I attended the 3-day Personal Skills Course from GPA Partnership on campus which I found unusual. I did however reflect on my own tactics and how I tend to approach tasks and people. The DPhil was presented as a manageable project that needs clarity, setting objectives, interim realistic aims and strategy. A good tip for prioritizing was to keep different material spaces for different priority tasks, which is not particularly useful to me because I don’t have that much space. Additionally, I don’t like paper to take up that space so I usually strip letters, notes etc to their core volume, which can be a note in my notebook.

A good tip that I am piloting and seems to work is: Use 10 minutes at the start of the day to plan (jot down 5-10 things that have to be done today). Use the plan. And spend another 10 minutes at the end of the day reflecting on own failure to accomplish the tasks, move for next day etc.