My Advice for a Type-A PhD Student

This is for the Type-A person entering a PhD. You know who you are: you like checklists, you like plans, you like knowing what “success” looks like so you can optimize toward it. The PhD will test all of that.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

Start with the big picture — but don’t live there

Write down what you think your goals are. Not just for the PhD, but for the work. What are you actually trying to understand? Talk to people around you about those goals. Listen to what they say. Revisit it every month or two.

But don’t live at that altitude. The big picture is a compass, not a map.

Each day, do small things you can finish

The PhD is a long game, and long games will crush you if you try to measure progress at the scale of years. Each day, write down two or three specific, completable tasks. Do them. Check them off.

The daily wins compound. The feeling of progress — even small progress — is protective against the existential dread that visits every PhD student eventually.

Stop measuring yourself against your peers

The Type-A trap: looking at what the person at the next desk is doing and concluding you’re behind. You’re not behind. You’re on your own path, and the paths are not comparable.

This is easy to say and very hard to actually believe. I’m still working on it.

Learn to sit with uncertainty

The PhD is, fundamentally, a training in tolerating not knowing things. You will spend years working on problems that might not have solutions, toward goals that might not be achievable. The sooner you make peace with uncertainty, the better your quality of life will be.

This doesn’t mean lowering your standards. It means learning to distinguish between the things you can control (your effort, your thinking, your writing) and the things you can’t (whether the experiment works, whether the reviewer is fair).

Find the thing that makes you weird — and lean into it

Every good researcher has a distinctive way of seeing. For me, it’s the basketball player’s obsession with systems, repetitions, and honest self-assessment. Find yours.

The PhD has a way of sanding off interesting edges if you let it. Don’t let it.

Take care of yourself

This sounds obvious. It isn’t. Exercise, sleep, eat food, maintain friendships outside of your department. You are not a research-generating machine. You’re a person doing research.

The two are not the same, and confusing them is the source of a lot of suffering.

None of this is original. The best PhD advice is the stuff your advisor won’t give you in a one-on-one: the honest, human stuff that takes a few years to learn. I hope some of this helps.