hello all,

I am in my first year Phd and I just realised just how poor my time-management is! I want to read, there motivation is there, BUT I feel like the 2/3 weeks deadline given to me by my supervisors is way too short to submit written material. I am a VERY slow reader and I am nowhere near done to submit my next piece for next week. I am so frustrated. They won't like the fact that I cannot stick to deadlines, but I simply cannot read a reasonable amount within their timescale.

Am I being too slow though? How much should I be expected to be able to read in a day? Is 3 journal articles a day too little?

Thanks.

how many hours do you work a day? generally everyone agrees that you should try to treat it as a job so work 9-5. I would say if you are working 8 hours a day either you are reading very big journals or are an extremely slow reader. I would suggest also you look at your reading technique. As when reading for academia you don't have to read like you are reading a book for enjoyment. By which I mean you can skim read were you look for bits that could be relevant and use them as quotes etc. Sometimes I will read words of every other line, and if something interesting catches my eye, I will then read closely.

Use mendeley, it is very helpful for keyword searching.
http://www.mendeley.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xLtk6n8cFdk

Moreover, you need to do something like mentioned in this article
http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/07/paper-reading.pdf

If you need to write a literature review I would say stop reading and start writing. Start from anywhere you like and then read the journals as you go along. For example, say you have to write something on how to build a house, you know you need to write about foundations and labour and building materials etc, so pick a topic and write like this: xxx used bricks, xxx used sand, xxx used straw. You don't need to read all these papers in detail because at this stage HOW they did it is irrelevant, you are just looking for the building materials. You then reread the papers later when you want to know how they built it.

Hi there,

I too am a slow reader - it takes me about 3 or 4 days to read a full book and I can read about 3 papers a day if I am really going for it. At first this used to make me panic a lot, because others around me would say that was slow. However, IMO part of the literature review process is getting to grips with what you're reading, not just skimming it and mining for quotes or facts. If it takes me a little longer to read than others I try not worry because at least I know I can talk about pretty much everything I read and understand how it all fits together. If my supervisors says "What did you think of X", I can give my opinion and link it to things that Y and Z may have said, which I think is more useful than just clocking up a massive bibliography which I have only skimmed. Personally, I think the first year is the only time you will have to read in this way (broadly, whilst thinking and processing what you've read), so I am trying to make the most of it.

Well, that's my approach anyway. I may well be wrong, but as Mark Twain said "Comparison is the death of joy".

I think you miss understand the importance of skim reading. You dont just skim looking for quotes, you skim to find the bits that are interesting. Then you read carefully the the bit before and after this to really understand the issue. That way you get a good understanding but do not waste loads of your time reading things that have no relevance to your PhD!

Hi Montanita,

Maybe I over-did my point, apologies for that. I understand skimming and do it myself when needed, I just think its important for the OP not to feel pressured to read at a certain pace that may affect concentration and worsen what already sounds like a bit of a panic situation. Everyone reads at their own pace is my main point, and although skimming may be a good strategy at certain times, another good strategy is just to relax and go at your own pace :-) I don't know about you, but once I get into that panic frame of mind nothing goes in my brain anyway! haha.

You must read your journals every day. Set a time at which you are not going to do anything else but only read and study. You have to manage your time, and things will be fine.
http://www.labortimetracker.com/

Once you get to know the depth and breadth of the literature in your field, you can focus your attention on the key papers. Those are the ones that are worth reading slowly and making detailed notes over.

When I was compling my literature review, I would read a paper and make notes as as I went along. Sometimes, if the paper was particularly dense or techical, I would need to read it first and then make notes the second time. Once I had those summaries, I could translate them into organised text in the review.