Here I summarize some of the most common mistakes of Ph.D. students
- Don't understand your supervisor strengths: you have a your own interest and propose some grand topic. But the topic is not of interest of your supervisor, or the topic is not something that your supervisor is good at. There is a high chance of failure as your supervisor is likely just as clueless as you. Supervisors are ONLY PHD. in their expert domain. They don't know everything.
- Use too much common sense: some students often use their wits for research. It is ok to use your intuition and wits to do research ONLY when your intuition is well informed. You have to be aware that your intuition can be wrong. Sometimes, science and intuition can be very far. In simple words, you need to first train your instincts via reading lots of papers, and talk with people.
- Overly ambitious: defining a big goal or dream that you cannot possibly reach. Many new Ph.D. students are very eager to propose some breakthroughs. It is ok to have this enthusiasm. However, you need to acknowledge that you have to do step by step. After all, you never ever do real research before. I can tell you - doing research is easy, but doing research *right* is very very hard. Out of a big problem, try to scope it down to many subtasks and first focus on one sub-task. Take baby steps. It's lots of hard work on small increments that eventually build up to a lot of insight.
- Dependent on the supervisor: you tend to stick to your old habit of asking your teacher everything you do not understand. You expect your teachers to spoon-feed you, to help you in every way. You got to change your attitude - Ph.D. life is not a class anymore, you have to be somewhat independent. You need to switch from classroom/homeroom approach to working with a mentor, in an apprentice approach.
- Do not know when to slow down: some students are very afraid about not doing well so they often hurried to conduct experiments or do stuff without first thinking carefully. It is important to emphasize being right over being fast. It is a very hard skill to learn but is essential. Once you do something wrong, you waste a lot of time and there is a high chance you are doing bad research.
- Prioritize perfection instead of progress: some students are perfectionist. They prefer to read so many papers, learn so many githubs, watch so many videos, but in the end, they cannot generate any original idea. I called this effort wasteful.
- Cannot absorb feedback and criticisms: Criticisms provide you the feedback and energize you to move forward and improve. You must be able to take hard criticism, reflect upon the criticism, and act how you can improve upon it.
- No focus and poor management: another common mistake is to engage yourself in many projects. It is admirable to have that urge to perform but good stuff needs focus and dedication.
- Does not know when to stop and move on: there are times when you need to realize that your research direction is not going as you have hoped and that you need to stop and move on to next topic. It is a painful process I know but is necessary.
All these things are kinda easy to understand, but as you do your Ph.D. you will found that you often *forgot* these simple principles and repetitively do the same mistake. This is because you have not practiced enough that this knowledge becomes your habit, becomes your wisdom. For this purpose, it is a good practice to remind you by reading this often.
For more readings:
Advice by professionals - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~jasonh/advice.html , http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~mernst/advice/, http://www.shengdongzhao.com/research-tips/