latanius comments on Grad Student Advice Repository - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Stabilizer 14 April 2013 09:28AM

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Comment author: latanius 14 April 2013 07:07:58PM 5 points [-]

You see that you won't get stuck: that you'll finish relatively fast.

Do you know of a way for estimating this? Every research problem (and the entire PhD itself) might look much easier before you start working on it (you don't have an outside view perspective before starting).

Comment author: JoshuaFox 15 April 2013 09:50:23AM *  1 point [-]

Nothing is guaranteed, but a good adviser and good personal focus should allow you to finish it off.

might look much easier before you start working on it

Again, no guaranteed answers, but if a given problem is too big, you can redefine your thesis to a narrower part of the problem.