What's better than a deadline?
Apart from two deadlines, that is.
Deadlines can help with putting projects to completion. But the accompanying stress almost makes it a Pyrrhic Victory. So let’s ask the question:
Can we create circumstances that are as motivating as deadlines, without the toll they take?
Yes, we can. Not by some black magic, gadget, or fancy routine, but by working in a team. I am not saying that teams solve all problems; they create different challenges for sure.
You can spend years with self-reflection and the study of human psychology. Or you can simply ask yourself:
Would you ever let down a friend?
Your colleagues might not be your friends, you share common research interests. Especially if you and your teammate are among the few (ten? twenty?) in the whole world who research the same topic.
I wrote earlier about the blessings of a sense of belonging, but I did not highlight how it can help face a lack of motivation and being stuck.
Your colleague(s):
Can provide an outside view, spotting the tree in the forest
Faced similar issues in their career, so they can share their relevant insights
Give you a sense of belonging, motivating you not to let the others down.
Provide a tight feedback loop1, transforming the potentially wicked learning environment into a kind one.
You can find more on kind vs wicked learning environments in
’s post:
To reiterate the most important factor: working together will not let you lower your guard. It's a thing to let your own thing slip away, but it's a totally different one to let your colleague down. You simply won't.
Working together is a win-win: you give and get help, thus, all of you can move faster. And there will be someone who will lift you out of the valley of despair—making it one of the most important decisions to choose whom to work with2.
In a Ph.D., you will always have your supervisor, though expecting that they will be always available and will be able to keep up with the details of the code/experiments is unrealistic
Of course, you cannot always choose your colleagues, but it is worth thinking about how an ideal team for a project would be