You really shouldn't start a PhD without doing the PhD simulator first [0]. Sadly, people who haven't yet been through the PhD experience think that this game is exaggerating for comic effect. It really isn't.
I finished my Ph.D. in 6 years rather than the usual 4 1/2 because ideas just didn't work out. My topic was much harder than those of my peers.
That said, I felt the 2 extra years I spent made me a much more solid researcher in my narrow field, because I spent more time learning and relearning the foundations of my craft.
I relate to what Winston Churchill said about being a dunce at school (who later become a incomparable wartime orator distinguished by his use of simple English):
"By being so long in the lowest form I gained an immense advantage over the cleverer boys... I got into my bones the essential structure of the ordinary British sentence–which is a noble thing. Naturally I am biased in favor of boys learning English; I would make them all learn English: and then I would let the clever ones learn Latin as an honor, and Greek as a treat."
I read it in my last year of college. It was a page turner, and helped me think about whether I wanted to do a PhD.
[0] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/g8mc1lniyf26opxtrqgna/pguo-Ph...
I dunno about the "filthy rich" outcome but this strategy is actually fairly common.
The team was great, the topic was great, I did something really innovative.
I also partied a lot, met great girlfriends, met my wife, made friends.
One of the best times in my life.
Or without seeing what Matt Groening thinks of your plan. (Just in case the Ph.D. simulator was not enough to scare you off.)
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/grad-school-so-glad-i-am-done-...
The winning move is to mine for an idea, then just do that idea and nothing else until you get a paper or reject the idea. Rest when tired.
Got my [simulated] PhD in 5y 4mo with 99/100 hope left by following that algorithm. Perfect teachable moment. Thanks
My big issue with the PhD is that it was designed to treat me as an employee in exchange for an annual salary equal to 1-2 months worth of earnings as a software freelancer. But the work was interesting. So I wondered why not be an amateur researcher instead.. Of course once I quit, real life intervened and I did little of substance during the following couple of years. I neglected the value of the focus that doing a formal program facilitates. However, I had some ideas recently and was able to establish a dialogue with a relevant research group, so the whole idea may work out after all.
Back to paper writing...
Going to grad school was the wrong economic decision for me... and perhaps the wrong 'life' decision as well.
if you had the option of getting into a well-payed, cushy tech job grad school would result in less personal/financial freedom.
if (like me) you didn't have that option out of undergrad, grad school was comparatively a period of great freedom. * i made enough on research/TA stipends that i lived a slightly-fancier-than-my-undergrad lifestyle that wasn't too far behind what my classmates that became teachers were living. * TONS of freedom with respect to how I wanted to work and having full control of my schedule
I feel like grad school gave me a pretty idealistic way to spend my mid 20s. And (luckily) in that time I was able to develop enough skills that I could jump into one of those high-paying, cushy tech jobs when it came time to realize that academica sucks and I wanted to leave.
This, the economy was shit when I graduated, I wasn't interested in a phd, but strongly considered getting a masters, and would have likely been financially better off had I stayed in school those extra two years instead of graduating into a horrible job market and losing that fresh graduate advantage when applying for jobs once it finally got moving again. In retrospect, I would have much rather lived a college lifestyle and did research/ta type stuff instead of doing the tech support type jobs I ended up with to make ends meet.
My doctorate was essentially; run studies for 2-3yrs, write up papers for submission, smash them together with an intro and general discussion, graduate.
(I can only speak for my experience and those of my peers in my field, at the end of the day)
This was in a proper hard engineering field though. I think in other fields can be much more likely to be things that can't really fail. For example in computer science, a lot of PhDs are just like "I implemented this thing" where there's very little risk of it simply not working.
An exception in computing is AI research where it is very much like the "try some stuff; it didn't work" experience of engineering and science research. I imagine a PhD in AI is not a fun experience...
My advice to most people would just be "don't". My second run of advice would be "find the most boring project imaginable" since it's likely to succeed on the basis of "do a bunch of fairly predictable experiments and publish them".
I think this is often useful. Maybe it's obvious, but it can be very tempting to develop ideas, or develop new shiny results, when you still have other ideas that haven't yet been turned into definite packages of well-supported results.