PhDwell 🌿

PhDwell

🌿 Today —

Guest mode

What's in Today?
😊 Morning check-in — log your mood, stress and energy to start the day 😴 Sleep — track how well you rested last night and how it shapes your mood, stress and energy 🎓 Thesis intention — plan when and what you'll work on in your thesis today, one small step at a time 🌙 Evening check-in — appears in the afternoon so you can reflect on your wins, gratitude and connection

🌿 "One step at a time"

How did this resonate with you today?

★★ ★★★

Show this one more often

Why track this?
Your mood, stress, energy, sleep and social connection are deeply connected — bad sleep tends to spike stress, and feeling isolated often drags energy down. In the moment it's hard to see these patterns, but over a week they become visible. Taking 30 seconds to check in each morning builds a picture of your rhythms — so you can make better decisions about when to push, when to rest, and when to reach out.

Morning Check-In

How are you doing today?

Mood 🙂

Bad5/10Good

Stress 😤

Not stressed5/10Very stressed

Energy 🙂

Low5/10High

How did you sleep?

Your thesis today

one small intention — tap to open

▼

📊 Week

What's in Week?
📈 Averages — your mood, stress and energy across the week at a glance 😴 Sleep & connection — how rest and social contact have shaped your week 📊 Charts — visual trends so you can spot patterns over time 🏆 Wins — a collection of things that went well this week 🎓 Thesis overview — track where you are on your PhD journey

No check-ins yet this week. Your first entry will appear here. Head to Today to get started 🌿

🎯 Focus

What's in Focus?
📝 Tasks — plan your day and week with Eisenhower or Aims 🍅 Pomodoro — 25-minute focus sessions with a distraction pad 🎵 Music — your saved focus tracks by task type 📋 Meeting — prepare and structure your next meeting

🔔 Sound on

Focus for 25 minutes, rest for 5. After 4 sessions, take a longer break. One tomato at a time 🍅

🧠 Justine's tip — Park your thoughts:
"When I started doing this, I noticed that almost everything I wanted to stop my work for was not actually urgent. My brain was just looking for an escape. Write distracting thoughts here instead of acting on them. After your session, look at the list — you will see that most things could wait. Over time, this really builds your focus muscle."

Two tools, same goal. Pick the one that works for your brain.

Not everything is equally important. Use this matrix to decide what actually needs your attention. Tasks that feel urgent are not always important — the most important work is often the least urgent.

Do First

Urgent + Important

e.g. Submit abstract, fix analysis error

Schedule

Important + Not urgent

e.g. Write chapter 2, read key papers

Delegate

Urgent + Not important

e.g. Reply to admin email, book room

Eliminate

Not urgent + Not important

e.g. Reorganise folders for the fifth time

To Sort

Most PhD progress happens in the Schedule quadrant — Important but not urgent. Protect that time.

10–30 minutes of preparation can make all the difference. You've got this.

New meeting

Meeting title

Who is it with?

Date

Time

Goals for this meeting

Most important to get out of it

Ideal outcome for everyone

What should your supervisor understand by the end?

Feedback you're hoping for

Decision needed from them

Agenda items

Notes / things to prepare

Past meetings

🎵 "Music can really make an impact on your focus. Sometimes you have to try a few things to find your beat — but when you do, it is a game changer." — Justine · the two tracks below are her personal picks for deep work

🌱 Wellbeing

What's in Wellbeing?
🫁 Breathe — guided breathing exercises for stress and calm 💛 Impostor — tools to work through self-doubt and build confidence 📖 Resources — apps and links for your mental health

🌱

Seedling

0 breathing sessions completed

Before a supervisor meeting

Box breathing — inhale 4, hold 4, exhale 4, hold 4. Supervisor meetings can feel high-stakes. Two minutes of box breathing will calm your nervous system before you walk in.

2 minutes

When you're stuck

Long exhale — inhale 4, exhale 8. Stuck for more than an hour? Your brain is full. This breathing pattern activates your rest response and helps you think more clearly.

3 minutes

End of day wind-down

Slow rhythmic — inhale 5, exhale 7. Transitioning out of work mode is one of the hardest things about a PhD. This helps your mind close the day.

4 minutes

Almost every PhD student feels like an impostor at some point — and I can tell you from personal experience that I felt this way at many points in my own life and PhD journey.

What really helped me was writing down everything I had already achieved. When I did, I realised I was not doing too badly at all. And I can assure you: doing this more and more often will genuinely change the way you think. Once you start truly believing that you are doing a good job — and you are — everything starts to feel a little lighter.

My achievements

Look how far you've already come

Evidence I belong here

Your reasons, in your own words

A letter from someone who believes in you

Words to come back to

Meditations & movement

Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop. Here are some of Justine's personal favourites.

🧘Meditation & affirmations→ 🧘Guided meditation→ 😴Yoga Nidra — full body relaxation→ 🌊Daily Calm meditations→ 🧘Yoga with Boho Beautiful→ 🧘Yoga with Tim Senesi→

Books

📚The Art of Happiness — Dalai Lama

📚Supercommunicator — Charles Duhigg

📚Ikigai — García & Miralles

📚The Science of Happiness — Stefan Klein

📚21 Days to Unlock Affirmations — Louise Hay

Online resources

🌐Free mindfulness course (with certificate)→ 🎙️The Happiness Lab podcast — Laurie Santos→ 📋Stress management guide→

📍 Groningen

A PhD can feel lonely. But Groningen has a lot to offer — here are some ways to connect and get support.

University support

🧠 PhD counselling at the RUG 👥 PhD student organisations 💬 Peer Group Coaching (Intervision)

Social & community

These are some great ways to meet people who are also open to new connections.

🗓️ Meetup.com — social events 🎨 USVA — drawing, improv, music courses

🧗 Sports clubs — climbing, dancing, tennis, fight sports

🎲 Board game nights — Groningen has several clubs

🗣️ Language exchange groups — great if you're new to the city

As a PhD student it can be hard to meet people outside of your department. The activities above are specifically good because they are regular, they require you to show up consistently, and they naturally create bonds over time. Board game nights, sports clubs and language exchanges are especially good for this.

🗺️ Journey

Plan your PhD in one place. Fill in your PhD period, then add your Big Stones — papers, chapters, your defence, or any major goal. Each stone appears as a bar on the timeline. You can drag a bar to shift its dates, or drag the right edge to change the deadline. Use the ✏️ button on a stone to edit it, and the status buttons to track where things stand.

📅 Your PhD period

Started

Expected end

Timeline

Drag a bar to move it · drag the right edge to resize

Your Big Stones

PhDwell

by Justine Dickhoff

⚡ Energy Management

"During my PhD I kept hearing the same things: you have to work evenings, weekends are for reading articles, overworking is just part of it. I believed this for a long time. But I have since learned that some of the most productive PhD students I know finished with something close to a nine to five, five days a week. The difference was not how many hours they worked. It was how intentionally they used their energy.

This app is about that. Not squeezing more into your day — but making sure the energy you bring to your work is the best it can be." — Justine

1 · Protect your peak energy for your most important work

Your brain has a limited amount of high-quality cognitive energy each day. Most PhD students spend it on emails, admin, and small tasks — and then wonder why the writing never happens. Schedule your most important work — writing, thinking, analysing — during the time of day when your energy is naturally highest. For most people this is the morning. Guard that time like it is your most valuable resource. Because it is.

💡 Practical tip: Use the Pomodoro timer in the Focus tab for these blocks. Put your phone in another room. Tell your colleagues you are unavailable. Even 90 minutes of genuinely focused work moves a PhD forward faster than a full day of distracted effort.

2 · Silence the inner critic — it drains more energy than anything else

One of the biggest energy drains in a PhD is not the workload — it is the constant inner voice telling you that you are not good enough, not smart enough, not progressing fast enough. This voice costs enormous amounts of energy. Every hour you spend doubting yourself is an hour you are not writing, thinking, or making progress.

In a PhD you often do not get regular positive feedback. That silence can make the inner critic louder. This is why the impostor syndrome section and the affirmations in this app exist — not as feel-good extras but as essential energy management tools. Believing in yourself is not soft. It is one of the most practical things you can do for your productivity.

3 · Recovery is not laziness — it is how energy works

Overworking does not create more output. It creates depleted energy, slower thinking, more mistakes, and eventually burnout. There will be exceptions — intensive experimental phases, submission sprints, conference deadlines. But these should be exceptions, not the norm.

Limiting your working hours actually forces you to use them more carefully. When you know you stop at five, you make better choices about what deserves your attention. And when you rest properly — evenings, weekends, holidays — you come back with the energy to do genuinely good work.

💡 Practical tip: Use the evening check-in to notice how your energy patterns change across the week. Over time you will start to see what drains you and what restores you. That self-knowledge is the foundation of good energy management.