Oh man I feel that in my bones.

Any advice on how to mitigate this?

▲ Kichererbsen 8 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I worked at a chair for 12 years - in that time I've seen a lot of PhD students go through this.

If it helps anything at all: It's normal. At this point, you've already proven you're smart and knowledgeable. Now, the universe wants to see if you can also finish what you've started. That's the main thing a PhD proves: That you can take an incredibly interesting topic and then do all the boring stuff that they need you to do to be formally compliant with arbitrary rules.

Focus on finishing. Reduce the scope as much as possible again. Down to your core message (or 3-4 core messages, I guess, for paper-based dissertations).

Listen to the feedback you get from your advisor.

You got this!

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wjnc 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD.

When I did my MSc thesis he told me it was a pretty good PhD. (Before giving me a months work in corrections.) I didn’t understand back then, but I understand now. It was small, replicatable and novel (still is)! Just replicate three times and be done with it. You’ve proven your mastery. Now start something serious.

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collabs 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> This is spot on. My dad was a professor and had dozens of PhDs. The only thing differentiating them (as I remember him telling me) was the resolve to keep work as /tiny/ as possible. Who is remember for his/her PhD? Only the smallest cream of the crop. He even made good fun of worthless thesis by (then) well known professors. It’s not about your PhD.

My professor once told me he presented at a small conference, the whole audience everybody had PhD in mathematics and maybe 2 of the 50 or so people in the audience could follow along. The point he was trying to make is at some point the people in the audience were not really interested in what was being presented because it is difficult to just follow along some really niche topic.

	▲	brandall10 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		There was a book I read a couple years back called "Mathematica: A Secret World of Intuition and Curiosity", by David Bessis. He discussed this topic and how generally it's left to those who are more notable in a field to ask the 'dumb' questions everyone else is afraid to ask. And such questions often need to be asked to get the audience on board and open the floodgates with areas of niche research - the speaker themself is often too far into the rabbit hole to discern the difference between opaque and obvious. So it stands to reason, at smaller conferences this would be a big problem, with fewer thought leaders in attendance whose reputations are intact enough that they wouldn't mind looking foolish.

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stathibus 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Focus on finishing. Reduce the scope as much as possible again.

in my field this would be terrible advice. instead you need to be doing something that your audience actually will give a shit about.

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arethuza 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It's been a long long time since I was the academic research world - but isn't 3 published papers pretty much the expectation for a PhD quantity of research?

	▲	noelwelsh 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Really depends on the field. Computer science research usually has pretty short cycle times. If you're working on, say, biology or anthropology, collecting data can take substantially longer.

▲ godelski 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Switch back and forth between trying and reviewing. Often it can be good to just try before reviewing, to get your feet wet. Don't spend too much time. Then when reviewing you're going to understand it more. Repeat this process.

But there's some things to remember that are incredibly important

  - a paper doesn't *prove* something, it suggests it is *probably* right
    - under the conditions of the paper's settings, which aren't yours
  - just because someone had X outcome before doesn't mean you won't get Y outcome
  - those small details usually dominate success
    - sometimes a one liner seemingly throw away sentence is what you're missing
    - sometimes the authors don't know and the answer is 5 papers back that they've been building on
  - DO NOT TREAT PAPERS AS *ABSOLUTE* TRUTH
    - no one is *absolutely* right, everyone is *some* degree of wrong
  - other researchers are just like you, writing papers just like you
    - they also look back at their old papers and say "I'm glad I'm not that bad anymore"
  - a paper demonstrating your idea is a positive signal, you're thinking in the right direction

As soon as you start treating papers as "this is fact" you tend to overly generalize the results. But the details dominate so you just kill your own creativity. You kill your own ideas before you know they're right or wrong. More importantly you don't know how right or how wrong.

▲ exidex 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

My choice is to not do a PhD and just invest as much or as little effort in the topic as you like

▲ 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

▲ bennettnate5 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

For me, it wasn't so much about mitigating this cycle as much as recognizing that the grit of pushing through that last 20-30% is actually a valuable life skill that the PhD could teach me to do, and that projects that I felt like I would never want to touch again actually started to become interesting again after I had left them for a year or so.

▲ thechao 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Find a brand new hire who wants to get tenure. Getting a PhD through in 4 years is catnip for tenure at most universities (stateside). We then dropped off my dissertation in the middle of NSF funding week. I paid for it during orals (4 hours), but they all signed within a few days without comment.

Uhh... unless you plan to stay in academia? Then, this is a terrible idea.

▲ ericmcer 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It seems almost inevitable...

Acknowledge it is normal? Attempt to buy deeper into the delusion ("Yeah my work is awesome and unique!"). Use stimulants to force enthusiastic days every once in awhile?