Managing Academic Feedback: A To-Do List Approach for PhD Students

PhD students and academic researchers often receive overwhelming amounts of feedback. During graduate school, I developed a simple and systematic approach to tackle it.

When receiving (written or verbal) feedback from my supervisor, doctoral committee members, or journal reviewers, I would turn each comment into a to-do list item. I would then address the items one by one, grouping them by type or section for efficiency.

This helped me because:

➡️ Approaching feedback as a to-do list made it more mechanical and less emotional

➡️ Checking off each item created momentum and motivation

➡️ Having an organized record of requested changes made it easier to provide reports to my committee or send revisions to journals

What helps you tackle feedback?

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