04/15/2015
Today, I saw a discussion in Huaren forum [Link]
Guys there were discussing about whether the self-discipline is determined by congenital factor (先天）or by nurture (后天). It is very interesting and also surprising that many people said they have very good discipline before they enter the Ph.D. program! But when they enter the Ph.D. program, they suffer a lot and become to have procrastination (拖延症).
The reasons that they tend to have procrastination after entering the Ph.D. program are
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Outside the Ph.D. program, everything has a very clear goal and if you work toward goal, you can see you make progress step by step. But things are different in Ph.D. program, you need to find a topic by yourself, and it is not easy to envision the outcome.
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Someone said in the forum that the motivation of self-discipline is “I am good at something, if I keep working on this, I will be much better than anyone else”.
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If you have no positive feedback, it is easy for you to give up.
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People around you are very excellent, and you found no matter what you do, you cannot catch up with them. As a consequence, you feel upset.
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My comment: Win-win will be better. Learn excellent qualities from others! I don’t think this is good reason for upset to come from.
Therefore, in order to be a productive Ph.D. student, there are some actions we can take
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Do something you are good at. For example, I am working on algorithm but I am not good at making proof. Therefore, a better way for me is to find some application for algorithms and do some simulation.
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Find short goal for yourself. Divided the big goals into small pieces and complete each one step by step.
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Someone said self-discipline is like muscle. If you not keep training, the muscle will atrophied （萎缩）. Lol
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Thinking in a different way. Many successes is due to the cumulative acquisition of knowledge.
If you are hurt by the Ph.D. life and would like to strike a way out to get a different life, here are some suggestions
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You may be procrastinated because you are doing something that you are not interested at all. If it were this case, then I encourage to find something you really like.