I read the book "Getting what you came for" before starting my PhD and took that to heart for graduating. It basically argued one does not need to do their best

I read the book "Getting what you came for" before starting my PhD and took that to heart for graduating. It basically argued one does not need to do their best work during their PhD as that's the start of one's career. What made me sad was after I realized my area wasn't one anyone was hiring for faculty for (deep learning and AI by around 2011), and that the people who did get interviews had an astronomical number of papers (in AI generally but nobody cared about neural networks). I fortunately got a faculty job after applying to 30 universities in 2013 where I got one offer and was their third choice. I got lucky, deep learning exploded, and my career took off. Many people tried to steer me away from AI and especially neural nets, including some of my committee members for the latter. Regardless, another factor in my success was having a somewhat crazy officemate who would work 30 hours straight and then sleep 13 hours, 7 days per week (we are still good friends and he is now a well known deep learning theory professor). I couldn't do that, but the zeal with which he pushed himself motivated me a lot (although he also gave me imposter syndrome since we took some proof heavy courses where he would be done in a couple hours what would take me days to do the same assignments). I definitely don't recommend having kids during a PhD, as I've seen many students and peers struggle tremendously. A partner is great, especially if they are equally busy (mine was in medical school across the country), because one isn't going to really get a lot of nights and weekends if you are really pushing yourself. My advisor never pushed me, but I pushed myself very hard. Still, if one just wants a PhD, what one needs is a good advisor who can steer one towards problems that are tractable given the student's abilities, stable funding (most programs worth doing are reasonably stable), and not trying to think one must do the most amazing work of their lives during their PhDs. It is a lot of work, but a career in research and the privilege of cultivating the next generation is really what makes me feel self-actualized. I try to find low-hanging fruit research projects for my PhD students in their first few years to build up their confidence and then have them pursue harder problems, where if the harder ones don't work out they still hopefully have enough stuff to form a dissertation. I often find myself needing to be more of a cheerleader for my students nowadays, though, since my field exploded and reviewers seem much less competent. Rejected papers for good work hurts mental health.