The PhD Model Canvas is a one page venture plan for your PhD. It was inspired by the Business Model Canvas designed by Alexander Osterwalder, the Lean Canvas by Ash Maurya, and the Creative Canvasby Terri Lonier which were designed to replace elaborate business plans with a single page business model for the startup and creative disciplines.

The PhD Model Canvas was designed to provide a roadmap for PhD students so that they can better navigate and orient themselves in order to achieve their goal faster and more effectively. This is the first in a suite of tools that are specifically designed to help you achieve your PhD with less stress, overwhelm, and wasted time.

The PhD Model Canvas is designed to provide a snapshot of the PhD project. It is intended as a dashboard overview for the research in progress – a research proposal on one page.

The aim is to try to reduce overwhelm and stress experienced by many PhD students by providing a birds-eye view of their project which they can iterate as the research progresses. As such it can be used by any researcher as a tool to get an overview of their research project and keep track of their objectives. As research is an evolving and iterative process the PhD Model Canvas will change as the student progresses through their PhD to reflect different iterations of their learning journey.

Good planning (project management) is key to successfully completing your PhD. Stress and anxiety stem from working on a major project like the PhD without clearly defined steps and interim goals. Research is a process of discovery and uncertainty, but it need not be stressful.

Mastering your PhD first involves breaking the PhD process down into bite-sized chunks and taking the long view. It’s like running a marathon – you need to pace yourself because you are going for the distance. The idea is not to work harder, but smarter. The prevailing culture in academia and in the modern workplace is that you have to put in long hours in the office – this can often be counterproductive.  By breaking down the PhD into bite-sized chunks and focusing on small assignments that build flow and small daily wins you will build momentum and confidence to achieve your PhD.

It’s gotten even harder to get an academic position now and the job market is fiercely competitive so anything that you can do to differentiate yourself at this stage will help.

If you are not pursuing a career in academia, the decision to publish is up to you and the way you want to communicate your research in whatever medium you choose. 

While the focus should be on completing the PhD on time, I recommend aiming to publish up to three articles or having them in the pipeline by the time of submission.

For those pursuing an academic career path, it’s important, however, where you publish. You need to publish in international peer-reviewed journals. You should generally not publish in collected volumes – that is edited proceedings of conferences – and non peer-reviewed journals.

Sometimes tools and project management systems are not enough. While we are excited about the PhD App that we are building that will provide a process system to support you as you progress in your PhD, we found from listening to students that an App is not enough. You want a supportive peer-to-peer mentoring system so we run monthly webinars and check-ins where you can set goals, monitor progress, get support, and be part of a peer network. We also advise in the difficult transition from PhD to the job market and are building a network of peers to provide guidance and contacts at this stage. 1-2-1 coaching is also available and an online course in 5 modules that deconstructs the PhD process into clear steps is being developed. The first module is live on how to choose the right research topic, supervisor, and University for your PhD.