I feel like this is useful information for much more than just people involved in work. Specifically, as PhD students, my partner and I (and pretty much all of our colleagues) often face burnout, and are always looking for ways to combat it.
I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get back into fiction, because that really did help when I read lots a few months ago. Also, evening walks sounds like a beautiful way to wind down.
Does anybody else here have other advice on ways to combat burnout during a PhD? I (and every other student) would be most interested to hear.
I have very clear advice for PhD: Agree to work 4 hours a day on your thesis + papers (including reading literature!), and stop. You won't get more done anyways, so enjoy the rest of your day guilt-free. It is a marathon, and the consistent 4-hour days add up. If you miss one day, don't do 8 hours the next day; just do another 4. Don't make more than 4 hours mandatory.
I completely agree. The only point where I fail at this is when I compare it to the 8 hour days I do once a week as a web developer (unrelated to the PhD). It seems so easy to power through the 8 hours and still feel like you could get more done. Then you go to uni, and if you manage 4 hours, it is a success. I always feel like I should be able to manage 8 hour days at Uni too, but of course it is a different kind of work which stresses different parts of your brain.
A PhD should have a combination of high- and low-risk projects. An advisor who places their students only into high risk projects is gambling with _your_ life and career. If the project succeeds, the PI gets the lion's share of the kudos, and if it fails, you lose years of your life.
Ideally, the projects should be a low-risk project which gets your feet wet in the methodology and is "guaranteed" to produce a paper, combined with a higher risk project that potentially pays off big. Once the first low-risk project works, pick a second low-risk project to replace it; the amount of time you devote to the high risk project can increase once the first low-risk one has worked.
Ensure you have (at least) monthly meetings with a supervisor. This provides good feedback and stops you getting lost in the weeds. It helps if you have small milestones attached to each meeting (reading a book/paper, editing a chapter, etc).
A sign the PhD is going awry is when they stop attending regular meetings and duck out of your way in the corridor. ;-) Then they start getting stressed
Haha, yeah, I have experienced both ends of the stick. One supervisor I get along with beautifully, we've been meeting essentially every week for the last two years, and she has full access to the JIRA install I'm using to log my research tasks against. The other we just chat in the elevator, and have a meeting every couple of months or so.
I quite like the sound of most things in this article, and think I will try to adopt some of the principles to my study and see if they will help. Specifically, I need to get back into fiction, because that really did help when I read lots a few months ago. Also, evening walks sounds like a beautiful way to wind down.
Does anybody else here have other advice on ways to combat burnout during a PhD? I (and every other student) would be most interested to hear.