5 habits to avoid during your PhD - AT ALL COSTS!

The most damaging habit to avoid during a PhD is getting pulled into academic politics—especially supervisor grudges, departmental gossip, and rivalries. Early-career researchers are “too early” to carry other people’s conflicts, and the safest move is to stay out of the emotional crossfire until enough experience makes it possible to form fair, personal judgments. That doesn’t mean ignoring difficult colleagues; it means giving people the benefit of the doubt, breaking down initial barriers, and treating academics like normal human beings rather than assuming the worst based on what others have said. Challenging personalities can look unworkable at first, but many soften once direct interaction replaces rumor.

The next major momentum killer is “internetting” at the start of the day. Checking social media, Google, analytics, or other online distractions immediately after sitting down fragments focus and can turn hours into nothing. The practical fix is to protect the first moments for meaningful work, then batch email later (the transcript suggests saving emails until around 11 o’clock). If web access is too tempting, the advice goes further: engineer the environment by restricting sites you can’t resist—using tools like OpenDNS to block specific distractions such as Reddit.

A third trap is reading one more thing before doing the actual work. Extra papers can feel productive, but once reading becomes repetitive and doesn’t change decisions, it turns into a delay tactic. The core priority in a STEM PhD is doing experiments and analysis—moving from “zero to something” matters, and at some point additional reading only marginally shifts understanding or confirms what’s already known. The antidote is to recognize when reading stops generating new ideas and to launch into the next step instead of checking “just a little more.”

Emotional habits can also slow progress, particularly the reflex to react instead of feeling. When something goes wrong—criticism, rejection, or even a supervisor escalating concerns—there’s a common loop: emotion appears, then an immediate response to resolve the discomfort (often attack mode for anxiety or hurt). The recommended change is to spend time in the feeling stage: allow the emotion to happen, sit with it briefly, and only then respond. That pause breaks the automatic loop and supports a more considered, healthier reaction.

Finally, comparison is framed as a career-damaging habit. The transcript describes obsessing over metrics like the h-index on Google Scholar, searching for peers who seem “better,” and feeling demotivated. That mindset ignores how careers actually grow—through small, consistent actions over time—and reduces progress to a single number. The alternative is to focus on steady effort, treating academic advancement like a path around a mountain rather than a single leap. In short: avoid politics, protect focus, stop information-hoarding, break reactive emotion loops, and measure growth by your own daily work rather than someone else’s scoreboard.