I’m partial to a bit of philosophy and amateur psychology regarding my PhD (or phhhhhhhdddd as it gets called in our house). To date, I’ve talked about caves and umbrellas, and soldiers and software developers. Yesterday, I read about procrastination in students (some random article in the Times Higher Education Supplement) and the point they made is that the most common cause is fear: Fear of failure or success. This morning I thought about mountains.

I’m pretty sure that I procrastinate because of a fear of failure. Somedays I can’t even open my Java IDE or LaTeX editor to start on a task. I’m paralyzed. Instead, I potter around the web, write blog entries, go for a walk, buy chocolate, talk to the ducks or whatever it takes to avoid starting the task. If pressed, I’ll tell anyone that I do not want to do a PhD. I don’t want the qualification and I don’t want to spend years of my life on this work. I’m enthusastic about my project, and its benefits, but I’d much rather go to sleep tonight and wake up to find that someone else had implemented overnight. The reason is that I have an idealised, perfect PhD in my head. The thesis is detailed, complete, entertaining and utterly ground-breaking. The algorithms are useful, precise and previously unknown. The simulations are complex, realistic and accurate. The results accurately reflect my assertions. The software is robust, efficient and reusable. The whole package is pristine. Unfortunately, viewing my phhhhddddd like this puts an incredible amount of pressure on myself and, for some bizarre reason, it just seems better to make no progress at all than to make insufficient progress.

So, to the mountains! Any project is a large mountain and, to complete the project, you have to reach to top of it. If this project is part of your work then there will typically be a whole team trying to get to the top. You’ll have sherpas to carry your gear. Teammates will provide support and encouragement. Team members will also be scaling their parts of the mountain so you only have to worry about a small ascent. A team leader will have devised a schedule and route to the top. The mountain is quite conquerable.

A PhD is a solo effort. You, and only you, will be scaling the mountain. The base of the mountain looks vaguely familiar to a few other people. They’ve been pottering around the lower slopes but no one has yet made the full ascent. The mountain top is covered in clouds so you have no idea what lies ahead, where the summit is or what the conditions are like. For all you know, the mountain could go on forever. You have to plan your route to the “top” and, whilst a few people will stand around and throw in their useless opinions, no one else can help you. Along the way you catch glimpses of other climbers trying to make the ascent but they fade off into the distance and you realise that they’re actually climbing a different mountain. There are impassable ravines which suddenly emerge from the cloud and threaten to sweep you back down to the ground. There are signs: “Here be monsters”. There is no encouragement. There is no one to discuss your plan with. There is only occasional contact with the base team, typically only once every few months. And frankly, they’re just too interested in their own lives to pay too much attention to some idiot stuck up a mountain. I imagine that after a sufficient period of time, someone will declare that you have reached the top of the mountain. Congratulations! You did it! But, above the clouds, you can see there are yet higher peaks to climb…

My mountain climbing rules (which I probably won’t be able to keep):

1. Start moving. Probably the best way to start moving is to do something trivial or something you want to do. Adding icons to the user interface of your research simulation is probably unnecessary (since no one else will be using it) but, you know what? You’ve opened the IDE. You’re moving!
2. Keep moving. Just try to intersperse useful tasks with the sort of trivial things that got you started in the beginning. No one scales a mountain by walking straight up it. Circle around. Zig-zag. Head down in order to find an easier way up. Take rest breaks. Appreciate the scenary. Sleep. Eat. Make some vertical progress in between.
3. Don’t look up at the mountain — under any circumstances!