Ph.D. in Stressology

October 11, 2008 6:38 PM

How can a Ph.D. student be less stressed and more enthusiastic?

I am the type of person who loves their research. I live and breath what I do. I work 16+ hours a day and spend a good deal of the remaining time thinking about my work. I read books in my field for pleasure and run a popular blog on the field in my spare time.

HOWEVER, I am also the type of person that freaks out about their research if there is even a possibility of it not going right. For example, today I realized the data I will need in a month might not be available. My stress level overflowed and I spent most of the day freaking out and not enjoying time with my SO. In fact, I even caught myself getting inappropriately cranky with my SO simply because I was so stressed about even the possibility of the data not being available. I am seriously beginning to worry that this persistent high levels of stress will hurt my health over the long term.

How can I keep the enthusiasm for my work while keeping my stress down as far as possible?

posted by Spurious to work & money (11 comments total)

How can a Ph.D. student be less stressed and more enthusiastic?

Finish your thesis.

Really. Every PhD student I've ever known has been a ball of stress. It ends when that damn thesis is finished. That means don't make any decision that adds time -- don't decide to do an extra three months of testing or data-analysis, don't delay to wait for a conference, don't do anything that puts off your completion even a little bit.

Until then, manage your sleep, take B-vitamins every morning, and make sure the SO knows that this cranky stressy life will end soon, when you're done.
posted by rokusan at 6:46 PM on October 11, 2008

16 hours a day?

I am also a PhD student, at an R1 institution with a lot of pressure, and I find that ridiculous.

Recently a newly-tenured faculty member told me about Boice's book for new faculty. Boice found that people that work 50 hours a week, have work-life balance and hobbies are much more likely to get tenure than those who work 60+ hours a week. A summary of the book is here.

I bet you'd be a LOT less stressed if you worked less. Someone could have easily said the exact same thing to me a year ago and I would have thought that they were crazy. But I have become progressively more relaxed about my work in the last year and OH IT FEELS SO GOOD. The time that I do work, I am more productive, happier and less stressed.

A lot of my PhD pals and classmates seem to be on an A+A cocktail... ativan and adderall. I've been there, I know. But taking those drugs to accomplish what we are "supposed" to accomplish seems dangerous.

Ask yourself this: if you put in 70% of the time and energy and effort that you're putting in right now, what would be the effect on your productivity? 1 less publication a year? 2 less? Is 2 less worth your sanity?
posted by k8t at 7:37 PM on October 11, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

Really? 16 hours a day? That sounds like a recipe for a fast burn out (seconding k8t)

How far along are you? Did you start your dissertation in the last year or two? If so you will have to get over your insecurity and learn to relax.

I was similar to you when I first started. I spent long days at the lab and sometimes just slept on the couch because I was too tired to ride my bike home. I would just shower in the gym and go back to work the next day. When I look back at that phase of my life, I realize that working harder did not mean better research. In fact it was quite the opposite. I feel terrible for all the people that had to put up with me. I passed up great opportunities (Road trip to Baja!) figuring that I could put all that time towards research. Instead I was worried about missing out and got less work done than my friends who took the trip and came back to work.

Then I realized that my family and friends are far more important than any of my mundane findings. I still love my research but put my worries aside at the end of the day. The way I see it, after about 6-7 hours at work I am mentally drained and would much rather recharge in the company of my friends and go back with a fresh mind the next day.

I take almost every weekend off. If I do any work, it's fairly light stuff (editing a manuscript, reviewing a paper at a coffee shop). This article provides some advice on setting boundaries and setting aside more time for other areas of your life.

This is something you have to address now if you are planning a career in research. A postdoctoral /faculty position will involve greater responsibilities and added stress (Rokusan's advice is useless unless you quit research after the phd).

PS: Also at a R1 school in the best program for my field.
posted by special-k at 8:55 PM on October 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

I work 16+ hours a day and spend a good deal of the remaining time thinking about my work.

What remaining time? That implies you're sleeping far less than 8 hours a night. That's a HUGE source of stress and general feeling-badness. Find a way to cut back and sleep enough.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:02 PM on October 11, 2008

Seconding Special K as well! This is something that you need to figure out now rather than when you're going for tenure, have to be publishing, teaching, mentoring, and on a gazillion committees. (A project I am working on had a bunch of assistant profs who all got tenure in the past 2 years - they all joke about how they worked so hard to become "middle management".)

Have any plans to have a family? I didn't, but now I am in the process of it and even though I feel guilty for looking at baby clothes online rather than do a deeper lit review or analyze some data, I've gotten over it. The kid is only going to be a baby, a toddler, a child, etc. once and the research/work is always going to be there.
posted by k8t at 9:03 PM on October 11, 2008

Also, I sometimes find myself suffering from workaholic tendencies, although not to this extreme. I had a big breakthrough when I realized the following:

taking care of myself is part of my work. If I don't eat breakfast before I go to write in the morning, I'm not being "dedicated" by putting in extra writing time. I'm being stupid and hurting my productivity. Because in a few hours I'll need to interrupt my writing because I'm starving.

If I don't take care of myself physically, I won't have the energy, and maybe won't even live long enough to be successful. And if I don't do things to make myself happy sometimes, I will probably quit writing, because why bother if it makes my life one long miserable slog?
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:06 PM on October 11, 2008

Work no more than 12 hours per weekday and 4 hours per weekend day. Take a full Saturday or Sunday off at least twice a month. Sleep and do fun stuff when you're not in the lab. Take two or three weeks off every year. Relaxation will come and your productivity will improve.

I was lucky to discover while still an undergrad that when you're in the lab, there is an unavoidable law of diminishing returns. Overworking yourself will lead to bad planning, bad time management, bad experiments, and bad or no data.

I'd also suggest restricting pleasure reading to books outside your own field. You need to allow your brain to feel comfortable outside the sphere of work and such.
posted by rxrfrx at 9:27 PM on October 11, 2008 [1 favorite has favorites]

Have any plans to have a family? I didn't, but now I am in the process of it and even though I feel guilty for looking at baby clothes online rather than do a deeper lit review or analyze some data, I've gotten over it. The kid is only going to be a baby, a toddler, a child, etc. once and the research/work is always going to be there.


Seconding k8t again. I feel the same way about balancing family and academia.

Congrats k8t
posted by special-k at 9:52 PM on October 11, 2008

I manage to work ~10-11 hour days during the week and usually ~10 hours over the course of the weekend. I have found as I approach that 65-hour mark I start to get really crabby about how I haven't done anything "fun" throughout the week. So especially on the weekends, I try to be flexible enough with my research time (it is sometimes required that I am in the lab on the weekend due to the nature of my research) and try to take some time out in between experiments for a bike ride, a nice dinner, a shopping trip. Usually that keeps me satisfied, and I probably "take off" about one weekend a month where I'm out of town or just don't go in.

I (fortunately? unfortunately?) have a wide variety of outside interests that are a nice diversion to a hard day of research. As much as I'd like to say "it has been a long time since I just had a day to veg out" I am really fooling myself because I tend to feel guilty about wasting time. Instead, I like to partake in "productive procrastination" -- doing stuff that is enjoyable and productive. Examples include your general litany of manual labor-ish tasks: cooking, cleaning, working out, crafts, yard work, etc. These are great for when I don't feel like doing work but feel the need to be productive.

But also what k8t said above -- your life doesn't have to stop for your PhD. I am in my last year now and there are a lot of times I say "if I end up graduating a little later because I went canoeing this weekend, then so be it. Taking a few hours out of my life to enjoy this beautiful day will be worth it. It probably won't make much of a difference." I still stress about a lot of stuff because there is a lot of pressure from my advisor (and, admittedly, myself), but you just have to ask yourself what is more important. I like to ask myself: "If I worked a zillion hours a week and shut my life off from friends and family and outside interests but cured/discovered ____ would it be worth it?" My answer is almost always no.
posted by sararah at 9:53 PM on October 11, 2008

I am the type of person who loves their research.

Well, you may not want to hear this, but the quickest way to reduce stress is to step back and realize that it is not your research, it belongs to your advisor. This can be either a disheartening or a liberating realization, it is up to you.

As rokusan alluded to, the purpose of a PhD is to finish it and start your own career. It is a lot less stressful on the other side.
posted by roquetuen at 12:41 AM on October 12, 2008

Things may have changed since my day (cough), but I didn't work hard as a PhD student at an "elite" school. I *might* have worked 7 hours a day as a grad student. The rest of the time I read Melville and Proust, joined clubs, protested injustices, went out for pizza with friends, saw a million movies, and goofed around. I don't think it hurt my research, either. If I had it to do all over, I'd do the same.

20 years have gone by, and I'm still doing scientific research and loving it more than anything else. When I look at my colleagues, the ones who have had staying power are the ones who are slow and steady, who have outside interests and a balanced attitude toward life.

PS- Not to say that a scientific life isn't stressful. It's extremely stressful. But overworking yourself is not the solution. Best of Luck.
posted by acrasis at 8:25 AM on October 12, 2008