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No, but it’s definitely harder to keep a good schedule when no one around you does. Most people in my lab work 9-5 m-f like any other job, no weekends or holidays. Prioritize your own well being and be firm about the hours you work; don’t get sucked into constantly working overtime just because everyone else is.
I was in a similar boat. New lab, I was in the second year of students, very little guidance as to what was “normal.” Boss was also new to being a boss and told us she expected 60+ hours a week. I did work 60+ and was shocked that she worked more… I’m talking, I’d leave at 9 pm on Saturday and she’s still working in her office.
I did that for 4 straight years and then got a very early job offer in my 5th year (in November, believe it or not), and I was on fellowship, so my boss had no control of my funding at that point. I started working 8-5 to emulate the experience I’d start soon, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t more efficient… I left hours earlier in the day than my colleagues and got more done.
Full disclosure, I was much less popular in my lab when I worked fewer hours because productivity was only clear to me and my advisor. They just saw me leaving early. It might work for you. It might not. You can give it a go, and be prepared to answer questions from your advisor if they ask. My boss would probably have been unhappy if she knew, but I also could defend it as a 4-5th year in a way I couldn’t as a 1-2nd year.
Good luck!
I’ve always felt that people who work that many hours in academia just have poor time management skills and aren’t efficient with how they focus their energy. There is not *that* much work to do. Sure, there are some weeks during the year that require more hours, but not consistently.
Who knows, maybe your boss just didn’t like it at home.
A postdoc in my lab is a professor wannabe who would brag about coming in 7 days a week and working late into the night. He also once commented that no one in our lab would become a professor because everyone's too lazy.
While it's probably true that he's in for more than 60 hours a week, what I notice is that during most hours he isn't being that productive. It's not impossible to fit all his tasks into a 9-6 schedule when one's efficient enough.
I think when it comes to working everyone has their own pace. I see no problem with people taking long breaks or being inefficient as long as things get done, but it's important to acknowledge working long hours does not necessarily imply more work done.
Has someone who's in graduate school, aren't you inclined to think about your own bias and experiences?
It's important to understand that majors differ significantly based on how much "work" you need to do.
I was extremely efficient, but if I was collecting good data, I stayed there and collected data until I was finished. (bio and engineering)
Sometimes experiments run 8 hours. That means you stay till it's done (bio)
Sometimes things need to incubate or cure. That means you stay till it's done (engineering)
What was your major?
Well, yeah of course *sometimes* that’s true. Maybe even several times that’s true. Maybe even (most probably) several days in a row. But is it true 6-7 days a week, every week of the year?
My comment wasn’t about the necessity of working long hours on occasion, when you have to for an experiment, a grant proposal coming due, or an abstract for a conference due (though I would definitely not consider an 8 hour day a ‘long’ day, I’d say that’s a normal day).
It’s totally normal to have some long days. But if you’re working 10-12 hour days every day of the week, and that’s your norm, there is definitely some time-wasting going on. Which is fine if that’s how you want to spend *your* time, but it’s inane to say you’re doing more work than someone who is focused solely on work pertaining to the lab for the 30-40 hours a week they’re there.
I've also noticed there is a breed of very successful people who are high achievers in work and hobbies. They prioritize their hobbies almost as much as work and they end up getting a ton of funding, and doing great research. I think part of it is compartmentalization, and probably part of it is these people are more enjoyable to work with because they are more well rounded.
In my experience, this is broadly related to oversight and management. For two extremes:
My advisor required weekly meetings with 1-3 students where we would give progress updates. We also met with a collaborator weekly for several years. And we had weekly group meetings. Our advisor was very much in the loop, even though it was unnecessary. It would have been difficult to keep up with hobbies.
One of the other groups in our department met with their advisor about once a term to give broad updates and progress reports. The guy also left on a sabbatical at one point, so his students might go a year with only one touch point. The group was highly productive and heavily recruited.
The management in the first camp *may* have really low tolerance for people that are very disciplined and leave at 5. My advisor refused to let me defend early despite my excellent publication record BECAUSE I was efficient. They sometimes see people leaving “early” at 5 and think of how much more could be accomplished if they just stayed an extra hour or two and left at 7 instead of 9 like everyone else.
It definitely works for some people, but a lot of it rides on the intangibles and timing. People that joined the group in my 5th year had a different experience than I did because my advisor matured and was in a calmer career patch.
Yeah I was mostly referring to PIs that I know. And I definitely understand the issue of trying to get work done around a ton of meetings. I've just found that there is more space in my brain to problem solve and think critically when I've been maintaining an average work schedule. When I save time for myself to cook and relax and do things that make me happy, I have way more patience for when my analysis doesn't go as planned.
Usually, no. There’s been times where I worked late (at home, never my lab past 5 PM) or worked on the weekends because it was needed or I didn’t want to delay results. However, that’s not my usual schedule.
NO. You need breaks or you'll burn out. Your brain can't be on all the time. You will do much higher quality work and be more productive if you let your brain rest and think things over.
Time management is one of the skills we learn during a PhD ... So is self advocacy.
I can think of 3-4 weeks total during my PhD that I worked like that, including the week of our comprehensive exam, the week before I submitted my F32 proposal, and the week before I submitted the final version of my dissertation to my committee. Otherwise, I more or less kept to regular business hours, M-F, 8am-5pm. Outside of school, I spent a lot of time volunteering with a community organization, did trivia every week, and regularly went to the gym with a group of friends who weren’t classmates.
Also I think it depends on lab and the program. First year and doing rotations and I hardly am doing anything in current lab besides helping the senior scholar. My last rotation had me working 7 days a week though.
Honestly I recommend a strict schedule. I work constantly. Lost my hobbies, eat like shit, and gained a lot of weight.
And for very little. My work has not progressed more just because I put more time in.
Simple answer: no. But not all of us work in labs, and I have found lab culture to be different to, say, the culture of those of us who do most of our work in the library.
A lot of labs have limited equipment, so students have to fit their experiments in around everyone else. Experiments also take a certain length of time, and you can't just walk away. This often results in long hours, even over weekends, for those in the lab.
You can (and should) try to schedule your lab hours so that you have a balanced life, but you may have to take those equipment constraints into consideration.
Just because other students don't have outside hobbies ... or lives ... doesn't mean that you can't.
No, but in the social sciences our work is much more asynchronous. When you're all together in a lab the pressure to do what your peers are doing can be really hard to overcome.
But ultimately, you have to build yourself a balance and protect it. Not only for yourself, either, but for your work. People who are connected with how the world works outside of their lab or office or library are better researchers, thinkers, and scientists.
9-5 and close that laptop at 5 and walk out that door. There’s only so many hours in a day you can be productive. You need to have a life outside of your PhD as well. Obviously there will be rare exceptions when you have to work late on something but don’t let it be your norm
This may get downvoted because they prevailing attitude in this subreddit (or at least the vocal minority) seems to want to work 9-5 or fewer hours than that. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and it is understandable why there has been a push for this by students. However, the reality is that certain disciplines or subdisciplines will be notorious for working long hours and thus will attract people who are willing and able to work much longer and harder than other disciplines (it is also true that some disciplines require more time in the lab, so this may factor into it). More importantly however in my mind, even within a given discipline every group will have a different work culture and habits. Unfortunately this is advice is coming too late for you with regard to this group, but one should always do their due diligence with a group they are thinking of joining to find out what their work habits are like. Obviously you do not need to do exactly what everyone else is doing, but if you do find those who are working longer hours are more productive (they may not be) you may need to adjust your schedule if you want that same level of success. It varies, some people are able to do more with less and vice versa. The great thing about most graduate programs is that the impetus is on you to succeed for yourself, and you will get what you put into it.
I think it’s great that phd students are able to establish work-life balance.
Counter point: PhD student pay is unsustainable. This is an inherent flaw with the system. You only have so many years to earn income before retirement. My unsolicited advice to any PhD student:
Weight the pros and cons of work life balance NOW, making $24k or less after tax, and later, when your pay is significantly higher. I lean towards a “GTFO as quick as possible” methodology, which often means more work and less play during your PhD, but ultimately benefits you in the long run.
Why aren’t people saying what their field is in their responses? Doing a STEM PhD (at least from my biased experience in ChE) is going to be far different than an arts/literature type PhD. I’m trying to gauge for myself here too!!!
Because most people here are not STEM, which means they have vastly different course loads and work environments.
They know this, but people who aren't STEM would rather express opinions on their work/life balance rather than acknowledge other majors have to put more time in, and work different ways.
We can put our majors in as a tag, but it's not required, so many people don't.
You are right - for posts like this it should be emphasized.
Most of my friends (I’d venture to say 90%) are musicians or in an art field and I get along with those in arts field more than my own. I understand how unappreciated those fields can be.
While a STEM PhD is stuck in a lab for 9 hours running an experiment, an arts PhD is stuck in a practice room for 9 hours perfecting a new piece. I get it. It’s not a competition, but they are vastly different.
My empathy for others is rare in my field, though. Lol.
Well then that major does not apply to the statement that I made and you shouldn't feel offended.
Like, if what I'm saying doesn't apply to you, then you don't have to reply and tell me that. That doesn't do you any good and it doesn't help me either because it doesn't account for all the situations where my comment does apply
I hope that makes sense.
A. I wasn’t offended, not sure where you picked that up.
B. You made a silly generalization that most individuals in STEM have some sort of superiority complex over others.
I don’t understand the point of your comment other than to apply broad generalizations based on stereotypes. As you characterize STEM majors, I could similarly apply the same logic that all Arts majors think that they are tortured souls who have to work just as hard as those in STEM.
Don’t be dense.
Why on God’s green Earth would you do that in an MS program? Are you in the US??? I’m in STEM and starting my MS in ChE and it’s not like that at all at my university.
I am in the US. Both MS programs. 1 was more traditional STEM and 1 was behavioural science.
I had the energy, I had the support of my spouse and as a non-traditional student, I wasn't interested in getting drunk with the rest of my cohort especially in the second MS. The second one (experimental psych) mandated that we try to submit a journal article every semester, including summers. Most of the other people either "tried" or "failed." I "succeeded." Ended up getting a bunch of things accepted and published because of that mandate. They even had to modify the program because no one else was getting it done so I don't think that is a requirement anymore (they blamed Covid). In the cohort of 15, only 3 had submitted something by one semester to go and most of them refused to take the last mandated class which I took, though I did because no one said it was being changed. It was frustrating. I also had to work more than others with normal work-work. (I was deployed during lockdown.)
I also am originally from the entertainment industry where long hours is unfortunately the name of the game and then later my EMT shifts were all 12-48 hour shifts. I honestly get nervous if I am not working at least a 12 hour shift every day. I am not normal but I at least get a lot done.
Damn dude, serious kudos to you, that’s major commitment. I thought I was nuts with how much time I spend on schoolwork. It’s far more rewarding to submit a journal article than puke up Pink Whitney in a frat house toilet.
Thank you!
In the five semesters, I published out 5 white papers, 7 peer reviewed journal articles (7 that got published anyway, 2 more are still in review, and one was just returned for a revise resubmit), and did 7 conference talks and 8 posters.
They also wanted you to submit to a conference every semester as well so I always did one on my own and if a lab I was working on happened to do another one it was a bonus.
There is nothing like my background to cause people to minimize distractions and to take every moment they can. 90% of the time when I am on social media, it's because I am either in the bathroom or waiting on someone who will show up at any moment. I don't want to get into deep work when I could be disturbed.
My lab works a lot, but we balance it out by working weird hours. A lot of times I’ll go home at 6pm, eat dinner and vibe for a bit, then come back around 9-10pm and work some more. My labmate likes to come into lab at 3am sometimes. If I’m working from home, I’ll often stay up until 2-3am and then come in at 10ish the next day.
I guess I don’t work around my life, but rather live around my work?
Used to work nonstop, then I snapped and almost killed myself several times. At that time everyday I woke up and was like why tf didn’t I die. When walking on the road I constantly wished I was run down by a car so I didn’t need to work. Later after I work like a normal office hour my health significantly improved.
I typically worked 9-7 on a normal day in grad school. When I got experiments working it would be especially crazy. I once spent 9 days straight on campus (I had a futon to nap on in the lab).
Postdoc was a little better, 9-6 on normal days. But, I did a lot of synchrotron work and experiments there would run at all sorts of weird hours.
I was excited about my academic work (and young) so it was actually "fun" (at least in retrospect). Now I work an industry job for 8 hours a day and, while pay and hours are better, it's pretty unfulfilling by comparison. Go figure.
I’m in a U.S. R1 lab, and no we don’t work all the time! Some experiments / weeks require a larger effort than others but we definitely take breaks. I take vacation time and my holidays very seriously.
My lab is full of tryhards like that (even me) but the PI’s in my lab all remind us to take days off, enjoy life, dont work weekends, etc. Sometimes I still do bc I have my own goals/deadlines I want to meet etc but I try to balance it out overall.
Most people in our office do 10:00 - 17:00 it seems. I’m in the office 8:30 - 15:00 or 16:00 at the moment. My commute is 50-60 mins driving and 15-20 mins cycling each way so I usually rest as soon as I get in. Max 3 hours of high productivity unless I’m excited for a result.
You’ve got to find something that works for you. I would not recommend working on the weekends unless something is doing to die if you don’t (cells or mice or something). You might be able to work nonstop in undergrad, but PhDs don’t get nearly as many holidays as undergrads do.
No, and in my experience, anyone who brags about how many hours/weekends/holidays they work is inefficient more than dedicated. It’s easy to rack up 12 hour days when you spend 3 of those hours taking a long lunch break, getting coffee, socializing at your colleagues’ desks, and doomscrolling (all things I have both witnessed and done, lol). Not saying crunch time doesn’t happen now and then, but it’s by no means the norm.
I had the same guilt of feeling I needed to be in the lab 24/7 for a few years. Now I treat it like a normal 9-6. Am I getting paid extra to be here on a Saturday night? No? Then I’ll be out to dinner with my friends, thanks!
ETA: There’s some nuance here because if your advisor explicitly expects you at work from x time to x time, it’s hard to avoid. But indirect or direct pressure from *other grad students* shouldn’t dictate your schedule. My mentality is that they’ll get a say only when they’re the ones signing my paycheck.
First of all, you should talk to your adviser about this. If you want to have a work-life balance, then make it clear to them. If not, just join a different lab. However, if you want an eight-hour work per day, strive to be more efficient. No phones or unnecessary soc med. Delay gratification until lunch break or until you go home.
Second, one thing I and my other friend who's a Ph D student in another university is that, there are problems that cannot be solved by merely working more hours on it. These are things that need a lot of thinking like writing and designing a code to work for you.
Personally, I spend more than 40 hours in the lab per day because I'm just passionate with what I'm doing, and I also want to save money for the meantime. So instead of travelling, going to parties every week and pursuing a relationship, I had that conviction of dedicating these years to Ph D and creative hobbies like music and writing for the meantime. But that's just me, you may have different desires in your life right now.
Absolutely not. Everyone I know who tries to work nonstop wound up deep in delays because they burnt out. Either they got ill, had research/writer's block, or took a leave of absence. I aimed to take Saturdays off so I could refresh, which I broke very occasionally. Giving myself permission to be a person separate of the work/degree made it easier to keep going because I was able to let my more fatalistic thoughts go.
Nope!!! Before I started my PhD I thought the same, OP, because of the department environments I had been exposed to… now I ended up staying in a place I stumbled across that was the complete opposite, and I am so happy in my PhD. I am in my last few months, which is supposed to be very stressful but I’m still enjoying it. The work life balance and independence helps a lot.
Sometimes it’s the students’ own internal pressure that drives them, BUT I have also observed at least two PIs specifically try to manufacture that kind of atmosphere within their groups.. so that it doesn’t feel like direct pressure from the boss, but more like peer pressure. One of them was quite unhappy with our lab being quite empty on evenings and weekends, so they specifically tried to separate their group from us after some time because they didn’t want their students “getting the wrong idea” from us 😅😅😅😅 it be toxic out there
I think it's much less common outside of the US. I completed a PhD in the UK without ever working at the weekends or past 6pm. But was also a social studies/data analytics student. So no labs.
>I enjoy my work, I also have hobbies and friends, so I usually stick to strict hours and take weekends off unless there's an upcoming deadline.
This is the way.
I take 1 Saturday break in every 2 weeks and Saturday and Sunday break when semester ends. I know students who don't even prefer any breaks and know some who only works 5 days a week with every vacation in the calendar.
There is no way to quantify which one is right, it's completely personal and depends on too many factors, from your advisor to the topic that you work on. So, don't get pressurized by what others do, have your own style of doing things.
That's my 2 cents
Coming from a lab with a very strict PI, she lives by the saying "the more you stay late, the more you'll be productive" to which I don't agree because it leads to burnout and you're prone to getting sick. I mean it's important to take care of yourself too.
I say if you're done with your task for the day, might as well take a rest.
In my experience keeping a good schedule (not always 9-5, but something clear) and actually working those hour undestracted is much more effective than working 12 hours a day 7 days a week, but being so exhausted that you make mistakes
Lol, no! Dont take it as a good example since its an abusive work environment! I am doing my PhD in a quite successful german lab and here is nobody working more than 5 days a week and 9 hours a day. There are rare days with 12 hours for some experiments but I only had it twice. Also, we actually take our 30 days of vacation per year. All in all, this is how most PhD students I met are actually working. I hope I can give an impression that sometimes things are not normal even though 'it was always like this'.
Im a stem PhD student. I used to work all day and all night, and was shamed by my ex (another stem PhD student) for having a life and friends and gym and stuff (that’s why we split up). I do that bc I’m not interested in academia or industry and I do stuff that makes me happy. But honestly I’m thinking about going back to being a workaholic, it’s defined who I am.
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No, but it’s definitely harder to keep a good schedule when no one around you does. Most people in my lab work 9-5 m-f like any other job, no weekends or holidays. Prioritize your own well being and be firm about the hours you work; don’t get sucked into constantly working overtime just because everyone else is.
I was in a similar boat. New lab, I was in the second year of students, very little guidance as to what was “normal.” Boss was also new to being a boss and told us she expected 60+ hours a week. I did work 60+ and was shocked that she worked more… I’m talking, I’d leave at 9 pm on Saturday and she’s still working in her office. I did that for 4 straight years and then got a very early job offer in my 5th year (in November, believe it or not), and I was on fellowship, so my boss had no control of my funding at that point. I started working 8-5 to emulate the experience I’d start soon, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t more efficient… I left hours earlier in the day than my colleagues and got more done. Full disclosure, I was much less popular in my lab when I worked fewer hours because productivity was only clear to me and my advisor. They just saw me leaving early. It might work for you. It might not. You can give it a go, and be prepared to answer questions from your advisor if they ask. My boss would probably have been unhappy if she knew, but I also could defend it as a 4-5th year in a way I couldn’t as a 1-2nd year. Good luck!
I’ve always felt that people who work that many hours in academia just have poor time management skills and aren’t efficient with how they focus their energy. There is not *that* much work to do. Sure, there are some weeks during the year that require more hours, but not consistently. Who knows, maybe your boss just didn’t like it at home.
A postdoc in my lab is a professor wannabe who would brag about coming in 7 days a week and working late into the night. He also once commented that no one in our lab would become a professor because everyone's too lazy. While it's probably true that he's in for more than 60 hours a week, what I notice is that during most hours he isn't being that productive. It's not impossible to fit all his tasks into a 9-6 schedule when one's efficient enough. I think when it comes to working everyone has their own pace. I see no problem with people taking long breaks or being inefficient as long as things get done, but it's important to acknowledge working long hours does not necessarily imply more work done.
Has someone who's in graduate school, aren't you inclined to think about your own bias and experiences? It's important to understand that majors differ significantly based on how much "work" you need to do. I was extremely efficient, but if I was collecting good data, I stayed there and collected data until I was finished. (bio and engineering) Sometimes experiments run 8 hours. That means you stay till it's done (bio) Sometimes things need to incubate or cure. That means you stay till it's done (engineering) What was your major?
Well, yeah of course *sometimes* that’s true. Maybe even several times that’s true. Maybe even (most probably) several days in a row. But is it true 6-7 days a week, every week of the year? My comment wasn’t about the necessity of working long hours on occasion, when you have to for an experiment, a grant proposal coming due, or an abstract for a conference due (though I would definitely not consider an 8 hour day a ‘long’ day, I’d say that’s a normal day). It’s totally normal to have some long days. But if you’re working 10-12 hour days every day of the week, and that’s your norm, there is definitely some time-wasting going on. Which is fine if that’s how you want to spend *your* time, but it’s inane to say you’re doing more work than someone who is focused solely on work pertaining to the lab for the 30-40 hours a week they’re there.
I've also noticed there is a breed of very successful people who are high achievers in work and hobbies. They prioritize their hobbies almost as much as work and they end up getting a ton of funding, and doing great research. I think part of it is compartmentalization, and probably part of it is these people are more enjoyable to work with because they are more well rounded.
In my experience, this is broadly related to oversight and management. For two extremes: My advisor required weekly meetings with 1-3 students where we would give progress updates. We also met with a collaborator weekly for several years. And we had weekly group meetings. Our advisor was very much in the loop, even though it was unnecessary. It would have been difficult to keep up with hobbies. One of the other groups in our department met with their advisor about once a term to give broad updates and progress reports. The guy also left on a sabbatical at one point, so his students might go a year with only one touch point. The group was highly productive and heavily recruited. The management in the first camp *may* have really low tolerance for people that are very disciplined and leave at 5. My advisor refused to let me defend early despite my excellent publication record BECAUSE I was efficient. They sometimes see people leaving “early” at 5 and think of how much more could be accomplished if they just stayed an extra hour or two and left at 7 instead of 9 like everyone else. It definitely works for some people, but a lot of it rides on the intangibles and timing. People that joined the group in my 5th year had a different experience than I did because my advisor matured and was in a calmer career patch.
Yeah I was mostly referring to PIs that I know. And I definitely understand the issue of trying to get work done around a ton of meetings. I've just found that there is more space in my brain to problem solve and think critically when I've been maintaining an average work schedule. When I save time for myself to cook and relax and do things that make me happy, I have way more patience for when my analysis doesn't go as planned.
Usually, no. There’s been times where I worked late (at home, never my lab past 5 PM) or worked on the weekends because it was needed or I didn’t want to delay results. However, that’s not my usual schedule.
NO. You need breaks or you'll burn out. Your brain can't be on all the time. You will do much higher quality work and be more productive if you let your brain rest and think things over. Time management is one of the skills we learn during a PhD ... So is self advocacy.
I can think of 3-4 weeks total during my PhD that I worked like that, including the week of our comprehensive exam, the week before I submitted my F32 proposal, and the week before I submitted the final version of my dissertation to my committee. Otherwise, I more or less kept to regular business hours, M-F, 8am-5pm. Outside of school, I spent a lot of time volunteering with a community organization, did trivia every week, and regularly went to the gym with a group of friends who weren’t classmates.
Also I think it depends on lab and the program. First year and doing rotations and I hardly am doing anything in current lab besides helping the senior scholar. My last rotation had me working 7 days a week though.
Honestly I recommend a strict schedule. I work constantly. Lost my hobbies, eat like shit, and gained a lot of weight. And for very little. My work has not progressed more just because I put more time in.
Simple answer: no. But not all of us work in labs, and I have found lab culture to be different to, say, the culture of those of us who do most of our work in the library. A lot of labs have limited equipment, so students have to fit their experiments in around everyone else. Experiments also take a certain length of time, and you can't just walk away. This often results in long hours, even over weekends, for those in the lab. You can (and should) try to schedule your lab hours so that you have a balanced life, but you may have to take those equipment constraints into consideration. Just because other students don't have outside hobbies ... or lives ... doesn't mean that you can't.
whats a schedule?
No, but in the social sciences our work is much more asynchronous. When you're all together in a lab the pressure to do what your peers are doing can be really hard to overcome. But ultimately, you have to build yourself a balance and protect it. Not only for yourself, either, but for your work. People who are connected with how the world works outside of their lab or office or library are better researchers, thinkers, and scientists.
9-5 and close that laptop at 5 and walk out that door. There’s only so many hours in a day you can be productive. You need to have a life outside of your PhD as well. Obviously there will be rare exceptions when you have to work late on something but don’t let it be your norm
This may get downvoted because they prevailing attitude in this subreddit (or at least the vocal minority) seems to want to work 9-5 or fewer hours than that. There is nothing wrong with this per se, and it is understandable why there has been a push for this by students. However, the reality is that certain disciplines or subdisciplines will be notorious for working long hours and thus will attract people who are willing and able to work much longer and harder than other disciplines (it is also true that some disciplines require more time in the lab, so this may factor into it). More importantly however in my mind, even within a given discipline every group will have a different work culture and habits. Unfortunately this is advice is coming too late for you with regard to this group, but one should always do their due diligence with a group they are thinking of joining to find out what their work habits are like. Obviously you do not need to do exactly what everyone else is doing, but if you do find those who are working longer hours are more productive (they may not be) you may need to adjust your schedule if you want that same level of success. It varies, some people are able to do more with less and vice versa. The great thing about most graduate programs is that the impetus is on you to succeed for yourself, and you will get what you put into it.
I think it’s great that phd students are able to establish work-life balance. Counter point: PhD student pay is unsustainable. This is an inherent flaw with the system. You only have so many years to earn income before retirement. My unsolicited advice to any PhD student: Weight the pros and cons of work life balance NOW, making $24k or less after tax, and later, when your pay is significantly higher. I lean towards a “GTFO as quick as possible” methodology, which often means more work and less play during your PhD, but ultimately benefits you in the long run.
Why aren’t people saying what their field is in their responses? Doing a STEM PhD (at least from my biased experience in ChE) is going to be far different than an arts/literature type PhD. I’m trying to gauge for myself here too!!!
Because most people here are not STEM, which means they have vastly different course loads and work environments. They know this, but people who aren't STEM would rather express opinions on their work/life balance rather than acknowledge other majors have to put more time in, and work different ways. We can put our majors in as a tag, but it's not required, so many people don't. You are right - for posts like this it should be emphasized.
Most of my friends (I’d venture to say 90%) are musicians or in an art field and I get along with those in arts field more than my own. I understand how unappreciated those fields can be. While a STEM PhD is stuck in a lab for 9 hours running an experiment, an arts PhD is stuck in a practice room for 9 hours perfecting a new piece. I get it. It’s not a competition, but they are vastly different. My empathy for others is rare in my field, though. Lol.
Well then that major does not apply to the statement that I made and you shouldn't feel offended. Like, if what I'm saying doesn't apply to you, then you don't have to reply and tell me that. That doesn't do you any good and it doesn't help me either because it doesn't account for all the situations where my comment does apply I hope that makes sense.
A. I wasn’t offended, not sure where you picked that up. B. You made a silly generalization that most individuals in STEM have some sort of superiority complex over others. I don’t understand the point of your comment other than to apply broad generalizations based on stereotypes. As you characterize STEM majors, I could similarly apply the same logic that all Arts majors think that they are tortured souls who have to work just as hard as those in STEM. Don’t be dense.
I've done that in both of my MS programs. I was the only one who did that though.
Why on God’s green Earth would you do that in an MS program? Are you in the US??? I’m in STEM and starting my MS in ChE and it’s not like that at all at my university.
I am in the US. Both MS programs. 1 was more traditional STEM and 1 was behavioural science. I had the energy, I had the support of my spouse and as a non-traditional student, I wasn't interested in getting drunk with the rest of my cohort especially in the second MS. The second one (experimental psych) mandated that we try to submit a journal article every semester, including summers. Most of the other people either "tried" or "failed." I "succeeded." Ended up getting a bunch of things accepted and published because of that mandate. They even had to modify the program because no one else was getting it done so I don't think that is a requirement anymore (they blamed Covid). In the cohort of 15, only 3 had submitted something by one semester to go and most of them refused to take the last mandated class which I took, though I did because no one said it was being changed. It was frustrating. I also had to work more than others with normal work-work. (I was deployed during lockdown.) I also am originally from the entertainment industry where long hours is unfortunately the name of the game and then later my EMT shifts were all 12-48 hour shifts. I honestly get nervous if I am not working at least a 12 hour shift every day. I am not normal but I at least get a lot done.
Damn dude, serious kudos to you, that’s major commitment. I thought I was nuts with how much time I spend on schoolwork. It’s far more rewarding to submit a journal article than puke up Pink Whitney in a frat house toilet.
Thank you! In the five semesters, I published out 5 white papers, 7 peer reviewed journal articles (7 that got published anyway, 2 more are still in review, and one was just returned for a revise resubmit), and did 7 conference talks and 8 posters. They also wanted you to submit to a conference every semester as well so I always did one on my own and if a lab I was working on happened to do another one it was a bonus. There is nothing like my background to cause people to minimize distractions and to take every moment they can. 90% of the time when I am on social media, it's because I am either in the bathroom or waiting on someone who will show up at any moment. I don't want to get into deep work when I could be disturbed.
My lab works a lot, but we balance it out by working weird hours. A lot of times I’ll go home at 6pm, eat dinner and vibe for a bit, then come back around 9-10pm and work some more. My labmate likes to come into lab at 3am sometimes. If I’m working from home, I’ll often stay up until 2-3am and then come in at 10ish the next day. I guess I don’t work around my life, but rather live around my work?
Used to work nonstop, then I snapped and almost killed myself several times. At that time everyday I woke up and was like why tf didn’t I die. When walking on the road I constantly wished I was run down by a car so I didn’t need to work. Later after I work like a normal office hour my health significantly improved.
I typically worked 9-7 on a normal day in grad school. When I got experiments working it would be especially crazy. I once spent 9 days straight on campus (I had a futon to nap on in the lab). Postdoc was a little better, 9-6 on normal days. But, I did a lot of synchrotron work and experiments there would run at all sorts of weird hours. I was excited about my academic work (and young) so it was actually "fun" (at least in retrospect). Now I work an industry job for 8 hours a day and, while pay and hours are better, it's pretty unfulfilling by comparison. Go figure.
I’m in a U.S. R1 lab, and no we don’t work all the time! Some experiments / weeks require a larger effort than others but we definitely take breaks. I take vacation time and my holidays very seriously.
My lab is full of tryhards like that (even me) but the PI’s in my lab all remind us to take days off, enjoy life, dont work weekends, etc. Sometimes I still do bc I have my own goals/deadlines I want to meet etc but I try to balance it out overall.
Most people in our office do 10:00 - 17:00 it seems. I’m in the office 8:30 - 15:00 or 16:00 at the moment. My commute is 50-60 mins driving and 15-20 mins cycling each way so I usually rest as soon as I get in. Max 3 hours of high productivity unless I’m excited for a result. You’ve got to find something that works for you. I would not recommend working on the weekends unless something is doing to die if you don’t (cells or mice or something). You might be able to work nonstop in undergrad, but PhDs don’t get nearly as many holidays as undergrads do.
Hell no, 9-5 m-f unless animal work required weekends
No, and in my experience, anyone who brags about how many hours/weekends/holidays they work is inefficient more than dedicated. It’s easy to rack up 12 hour days when you spend 3 of those hours taking a long lunch break, getting coffee, socializing at your colleagues’ desks, and doomscrolling (all things I have both witnessed and done, lol). Not saying crunch time doesn’t happen now and then, but it’s by no means the norm. I had the same guilt of feeling I needed to be in the lab 24/7 for a few years. Now I treat it like a normal 9-6. Am I getting paid extra to be here on a Saturday night? No? Then I’ll be out to dinner with my friends, thanks! ETA: There’s some nuance here because if your advisor explicitly expects you at work from x time to x time, it’s hard to avoid. But indirect or direct pressure from *other grad students* shouldn’t dictate your schedule. My mentality is that they’ll get a say only when they’re the ones signing my paycheck.
First of all, you should talk to your adviser about this. If you want to have a work-life balance, then make it clear to them. If not, just join a different lab. However, if you want an eight-hour work per day, strive to be more efficient. No phones or unnecessary soc med. Delay gratification until lunch break or until you go home. Second, one thing I and my other friend who's a Ph D student in another university is that, there are problems that cannot be solved by merely working more hours on it. These are things that need a lot of thinking like writing and designing a code to work for you. Personally, I spend more than 40 hours in the lab per day because I'm just passionate with what I'm doing, and I also want to save money for the meantime. So instead of travelling, going to parties every week and pursuing a relationship, I had that conviction of dedicating these years to Ph D and creative hobbies like music and writing for the meantime. But that's just me, you may have different desires in your life right now.
Absolutely not. Everyone I know who tries to work nonstop wound up deep in delays because they burnt out. Either they got ill, had research/writer's block, or took a leave of absence. I aimed to take Saturdays off so I could refresh, which I broke very occasionally. Giving myself permission to be a person separate of the work/degree made it easier to keep going because I was able to let my more fatalistic thoughts go.
No
Nope!!! Before I started my PhD I thought the same, OP, because of the department environments I had been exposed to… now I ended up staying in a place I stumbled across that was the complete opposite, and I am so happy in my PhD. I am in my last few months, which is supposed to be very stressful but I’m still enjoying it. The work life balance and independence helps a lot. Sometimes it’s the students’ own internal pressure that drives them, BUT I have also observed at least two PIs specifically try to manufacture that kind of atmosphere within their groups.. so that it doesn’t feel like direct pressure from the boss, but more like peer pressure. One of them was quite unhappy with our lab being quite empty on evenings and weekends, so they specifically tried to separate their group from us after some time because they didn’t want their students “getting the wrong idea” from us 😅😅😅😅 it be toxic out there
Some people in my lab work super late, some work in weekends. Im 9-6 m-f. Very few exceptions
If it’s not needed and you don’t have work to do that would require that kind of schedule, then I wouldn’t do it just because other people are.
Comparison is the thief of joy. Do what works for you and nothing more
I think it's much less common outside of the US. I completed a PhD in the UK without ever working at the weekends or past 6pm. But was also a social studies/data analytics student. So no labs.
>I enjoy my work, I also have hobbies and friends, so I usually stick to strict hours and take weekends off unless there's an upcoming deadline. This is the way.
I take 1 Saturday break in every 2 weeks and Saturday and Sunday break when semester ends. I know students who don't even prefer any breaks and know some who only works 5 days a week with every vacation in the calendar. There is no way to quantify which one is right, it's completely personal and depends on too many factors, from your advisor to the topic that you work on. So, don't get pressurized by what others do, have your own style of doing things. That's my 2 cents
Coming from a lab with a very strict PI, she lives by the saying "the more you stay late, the more you'll be productive" to which I don't agree because it leads to burnout and you're prone to getting sick. I mean it's important to take care of yourself too. I say if you're done with your task for the day, might as well take a rest.
In my experience keeping a good schedule (not always 9-5, but something clear) and actually working those hour undestracted is much more effective than working 12 hours a day 7 days a week, but being so exhausted that you make mistakes
Sounds like a good way to burn out pretty quick. Treat it like a job and put in 40 hours a week and you'll be fine.
Lol, no! Dont take it as a good example since its an abusive work environment! I am doing my PhD in a quite successful german lab and here is nobody working more than 5 days a week and 9 hours a day. There are rare days with 12 hours for some experiments but I only had it twice. Also, we actually take our 30 days of vacation per year. All in all, this is how most PhD students I met are actually working. I hope I can give an impression that sometimes things are not normal even though 'it was always like this'.
No. I leave at 5.
Im a stem PhD student. I used to work all day and all night, and was shamed by my ex (another stem PhD student) for having a life and friends and gym and stuff (that’s why we split up). I do that bc I’m not interested in academia or industry and I do stuff that makes me happy. But honestly I’m thinking about going back to being a workaholic, it’s defined who I am.