Question: What’s the hardest challenge you’ve had while studying your PhD?

Alex Batchelor answered on 13 Nov 2019:

Sometimes I struggle to motivate myself to do bits of my job that are less fun. For example I need to read a lot about work other scientists have done that might be useful to what I’m doing. It can be interesting but sometimes what I’m reading gets really technical and hard to understand and it can be a bit boring so its hard to make myself go and do it.
This is particularly true if my experiments are not working at the same time as needing to do some difficult reading, it can make it all feel a bit pointless and stressful.

But I have ways to motivate myself like making sure I have some motivational music on while I’m reading or building in a little reward when I finish it like “when I finish reading this section I can go get a cup of hot chocolate from the cafe.” Sometimes after I’m done reading I go for a walk round where I work and hunt Pokemon on Pokemon Go for a few minutes to relax a bit before doing the next bit of work.
And if my experiments aren’t working I can always talk to my work friends or my supervisor and they cheer me up and usually have lots of helpful advice which is great.