3 ms·

I did a phd in cognitive neuroscience. It was similar-ish to my undergrad. Early in the program, days were fairly structured: a typical day had classes/homewor

I did a phd in cognitive neuroscience. It was similar-ish to my undergrad. Early in the program, days were fairly structured: a typical day had classes/homework, maybe meeting with an advisor, read some the foundational "classic" papers, and maybe collect/analyze data. Later in the program, the structure disappeared. You might have a meeting or two, but the rest of the time you need to figure out what to do. Should I write something? Apply for something? Which papers/journals are worth reading to stay up to date? When should I stop playing with new analyses and start writing up some findings? The hardest part of the PhD was dealing with this lack of structure and the most useful skills you work on are self-discipline and time management. I didn't learn self-discipline and time management very well and it really took a toll. There was a constant drone of "I should be working right now" so I took a laptop and stack of papers with me everywhere. But I rarely did much work, so I ended up a) never truly disconnecting from work and b) piling on extra layers of guilt because I was not working.

abhayhegde 3y ago
Thanks for this comment. I too often feel that I'm truly never disconnected from work related thoughts and hence feel rusty or not fresh enough to attack a problem. Do you have any suggestions to deal with that effectively?
- parpfish 3y ago
  when you go to grad school, you've elected to move yourself to a new place and surround yourself with a social circle defined by your shared research interests. everything in your life will somehow connect back to work, so doing work (or thinking about work) will easily become all consuming. Disconnecting will be hard because you have to decide how to fill that non-work/research vaccuum and will often default to just doing more work because it's familiar. So, for me, disconnecting didn't work when it was seen as "pushing away work" to do something else -- it had to be that my focus was "pulled into something non-work". The hard part is finding a non-work thing that naturally pulls your focus away from work (especially on a grad-student budget).

abhayhegde 3y ago

Thanks for this comment. I too often feel that I'm truly never disconnected from work related thoughts and hence feel rusty or not fresh enough to attack a problem. Do you have any suggestions to deal with that effectively?

parpfish 3y ago
when you go to grad school, you've elected to move yourself to a new place and surround yourself with a social circle defined by your shared research interests. everything in your life will somehow connect back to work, so doing work (or thinking about work) will easily become all consuming. Disconnecting will be hard because you have to decide how to fill that non-work/research vaccuum and will often default to just doing more work because it's familiar. So, for me, disconnecting didn't work when it was seen as "pushing away work" to do something else -- it had to be that my focus was "pulled into something non-work". The hard part is finding a non-work thing that naturally pulls your focus away from work (especially on a grad-student budget).