PhD crossroad: dealing with constantly absent supervisor and diverse workload? I am in the first year of my PhD studies. Was involved with the same group since a while as a student, and then I was offered a PhD there.

Project work

The topic of my PhD is completely different from what I had done before, so the first 3-4 months passed while I was trying to get into the new topic. In the meanwhile a project arrived. It was loosely related to my previous experience, but still completely unrelated to the PhD topic.

I was assigned to this project. Soon it started hogging all my time. Project meetings, proposal, presentations, reports and all that. Months were passing by without doing anything on the PhD topic. Also it was hard switching between the topics as the context switch was immense. 

I tried different strategies. Switching topics within the day. Switching topics week in week out. And in the end what worked for me was switching between the topics as the deadlines for the project were met. 

Lack of supervision

On top of all this the supervisor is busy constantly. All in all I might have had less than 3-4 hours of one-to-one discussion with my supervisor within these 12 months, whereas I hear other professors have monthly meetings with their students. Also, no one from the seniors in the group has expertise related to my PhD topic. Neither there is a fellow student working on the same topic with whom I could discuss.

Assuming that my work-flow and the tools I use were faulty, I constantly looked around for approaches to become more and more efficient. To make sure there is nothing extra to be done from my side I started working actively on the weekends and did not take any holidays.

Yet, looking at my PhD topic I still think there is so much to learn there regarding the basics let alone advanced concepts. Much more than one usual candidate who is researching within a topic which s/he might have encountered previously during studies.

What next?

As the time for the contract extension is approaching I am trying to figure out what is the best to do next. Below I will list pros and cons from my POV.

Pros:


I like the PhD topic 
I like the group 
I like teaching duties
(although it requires significant time investment)


Cons:


I hate the project work
Lack of input from the supervisor
There is no one in the group to discuss with




Bottom line: How should I deal with this situation? Is it a common situation for PhD students? 

Options: 


Request a helping hand for the project (an extra student that will help me). I am even contemplating of paying from my own sallary. 
Start contacting other groups worldwide and switch for a PhD there.
Visit another research group (e.g., my co-supervisor etc.) for half-a-year (or longer), whose main research aligns with my PhD topic
other...?
It's not clear to me whether you did Step 1 (or Step 2) yet.  Forgive me if you already did them.

Step 1. Talk to your advisor and let her know how much time per week (or a percentage or proportion  of your time) is being spent on the project, and ask for help and/or advice about how to balance your time more effectively.

Step 2.  Work in the library, work at home, but limit the amount of time you spend in your office where other project members can grab you or distract you.