[neom]

My wife is finishing up her PhD in American History and I can tell she's getting bored, at least demotivated reading a billion books a week. I've seen this motivation decline in a lot of founders as well 4/5 years into their startups, but I've not seen much reignite the fire. Can anyone recommend any specific tips for staying motivated through a PhD?

[ModernMech]

Your wife is bored because she’s gotten what she can out of the program, and the dissertation is a slog. I had the same experience.

This is why there is a term for people who do the whole program but drop out without finishing the dissertation: ABD (all but dissertation). It’s the one non-degree people feel justified to list on their resume, because it takes at least 4 years to get there, and it’s still quite an achievement.

I was ABD for 3 years when I got bored, and I almost quit. I figured since I had all the skills, it didn’t matter that I didn’t have the degree. It’s just a meaningless credential. I asked a friend of mine who had gotten his degree whether it was worth it, and he said “Don’t do it, the plus side isn’t that great”

Then I went to his wedding. He was the only PhD in his family, and his mother made the DJ introduce him as “Doctor”. What he considered a meaningless credential made his whole family so happy and proud. That moment made me change my mind, and I finished my PhD.

And you know what, he was wrong about the credential being meaningless. Employers look at you differently when you are ABD versus PhD. He didn’t experience that because he was never ABD. Truly it was like night and day. Governments care when applying for visas. Grant agencies care. There is also a lucrative market for expert opinions, and ABD are not considered at all in this market. Credentials matter in our society, even if they don’t matter so much in the tech sector.

Anyway, I hope something I said here will convince your wife to stick it out! If you want a specific tip, I would say take a leave of absence. For me I could take up to 2 years off no questions asked, and rejoin. If her school has a similar policy, she can use that time to recharge, and come back fresh and ready to bang out her dissertation.

[thoms_a]

Just have to chime in and state that this extremely sage advice that is rare to find on HN, where credentialism is (rightfully so) looked down upon. Whether we like it or not, credentials are a very powerful social signal in our society, with very real benefits. If you've spent 3 years in a PhD program, you should absolutely finish unless you have a very compelling alternative opportunity that cannot wait.

A secret that no one often admits is that most PhDs get more out of the credential than advertised, because they aren't a von Neumann or a Fermi, whose credentials never mattered because everybody knew they were one in a billion geniuses.

[euroderf]

Isn't there an issue that if you take two years off, in the meantime someone somewhere else is doing the same topic and bangs it out and steals your thunder? Does this kind of thing ever happen, or is it more of a theoretical possibility?

[ModernMech]

It's more theoretical. While it's possible to write a dissertation in a short amount of time (I wrote mine in 2 months), it really should represent multiple years worth of dedicated research. For example, I had a figure in my dissertation which took 4 months to create, in terms of data collection and processing. Just one single figure out of several dozen!

That's one aspect is that most dissertations are not very impactful. The general idea is that a good dissertation should extend the field of knowledge in just a small way. It doesn't have to represent a titanic shift in thought or be revolutionary in any way. So really most dissertations are not supposed to have much thunder at all to steal.

At that level of specificity, it's possible to know all the big players by name and what they're working on. It's easy to find your own corner in such a small group, and it's very rare for a dark horse researcher to enter the field and suddenly steal your topic. It's hard to become an expert in a field without being noticed by already experts.

[euroderf]

Thanks for replying. I'm not implying that someone else would "redo" your entire body of work in that two years, but rather, that someone else had also already been working on it at the point when you took your two years off, and they wrapped it up in that two years, taking you somewhat by surprise. But yes, I imagine that for a sufficiently compact addition to Knowledge, it's straightforward to keep tabs on everyone working in that small area.

[neom]

wow this is really great advice! And funnily parallels what I see in founders, founders who start their startups for the wrong reasons (Sam raised a $3MM seed and I'm smarter than Sam so I bet I can raise a $5MM seed. Shit, I raised a $5MM seed).

Thanks for the thoughtful reply, I'll share your words with her.

[bachmeier]

> My wife is finishing up her PhD in American History and I can tell she's getting bored

[PhD candidate] is finishing up [gender pronoun] PhD in [field] and I can tell [gender pronoun]'s getting bored.

I just turned your statement into a template that works for every PhD candidate of the last 100 years.