Finding Work Life Balance as a PhD Candidate

 

This is going to be a slight departure from the content you're used to on the blog. I don't talk about myself much anymore, so for any new readers I'm Sisi, a PhD candidate in STEM at a R1 University. I've had many conversations with my friends about work-life balance as a graduate student and I've recently did a total overhaul of my priorities and work schedule. I don't know how many of my readers are in graduate school, but I think what I've written below can also be applied to entrepreneurs, sales associates, and college students. 

Before: Prior to my little reset, I was working well over 40 hours a week. Graduate school is similar to entrepreneurship or sales where your output is directly correlated to how much/how well you work. Because of that, I fell into the "longer hours will get me closer to graduating" mindset that left me working insane hours and neglecting the other areas of my life (family, friends, health, spirituality). I did some work with a life coach (if anyone would like a referral, let me know and I can pass on her information) to fix my work life balance issues. 

Here are some of my takeaways:

1) Plan what needs to be done the night before

Before I leave the lab for the day, I write out a list of things that I need to do the next day. This has been super helpful because it allows me to plan out my days so I don't accidently start something with a long incubation right before 5pm. It has also been a nice reminder of how much I accomplish in a week. I am someone who doesn't really give myself any credit for what I've done, so having every experiment I've done in a week written in my planner allows me to give it a once over and feel proud of my accomplishments. The final benefit of this is that I don't accidently drop projects by forgetting about them. Having it written keeps me on schedule. 

2) Don't bring work home

I can sometimes get into the habit of leaving work, then going home and thinking about work, or talking about work, or even doing some of the work. This is so unhealthy because it leaves little time for me to fill my cup. Instead, I try to get everything done while I'm in the lab (even staying late if I need to), but when I go home it's my time to do what I want. Boundaries are so important for your mental health and for finding balance in life. 

3) Scheduling in priorities

While talking to my life coach I mentioned not feeling like I had enough time for things I would like to be doing (reading, working out, meditation, friend time). After we made an ideal schedule for my week (do it if you haven't already and see how much time you truly have!) we realized that I have more than enough time for the things I want to do, I just need to schedule it in. I put my workouts in the morning three times a week, facetiming family on the weekends, and social time one weeknight and one weekend day. I don't need to hit everything every week, but knowing I have time to do everything I want to has been a game changer. 

I hope this post has been helpful. Let me know below if you'd like more grad school-related posts (or not) and I'll keep that in mind going forward.