Finish Your Thesis Program...perspective will build resiliency and make you much more capable of bouncing back from the many mistakes you will make along the way. Choosing to see your

Finish YourThesis Program

How To Shift Your Mindset And Challenge Your Beliefs So You Can Succeed In Graduate School

grads™

dora Farkas

module 1.1

Copyright © Dora Farkas, www.FinishYourThesis.com2

Let’s be honest: everyone has a preconceived idea of what life in graduate school is like before they even apply. What comes to mind when you think about graduate students? They work hard and they are underpaid! It is almost as if choosing to go to grad school is to choose to be miserable. It takes a powerful motivation to decide to enter into a PhD program—and even then, motivation might not be enough to sustain you.

Sarah was a graduate student in cancer research. She chose this field because she lost her grandmother, the woman who had raised her, to cancer when she was only 10 years old. Sarah had vivid memories of her grandmother’s pain as she was dying from her illness, and she was determined to become a leading researcher in the field in order to save or at least improve the lives of cancer patients.

Like most of her peers, Sarah was an “eager-beaver.” She saw that her supervisor worked 12-hour days and almost every weekend, and she thought that she also had to put in the same hours to succeed. However, the long hours that Sarah spent at work took a toll on her physical health and the quality of her work. The fatigue that she experienced due to lack of sleep led to careless mistakes, and she had to repeat her experiments several times. By the end of her third year, Sarah was falling behind on her milestones. To make matters worse, her supervisor was a micromanager, and during their weekly meetings he frequently expressed his dissatisfaction with the quality of her work and her lack of progress.

Despite her supervisor’s criticism, Sarah was committed to getting her PhD and staying in cancer research. One of the things that distinguished Sarah from her classmates was that she was an avid runner. She had been running since high school, and she knew that most runners experienced setbacks, particularly injuries, before they broke their own records. Her training as a runner taught her to focus on her desired outcome, finishing the race, rather the obstacles she faced during her training or her events.

While Sarah was disappointed that she was falling behind in her milestones,

Empower Your Mindset ParT 1

3Copyright © Dora Farkas, www.FinishYourThesis.com

she saw her “mistakes” as setbacks similar to the ones she had experienced as a runner. And, just as she had learned a lesson from every hurdle as a runner (e.g. strategies to prevent injuries), she also used every “failed” experiment as a learning experience.

In order to stay on track, Sarah decided to get more help. She organized another meeting with her thesis committee, where she presented the progress that she had made and asked for their input. The additional perspectives of her committee helped Sarah overcome the challenges of her project. By following the advice that she received from her committee, Sarah was able to regain her momentum, and reduce the time she spent on designing and executing experiments. Over the next six months, Sarah caught up on her milestones and her supervisor asked her to present her research to their industry sponsor.

Sarah’s success was not due to the long the hours that she put in. In fact, working overtime was counter-productive. It was her mindset that made the difference. Sarah focused on completing her work, rather than the obstacles in her way.

It is a small distinction but a critical one.

Those who focus on their obstacles tend to run into them often. Worse, if you train your energy on the hurdles in your path—if you allow yourself to be distracted by them—you are pulling your focus away from where it belongs. In other words, your mindset can set you up for failure as easily as it can help you succeed.

A negative attitude is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

When you focus on how little you have

accomplished, or all the mistakes you have made,

you undermine your confidence in yourself and

your ability to successfully complete your work.


Do you have any fears or limiting beliefs that you think may be undermining your confidence? List them below:

Those who set their sights on an end goal will be more successful and far more likely to complete their dissertations in a relatively short amount of time. They also have a very different attitude toward their thesis. High-achieving graduate students are usually very motivated individuals who have very specific goals for graduate school either in terms of their thesis topic, the marketable job skills they want to pick up, or the career path they want to follow. These highly motivated students—students like Sarah—see themselves succeeding, and have confidence that they will achieve the outcomes they are working toward. It starts with a small, but critical shift in perspective:

Focus on what you have accomplished versus all your mistakes and shortcomings.

What accomplishments have brought you to where you are today? How have you already made progress

toward finishing your thesis? List your wins, no matter how big or small, in the space below:

It is up to you to focus on things that are positive and empowering. It is a choice that will positively impact multiple areas of your life. This shift in perspective will build resiliency and make you much more capable of bouncing back from the many mistakes you will make along the way. Choosing to see your mistakes as learning opportunities will enable you to bounce back with

new ideas and strategies, rather than use them as an excuse to beat yourself up. Resiliency will help you continue to move forward.

An empowered mindset will make it easier to ask for the help. Many students are very preoccupied with “looking smart” so they don’t want to admit to their supervisors when they need help. In fact they might not want to admit it to anybody. They may feel lonely or isolated, and as their workload snowballs and their confidence diminishes, their progress can come to a complete stop.

Can you think of a specific instance in which you were reluctant to ask for help? How did you feel?

What thoughts were holding you back?

A goal-oriented, positive mindset can also have tremendous impact on your productivity. Research is time-consuming, and long hours and working on weekends might be necessary to get your studies completed. However, long hours alone will not do the job. Your daily work habits will make the difference. What follows is one of my favorite productivity tips—one that is firmly rooted in an empowered perspective.

55 Copyright © Dora Farkas, www.FinishYourThesis.com


When I ask students, “What is the first thing that you do when you turn on the computer?” the unanimous response is, “Email”. Of course, we want to be aware of any important communication from our supervisors and collaborators, and most people expect replies to emails within a few hours; however, this habit poses a huge problem because it puts you in a reactionary mindset.

When you check your email or text messages first thing in the morning, you start your day by reacting to the demands of other people, instead of focusing on the high priority tasks that need to be completed in order to make progress on your thesis. It can then be difficult to pull yourself out of the reactionary mindset in order to reapply your focus where it truly belongs, as other small tasks compete for your attention.

What do you think would happen if you delayed checking your email by one hour and began your day by tackling your most important task, such as setting up a new experiment or writing the introduction to a paper? Brian Tracy, one of the most famous business coaches of all time, wrote a book called Eat That Frog: 21 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Done in Less Time. Tracy’s message is that if you consistently begin each day by completing your most challenging task, your productivity will skyrocket. Dedicating the first part of your day to something that is important to you will also keep your mindset out of reactionary mode.

What is the single most important task you have on your plate right now?

Dedicate one hour tomorrow morning to working

on that task before you check your email.

Stop ReactingParT 2


Leah reached out to me for coaching because she had not made any progress on her thesis for an entire year. Her thesis focused on identifying a unique protein important for cardiac function and she had collected a lot of data from experiments with mice. The problem was that her data was not organized, and she was unable to make any conclusions to present to her committee. Her goal was to be “more productive” so she could publish at least one paper and graduate in two years.

Like most students, Leah began her day by responding to her emails. She would finally start her own work around mid-morning, and then by the mid-afternoon she felt fatigued and unable to focus. She felt guilty about taking a break, so she stayed at her desk, but she spent most of the time reading articles on the Internet, rather than analyzing her data or planning her experiments.

It was clear that in order to make progress, Leah had to take a different approach, and make her thesis (instead of emails and web-surfing) a priority. She was resistant to the idea of spending an hour on her work before checking her email because she felt obligated to respond to questions from her supervisor and other students. In fact, it was important for her to be aware of emails, as her supervisor frequently scheduled or rescheduled group meetings for later in the day.

Leah typically got to work around 9:00 or 9:30 am, and by that time her inbox had 10-15 messages that needed her attention. The only way she would to be able to spend an hour on her work before checking her email was to get to work earlier. As she lived nearly an hour away from her lab, Leah did not think she could wake up early enough to get to work by 8:00 am. As resistant as she was to the idea, Leah still decided to try it for at least a few days. With a little scheduling creativity, she found she could get to work by 8:30 and spend 30 minutes on her work before opening her inbox.

Thirty minutes can go a long way if you are committed to making progress. To make the most of the thirty minutes Leah could commit to first thing in the morning, we made the following plan for her:

My Favorite Productivity Tips: Leah’s Story

ParT 3


The last point is one of my favorite productivity tips because it enables you to have uninterrupted focus. Your mind can get a lot done very efficiently when it isn’t being distracted with other things. Spare your mind from a deluge of emails and see the difference it makes in your ability to concentrate.

Leah’s biggest challenge was organizing the dataset that she collected from her experiments; it was a task she had been putting off for months. Without having a clear record and interpretation her data, Leah was unable to present her work to her thesis committee and make progress on her research. Because her procrastination was making her life more difficult on a daily basis, this was her highest priority item.

Leah committed thirty minutes every morning to restructuring her dataset. It was not a walk in the park. She did not like to wake up 30 minutes earlier, and she was not looking forward to cleaning up her dataset, as it felt like a really overwhelming task. But doing nothing also had a high cost—she had not made any significant progress for an entire year and she only had funding for two more years.

Fortunately, it did not take long for the extra thirty minutes in the morning to start paying off. When her mind was fresh and free of the distractions from her email, she was able to tackle her herculean dataset and organize it into a

9 First, make a list of all the tasks that need to be completed in the next few weeks.

9 Second, highlight the tasks that are the highest priority. These are what need

to be completed in the next week.

9 At the end of each day, pick one high priority task that can be completed in

30 minutes or less and commit to doing it first thing in the morning. If all your

tasks require more than 30 minutes, commit to doing a portion of the

highest priority task.

9 Before you end your day, visualize yourself completing this one task and then

think about how relieved you will feel once the task is completed, and the

impact it will make on your thesis.

9 Once you get to work in the morning, set a timer to 30 minutes and focus

only on that task until the timer rings. This means no email, text messages, or

phone calls during that time.


legible spreadsheet in just two weeks. Once her data was organized she was able to see where the gaps in her research were, and what experiments she still had to do.

When Leah initially came to me, she was completely overwhelmed by her data; in fact, her exact words were, “There is no way I can get this organized by the abstract deadline.” Over the few weeks that she applied her early focus to her highest priority, Leah collected some valuable data that made it possible for her to submit an abstract to a conference. She was ahead of schedule!

Do you think that email, text messages, and social media are distracting you from your work?

If so, how do you think you rearrange your schedule so that you can keep your thesis as a priority?

A simple shift in your mindset and daily schedule can have an amazing effect on your productivity. An empowered belief that you will succeed will give you forward momentum, resiliency, and can energize you to take action to actually accomplish your goals. In Module 4 I will show you more advanced productivity strategies that not only give you momentum in the morning, but will also help you to stay focused and motivated throughout the day and in the long run so you can reduce your work hours and get well-deserved breaks that will further enhance your creativity and progress on your thesis.

Module 4 will also include the latest online productivity tools that will help to maximize your efficiency, manage your workflow and files, and collaborate with others.


To receive maximal support from this program,

please send your questions or comments about this

Module to [email protected].

I will announce the return deadline for each

Module via email. This will help me to address

your questions during the webinars.

Remember that other students might be facing

situations as you, and they will also benefit from

the strategies that I will offer during the webinars in

response to your questions.

Call To aCTion

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Finish Your Thesis Program...perspective will build resiliency and make you much more capable of bouncing back from the many mistakes you will make along the way. Choosing to see your