This summer, we're all about making space in your work life for those things YOU consider a priority. So we've asked our University of Graz researcher community about aspects of their daily work life that they have developed a useful routine for - and aspects that still need a “research life hack”.
Interview partner:
- Shiva Taghizadeh, Department of Psychology
Shiva Taghizadeh's daily work:
“I am a PhD researcher in the Department of Psychology at the University of Graz. As a project assistant, my work sits at the crossroads of cognitive psychology and educational neuroscience — I try to understand what happens in the brain when people think about their own thinking while they are solving a math problem. What makes them confident they got it right — or aware they got it wrong? In more technical terms, I study the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying metacognition, specifically in mathematics and arithmetic. Both math and the self-monitoring process fascinate me."
The "happy hack" that makes Shiva more efficient/creative/motivated at work:
"If we skip sports, one practice that has genuinely changed how I work is what I call a "pre-task metacognitive check" — and yes, I do find it true that research is “me” search, a metacognition researcher has learned to use metacognition as a productivity tool. Before I sit down to a demanding task, whether that's designing an EEG paradigm, analysing data, or writing a difficult section of a paper, I spend about five minutes writing down three things: what I am trying to achieve, what I already know about it, and where I expect to get stuck. It sounds simple, but it forces me to be honest with myself about my actual knowledge gaps before I start, rather than discovering them mid-flow and losing momentum. My research tells me this kind of deliberate self-monitoring reduces cognitive overload, and my experience confirms it. I am calmer, more focused, and far less likely to end the day feeling like I was busy but not productive."
And the challenge in her research life that she still needs a hack for:
“Honestly? Switching off. I study how people regulate their cognition, and yet I have not cracked the code on how to stop my own brain from running experiments in the background at eleven at night or waking up at four in the morning to spot a mistake in my analysis code. PhD research has this way of bleeding into every quiet moment — a finding that does not quite replicate, a new idea that arrives exactly when you should be sleeping. I know the research on cognitive rest and how critical it is for memory consolidation and creative insight. I know it intellectually. I just have not found my personal ritual for actually doing it. If anyone has a hack for that, I'm interested.”
What is your own happy hack? Let us know!
Find the full series of interviews here: How to hack your research life - Research Careers Campus Graz
(Interview: Johanna Stadlbauer, 29.6.2026, picture credit: Jessica Karkheck)