January 2016-Early days

I'm 18 months into my (very) part time PhD and my supervisory team have asked that I record some reflections as I go along.  I can see the value in this, I already struggle to remember my thoughts on various topics & ideas from last year.  Someone described the PhD process to me as being a bit like making candyfloss, you go round and round in circles and feel as though you are getting nowhere but with each revolution there is a subtle change and at some point you have a big pink ball of sugary loveliness to show for your effort....maybe not the best analogy for a public health PhD!

I can certainly relate to the going round in circles bit, I have become immersed in physical activity, health promotion, health conversations, motivational interviewing, IPAQs, GPAQs, SIMPAQs, GPPAQs, I teach it, I read about it, I talk about it, I plan curricula around it, I investigate it, I think about it and I tweet about it.  It's easy to convince myself that everyone knows about it and that everyone is doing it.  I have to remind myself of my own enormous biases and the fact that it occupies so much of my headspace gives me a very skewed perspective.

I have been enjoying do some concrete PhD work recently, having spent so long mulling it's been great to start on a scoping review, the process is clear and the team are taking it all in their stride.  As with many things it has felt like an enormous task but when broken down and chipped away at it has become very manageable and enjoyable.  It's an international scoping review and it was suggested in supervision that I might take the UK findings and take a closer look in a second paper.  This idea really appeals, I have a good understanding of the political, economic and social backdrop to UK healthcare and if there are sufficient papers from the UK I think this would make an interesting article.

I recognise that I need to make some firm plans for after the scoping review, I think one of the things that holds me back is feeling that the main part of my PhD needs to be something awesome.  It doesn't, it needs to be interesting, meaningful research that will develop my knowledge and skills and will result in publications.

I have decided that 2016 needs to be a year of focus, I'm good a spinning lots of plates but I can spend so much time and energy keeping them all spinning that progress with any one task is very limited.  I need to settle, prioritise and focus.