it? We think so.

Learn more about

doctoral degrees at SMU, and how you can choose the right program and thrive in it, in our Guide to Getting a PhD.

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6 Reasons People Fail To Finish Their Doctorate (& How to Finish Yours)

Getting a doctorate could be one of your biggest life achievements—provided you can make it to the finish line. Drop out rates vary by discipline, but as many as 50 percent of students don’t complete their doctorate.

In order to succeed, you must understand what’s at stake—and what’s expected of you—then develop a plan that you can stick to.

The Doctorate Killers: 6 Common Reasons Why People Fail to Finish their Degree

A doctorate is the highest level of academic degree available in the United States., and the United States is renowned worldwide for the excellence of its doctoral programs. That reputation for excellence is in part because of the stringency surrounding admissions (student quality), academic rigor and program design.

The combination of intellectual, emotional, and financial stress can take its toll, however, leading to high attrition/dropout rates, and the dreaded ABD (“all but dissertation”) syndrome: the doctoral equivalent of the blue screen of death.

Here, we give you insight into why many students fail to complete their doctorate, and provide tips to help you attain yours.

Earning a doctorate is challenging and rewarding, but do you know what to really expect? Download this free guide for tips and insights to help you prepare for success.

Doctorate killer #1: unrealistic expectations.

Some students underestimate the scope of demand that a doctorate involves.

It can be tempting to underestimate the gravity of the situation. You’ve already completed your master’s – and may have flown through the program with ease. But a doctorate program is an entirely different animal reserved for seriously driven students.

- Dr. Wendell Seaborne, Ph.D. Program Chair,
Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), Franklin University

In reality, the program is going to take considerable time and effort. You’ll be challenged and you will feel pressure. To make room for the energy required for the program, you’re going to have to sacrifice some things to achieve your degree.

How to Avoid this Doctorate Killer:

Audit Your Commitments. Determine how and where you’re spending your time, and look for ways to create margin for your degree work.
Interview Former Doctoral Students. Ask your advisor or your program director if you can speak with former students in their program. It’ll give you an eyewitness account of the scope of work that’ll be required of you.
Choose a Topic You’re Passionate About. Make sure you have a passion for your dissertation topic, or you will likely lose interest. Your doctorate is just that: yours. Make sure it’s reflective of your true interests, rather than those suggested to you by an advisor or peer.

Doctorate Killer #2: Undisciplined Time Management

As we’ve established, a doctorate takes time. And lots of it.

Poor time management is a common issue for students who never finish out their degree. It’s not that they don’t care about their degrees—it’s that they are busy with so many other things. Social events creep up, work carries intense pressures, and family commitments are a top priority.

If you’re not proactive, your doctorate can get pushed to the side—again, and again, and again.

- Dr. Wendell Seaborne, Ph.D. Program Chair, Doctor of Business Administration (DBA), Franklin University

The way to avoid this risk is to proactively manage your time—ensuring that you’re fully committed to each task, prioritizing the most important things, and giving yourself the bandwidth and time to complete your doctorate work.

Use Google Calendars—Religiously. If you’re not using the app, start. Plan out all your social events, family commitments and work priorities. Schedule dissertation work like you would a meeting—and stick to the schedule. Reference this sample calendar while you’re building yours:

Use Trello to Keep You Organized. Trello allows you to organize your project by phases, and establish different tasks within each phase. And an added benefit – you can see the progress you’re making toward your goal. That alone can be huge. The example below shows how you can organize your to-do list based on the stages of a dissertation process. Please note, however, that Trello is flexible enough to accommodate whatever your personal organization preference may be.
Work Your Power Hours. Everybody has certain times of day when they are at their most creative. By now, you should know yours. Schedule high-value tasks during these hours, and lower-value tasks when you are not at your peak.
Learn to Say No (& Stick to it). You will be forced to trim the fat, so to speak, in terms of how many ancillary activities (and people) you can commit to.

Doctorate Killer #3: Lack of a Vibrant Support System

While it’s entirely worth it, earning your doctorate is a grind. It’s difficult, time-consuming, and, at times, it can be downright frustrating. Success is often determined by a person’s support system—the people they surround themselves with in the pursuit of their degree.

Choose wisely and you’ll have the support you need to finish. Choose poorly, and you’ll have lots of voices competing for your attention and time, a certain recipe for disaster.

Choose the right advisor. This is extremely important, which is why we’ve dedicated a whole section to it below.
Build a support network. Establish a small group of friends, mentors, and contacts who can help guide, advise, keep you sane, and offer helpful critiques along the way. Whether it’s a text, a call, or a chat over drinks – support will help.
Bring in an outside perspective. You should also bring in “consultants” during your project. These should be people in your field who can read or discuss your research to help you both judge its value and articulate it effectively.

Doctorate Killer #4: Advisor Issues

One of the biggest causes of failure to complete a doctorate is incompatibility/issues with one’s dissertation chair. And with good reason; you will be working one-on-one with this person for at least 5 years (on average), so it’s best to set yourself up for success in that regard.

Of course, it is important to find a faculty member that is a leader in your field of interest, but also look for advisors with a good record of graduating candidates on time, being a strong leader, and treating students fairly and with dignity.

But finding the right advisor is only half the battle—it will be up to you to maximize the value you get out of the advisor relationship.

Manage Up. Having chosen an advisor you're compatible with, make sure to proactively manage your relationship and interactions with them. Do not rely on them to take the lead. If they do, that’s fine, but if they don’t, be prepared to step up.
Follow Their Advice. We can safely say that most advisors have in-depth knowledge of their field of research, and the world of academia in general; they also have your best interests at heart and want to see you succeed. There will be times when you disagree (see below), but in general, they are giving you advice that will move you closer to producing a top-tier dissertation.
Be Assertive. They are experts in their field—but so are you. It is perfectly okay to challenge them if they make an assertion or suggestion that you do not agree with. Be mindful, however, to use your challenges wisely. The relationship should never devolve into one of constant contentiousness.
Stay in Touch. Set up regular meetings, and stick to agreed-upon timelines. Find out their preferred communication style, and honor that whenever possible. Do not, under any circumstances disappear, or decide not to show up for a previously arranged meeting. Communicate, communicate, communicate. If you are thinking of changing the focus of your research: discuss it. If you are struggling with a specific area: mention it early. If you need to reschedule a meeting or push a deadline: provide adequate notice via email.
Make every meeting a working meeting. Have an agenda. Come with prepared questions. Solicit (and listen to) their feedback. Create follow-ups. Then follow up.

Doctorate Killer #5: Lack of Organization and Focus

he volume of work for a degree can be overwhelming. Students can fall behind on their tasks or their projects—and soon feel like they are too behind to finish.

Establishing a good organization system is a great way to ensure you’ll finish your degree.

Use Wunderlist. You’re going to have a lot of small tasks while you work on your coursework and dissertation. From homework notes to reminders to asking your advisor a specific question, this app gives you a single place to log to-do’s (and check them off).
Build Playlists on Spotify. Music can have a huge impact on your brain’s ability to focus and perform tasks. Find music that helps you focus when you research and when you write. Build a few go-to playlists to enhance your work.
It can be used across any device
Its ability to autosave
Notes can be shared via public URLs (similar to Google Docs)
It offers a number of tools to help keep you organized, including reminders, and notebook and note titles

Pro tip 1: when you’re labeling your notes, be sure to follow a similar taxonomy so it’s easy to quickly find previous notes in your search. For example, if you’re taking notes during lectures, you could use [YYMMDD: Class Name: Subject of Lecture].

Pro tip 2: When you use Evernote on a daily basis, you can utilize it as your to do list, too. Use Evernote’s checkbox feature, and check off each task as it’s completed.

graphic displays a screenshot of a sample from evernote

Pro tip 3 : Instead of crowding your browser bookmark list, use Evernote’s Web Clipper extension to keep track of important information you find online.

Use a Researcher. Some schools offer each student a personal assistant to do the grunt work of compiling research. It’s up to you to interpret it—but this takes a huge chunk of time off your plate and allows you to focus on what matters most.

Doctorate Killer #6: Bad Writing

Many doctoral students simply aren’t writers.

They are smart and passionate about their field of study. They can articulate their thoughts in debate or conversation. But when it comes to documenting the thing, they struggle. And sometimes, mightily. That can be a huge deal-breaker for students–as the writing level required for a doctorate degree is far superior to any other writing requirements or skills for other programs.

If you’re worried about the writing element of your doctorate, there are some tips you can practice to ensure you don’t become a victim of writer’s fear.

Use Google Docs. This tool will allow you to share your work with others and get comments, feedback and suggestions for edits.
Work with a Writer. They are out there, and they can be a huge help. Use them as consultants to help you refine your content, define your angles and ensure clarity. Go to sites like Elance or Guru—and find people near your location.
Write a Little Every Week. If you can’t write, then edit. If you can’t edit, then prepare supporting documentation, or work on your bibliography, or ensure all your formatting adheres to your school’s official style (yes; that matters). The goal is to consistently contribute to your doctoral dissertation. Think of it as the success by attrition method. Keep. Chipping. Away.
Hire an Editor. Yep. Someone who can cross the T’s and dot the I’s, and ensure that you’re writing at a highly professional level.
Fight Against Perfectionism. You have probably not gotten this far in your academic career without possessing and being motivated by this trait, but in the world of doctoral studies it can sideline you. It’s a matter of picking your battles. You will probably never be 100 percent happy with every aspect of your dissertation, and that is okay. The point is to get it close enough so you can defend it and get your degree.

Success Isn’t Accidental. It’s Intentional.

Though students might possess the required intellectual capacity, many are simply not fully prepared for the leap to doctoral studies on a practical level. To be successful, establish a proactive strategy to manage your time, build your support system, organize your tasks, and bring clarity to your writing.

It’ll make all the difference in the world.

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Local: (614) 797-4700 Toll Free: (877) 341-6300 [email protected]

Speaking of Psychology: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD

Episode 225.

These days, most of us live our lives tethered to our computers and smartphones, which are unending sources of distraction. Research has shown that over the past couple of decades people’s attention spans have shrunk in measurable ways. Gloria Mark, PhD, of the University of California Irvine, talks about how the internet and digital devices have affected our ability to focus, why multitasking is so stressful, and how understanding the science of attention can help us to regain our focus when we need it.

About the expert: Gloria Mark, PhD

Kim Mills : When was the last time that you had an entire day completely free from digital distractions? No text messages, no email notifications, no social media and no aimless internet browsing. It might be hard to think of the last time you even had a tech free hour. These days, most of us live our lives tethered to our computers and our smartphones, which are unending sources of distraction. Sometimes it can feel impossible to concentrate deeply on anything for any significant length of time.

And indeed researchers have found evidence that over the past couple of decades, people's attention spans have shrunk considerably. So how has the rise of the internet and digital devices affected our ability to focus and pay attention? What does it mean to pay attention to something anyway? When you're being bombarded by different tasks, notifications, and emails, is it possible to multitask and deal with them all effectively? Or is productive multitasking a myth? How can understanding the science of attention help us to regain our focus when we need it to improve both our productivity and our happiness?

Welcome to Speaking of Psychology , the flagship podcast of the American Psychological Association that examines the links between psychological science and everyday life. I'm Kim Mills.

My guest today is Dr. Gloria Mark, a psychologist and the chancellor's professor of informatics at the University of California Irvine. Dr. Mark studies how people interact with technology in their everyday lives and how technology affects our attention, multitasking, mood, and stress level. She studies people's behavior in real world settings and she's found that our attention spans have been shrinking over the past two decades. Her new book, published in January, is called Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness, and Productivity .

Dr. Mark, thank you for joining me today.

Gloria Mark, PhD : Thank you so much for having me.

Mills : Most of us probably think that we know what it means when we say we pay attention to something, but you wrote in your book that there are different kinds of attention. Can you talk about that? What are the different kinds of attentions that we experience in our everyday life?

Mark : Let me actually start out by talking about what William James, the father of psychology, says about attention. So back in the 19th century, he said “Everyone knows what attention is. It's the taking possession by the mind in clear and vivid form of one out of what seems several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” Of course, everyone knows what attention is. We all believe we know what attention is, but it's a lot more complicated than that.

So when I was studying attention, it occurred to me that you can be very engaged in something and you can put in a lot of mental effort. If I'm reading an article, it be challenging for me. On the other hand, there's a lot of things we do that are not at all challenging, but we're very engaged in. So when we're playing solitaire or playing simple games online, or if a person is gardening, they might be very engaged and not at all challenged. So we set out to study different kinds of attention when people use their devices. And what we did was we probed people throughout the day and we asked them at this point in time, want you to respond very quickly and tell us how engaged were you in what you just did, and how challenged were you in what you just did?

We find that when people are engaged and challenged, there seems to be rhythms in the day when this happens. And people seem to have peaks of times when they do this. We call this focused attention, tends to be late morning and again mid to late afternoon, about two to three. And when people are very engaged in something and not at all challenged, we call that rote activity.

Lots of things that people do are rote activity when they're online. It could be simple games, it could be even reading the news or doing social media. They tend to do that relatively uniformly throughout the day. But we do find that focused attention occurs in rhythms and it seems to correspond to the ebb and flow of our mental resources that we have available.

Mills : Well, I mentioned in the introduction that you have found evidence that our attention spans have shrunk in recent years, at least as measured by how long people spend on tasks and screens at work. Can you talk about that? How much have our attention spans shrunk?

Mark : So we started measuring this back in 2004, and at the time the measures that we used were stopwatches because that was the most precise thing we had at the time. We would shadow people with stopwatches for every single activity they did. We would record the start time and the stop time. So you're on a screen where you're working in a Word doc, as soon as you get to that screen, we clicked start time, soon as they turned away and checked email, we clicked stop time for the Word document, start time for the email. But fortunately, sophisticated computer logging methods were developed, and so of course we switched to those. So back in 2004, we found the average attention span on any screen to be two and a half minutes on average. Throughout the years it became shorter. So around 2012 we found it to be 75 seconds.

This is with logging techniques. This is an average. And then in the last five, six years, we found it to average about 47 seconds, and others have replicated this result within a few seconds. So it seems to be quite robust. Now, another way to think about this result is the median. The median means the midpoint of observations. The median is 40 seconds. And what this means is that half of all the measurements that we found were 40 seconds or less of people's attention spans. Now obviously because we're talking about averages and medians, sometimes people do spend longer, but quite a good bit of the time, their attention spans are much shorter and with an average coming to 47 seconds.

Mills : So why is this a problem? Since it seems to be happening almost universally at this point, is this just the new normal?

Mark : It seems to be the new normal because we seem to have reached a steady state over the last five or six years where these are the measures that we're seeing. Is this a good thing? I would argue it's not a good thing for the following reasons. First of all, we find in our research a correlation between frequency of attention switching and stress. So the faster the attention switching occurs, stress is measured by people wearing heart rate monitors. We show that stress goes up. We know from decades of research in the laboratory that when people multitask, they experience stress, blood pressure rises. There's a physiological marker in the body that indicates people are stressed. And in our studies, we've also simply asked people with well valid instruments to report their stress, their perceived stress, and it's reported to be higher the faster that we measure attention shifting.

So all of these measures seem to be consistent. I'll also measure that when people shift their attention so fast, and this is multitasking, when you keep switching your attention among different activities, people make more errors. And that's been shown in studies in the real world with physicians, nurses, pilots. We also know that performance slows. Why? Because there's something called a switch cost. So every time you switch your attention, you have to reorient to that new activity, that new thing you're paying attention to, and it takes a little bit of time.

So imagine if you're writing, let's say, say you're writing a chapter and you suddenly stop what you're doing and you switch and do something else, and then you come back to it, it's going to take you some time to reconstruct, what was I writing? What was the topic I was thinking about? What were the words I was using? That takes a bit of time. And so we incur these switch costs throughout the day as we're switching our attention, and this creates more effort. It uses more of our very precious mental resources on top of the work that we actually need to do.

Mills : You've also found that some switching is good. It's normal during the course of a day so that you might really concentrate on something for a length of time, and then you take a break and maybe you go online or maybe if you're working from home, you put in a load of laundry or you take a walk. Isn't that something that we actually need to do?

Mark : Absolutely. It's so important that we take breaks because if you work until you get exhausted, then of course you can get burnout. It's so important to take breaks and replenish. And by taking breaks, we have more energy, we have more attentional capacity, and we can actually do more. We can be more productive. The problem is that in our current world, many work environments, people neglect to take meaningful breaks, and we get ourselves into position where our performance suffers as a result.

Now, if you're going to take a break, it's really important to take a break at a point in the task that's called a break point. And a break point is a natural stopping point in a task. So going back to the writing example, if I'm writing something, a breakpoint would be at the end of a section or even at the end of a paragraph, but at a point where when I come back to it, then there's not going to be a lot of effort for me to have to reconstruct what I was doing. I've already finished that part. If you interrupt yourself in the middle of doing something as opposed to a natural stopping point, you use up a lot more mental resources and it's also more stressful.

Mills : Well, for people who want to schedule breaks, who really want to intentionally make the changes that you're talking about, what do you think about programs such as internet blockers that prevent people from going online during certain hours of the day so that you can force yourself to be more focused? Do you think that those are effective?

Mark : We've done a study with internet blockers, and it turns out it very much depends on an individual's personality. So people who have poor self-regulation skills can benefit from these kinds of blockers. Essentially what you're doing is you're offloading the work of self-regulation onto the software, and the software becomes a proxy agent for you. It's doing the work. It turns out people who have good self-regulation skills, so people who score low in impulsivity as a trait, people who score high in conscientious these are people who are actually harmed by these blockers.

Why? Because these are people who are very good at taking breaks and coming right back to work. They can take a break, they can go to social media, they can go to a news site and they can take a break, relax themselves, then they can come back to work. In this study, we took away their opportunity to take a quick online break, and they got burnt out. They worked straight through. They didn't take breaks. On the whole, I prefer that people develop their own agency, their own self-efficacy in controlling their attention. These software blockers can be good at times, but I think it's far more important that people learn to develop their own skills to control their attention.

Mills : A lot has been written about the Pomodoro technique, which is basically you set a timer for every 25 minutes and then you agree you're going to work straight through for 25 minutes, a timer goes off and you get a five minute break. What about that as sort of a low tech blocker?

Mark : Well, that's fine, but there are individual differences and some people would be able to work longer than what the Pomodoro technique dictates. Some people would work less. I think it's much more important that people become self-aware of their own level of energy and the amount of attentional resources they have available and take breaks according to what their own levels are.

So I've learned to do this. I've learned to become more aware of what my own capacity is, and when I start feeling tired, that's the point when I take a break. If I know I've got a really hard task to do, I might schedule a break before I start doing that task so I can replenish myself and then right after so that I can build back up the resources that I expended. The worst thing you can do, the worst thing is to schedule back to back Zoom meetings without breaks that it just gets us exhausted. There's no transition between these meetings. So we need to schedule in transitions between these kinds of hard tasks.

Mills : And when we're talking about attention and attention spans, there's something a little bit different but related, which is the concept of flow. Can you explain what that is? Because that is a kind of attention and it's very, very different from what we've just been talking about.

Mark : That's right. So flow is a type of attention that the psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi discovered, and it's what he calls the optimal state of attention. It's when people are so immersed in something that time just doesn't seem to matter. And so it's when we are at our peak creativity, we're using the optimal amount of challenge of our skills. So if we're not challenged enough in whatever your skill happens to be, you won't go into flow. If you're challenged too much in your skill, you won't go into flow. It'll be too hard. So there's that sweet spot that you have to hit to go into flow. So before I went into psychology, I actually had studied fine arts and used to be an artist, and I would get into flow regularly, and it's the nature of the work of being an artist and being creative that I could regularly get into flow.

Now, as a scientist, I rarely get into flow because of the nature of my work where I have to be very analytical and I have to use very careful thought. Is that a bad thing? No, not at all. It's very rewarding. It's just I realize that the nature of my work and the nature of a lot of knowledge work is such that it may not be conducive to flow, but sometimes I get into flow. If I'm in say a brainstorming session with other people, we might get into a kind of group flow where everyone is feeding off of each other's ideas. But in my typical day-to-day life, now, I generally don't get into flow, and it's not a bad thing.

Mills : Let's talk for a minute about the effect of the internet and devices on children's attention span. Most of your research has been with adults, but kids are spending a lot of time on devices as well. Are they going to have even more trouble with attention than those of us who first experience this level of distraction as adults?

Mark : This is something that I think we should be very concerned about as a society. So it turns out children that are as young as two to four years old, they already average two and a half hours of screen time a day. And when they get to be between five and eight, they average about three hours of screen time a day. Now, most of that screen time, it's TV and YouTube viewing, but children also do a lot of gaming. So we know from a lot of laboratory studies that when children are very young, they're a lot more susceptible to distraction than older children. And when they're distracted, it takes them longer to get back and focus again on that thing that they were distracted from. So I worry that when young children are spending so much time on the screen, it acculturates them to think that this is normal behavior to be on a screen.

The problem is that when children are very young, there are certain parts of their brain that are not yet mature. So their ability to self-control and a part of the brain called executive function and executive function, you can think of it as the governor of the mind. So it manages things like decision-making, and setting priorities of what we should be paying attention to. It helps manage interference of peripheral stimuli in the environment, and executive function is not yet well developed and children are sitting in front of screens and they're exposed to all kinds of potential distractions.

So I think this is not a good idea. Children need self-control for learning, and more and more we're seeing schools having a lot of online learning available for kids, and kids need self-control as a skill to be able to search for information, to do math problems online, to read and write without being distracted. I find it problematic that we're putting children into a digital world before some very critical mental functions are fully developed. I don't think kids are really ready for that.

Mills : Can focus be taught? I mean, you seem to be implying that we need to be doing something particularly with children so that they aren't constantly distracted. But how do you teach somebody to focus on something?

Mark : Well, for children, I think the best thing children can do is to do activity off-screen. And I think they would learn to focus, whether it's playing outside, reading books is an excellent way to get children to focus. If we're talking about adults, I think that one of the best things that adults can do is to make sure that your internal tank of mental resources is kept at high capacity. So when you have a full tank of resources, you can focus much better than when you're just spent, when your resources have just drained because you're doing hard work all day, you're switching your attention a lot. It's going to be very, very hard to focus, and there are things we can do to build up those resources. So one of the best things you can do is to get a really good night's sleep. Everyone says, of course we know you should get a good night's sleep, but let me tell you what happens when you don't. When people accumulate what's called sleep debt and sleep debt is the accumulation of loss of sleep.

If you need eight hours of sleep a night—and I need eight hours of sleep a night—but if you're only getting six hours a night, that difference is called a sleep debt. And if you're consistently getting six hours of sleep a night, you're accumulating sleep debt. And we know that the greater the sleep debt, the shorter the attention spans. And what do people do when they have a lot of sleep debt? We found that they tend to do more lightweight activities like social media. They just don't have the resources to be able to focus and do hard work, so they do what's easy based on the amount of resources that they have available.

Mills : Let's switch topics for a minute to something else that you talk about in your book, which is how TV and movies have changed in the past few decades. You're right that the pace of television and movies has sped up and things like the length of each camera shot, they're getting shorter. Why is that? And are those changes affecting our attention or is this happening because the people who are creating these things already know that we have no attention anymore?

Mark : So I was very surprised to learn that TV and film shot lengths have decreased over the years. They started out much longer. They now average about four seconds a shot length. That's on average. If you watch MTV music videos, they're much shorter. They're only a couple of seconds. So we've become accustomed to seeing very fast shot lengths when we look at TV and film. Even commercials have shortened in length. Commercials used to be much longer. Now it's not uncommon to see six-second commercials, even shorter than that. Now it's a chicken and egg question. We don't know if TV and film have affected our attention spans on computers and phones. We don't know if our attention spans have affected the decision-making of film editors and directors. We don't know exactly if there is any causal connection we see these two parallel trends.

It could be the case that directors and editors are influenced by their own short attention spans when they create these film shots or it could be that they're creating short film shots because they think that's what the viewer wants to see. But this has become quite ubiquitous. In fact, on YouTube, there's a particular YouTube aesthetic which uses jump cuts. So when you're watching a YouTube film, the film becomes very jumpy. The natural pauses that people make when they speak it is removed. So the idea is to pack more content into a shorter amount of time. So we're seeing short lengths of content from all directions. It's not just what we're attending to on computers and phones.

Mills : But I think you found that some of this we're doing to ourselves. I know some people who feel like they're so time crunched that when they want to listen to a podcast, they turn up the speed to 1.5 or 2 and then listen to it. Why are we doing this to ourselves and is this helping?

Mark : I myself have sometimes done that?. Why do we do this? There's a number of reasons. I can't say exactly why we do it. It could be because we want to fit more content into a shorter amount of time because there's so much content available, right? We're talking about access to the world's largest candy store, and we want to sample all the wares that are available. So of course, you might want to speed up the podcast so that you can simply take more in and quickly get to your next favorite podcast. So I don't know exactly why we're doing it on ourselves. It could be also out of habit. We're just used to listening to things faster, but we do have all of this content available to us at our fingertips within milliseconds, and so perhaps we just want to sample as much as we possibly can.

Mills : Now, during the pandemic, many people have switched to remote work, which I'm guessing has meant more emails, more messages on Slack, and Teams, and workers have to deal with all of this. How do you think this is affecting people's attention and focus? Do you even know? Is it too soon to say?

Mark : Yeah, so I've worked on a survey with colleagues. So we have people’s self-reports, they've reported that it's hard to focus. I've done other work where we're looking at team interaction in remote work and have picked up some information from that. People do report having a hard time focusing. It's a different kind of distraction than you would have in a workplace. Of course, you're distracted by the pile of dirty laundry that you're looking at. In a workplace, you might be distracted by ambient noise in the workplace. We do know that it makes a difference whether people have a private workspace at home where it can be quiet or whether they have to share a public working space with others, which is more distracting. Some people might go to a cafe to work, and of course, that creates another type of distraction. So a lot of it very much depends on the environment, where the person is working.

We also know that if you're remote from your colleagues, you can't really signal to them when is a good time to interrupt. If you're in a workplace, and especially if you can see your colleagues, you can see when they just hung up the phone, then you know it might be a nice time to walk over and talk to them or you might stand outside their office and wait, and then you can see when it's good to interrupt. When we're remote, we don't have that visual information, and so we can just be sending electronic communications to our colleagues at all time. There's another study that I did with my postdoc, and she found that a lot of people feel that they want to go above and beyond what they ordinarily do to be able to signal to their colleagues, to their supervisors that they're working hard. And so they jump to answer their email, their Slack messages so that they can demonstrate, hey, I'm working—you don't see me, but I want you to know that I'm here and I'm working hard, and that's why I'm going to jump on these messages.

Mills : Now, we've been talking a lot about what individuals can do regarding better attention spans, but are there changes that organizations should be making or even changes at a societal level that could help all of us with boosting our ability to stay focused on important things?

Mark : There are, and I'm a big advocate for changes on a collective level. And the reason is that if any individual decides to just pull out and completely cut themselves off from technology, they might penalize themselves. If you're a knowledge worker of any kind, you're cutting yourself off from important work communications. You can be cutting yourself off from communications from family, friends, loved ones, from important news in the world. So it's not always beneficial for any individual to cut themselves off, but an organization can do things. They can, for example, control times during the day when electronic communications are sent. They can create a window of time when no communications would be sent, and this would be a quiet time when people can work. In our research, we find that people check email on average 77 times a day. And if you have this quiet time, at least you can curtail that checking.

We might be able to reduce the amount of checking because there's no point to check, there won't be email coming. On a societal level, there's starting to be what's called right to disconnect laws, and there's one in France, it's called the El Khomri law. There's also Ireland and Ontario have policies, so other countries are starting to pick up on this, and it's the idea that no worker can be penalized if they do not answer electronic communications before and after work hours. New York City tried to introduce a right to disconnect law in its city council meeting. That got shut down very quickly. And my favorite, I read the transcripts of the meeting, and my favorite response, my favorite argument against it was from the Bureau of Tourism, which said, we're the greatest tourist city in the world, we're the city that never sleeps.

So if we have right to disconnect laws, it enables people to detach from work, and that has so much psychological benefit for individuals. You truly do need a break from work. We can't be on work 24/7, and that's what's happening. The borders between our personal life and work life have just blurred so that in personal time when people are at home after work, they're dealing with work problems, and work communications. People do need time to really relax, to break away from work. It's such a great psychological benefit, and if they can do that, it enables them to better reattach to work the next day because they're fresh, they're replenished. So I'm a big advocate of right to disconnect policy.

Mills : let me ask you a totally different question, which is what's next for you? What are you working on now? What are the important research questions that you want to see answered?

Mark : Yeah, so I would like to continue looking at our attention. I'm interested in a lot of things. I'm interested in how we can get more value from the internet. We have this incredible resource available to us, and so rather than be upset by it because it distracts us, how can we turn that around and instead find value from it? And how can we utilize our time best and optimize our time best when we use the resources that the internet offers without getting exhausted from it?

And I also have been looking at teamwork, remote teamwork and how that can be optimized because more and more companies are starting to have hybrid work and remote work, and what are the repercussions from that? What are the benefits from that? So I'd like to understand that better.

Mills : Well, that all sounds really interesting. I look forward to seeing your subsequent research. Appreciate your joining me today, Dr. Mark. Thank you very much.

Mark : Thank you so much for having me.

Mills : You can find previous episodes of Speaking of Psychology on our website at speakingofpsychology.org or on Apple, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like what you've heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. If you have comments or ideas for future podcasts, you can email us at [email protected] . Speaking of Psychology is produced by Lea Winerman. Our sound editor is Chris Condayan.

Thank you for listening. For the American Psychological Association, I'm Kim Mills.

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Episode 225: Why our attention spans are shrinking, with Gloria Mark, PhD

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Gloria Mark, PhD
Attention Span: A Groundbreaking Way to Restore Balance, Happiness and Productivity

Speaking of Psychology

Speaking of Psychology is an audio podcast series highlighting some of the latest, most important, and relevant psychological research being conducted today.

Produced by the American Psychological Association, these podcasts will help listeners apply the science of psychology to their everyday lives.

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Your host: Kim I. Mills

Kim I. Mills is senior director of strategic external communications and public affairs for the American Psychological Association, where she has worked since 2007. Mills led APA’s foray into social media and envisioned and launched APA’s award-winning podcast series Speaking of Psychology in 2013. A former reporter and editor for The Associated Press, Mills has also written for publications including The Washington Post , Fast Company , American Journalism Review , Dallas Morning News , MSNBC.com and Harvard Business Review .

In her 30+-year career in communications, Mills has extensive media experience, including being interviewed by The New York Times , The Washington Post , The Wall Street Journal , and other top-tier print media. She has appeared on CNN, Good Morning America , Hannity and Colmes , CSPAN, and the BBC, to name a few of her broadcast engagements. Mills holds a bachelor’s degree in biology from Barnard College and a master’s in journalism from New York University.

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What is the creeping bellflower? And why is it so hard to get rid of?

By Kirsten Mitchell

August 8, 2024 / 10:30 PM CDT / CBS Minnesota

MINNEAPOLIS — At first glance, it looks like a pretty purple flower. The creeping bellflower been popping up all over gardens, yards, and alleys this summer.

Native to Europe, the invasive plant can easily take over a garden. Though it benefits some native bees and insects, but it out-competes plant species that are more beneficial to pollinators. It spreads quickly, producing roughly 15,000 seeds per pod.

According to Julie Weisenhorn, a horticulture educator at the University of Minnesota Extension, creeping bellflower can be hard to spot, as it takes on new forms as it grows.

It starts out as a young, heart-shaped leaf. Then it becomes more pointed before transitioning into long and narrow leaves. It's quick to spread and hard to kill.

"It's so pervasive, there are social media groups around getting rid of it," Weisenhorn said.

More than 14,000 have joined a Facebook group called "Creeping bellflower battles."

"It showed up in my yard and it was so pretty, but then a year later I realized what was going on," said Jan Fransen of St. Paul.

Fransen is spreading the word by putting informational bookmarks in her little free library.

The creeping bellflower is difficult to uproot, so Weisenhorn also suggests treat it using a herbicide called Clopyralid. She says to be sure to follow the label directions. And once removed, the bellflower should be burned or bagged to stop the spread.

Kirsten Mitchell joined the WCCO team as a reporter in November of 2021. A Saint Paul native, Kirsten is proud to tell stories in her home state. She graduated from the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (Go Gophs!) and interned at WCCO during her time there.

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Why You Feel Underappreciated at Work

And how to empower yourself when you do.

Despite working hard and meeting our goals, sometimes it’s not clear why we aren’t getting ahead at work. In the absence of strong feedback, we may begin to feel underappreciated or undervalued. While leaders and managers can help boost employee morale by bridging communication gaps around performance, it can be frustrating to wait for that change to happen. What can you do to empower yourself in this situation? Begin by figuring out the unique circumstances that are contributing to your feelings of underappreciation. In some cases, you may be making false assumptions that are exacerbating your negative emotions or leading you down the wrong path of action. You may need to course correct to move in the right direction.

Do you ever feel underappreciated or undervalued at work? If you answered “yes,” then you’re one of many. In a recent survey of over 1000 full-time employees in the United States, more than a half of respondents reported feeling only somewhat valued (46.4%) or not valued at all (10.7%) by their organization.

Tessa West is a Professor of Psychology at New York University and a leading expert in the science of interpersonal communication. She is the author of Jerks at Work: Toxic Coworkers and What to Do About Them .

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Harris’s Rise Has Unsettled Trump, Who Is Struggling to Focus, Supporters Say

Donald J. Trump’s allies want him to talk about the issues, but he seems distracted by Kamala Harris’s burst of momentum.

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An aerial view of Donald Trump speaking at a lectern on a red-carpeted stage. A Trump-Vance campaign sign is on the front of the lectern.

By Shawn McCreesh

Follow live updates on the 2024 election .

Former President Donald J. Trump dialed into “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning for his first interview since Vice President Kamala Harris picked Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota as her running mate.

“Talk about how you’re going to handle this on the campaign trail,” the friendly Fox host Ainsley Earhardt said to the former president. “Will you just really hone in on how they voted in the past?”

It was really more of a plea than a question.

“Well, I am,” Mr. Trump assured her. “I’m going to be doing that.”

The way Republicans see it, it should not be hard for Mr. Trump to pivot from President Biden to this new Democratic ticket. All he has to do is hammer Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz for things they have said and done, to paint them as out-of-step from most Americans, on everything including policing, immigration and transgender policies .

But lately Mr. Trump keeps getting tangled up in distractions of his own making. He has gone on tangents about Ms. Harris’s biracial identity. He has picked fights with fellow Republicans. He has fantasized that Mr. Biden might somehow snatch back the nomination.

Many in Mr. Trump’s party find this all to be counterproductive, to say the least.

“The Harris-Walz ticket is the furthest left ticket in American history. They are a target-rich environment,” said Ben Shapiro, the right-wing media warrior. “All he has to do is focus the attack, to dump the war chest he’s accrued on this extremist ticket, to stick to a simple point: You were better off in 2019 than you are in 2024.”

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What Kamala Harris has said so far on key issues in her campaign

As she ramps up her nascent presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris is revealing how she will address the key issues facing the nation.

In speeches and rallies, she has voiced support for continuing many of President Joe Biden’s measures, such as lowering drug costs , forgiving student loan debt and eliminating so-called junk fees. But Harris has made it clear that she has her own views on some key matters, particularly Israel’s treatment of Gazans in its war with Hamas.

In a departure from her presidential run in 2020, the Harris campaign has confirmed that she’s moved away from many of her more progressive stances, such as her interest in a single-payer health insurance system and a ban on fracking.

Harris is also expected to put her own stamp and style on matters ranging from abortion to the economy to immigration, as she aims to walk a fine line of taking credit for the administration’s accomplishments while not being jointly blamed by voters for its shortcomings.

Her early presidential campaign speeches have offered insights into her priorities, though she’s mainly voiced general talking points and has yet to release more nuanced plans. Like Biden, she intends to contrast her vision for America with that of former President Donald Trump. ( See Trump’s campaign promises here .)

“In this moment, I believe we face a choice between two different visions for our nation: one focused on the future, the other focused on the past,” she told members of the historically Black sorority Zeta Phi Beta at an event in Indianapolis in late July. “And with your support, I am fighting for our nation’s future.”

Here’s what we know about Harris’ views:

Harris took on the lead role of championing abortion rights for the administration after Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022. This past January, she started a “ reproductive freedoms tour ” to multiple states, including a stop in Minnesota thought to be the first by a sitting US president or vice president at an abortion clinic .

On abortion access, Harris embraced more progressive policies than Biden in the 2020 campaign, as a candidate criticizing his previous support for the Hyde Amendment , a measure that blocks federal funds from being used for most abortions.

Policy experts suggested that although Harris’ current policies on abortion and reproductive rights may not differ significantly from Biden’s, as a result of her national tour and her own focus on maternal health , she may be a stronger messenger.

High prices are a top concern for many Americans who are struggling to afford the cost of living after a spell of steep inflation. Many voters give Biden poor marks for his handling of the economy, and Harris may also face their wrath.

In her early campaign speeches, Harris has echoed many of the same themes as Biden, saying she wants to give Americans more opportunities to get ahead. She’s particularly concerned about making care – health care, child care, elder care and family leave – more affordable and available.

Harris promised at a late July rally to continue the Biden administration’s drive to eliminate so-called “junk fees” and to fully disclose all charges, such as for events, lodging and car rentals. In early August, the administration proposed a rule that would ban airlines from charging parents extra fees to have their kids sit next to them.

On day one, I will take on price gouging and bring down costs. We will ban more of those hidden fees and surprise late charges that banks and other companies use to pad their profits.”

Since becoming vice president, Harris has taken more moderate positions, but a look at her 2020 campaign promises reveals a more progressive bent than Biden.

As a senator and 2020 presidential candidate, Harris proposed providing middle-class and working families with a refundable tax credit of up to $6,000 a year (per couple) to help keep up with living expenses. Titled the LIFT the Middle Class Act, or Livable Incomes for Families Today, the measure would have cost at the time an estimated $3 trillion over 10 years.

Unlike a typical tax credit, the bill would allow taxpayers to receive the benefit – up to $500 – on a monthly basis so families don’t have to turn to payday loans with very high interest rates.

As a presidential candidate, Harris also advocated for raising the corporate income tax rate to 35%, where it was before the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that Trump and congressional Republicans pushed through Congress reduced the rate to 21%. That’s higher than the 28% Biden has proposed.

Affordable housing was also on Harris’ radar. As a senator, she introduced the Rent Relief Act, which would establish a refundable tax credit for renters who annually spend more than 30% of their gross income on rent and utilities. The amount of the credit would range from 25% to 100% of the excess rent, depending on the renter’s income.

Harris called housing a human right and said in a 2019 news release on the bill that every American deserves to have basic security and dignity in their own home.

Consumer debt

Hefty debt loads, which weigh on people’s finances and hurt their ability to buy homes, get car loans or start small businesses, are also an area of interest to Harris.

As vice president, she has promoted the Biden administration’s initiatives on student debt, which have so far forgiven more than $168 billion for nearly 4.8 million borrowers . In mid-July, Harris said in a post on X that “nearly 950,000 public servants have benefitted” from student debt forgiveness, compared with only 7,000 when Biden was inaugurated.

A potential Harris administration could keep that momentum going – though some of Biden’s efforts have gotten tangled up in litigation, such as a program aimed at cutting monthly student loan payments for roughly 3 million borrowers enrolled in a repayment plan the administration implemented last year.

The vice president has also been a leader in the White House efforts to ban medical debt from credit reports, noting that those with medical debt are no less likely to repay a loan than those who don’t have unpaid medical bills.

In a late July statement praising North Carolina’s move to relieve the medical debt of about 2 million residents, Harris said that she is “committed to continuing to relieve the burden of medical debt and creating a future where every person has the opportunity to build wealth and thrive.”

Health care

Harris, who has had shifting stances on health care in the past, confirmed in late July through her campaign that she no longer supports a single-payer health care system .

During her 2020 campaign, Harris advocated for shifting the US to a government-backed health insurance system but stopped short of wanting to completely eliminate private insurance.

The measure called for transitioning to a Medicare-for-All-type system over 10 years but continuing to allow private insurance companies to offer Medicare plans.

The proposal would not have raised taxes on the middle class to pay for the coverage expansion. Instead, it would raise the needed funds by taxing Wall Street trades and transactions and changing the taxation of offshore corporate income.

When it comes to reducing drug costs, Harris previously proposed allowing the federal government to set “a fair price” for any drug sold at a cheaper price in any economically comparable country, including Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Japan or Australia. If manufacturers were found to be price gouging, the government could import their drugs from abroad or, in egregious cases, use its existing but never-used “march-in” authority to license a drug company’s patent to a rival that would produce the medication at a lower cost.

Harris has been a champion on climate and environmental justice for decades. As California’s attorney general, Harris sued big oil companies like BP and ConocoPhillips, and investigated Exxon Mobil for its role in climate change disinformation. While in the Senate, she sponsored the Green New Deal resolution.

During her 2020 campaign, she enthusiastically supported a ban on fracking — but a Harris campaign official said in late July that she no longer supports such a ban.

Fracking is the process of using liquid to free natural gas from rock formations – and the primary mode for extracting gas for energy in battleground Pennsylvania. During a September 2019 climate crisis town hall hosted by CNN, she said she would start “with what we can do on Day 1 around public lands.” She walked that back later when she became Biden’s running mate.

Biden has been the most pro-climate president in history, and climate advocates find Harris to be an exciting candidate in her own right. Democrats and climate activists are planning to campaign on the stark contrasts between Harris and Trump , who vowed to push America decisively back to fossil fuels, promising to unwind Biden’s climate and clean energy legacy and pull America out of its global climate commitments.

If elected, one of the biggest climate goals Harris would have to craft early in her administration is how much the US would reduce its climate pollution by 2035 – a requirement of the Paris climate agreement .

Immigration

Harris has quickly started trying to counter Trump’s attacks on her immigration record.

Her campaign released a video in late July citing Harris’ support for increasing the number of Border Patrol agents and Trump’s successful push to scuttle a bipartisan immigration deal that included some of the toughest border security measures in recent memory.

The vice president has changed her position on border control since her 2020 campaign, when she suggested that Democrats needed to “critically examine” the role of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, after being asked whether she sided with those in the party arguing to abolish the department.

In June of this year, the White House announced a crackdown on asylum claims meant to continue reducing crossings at the US-Mexico border – a policy that Harris’ campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, indicated in late July to CBS News would continue under a Harris administration.

Trump’s attacks stem from Biden having tasked Harris with overseeing diplomatic efforts in Central America in March 2021. While Harris focused on long-term fixes, the Department of Homeland Security remained responsible for overseeing border security.

She has only occasionally talked about her efforts as the situation along the US-Mexico border became a political vulnerability for Biden. But she put her own stamp on the administration’s efforts, engaging the private sector.

Harris pulled together the Partnership for Central America, which has acted as a liaison between companies and the US government. Her team and the partnership are closely coordinating on initiatives that have led to job creation in the region. Harris has also engaged directly with foreign leaders in the region.

Experts credit Harris’ ability to secure private-sector investments as her most visible action in the region to date but have cautioned about the long-term durability of those investments.

Israel-Hamas

The Israel-Hamas war is the most fraught foreign policy issue facing the country and has spurred a multitude of protests around the US since it began in October.

After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in late July, Harris gave a forceful and notable speech about the situation in Gaza.

We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”

Harris echoed Biden’s repeated comments about the “ironclad support” and “unwavering commitment” to Israel. The country has a right to defend itself, she said, while noting, “how it does so, matters.”

However, the empathy she expressed regarding the Palestinian plight and suffering was far more forceful than what Biden has said on the matter in recent months. Harris mentioned twice the “serious concern” she expressed to Netanyahu about the civilian deaths in Gaza, the humanitarian situation and destruction she called “catastrophic” and “devastating.”

She went on to describe “the images of dead children and desperate hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time.”

Harris emphasized the need to get the Israeli hostages back from Hamas captivity, naming the eight Israeli-American hostages – three of whom have been killed.

But when describing the ceasefire deal in the works, she didn’t highlight the hostage for prisoner exchange or aid to be let into Gaza. Instead, she singled out the fact that the deal stipulates the withdrawal by the Israeli military from populated areas in the first phase before withdrawing “entirely” from Gaza before “a permanent end to the hostilities.”

Harris didn’t preside over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress in late July, instead choosing to stick with a prescheduled trip to a sorority event in Indiana.

Harris is committed to supporting Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression, having met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at least six times and announcing last month $1.5 billion for energy assistance, humanitarian needs and other aid for the war-torn country.

At the Munich Security Conference earlier this year, Harris said: “I will make clear President Joe Biden and I stand with Ukraine. In partnership with supportive, bipartisan majorities in both houses of the United States Congress, we will work to secure critical weapons and resources that Ukraine so badly needs. And let me be clear: The failure to do so would be a gift to Vladimir Putin.”

More broadly, NATO is central to our approach to global security. For President Biden and me, our sacred commitment to NATO remains ironclad. And I do believe, as I have said before, NATO is the greatest military alliance the world has ever known.”

Police funding

The Harris campaign has also walked back the “defund the police” sentiment that Harris voiced in 2020. What she meant is she supports being “tough and smart on crime,” Mitch Landrieu, national co-chair for the Harris campaign and former mayor of New Orleans, told CNN’s Pamela Brown in late July.

In the midst of nationwide 2020 protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, Harris voiced support for the “defund the police” movement, which argues for redirecting funds from law enforcement to social services. Throughout that summer, Harris supported the movement and called for demilitarizing police departments.

Democrats largely backed away from calls to defund the police after Republicans attempted to tie the movement to increases in crime during the 2022 midterm elections.

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COMMENTS

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