I currently am working as a Phd student in theoretical physics. I'm focused on condensed matter theory, but I find alot of other topics quite interesting.
I decided to start a blog here in order to log my progress and results. I also want to continuously analyze, question and experiment with my work strategy, methods and ideas in order to find improvements. I recently started a log in the health and fitness forum and have found the process sufficiently useful that I want to try doing the same sort of thing w/ my work.
My current goal is to co-author 3 papers. I have no particular time frame, but I am in my 2nd year having passed my qualifiers over last summer. My main project involves a classical field model. Numerical work is done by Monte Carlo. I just bought a text by Newman on MC methods which seems quite helpful.
I have generally struggled to find ways to be productive in my career. I know I have to work, and be consistent and put in effort. There are alot of skills required in addition to this. Here is a starting strategy:

Hours: 11am-7pm everyday

note: simply getting to work on time is something I have not been doing. I think its important. Arriving, prepared, energetic and free from distraction is crucial.

Location: I can work at the nearby library and there is an office that is 24/7 if the library is closed.

Breakdown: How exactly should I divide my time between reading texts, collaborating, classwork, teaching and trying to do my own analytical calculations/coding? I can't really predict ahead of time. But I will try to divide my time such that I am mixing it up. I will need to be organized and avoid distractions and wasting time, that is for sure. I think organizational skills are something that I am quite weak at in general, and should be a focus point.

comment: no weekends off is something I'm not sure about. Definitely taking some time off once in a while is necessary. For the moment I will give this a try as the default plan.

comment #2: Sleep/rest is important. That is something that you should be thinking about in terms of your productivity.

comment #3: I find it tough to go to sleep early so 9-5pm I assume is not my bag. I'm open to changing the hours though if there is a better way

Scheduled: 12/22 -12/23

8pm - 3am --- review of Monte Carlo methods
algorithms for determining critical exponents

Scheduled: 12/23

11am-7pm --- analytical calculations/ numerics for the model
--- think about other projects
--- figure out a way to be more organized so you are more aware of what your projects are and what you need to work on.

11/23:
total disappointment as I completely wasted almost all of my time over the last 24 hours. I wasn't successful in eliminating distractions, like silly internet games, silly conversations when I knew I should be working. I'm still completely disorganized. I'm going to go get a coffee and try to figure out how I can adjust. will report back.

ok, so one thing I've realized is that it makes a pretty big difference where I work. For various reasons, I'm going to try working from home instead of the campus. here's a new plan I came up with:

Basically there are two really important things I need to do:
A) Reading/notetaking (studying textbooks/basic theory/ literature)
B) Problem solving/coding

Here is the detailed schedule:
10am: set alarm--wake up
10am-11am: shower/eat/coffee/whatever
11am-3pm: notetaking
3pm-4pm: coffee break
4pm-8pm: problem solving/coding.

I won't be able to follow this everyday, but most days I am not teaching or I don't have class so I will do this. On days when I have teaching or classwork, I will still try to fit in the two 4 hour sessions if possible.

Are there colleagues, professors on the campus that are working on the same subject so you could discuss stuff with them?

What programming language do you use?

my boss tells me to use FORTRAN, but I am doing alot of stuff Python; python is quite easy/fun to code in.
so far I made some progress, I finally finished a derivation involving an saddle point integral, it took me a long time, it was basically high school level algebra, but slightly tricky involving a lot of square roots and stuff. It's good practice, in the future, I will be more careful in my derivations.
So as far as my work schedule, I have noticed that sleep is super crucial, but also, I've noticed my gym schedule has a pretty serious impact on my energy. I will have to take it easy at the gym. After today, no more 8 mile run days. I will do 2 miles maximum, one warm-up, one cool down, and not super fast tempo either. Sleep/food/rest are quite important if I am going to have energy to do this, I can't be going nuts at the gym. I mean still go, but take it easy at least while I am doing active research. My new schedule that I am working with is 10am-6pm, its working ok, but I need to make sure I handle the other stuff if I want to stay on point.

1/08:

So i've been consistent w/ my schedule and it's paid off w/ some results though nothing big, just some small progress. I haven't been sleeping so great unfortunately, but hopefully that will pick up at some point. My diet is improving. I really notice that sleep/food have a big impact on my energy level. However, I need to do my work and not make excuses as I'm not always going to be able to get perfect sleep but I still need to get stuff done! Let's stay on point! Tonight I'm gonna work extra, ~ until 8pm ~and then I have some other stuff to do.

1/15:

results: simulation is finally returning good results. I'm starting to see the expected finite size scaling effects that I wanted. I also am starting to learn how to check for thermalization (reaching of equilibrium) in the data. Just plot it and it is obvious.

Mental Notes: make sure you get enough sleep, eat well and get to work on time. Make sure you're environment is completely distraction free; be prepared when you arrive to work, don't take 2 hours to check email/get coffee + donut/ handle that stuff before you arrive!

I know this stuff is super-obvious and I am just repeating myself, but I just sort of need to get into a pattern and I feel like if I repeatedly tell myself what I need to do, eventually I'll do it!

1/17:

results of simulation are ok, but I need a faster computer or else it takes too long. So i'm working on that, also need to get the other critical exponent, i'll work on that today.
As far as maintaining my schedule, I slipped yesterday, due to fatigue (extra long run + going out late) but I can't be perfect, I just need to make sure I get right back in line and try not to let that happen again.

1/20:
so i have come up w/ yet another plan for getting my work done. The thing is that I prefer not to wake-up at any particular time, because my sleep schedule has always been kind of all over the place, so I'm gonna try organizing things differently. I'll work from
monday- 5pm friday . During this time I'll try to be 100% focused and avoid distractions, but not have any specific time-frame during the day/night for work. Then I'll have friday night and the weekend off for relaxing and pursuing hobbies/interests + whatever else. I think this is at least an interesting strategy to try. I think I definitely need some off time and i'm kind of an all or nothing kind of guy so I find it difficult to switch between different modes. I think this way of dividing my time is more in my style. I'll see how this week goes.

I put in a big effort to get my code output and input organized efficiently. It's so important to be able to control parameters effectively and view the results in a boiled down manner instead of constantly going through 20 step processes everytime you want to see what's going on. Now the way the software works, is I set all the input parameters in one place, hit enter, let the simulation run, and the results are automatically saved and plotted to screen. very nice!
Now i really need to concentrate on the physics. There seems to be an unexpectedly small result that may be do to periodic boundary conditions or may not. I need to look into how distances are measured on the lattice and figure out if it is being done correctly.
Also, I can use the organizational structure of this code to model other systems, at least the data handling part will be very useful, though obviously I will have to change alot of things for a different model.
As far as my new system of working is concerned I think it is good so far. I just need to make sure I am 100% not getting bogged down by distractions during my work time and not playing ANY online games, not spending too much time listening to music or talking, or hanging out or any thing like that. Also, stay away from facebook and 2+2 for that matter lol!

I need to not play online blitz chess anymore, at all. Instead of working I just wasted 6 hours. Let's get back on track, stay on point, and avoid these distractions.

Thinking more about this problem... I think it really is important not to play any online blitz chess/ or any online poker or anything like that at all during my work week. The reason is because I have a large number of tasks to complete, and I need to organize those tasks, and all of this takes significant time and energy that I just cannot afford to waste. In addition, I will avoid other distractions like chatting with people, going out for food/coffee/drinks whatever, any sort of social distraction that I can avoid I will avoid. I hope that my schedule will open up so that I can hang out more, and I will always have the weekends, but for now this is what I will do.

So today I hope to get a bunch of tedious teaching related tasks done, and start working on submitting jobs to the supercomputer. I also need to look into an interesting analytical calculation. Suppose you pick two numbers randomly between 0 and 1. What is the expected (e.g. average) distance between them. The answer is 1/3, but the proof is slightly tricky. I actually need to know the extension: If you pick two points randomly anywhere inside or on the edge of a square what is the average of the distance between them. It turns out this is actually not trivial at all, and has quite complex solutions.
As far as my work schedule, it's going ok, though I was somewhat exhausted monday/tuesday and couldn't sleep so I didn't get much done. I will make up by working an extra day over the weekend. I'll work through saturday 5pm, instead of through Friday 5pm. I will avoid distractions today and stay focused, though I have some errands to run later /shopping/gym/laundry. Though this is working ok so far, remember that consistency is key. I need to keep working hard every work day and keep trying to improve my productivity in order to get 3 papers published.

things are moving along. the only issue is that I need to redevelop my code such that it can be run in parallel. The computer cluster has a ton of cores, if I can split my code into a 100 threads, it will run 100 times faster. This is really important for testing code and getting high accuracy results.
As far as my strategy is concerned, it's working ok, but I still need to find ways to improve my consistency with avoiding distractions. I'm using leechblock now, but I'm still need to find better solutions, so I'm actively thinking about that.
Today I will work on parallization and check the results of the most recent simulation. I also need to fix the relocate procedures and implement a measuremeant of the corellator

So I am now realizing that leechblock is crucial for my work environment. I will use this everyday from now on. It just makes a huge difference in my productivity.

so the schedule has been working pretty good, I think it fits my style pretty well (as I said before, I'm kind of an ON or OFF, ALL or NOTHING type of guy). I just need to stay consistent with it, remember to use leechblock and avoid the distractions: online chess/hangin' out /chatting etc./ noisy environments. If my work environment is noisy I refuse to tolerate that, and I go ahead and MOVE to a quiet location. I also have set up a separate work organization protocal/ and notebook which is helpful. Looking forward to teaching and doing research this week. I need to review my lesson plan and analyze the data from the computer cluster-- it turns out I should be able to parellize but it will be kind of tricky using MPI. Meanwhile i can submit many jobs in serial and that should be ok for the time being.

I think my new regimen has been working ok, but I think I am not working hard enough. I need to do whatever it takes to be successful, and that's going to take a significant investment on my part. I will work saturdays until I feel like I have made up some ground.
Also, Having a to do list of 15 items is just too much. PRIORITIZE and get one or two things done, instead of constantly fretting about what to do. So let me boil down some of the ideas in my regimen:

Schedule:

Monday-Sat. (5pm)
1. enable leechblock at your workstation, IMMEDIATELY
2. Always work in a quiet environment, if there are distractions, MOVE to a better work environment.
3. Avoid talking/chatting/hanging out/ going out to lunch w/ others during your dedicated work time. These things just suck away time and energy. I'm not saying to never do anything during the week, just that the default is to avoid this stuff currently. Sacrifices do have to be made. there is sat. night and all day sunday off.
4. Have a list of work stuff to do.
5. Then PRIORITIZE that list to ONE or TWO things that you ACTUALLY work on.
6. Again, it's really important not to stretch yourself too thin, work on ONE THING AT A TIME, you are only human.
7. You definitely need to ask more questions and do more collaborative work, however you need to do it in a more constructive way than just chatting about random physics stuff w/ friends.
8. absolutely no online blitz chess.
9. at some point I may decide to work on some chess related goals, so if that happens I may start doing chess work during the week, but it won't be playing blitz (studying(chessbase) and longer time controls)

(cross-posting this in my HF log too) I'm posting about a sort of side issue . My friend brought it to my attention that I am constantly strung out/ stressed out and that I seem agitated all the time or exhausted. My friend suggested that she had observed me drinking coffee all the time and this might be the reason why. It's true, I have a problem and really need to do something about it. I'm totally irresponsible when it comes to coffee. I have a kind of all or nothing personality so I tend to over do it with everything, and caffeinne is no exception. Of course at this point my brain is pretty hard wired on caffeine so I don't think I can do a cold drop. However, I will start experimenting with a new plan:

1. I will generally not drink coffee as my default beverage
2. I will drink white tea (lower caffeine content)
3. Once in a while if I feel like I really need it I will get coffee, but try to keep it as a rare event.
4. as a side note: if you reuse the same teabag, the tea will be weaker and thus have less caffeine. This seems like a good idea for you, since I like to constantly be drinking something when I am working,

Honestly, my sleep has been so messed up for so long and I am 100% sure the 4-5 large coffees I get everyday has something to do w/ it. I'm gonna try this white tea thing and see how it goes. It might be possible to do 1 coffee a day, I might look into how to go about doing that, but for now I'll try the above. Just remember to bring white tea and a mug with you wherever you go and you should be good!

So, I'm pretty happy about these changes in the above post. The only thing is I decided I will allow myself to have one (1!!) cup of coffee per day and then switch to white tea after that. Sleep + rest are important!! Need to get enough rest and be healthy if I am going to do a lot of high quality work.

So recently I realized that naturally I am easily distractable, and disorganized. If I were to not think about what I'm doing I would get nothing done at all. But that's ok, I have a plan for getting stuff done. I'm basically gonna do a lockdown from mon-fri. (5pm). One important thing, is that I will setup my default workspace with no computer and no internet. Most of my work is just pen and paper analytics, this is where I really need to push. When I need to code I make sure I have leechblock immediately set up.
The other thing i realized is that during my downtime (the weekend) I'm gonna have to give up blitz chess for a bit. I'll definitely come back at some point, but there's a few other things that need my attention for now. I probably played 12 hours a day on sat/sunday. Totally neglecting so many aspects of my life that I need to work on. So the only chess I'll play for a little while is an occasional live tourney is my plan, while i think about how I want to approach chess in the future so it doesn't rob me of all my time.
The one coffee per day thing has really helped my sleep. This last week has been the most regular sleep i've gotten in a long time, and I doubt that it is a coincidence.

I'm gonna put in some extra time (The difference is that I will work an extended work week, as right now is just very critical) over the next 6-12 months to try to reach my new career goals. I'm gonna post the guidelines from before to remind myself as they are really on point:

1. enable leechblock at your workstation, IMMEDIATELY
2. Always work in a quiet environment, if there are distractions, MOVE to a better work environment.
3. Avoid talking/chatting/hanging out/ going out to lunch w/ others during your dedicated work time. These things just suck away time and energy. I'm not saying to never do anything during the week, just that the default is to avoid this stuff currently. Sacrifices do have to be made.
4. Have a list of work stuff to do.
5. Then PRIORITIZE that list to ONE or TWO things that you ACTUALLY work on.
6. Again, it's really important not to stretch yourself too thin, work on ONE THING AT A TIME, you are only human.
7. You definitely need to ask more questions and do more collaborative work, however you need to do it in a more constructive way than just chatting about random physics stuff w/ friends.
8. absolutely no online blitz chess.
9. at some point I may decide to work on some chess related goals, so if that happens I may start doing chess work during the week, but it won't be playing blitz (studying(chessbase) and longer time controls)

So in terms of my career goals, one thing I'd like to start thinking about is ways to save money. I want to spend my money effectively, and that's something I haven't put a whole lot of time/thinking into. I will try a couple of things to reduce my expenditures:

1. food/drinks: don't spend money on starbucks coffee (huge waste of $ in fact rip up your starbucks gold card and start making your own espresso)

2. when you eat out, don't eat out at overpriced restaurants , if it's gonna be an expensive restaurant, it had better damn well be a good one, or else I'm not payin'. Get value for your money. It's ok to go out to bars/etc. travel, have fun, but be smart about it.

3. Keep cooking. Don't buy snacks at duane reade. $2 for a candy bar. $3 for a sabria mini hummus and pretzels. this stuff adds up. Just cook food and eat it. I will avoid everything else. (except for one (1!!) ice cream bar (a little indulgence) per day). Also, I need to lose weight so I will avoid junk food.

4. For now, take people up when they offer to buy you things (clothes etc.). You don't have to refuse everything due to pride. When you have more money you can return the favor.

5. Actually go through your expedentures and see what you are wasting money on. I bet if you actually looked at what you bought you would see a million unnecessary items.

Honestly, I don't spend that much money right now I'm just a little sloppy and wasteful sometimes, and actually I would like to spend more money, however I would like to get VALUE, from the purchases I make, which means looking at prices and checking competitors prices to see if stuff is really fairly priced or not. I will just be sure to do research. Really, I should do more things and spend more money, just be intelligent about it.

I will do the following:

1) For difficult time consuming physics/analysis type work: I will always work in a browser free setting. (No browser type internet, I found a way to implement this on Ubuntu)

2) I need to make more money. So I need to get a 2nd P/T job and possible a 3rd. As things are, it's just not cutting it. So I need to get to work, while still handling my day job --> work even harder at this, while looking for new opportunities. Once you land something, it will be tough for a little while juggling, but it's what I need to do. look on craigslist: fix up your resume, get your references in order, apply to ALOT of stuff!

3) remember: you need to work more, but also work more effectively, and try new things until I start making some progress on my goal (my goal is to get > $100K)

Been kind of a rocky start to the summer as I have really struggled with motivation, and I've been questioning myself alot whether I am on the right path or not. Basically, I realized that though it's true that I do need to make more money, the first thing I need to do is get my research on the right track before I can divert time away from this. I have to take responsibility and master physics, now. Getting a P/T job is not gonna solve my long term financial problems. Once my research in on track, and I have accomplished something, gotten my PhD, then I can worry about getting a good job, or working extra P/T jobs. Also, being sick w/ a cold/flu all week didn't help. But it's time for me to get back on track. I have a plan for the summer... basically to work alot, as I had been doing, and not to let up one little bit. I plan to redouble my efforts. I will take one day a week off for myself though, (sunday). This is something I plan to continue doing even after the summer is over, as I have to have a little time for myself every week to do things like exercise, shopping, drinking (lol), etc. Also, I want to make it a point to try something new every sunday, a concert, a new restaurant, hang out w/ a new friend, that's something I'd like to do, (besides working like a dog all summer!! ). Let's go go go!!

man, i wasted so much time already this summer. It's time to get back on track. I have made my choice as to how to proceed, now it's time to get to work.

Let's go go go!!