Blog • Posted on Dec 1, 2025

12 Habits That Boost PhD Productivity

There isn’t much debate about what defines a successful PhD: it’s papers published. And having several of them means you’re already well on your way to securing a career in research.

But how do you guarantee you enter the postdoc world with two, three, or even more papers under your belt?

When you look at successful PhD researchers as a group, a clear behavioural pattern emerges. These patterns sit at the heart of genuine PhD productivity and can be learned by anyone.

I’ve mentored hundreds of PhD researchers. These are the 12 most common habits my most successful clients share.

You don’t need to master all 12 to succeed at writing and publishing research. Most researchers don’t.

But if you want to become more productive, publish more, or simply feel less overwhelmed during the PhD, these behaviours are the ones that make the biggest difference.

Key Takeaways

• PhD productivity is the result of habit, not motivation. Small, consistent writing blocks outperform unhealthy sprints every time.
• Productive researchers trust the writing process. They plan first, write second, and leave their ego out of it.
• Publishing more doesn’t mean working harder per se. It means protecting your time and avoiding distractions.
• Progress accelerates when you stop fearing mistakes. Productivity comes from action, not perfection (because you can always clean it up later).

Table of Contents

1. They Show Up (Even When They Don’t Feel Like It)

In the years that I have been mentoring PhD researchers, it never ceases to amaze me how many don’t show up but expect to outperform their peers. Plenty of factors lie outside your control.

Thankfully, the most important factor–writing–is completely within your grasp. You’ve just got to show up.

Writing is a skill, just like any other. And honing a skill requires time. Reps. Feedback. And more reps.

There’s no getting around it.

My most successful mentoring clients understand this. They showed up, even when they didn’t feel like it. They prioritize writing their papers over everything else. Because it’s the single most valuable investment they can make in their career.

They aren’t motivated. They’re disciplined. And discipline beats motivation for meeting your goals.

In fact, if you look into the science of it, motivation is not a precursor to achieving your goals at all. Rather, motivation is the result of consistent improvement toward mastery. Peter Hollins describes this brilliantly in his book.

2. They Work Consistently, Not Heroically (The Quiet Secret to PhD Productivity)

While locking yourself in your room and smashing out a thousand words might feel good afterward, working in occasional bursts is suboptimal. In all likelihood, you’re now a little burnt out and wanting a break.

And who knows how long it will take until you feel like writing again.

Working in regular, small chunks will always outperform chaotic bursts. My best mentees get that. They schedule writing blocks into their calendar and make them non-negotiable, even sacred.

Thirty minutes might not feel like much in the moment. But when you replicate that across several weekdays, and then again across weeks, that work compounds and you’re ultimately far better off.

3. They Trust the Process

All research papers follow a basic template. That common structure enables mentors like myself to systematize the process of writing them; from idea to publication.

It took me over a decade to perfect my system for writing and publishing papers. But it enabled me to publish 15 papers from my PhD. And I’ve taught over a hundred other researchers to do the same.

My most successful mentees are the ones that surrender themselves to that process without complaint. Even when the page stays blank during planning.

They lean into structure instead of rushing into paragraphs. Another reason why you should seriously consider working with a mentor to improve your writing.

And that leads perfectly into the next habit of my most productive PhD mentoring clients.

4. They Leave Their Ego at the Door

I was fortunate enough to find a great mentor at the earliest stage of my research career. But it wasn’t always sunshine and rainbows. In fact, it almost never was.

For the first two years, we clashed like crazy. Looking back, it’s obvious that that clash arose from ego. My ego.

You see, I was convinced I knew how to write. But I didn’t. I could write an above average essay for a course assignment, but writing research papers… that was a deeper rabbit hole than I knew anything about.

And it took two intense years for me to realize that ego was hindering my development as a writer. So I dropped it. I left it at the door each time I came to my mentor.

I trusted his guidance wholeheartedly and without resistance—like a soldier.

The result? I developed faster as a writer than any of my colleagues. And it became the strongest tool in my toolbelt as a researcher.

It won me awards, jobs, research money and, most importantly, opportunities.

My most successful mentees understand this. The ones who can detach emotion from the task at hand and surrender themselves to the process of storytelling are the ones who reap the benefits.

5. They Don’t Waste Time on Tasks That Don’t Lead to Publishing Research

This one might seem obvious: don’t waste time. But it’s more nuanced than that.

As an academic, you’re pulled in a thousand different directions at any one time. Conferences here. Collaborations there. Grant applications, society memberships, and journal clubs.

But while these things provide some benefit, they can’t hold a candle to investing time and energy into writing your papers.

It’s not that other things don’t matter. It’s simply that the highest return on investment activity you can do is write your papers.

Awards, society memberships, and conference attendances are great. But they’re the icing on the cake that is your publication record.

6. They Know Their ‘Why’

I have a saying that I tell all of my clients when we begin working together:

"If you don’t know your why, the how doesn’t matter."

It’s a bastardization of Nietzsche’s “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how”.

The message is that, if you don’t understand why you are doing something difficult (in this case, mastering the skill of paper writing), the best course of action is irrelevant because you won’t do it.

Without your why, you will find every excuse not to do the work. Because it’s difficult and uncomfortable.

Your mentor provides the how. They guide you to success. But adherence to that guidance is tied to your understanding of what the successful outcome means to you.

Finding your why is the first thing I do with all new clients. It forms the foundation of all future work.

When things get hard, the why reminds you and keeps you on track despite hardship.

7. They Let the Data Dictate the Story

My old mentor used to repeatedly tell me to get out of the way of the data. But it took me years to understand what that actually meant.

When you undertake a research project, you go into it with certain expectations of what the results will be. When the results contradict that expectation (a prediction error), our egos fight to hold on to our original story.

If you’ve ever wrestled with results for weeks or even months because they don’t line up with what you thought would happen, you’ve lived this phenomenon.

The better approach is to listen to the data. Let it reshape your understanding of what is going on and adapt.

Or as my old mentor would say: “Mother Nature has a better story than you do”. Get out of the way.

My most successful mentees let the data dictate the story. They view their role as author to tell mother nature’s story. Not theirs.

Once you understand that, paper writing becomes frictionless.

8. They Don’t Write Until They Have Their Story

I regularly get requests from researchers asking me to help edit a manuscript draft. And nine times out of ten, they can’t tell me the central story of their paper in less than 6 sentences.

In many cases, they’ve already written thousands of words. They have entire drafts. Yet they don’t know what story it is they are telling.

This is the crux of the productivity drain for most PhDs. This is why so many researchers struggle to write and get published.

They’re so often told by colleagues and supervisors (albeit well intended) to just get words on paper. But it’s precisely that action that slows so many researchers down.

Now you’ve got a mess of words that you (or I) have to somehow reshape into something that makes sense. Something that tells a cohesive story.

If you were building a house, you wouldn’t just start slapping random pieces of timber together in the hope that a sound home would emerge from the chaos.

No. You would begin with building plans.

Well, writing research papers is no different. First, you must plan your manuscript. The key to making that plan is isolating your story.

And my best clients understand that. They take the time to get that story fully in order before they write a single word. So that when they do write, it’s a single take.

Sure, you might come back to polish the wording. But the content order and flow remains.

That is how you maximize PhD productivity. Not throwing alphabet soup at a blank page.

9. They Communicate Honestly When They’re Stuck

This one echoes the sentiment of #4. Productivity in the mentee–mentor relationship relies on the mentee having the humility to admit when they’re stuck, and the mentor being available and receptive to provide guidance.

My mentor had an open door policy with me. I could bug him at any time of the day or night, so long as it was about paper writing.

I strive to do the same with my clients. Which is why we have a Discord server where we stay in touch between sessions.

But this only works if you have the humility to raise your hand when you’re stuck and ask for help. My best clients understand that.

They aren’t stubborn. They don’t want to impress me or their supervisor.

They prioritize learning and improving above all else.

10. They Seek Clarity, Not Perfection (The Enemy of PhD Productivity)

Try to avoid perfectionism in the early stages of preparing a manuscript. Instead of focusing on the perfect word choice, focus on making sure the logical flow of the content is in order.

When wrestling with a manuscript draft, your goal should be to get to 80% good enough. You can always come back over it later and polish up the wording before you submit.

Ruminating on the perfect word choice when you don’t even have a fully fleshed out draft is a great way to waste a lot of time because you’ll inevitably come back to rewrite things anyway.

Productive PhDs recognize this and get their draft sections to 80% good enough and move on.

11. They Take Radical Ownership of Their Time

Our schedules can feel overloaded at the best of times. But here’s the thing: we all have the same 24 hours in a day. We all get 7 days in a week.

Yes, some people have responsibilities that others don’t, like kids, work, or sport. But highly productive PhDs take ownership of their schedule and carve out time for writing.

Some of my most productive clients have the busiest schedules. Because—ironically—despite having the least available time, they’re substantially better at scheduling it.

I covered the pros and cons of part-time and full-time PhDs in an earlier article.

They also spend the little time they do have doing high return on investment activities, like:

• Writing draft sections
• Finding sources to support their manuscript claims
• Cleaning up their figures and graphical elements
• And getting guidance and direction from their mentor (me)

Because they know it will be a long time until they get a free slot again.

Pair this kind of radical time ownership with AI tools for PhDs and you’ve got an unbeatable productivity system.

12. They Don’t Fear Getting It Wrong

If there’s one thing that derails PhD productivity more than anything else, it’s fear. Fear of writing the wrong thing. Fear of choosing the wrong structure. Fear of having to go back and change it all later. Fear of your supervisor’s opinions.

But the harsh reality is: you will get it wrong. And you will write the wrong thing. Everyone does. Even seasoned academics. Because it’s necessary to progress. The difference is that the productive PhDs don’t let that fear stop them from taking action.

My most successful mentees aren’t fearless. They just don’t let fear dictate their next move. They understand that a messy sentence in the right place is progress. Because you can always go back and polish it later.

When you stop fearing getting it wrong, you free yourself to write. To learn. To improve. And that’s when productivity stops being a struggle and starts becoming inevitable.

FAQs

Conclusion

The most productive researchers don’t necessarily work harder than you. They just work more deliberately. They’ve built habits that protect their time, maximize their rate of improvement, and reduce the emotional burden that prevents so many PhDs from improving.

The best part? Every one of these behaviours is learnable. You don’t need to be a “natural” or exceptionally organized person to apply them. You just need to start.

If you need help applying these habits to your own research life, you’re welcome to book a call with me. We’ll talk through where you’re at, what’s stopping you from progressing, and how to get you publishing with confidence.

---

Dr. Matt Biddick is Founder & Mentor at RURU. You can book a free call with him here.