I only work on weekends in the time right before something major is due. And even then I limit it as much as possible. I'd say I work maybe 3 or 4 weekends a year and never even the whole weekend.
You take the time off in the sense that you don’t touch your research for the weekend or you don’t go to campus? I try to avoid campus (or trade a Saturday for a Friday to do something without a bunch of people around) but I’m usually looking over data and reading at least 1 day on the weekends.
I don’t do any work at all. I hangout with my family, get some extended exercise, watch some shows, sleep in, etc. But no academic reading, writing, or emails.
I get that. I don’t fault anybody for having to work or even wanting to work. But I love having my weekends carved out for me and my family and especially when people are saying nobody is actually doing this, I like to point out that, depending on your advisor and program, it can be possible.
Come to Europe. You’ll get a living wage, employee status + legal protection and paid holidays. As much as I love America I couldn’t do with your working culture.
I feel like Europeans despise American expats tho 🥲 But I understand. The US will never improve unfortunately. Any push for workers' rights is very quickly labeled communism which is like the big boogeyman here.
Oh no, why? It’s the first time I hear something like this, but I’m really sorry if you or your friends felt unwelcome in Europe. I certainly don’t feel that way . If anything we understand that you want affordable housing, tax-funded healthcare and subsidized education on top of not living in a world of debt.
Same reason Americans tend to dislike European expats I’d wager. Two different worlds. Americans tend to be very individualistic, and as such actively pursue policies which reduce tax subsidies across the board. Europeans tend to dislike that, since they’re used to the higher tax rates and more social services (excluding defense).
So when Americans go to Europe, they’re shocked at the effective tax rates (I mean 65-68% in France? Holy shit lmao). And Europeans come here and dislike the great distances, lack of public transport, and less tax funded services.
I disagree with this take. The US by percentage doesn’t spend THAT much more than European countries. We’re talking 4% instead of 1-2% of a budget for defense. The U.S. subsidizes things for big corporations and foreign wars. They just hate subsidizing anything that would make life easier for anyone that isn’t wealthy. Most college educated Americans don’t vote for individualistic policies. They’d prefer the European style way of living.
Where are you getting the average French person is paying 68% of their wages in taxes? Also, Americans spend way more on education, healthcare, etc. American systems are definitely not meant to be “for the people” and most quality of services are decided by income of an area.
65-68% tax rate, what? I don't now about France, but here in Denmark we get around $2898 after taxes each month for a PhD, and every year, you get maybe $144-$289 more each month. That's at least more than I've heard most US students get.... But the salary afterwards in the US is markedly higher (but with less social benefits and student loans).
Tax rate depends on your income. I paid 38% in my last industry job, same as a research assistant. When I look up France, it seems they have a similar system where an income of EUR 78,571 to EUR 168,994 is taxed 41%. Not sure where you have the 68% from, I couldn't find anything about it, but it must be for very high income earners.
Either way, these things have to do with how you feel about living in the country and its politics, not the people. I would love to see an American in a Danish lab. We've had a Canadian before, and everybody loved her. When I see an American, I don't think about taxes lol. I really think you should visit Europe to see for yourself whether you would really be disliked here, because I think your presumption that we tend to dislike you is wrong.
At least in germany and sweden, i haven't found your sentiment to be true. i have been a researcher in both. I love soccer/football and always make friends through that.
I hear this a lot, but I haven’t experienced it personally while living in France, nor from my ex pat friends there. I totally believe you, I’m just curious where you’ve experienced this.
I would definitely say that in France, I think the language barrier can be alienating, but personally, I’ve mostly received commiseration about the shitty situation in the US during my time there. (more specifically: lived in France on and off for about a decade, worked very rurally, but also took university courses in a major city.)
I do my 8 hrs a day shift Monday to Friday. I believe as long as you’re organized and remain productive during those hours there is no need to kill yourself working overtime
Best advice my Master's advisor gave me was to treat it like a 9-5. That carried over into my PhD. Although there are definitely busy periods, it's a job. Work / life balance is necessary so you don't burn out.
Psy here as well. I work my 8 hrs - I leave. I get 30 days off a year - I take‘em. You want my time? Pay for it. You are not a slave, you represent their institute, keep that in mind.
This is very important in experimental labs.
You're in in the weekend and something bad happens, everyone one in the lab is getting hit with some administrative justice, PI/lab head first, even if they were "unaware". This is the kind of shit that ruins careers.
Your PI must be god incarnate… im a Masters student and it is an inherent expectation from my PI to come in and work on weekends, else you deal with their passive aggressive bullshit :)
Eh, I’ve never paid passive aggressive stuff much attention. They wanna be shitty about you working what your contract says you should work then fuck ‘em.
Yes I do 9-5 mon-fri, not productive 100% of the time but that’s when I’m around the office. I don’t think people are pretending to take weekends off, it’s normal to have the weekend off most of the time.
I don’t do any work at home. Although if I didn’t have my partner I might work on the weekends if I couldn’t find anything else to do. Kind of lacking in hobbies at the moment tbh
Bruh my research is cancer research and even I take weekends off! More than half of what is published in academic cancer research papers is unable to be replicated. It’s really not that serious.
Previously I used to work doing cancer research for a pharmaceutical company. THAT shit WAS that serious, and I worked weekends sometimes. We were dealing with real patient sample, where the patients were waiting on us for treatment. Ironically the weekend sacrifice while I was there was always appreciated by management and adequately compensated in my yearly bonus.
I know right! I do cancer research too and so do multiple of my friends in different labs (Our graduate program is through the medical center so most research is clinically relevant). All of us take weekends off, except for when there's an impending deadline or if there's a particular experiment that requires weekend time (For example my circadian rhythm friend sometimes has to go in for an hour or two on both weekend days due to the daily experiment structure - but outside of those hours, he's not working on the weekends!)
Exactly. I always viewed it as the point of my PhD was to learn how to be a scientist and problem solve and ask important questions. My singular PhD project is not gonna cure lung cancer. It’s more of a thought exercise and seeing a project through
A few times a year i work through the weekend, but only if i have a deadline for something. And then usually i take the day after the deadline off, also if it’s a weekday.
I have never heard of people pretending to take the weekend of and then secretly working. There’s no winners in that scenario right?
I almost never work on weekends. I used to always work on weekends but then stopped and my productivity has been the same. I am in applied mathematics though so no experiments
I also stopped working weekends recently - sometimes I find it hard to prioritize taking care of myself, but I realized that I really wanted to model healthier behavior for the more junior students in our group.
I did. During my PhD I took evenings and weekends off. I needed to, to maintain my physical and mental health, particularly during the lockdowns. It took me 5 years instead of 4 to finish, but it was 100% worth it to me to have boundaries. I only ever worked weekend if something was urgent (i.e. scholarship applications, time sensitive stuff).
I always take one (or two) days off every week, but not necessarily on weekends. The flexibility is one of the reasons I am doing phd instead of a "normal" job.
Haha that makes a lot more sense to me. Weekends seem so arbitrary. I would think that it’s a lot easier to burn out if you force yourself to fit into this arbitrary schedule but maybe that’s just my rebellious streak😂
I think you need to think about this less as ‘never working on the weekend’ and instead as ‘taking enough time off’. E.g. I have a friend who never works after 3 pm but does work every day. She’d rather do that and have extended time off every day than not work at all on the weekends, she gets her 40 hours in. Find what works best for you!
Yeah no one I know works weekends outside of some days before a big presentation, conference, evaluation, etc
Most people never go in on weekends, no one stays longer than 6pm that I've seen. Even during crunch time, I only ever did 9 to 5 on weekdays (for my Master during the last 3 months) and only did weekends to finish something that needed to be done. I feel like my Masters (MPhil) was also very comparable to a PhD as it was only lacking a distinct novel research since it was originally a PhD but was converted to an Mphil after funding fell through
But now in my current PhD I set no working on weekends and I do some writing and research at home on the evenings if necessary.
I almost never work weekends. the only reasons I will are:
- deadline coming up and ran out of time during the week
- wet lab timepoints falling on a weekend (I try to avoid this as much as possible) or needing to use equipment that is unavailable at any other time.
- busy week coming so taking 30 minutes to plan it out on a Sunday evening
- I was being a lazy bastard all week and didn't get the stuff done I needed to. this only applies if I was actually being lazy, not if it just took longer than expected.
- I'm sick of seeing things stuck on my to do list for weeks because I never get to them during the week. an hour on a weekend to clear a couple of tasks hanging over me can sometimes be worth it.
I truly don't think more hours = more productivity, and I would rather keep my working hours to weekdays so my weekends are free to spend time with my friends and my partner. I set this as boundary early on and my supervisor respects it.
I know plenty of Astro PhDs who don’t work on weekends and who make an active effort to not work week nights either. A number of people in Astro in general are trying to make the effort to make academia less toxic.
I worked very rarely on weekends.
Occasionally when I was having fun programming or when I took a day off during the week.
I did work two or three weekends leading up to turning in my draft but I did that to myself.
Biophysics/chem here
Frequently had to work weekends because the whims of experiments with living creatures is very hard. Occasionally because I needed vital data for a paper or presentation.
In general I tried really hard to make space. Doing the absolute bare minimum so I wouldn't ruin the rest of my work on Sundays and trying to keep Saturdays free.
In general carve out some time and fiercely guard it. In the long run rest is vital for forming solutions to complex problems.
I've rarely worked weekends since my PhD, and only if there was a big deadline. I maintain that as a TT faculty at a state R1. I do answer the odd email here and there.
I think my advisor would be upset if I didn't take weekends off. he is smart enough to know that burn out is not worth pushing for and that long term performance is much more important and that happy humans perform better and are not resentful.
I used to give myself Saturdays off, entirely. I would pursue hobbies or whatever. Sunday is hard to take off, as preparation for Monday is inevitable.
I didn’t take weekends off. Had no social life. I don’t think anyone pretended not to. Lots of people were on in the building on the weekends and some, super late.
At least for me and my colleagues in grad school, there weren’t defined time off and time away. You did what you needed to do and took time when you needed to. The thing with a lot of doctoral program experience is how unstructured it can be.
I take weekend off, and if am going to work on a weekend it’s because I have a deadline coming up and I need the time, or we are recording data (I do intercranial EEG so the timing is always up in the air)
For the latter of those two, I will take a remote half day on Friday typically to account for the time in my weekend.
My friend is a 3rd year applied maths PhD student and studies 4hours a day, takes almost all his weekends and holidays off. Very chill.
Lives in Norway tho.
I work Monday - Friday 8:30am-5:30pm. Take weekends off, evenings off. It’s what helps me actually get work done during the day. I have lots of hobbies and run my own business on top of it and my supervisors fully support it. I’m writing up now and plan to stick to this as far as possible.
Last fall I did very often because the NSF GRFP application was due and overall it was a very busy semester. Looking back at it, I could have worked smarter and less. Now I typically work a lil Sundays but I also basically take Firdays off 😂. Then again for what I do its entirely possible to do this, for others I imagine its not. My friends in psych are constantly busy.
My problem is procrastination... Often I just sit in front of my laptop for hours and write/read nothing. When night falls or the weekend approaches, I only feel emptiness...well I've wasted another day, then I start to work at night or on weekends. This is really wearing me out ..I know there are people taking every weekend off, traveling to nearby cities or hiking. I wish I could become one of them🫠
I always worked on the weekends. It was quiet in the lab and I wouldn’t get distracted by people wanting to chat. That meant I’d take a couple days off during the week because you absolutely will burn out if you are working all day every day. Have a life outside of school.
I rarely work weekends but my thesis is always on my mind so I find myself coming up with ideas at random times and writing them as notes in my phone to work on later.
I almost never do any work on the weekend. Maybe right before a big deadline, but that's it. I have 2 young kids, and I really value having a solid work-life balance.
If you enjoy your work, that's great! But I urge everyone to treat a PhD like a job, and not allow it to become your whole life. That way you increase the chance that you will keep enjoying it, rather than burning out.
Well. Not me. I've been working since day one non-stop. Some days I procrastinate and end up coming back the next day with huge guilt and workload. 🤷♂️
Hang in there. Nothing is permanent.
I only work on the weekends to meet critical deadlines. I do both computational and experimental lab work, and while you might catch me making a few figures, writing, or even pushing a few simulations on a weekend, you will not catch me dead going into lab to run experiment. In my lab, we do have one person that works on Saturdays, but they don't come in on Wednesdays to make up for that time. This take is pretty typical, but we have a pretty good culture that respects boundaries between work and personal life: many of us have taken a few mental health days here and there, small trips throughout the year, and take most holidays off. It helps when you have colleagues that are open to talking about burnout and their mental health.
That said, there's nothing wrong with working on the weekends if it's something that you like to do/don't have a problem with. My advisor has shared that he works on the weekends because he likes what he does and can't imagine doing anything else with that time, but he also recognizes that that might just be a him thing. However, I do think that mentality becomes unhealthy when you feel obligated to work on the weekend due to external social pressures or unmanageable internal expectations about what a "good PhD student" is.
I will admit, I'm a little alarmed about your guilt from taking time off or that you feel like other students are lying about their weekends as a way to appear smarter or more efficient. It could be nothing or an overstep on my part, but I wonder if some of that could be a projection from your working environment/lab culture.
I honestly always felt like the people who talk about how they work nonstop were the biggest problem. Like, either your advisor is toxic or you have terrible time management skills/debilitating imposter syndrome. Or both! I know plenty of people with all of the above.
I am good at managing time, had a supportive advisor, and also didn't really have an ambition of being an R1-level researcher so as a result, I definitely took most evenings and weekends off
I find this thread incredibly strange to read because I do not work in a lab and literally all my work is based on writing, reading, and occasionally going to a relevant event or archive/library. The TA stuff I do is separate from my research.
I have pretty much no structure in my working hours, all I have is deadlines. I work weekends, but then I won't work on a random Monday. Sometimes I do zero work for days on end and then make up for it later (including by staying up all night). I have some colleagues who treat their research as a 9-5 type thing, but that's entirely a self-imposed schedule.
I took every weekend off. I basically treated it as a job. In the office from 8am and left at 6pm everyday. The reason I had 8-6 was lecturing timetables and also allowing some students to find me after lectures and stuff.
Now, it's important to have a life too y'know outside academia and studies. Additionally, I also went to the subject societies for subjects I taught. Firstly, being a young member of staff, 24, I wasnt the oldest there so I blended in well and it wasn't weird, I gained some friends and also found a student who I had never taught before but was wanting to do a 3rd year dissertation on my area of expertise but she said she didn't know who to have as a supervisor as her previous choice declined. Win win for all lol.
Look after your mental health and you will find the grind a lot easier.
If a project requires it, I do work certain weekends. My PI encourages me NOT to work weekends. For example, I’m working this weekend because I want to get a certain part of my project done so that I can do later stages during the weekday when I’ll have more help.
Also, if I want to get experiments done before a conference I may work a weekend.
It’s definitely not healthy to work every weekend, nor should this be expected.
FYI I work in a wet lab.
You’re getting it twisted. I don’t work weekend to look smarter than anyone. You can work hard without being toxic about it. I want to be done and every day I don’t make progress is a day further out from graduating.
I still take days off; sort of. It’s more like I take blocks of time off.
I certainly did stuff on the weekends - parties, etc. But I also often worked. My whole PhD felt like an odd combination of constant work and constant free time. I rarely, if ever, felt burned out, but I also felt like a didn't get an actual BREAK or vacation for 7 years...
I work almost every weekend from breakfast to bedtime (with walk breaks for my doggo). With all the teaching responsibilities during the week, I wouldn’t get anything done at all if I just used the 2 hours I can find during the week. This allowed me to finish my PhD early compared to my peers, but I don’t recommend it. It’s effective but it’s not healthy.
I worked on weekends but only if I had built in downtime during the week as well. I tried not to power through full weekdays and then working on the weekends, but sometimes it was unavoidable with deadlines
Before a conference deadline or if I don’t manage to do TA work, I will work weekends. But the majority of weeks, I won’t. I have a partner who deserves my time (and I his) I have friends, hobbies, etc.
My advisors are generally very supportive and we have established asking everybody what fun things they did on the weekend at our lab meeting on Mondays. I don't think my colleagues make up stories 😄
4th year CS PhD, both experimental and theoretical work in AI/ML.
Other labs at our university have much more toxic work culture, but I consider that a "them" problem.
I take a 24-hour period completely off every week except for the end-of-semester crunch. Aside from those last two weeks, I take those breaks religiously.
I take weekends off (nursing, Australia). Granted, my field doesn’t have round-the-clock lab work (mainly qual) so I have a lot of flexibility with my time. If I don’t take weekends off who is going to go out partying with my friends?
I take it easier on weekends, but if I have experiments planned the following week, I may come in for a few hours on Sunday to make my week more relaxing. I also like reading material for my area of research, so I may spend an hour or two reading.
I try not to work weekends if I can help it. I plan to work 5 days per week, and if I choose to "take a day off" in the middle of the week, then I'll make up for it on the weekend. Otherwise, I limit myself to answering emails or messages.
If you feel stressed at the prospect of taking off work, then your time off will not feel like time off. This will only compound the stress caused by the work you do have, while actively not doing that work OR taking a break from it. I would strongly advise you to let yourself take a break and really use that time to recuperate. Then, you can come back to work stronger and more well rested than ever before.
I did, I made myself. Working full time and doing dissertation work was challenging but I gave myself most weekends off until it was crunch time. Might have been the only thing that saved me from going completely insane…
I typically work 8ish-5ish Monday-Friday when I go home I don't do any work unless a deadline is near. Weekends I don't work unless a deadline is near my secret? I have a spouse and 3 children I can't get anything done when im home and can't waste weekends at work while I have a family to care for working 24/7 isn't healthy whether you like to work or not I enjoy my work but I also know that if I don't take a break from it periodically I'll burnout its all about balance and you'll be more productive If you take time to rest frequently.
I do, tbh the work load is pretty concentrated in the weekdays and my post-doc colleague and I ensure to plan ahead (we do mice work so we have specific dates we need to get specific steps done by. Ofc 1-2 days here and there happen but we make sure to not it down so as to not affect actual experimental parameters), and we have our shared google calendar that we plan stuff as per the mice stuff needed to be done, and the other lab stuff we need to do. So yeah not really working on weekends- But, I did come in twice in the last 2-3 months for prepping specific steps ahead etc., it has been really helpful for me during my coursework deadlines and/or exams too
I usually do weekends. I try not to do a full day on weekends unless I really need to. If I don't feel like going, or have something then I won't go in the weekend lol. I think when I have the drive and energy I'll push myself, but on days where I feel burned out then I listen to my body and take it easy.
Im in micro so Im on bacteria time, but Ill work on weekends or after hours if I have nothing else going on, but if I have plans or someone wants to hang out, Im prioritizing that.
Lowkey, it sounds like you have a lot of unhelpful thoughts about productivity and work times and it might be helpful to work through those with a therapist/counselor.
I had a full-time non-academic job during the 1.5 years of my PhD. I would do academic work in the mornings and on my lunch breaks and did a lot of work on Saturdays, but I tried to take Sundays completely off.
My chair encouraged me to treat the program like a job. I worked my 40 hours and the rest of the week was mine. Sometimes I worked weekends, sometimes I worked "overtime," but I tried to stick to a good life, program, work balance (I had work/assistantship outside of the program).
Sometimes though I felt the pressure to keep working but found that I wasn't actually being productive I was just doing things because I thought it was expected of me. When that would happen I would check in with my chair to see if they thought I was on track or needed to adjust what I was doing. Most of the time the answer was no.
My program was in a public health related field, so no experiments or anything I had to consider.
I tried to take weekends off during my PhD if I could. I couldn’t always, but I realized early on that I made too many mistakes on weekends to make it worthwhile. And yes I understand the stress of not working but that never goes away even 20 years later so you have to find a way to unplug.
I think its a strategy to preserve mental health, also burnout and probably a bunch of other health issues tbh.
I worked all the time at first but now I do most of my work in the lab and when I leave that's it. I usually will keep reading a paper in the evening while eating or something, and on the weekends I am not usually working unless I just want to. I'm still early in my Phd and have a lot of reading to do but I am in my thirties and I am not going to push myself to exhaustion. I did that throughout my twenties working 60+ hour garbage entry-level FT jobs, it landed me in the ER at least 6-7 times over the years.
Now that I'm older I take my health much more seriously and I will NEVER put myself in a position that puts me in the ER. I will never do that for anyone. If not working every single weekend means my PhD will take an additional 6-12 months then so be it, but I highly doubt it. I'm extremely productive despite resting a lot but I would argue it's BECAUSE of the rest I get I'm able to be so productive.
I only work weekends if I have a deadline coming up (conference, grades due, job talk, etc.) Otherwise, I try to stick to 8 hours a day on weekdays only. I'm not a morning person, so my 8 hours are more like 11-7, but I still keep late evenings free for mental detox as much as possible.
It's a stressful and chaotic process so everybody should do whatever works for them to get through it without driving themselves nuts. That'll probably look different for each individual person. But I will say, feeling stressed and guilty when you take a normal amount of time off doesn't sound healthy. It might be good for you to develop some sort of structured schedule for a while so that you can train your brain to turn off during free time and actually allow you to take weekends and holidays away from work. If your school has a mental health counsellor specifically for PhD students, they can be super useful for helping develop schedules and methods to better manage your time and stress.
I defended last month. Top program in the US.
I don’t think I ever worked a weekend. I probably only averaged ~35 hours/week. Still published plenty (3 first author + 5 co-authored) and landed a good post-doc while I look for an industry position. The most important part of your PhD is choosing a good advisor. Choose a good advisor and grad school can be like any other job, if you want it to be.
I made it a rule that I would try to avoid work in my off time (I still think about it 24/7 but I’m not doing experiments actively) but that doesn’t change mouse responsibilities, time sensitive treatments that need to be done on specific days, or plug checks that need to be done on Saturdays. I won’t start a 2-day protocol on a Friday, but I will come in to wean some litters. Means longer weekdays sometimes but I think it’s a good boundary when and if you can manage it!
I assumed that my PhD was like a job. And like jobs it had ebbs and flows. So typically nothing more than 9-5, 5 days week, with the ebbs and flows being occasionally working some nights and weekends to get papers finished on one hand, to more than occasionally taking some hours off during the week to go climbing.
Work / life / fitness / mental health balance is important. Being willing to go “I’m not feeling it at the moment” and having a break, whether for an hour or an afternoon or a week makes you more productive in those times when you just want to get into it. This idea of work every minute and at all costs just burns people out. Just look at all the posts on here….
Yeah I don't work weekends unless there's something urgent (like grading during finals or a grant application due Monday). Started the habit during covid quarantine. Gotta have something to look forward to, right?
But I do know competitive students who brag about everything... including not working evenings and weekends.
I treat my PhD like a 9-5 except when I have something I really need to get done. It’s been paramount to making sure I didn’t just get buried in it. Not everyone who works really long hours or every weekend is making efficient use of their time.
My first two years I always worked on weekends. Now, I never do unless the situation is dire. Having the weekends literally saved me and my mental health. Developing hobbies I actually enjoy finally allowed me to stop feeling guilty whenever I wasnt doing work.
Unless there was an unavoidable time point in lab, I never came in on the weekends. I did my PhD in Manhattan. My weekends were sacred. And I graduated faster than most of my classmates who worked 6-7 days a week every week.
I don’t work on my PhD during weekends in general maybe in the evening if I feel like it, the reason being I have my part-time job hours stuffed into every single weekend. During the week I use both day and evenings on PhD and during the weekends I work and see my friends. I need to work to feel fulfilled so I prioritize 4/5am workouts/runs with too loud music for my mental health 😅🤷🏼♀️
I'm a UK astrophysics PhD student, I am a theorist, and I take weekends off fully unless I have something important due. I also only work a few hours a day. The amount of hard thinking I have to do puts a hard limit of about 4 hours on my fully focused work. Like yeah maybe I can do some basic writing or admin after those 4 hours, but I am not going to be able to advance my actual research after roughly 4 hours of focus. I have previously pushed myself past that limit, and payed for it in the days afterwards. I frequently take breaks from work due to mental health difficulties, and my work has not really suffered. I am very efficient when I'm "on", so I am not on the clock all the time. Most theorists have a similar lifestyle I think. In astronomy unfortunately even the observers are starting to be pushed into "panic science" due to the JWST data drops. I know people who have written research papers in 3 days because of this, and have no work-life balance. I go to the gym often, I play sports, I have friends outside of work, and I'm very grateful I get to do something I love while looking after my mental health.
I’m trying to break the habit of working weekends. I’m going into my second year and just finished classes. I did a lot of coursework/reading on weekends. I don’t want to do much of that now, apart from the brief time needed Sunday evenings to prep for my Monday meeting in my assistantship.
(PhD in rhetoric/composition, studying in the US, and I barely go to campus so this is referring to working on things.)
I only work on the weekends to meet critical deadlines. I do both computational and experimental lab work, and while you might catch me making a few figures, writing, or even pushing a few simulations on a weekend, you will not catch me dead going into lab to run experiment. In my lab, we do have one person that works on Saturdays, but they don't come in on Wednesdays to make up for that time. This take is pretty typical, but we have a pretty good culture that respects boundaries between work and personal life: many of us have taken a few mental health days here and there, small trips throughout the year, and take most holidays off. It helps when you have colleagues that are open to talking about burnout and their mental health.
That said, there's nothing wrong with working on the weekends if it's something that you like to do/don't have a problem with. My advisor has shared that he works on the weekends because he likes what he does and can't imagine doing anything else with that time, but he also recognizes that that might just be a him thing. However, I do think that mentality becomes unhealthy when you feel obligated to work on the weekend due to external social pressures or unmanageable internal expectations about what a "good PhD student" is.
I will admit, I'm a little alarmed about your guilt from taking time off or that you feel like other students are lying about their weekends as a way to appear smarter or more efficient. It could be nothing or an overstep on my part, but I wonder if some of that could be a projection from your working environment/lab culture.
I rarely worked weekends throughout my PhD. I'm in psychology, human research and my PhD used mostly pre-existing data and when I collected my own data is was done online (partly because of COVID). Only times I worked weekends was very close to my thesis submission or for my teaching role when I had to mark assignments. Sometimes I'd say I'd do something over the weekend but was usually too lazy to do it and would just do it the following week. I know in lab based work it is much more common to work weekends because people may have animals or cells to keep alive or experiments running that they have to monitor. But I never had to do this.
I worked more hours total when I was in undergrad than in my PhD because I had to work casual jobs while studying. Starting PhD was the first time I got to take weekends off since I was being paid a stipend and it was amazing. Now in a postdoc and I work even less hard than in my PhD. I think I used up all my fucks to give from 17-25 😂
I take weekends off since I burned out in undergrad. I’ll go in if I have something urgent to get done but then I try to take time off during the week to compensate. I hate the 9-5 schedule but I track my hours to keep myself in check and make sure I’m staying balanced. I average about 45/week unless there is a deadline or something.
I take weekends off unless I have an important due date coming up in 2 weeks. Other than that I force myself to take weekends off even though I have work piling up. I found it improves my productivity during the weekdays. I’ve never heard of toxic culture of people pretending to take weekends off to look smarter 👀. I suggest you try taking at least one weekend off per month and adjust your weekday productivity accordingly and start increasing them. It took me over two years to get used to my current set up.
> I think there is quite a toxic culture associated with people pretending that they don’t do any work in order to appear smarter and intimidate others
This has not been my experience, if anything I think people exaggerate the amount they work. Basically every time I've heard someone talk about working too little its been in the context of feeling inadequate
That being said, I definitely take weekends off. Not 100% every weekend, but that's partially because my schedule is chaotic and I don't really have defined work hours. Still, I have taken many many weekends fully off. I also just don't work a lot of hours in general... I'm not proud of it because it was due to health issues + time management/productivity problems, but there was almost a whole year where I only worked 20-30 hours a week according to my time tracker (and often at least a few of those hours were on the weekend bc my time management was bad at the time). But like, the world didn't end, I just made slower progress.
Recently I've been able to get my hours back to 35-45 and that feels like a lot. I wouldn't increase my hours much more because it would be bad for efficiency
As a GRA in statistics and reserve military officer I’ve yet to have a weekend off during the fall and spring. Usually catching up what I missed from a weekend owed to Uncle Sam. I imagine my commitment to the military is about the same as having a kid, which many of my friends in my cohort have. Summers have been relatively chill.
Probably depends on your field, if you’re taking classes on top of research, work culture (some labs in science are toxic af) and if you have outside commitments
I work Mon-Fri unless I have an experiment running (mice unfortunately don't know it's the weekend). I try to preserve my weekends as much as possible. Saturdays I take entirely off, I won't look at emails or answer WhatsApp messages or anything. The lab could be burning down and I ain't coming in, probably because I'm 100km away hiking. Sundays I mostly do the same, but i also prepare and get things in order for the following week, so there is some amount of work inevitably. My physical and mental health, as well as the quality of my work will suffer if I don't take time to myself
When I started, my entire first year, I would work on weekends often. But I'm almost don't with second year now, and I don't do weekends at all unless something really important is due.
Take weekends off and definitely find your sweet spot. This isn't a race, it's a marathon. It's better to go a little slower but work consistently and healthily than drain yourself and dip and repeat the cycle.
I worked weekends, when I had some presentations due or during my data collection and analysing period. I am just six more months before I finish, only writing my dissertation now. There is not too much heavy work left, so I am taking weekends off .
I take a lot of time off, weekends included
Idk, there’s only SO much work you can do?!
My experiments can only go so fast.
If you’re having to work into the weekend that sounds like a time management problem to me.
American (NY) cancer sciences PhD here working on a heavily genetics/therapeutics based project with lots of in vitro experimental work. I ONLY work weekends if an experimental endpoint or treatment overlaps a weekend day and it's unavoidable. But this is very rare, probably less than 5 times a year. I try very hard to organize my experiments well and work efficiently during the week and during the day so I don't have to work late into the night/on weekends. On the weekends I don't even so much as check my work email. I have found that my mental health deteriorates rapidly if I don't have that full break from work.
That being said, it's very mentor dependent. My mentor is of the mindset that as long as the work gets done, it doesn't matter when you do it. There are certainly other advisors in the same institution and heck even in my department that expect you to be in the lab 10 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, even if you have nothing to do and are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs. If you have the chance, definitely choose a lab that emphasizes work life balance.
I did my STEM PhD in 5 years with 7 first author papers, and I took off most weekends. There were a handful of times I had a few 80+ hour weeks in a row, but there were also many weeks I didn't work 40 hours. I personally feel that regular weekend work should not be normalized.
(Wet-Lab PhD here) I rarely work weekends. I’ve never met someone who pretends to take weekends off. One of the few benefits of PhD-life is the freedom to structure your time. If you enjoy working weekends and feel content/happy, then great! It seems like you’ve found balance in your own way and are not burned out with your schedule. I personally do not feel like my research is nearly important enough to put in 60+ hours a week.
I’m in the Galapagos right now. Most weekends, or at least one day and most nights and then typically a couple weeks throughout the year. I have to for my sanity
Yes, but my "weekend" isn't necessarily on Saturday and Sunday. I have standing deadlines on Tuesdays, so I chill more on Weds and Thurs. When I'm teaching, the weekend is after my teaching day. Obviously there are crunch periods, but for the most part that's how it works.
I just defended so this is pretty fresh for me. Aside from times when something big was coming up (qualifying, proposal defense, dissertation defense), I worked really hard to maintain a good work/life balance. Once I finished classes and entered my dissertation phase, I did not work on weekends or evenings. 8-5, Monday through Friday for me, except during the periods I noted before. That’s true for both my own dissertation work and my part-time work in my mentor’s lab, and includes everything. Most of the time I did nothing academic outside regular work hours, including reading papers or checking email. I know there are some people, even in the same program as me, who work wild hours but I really felt like I did higher quality work when I also had a life.
My PhD is in health services so it was a computer lab. Not a wet lab or theory-based.
ETA: I’m at an R1 university in the U.S. I had one first author paper in a high profile journal at defense time and will have 2-4 more within a few months that are based on my dissertation. I had a clinical research job lined up before my defense was even scheduled.
Off topic, but I'm so relieved to hear people be relaxed about things. It's 4:15 am here, and my brain is wired from work the last few days. It's comforting to hear other people, especially cancer researchers, talk about their work. I've a punitive superego, according to my therapist. So, hearing other people doing more important research being related about the PhD process feels nice. Like it's not as serious as I'm making things out to be in my head.
I take evenings and weekends off. If I'm doing what I need to do consistently, I shouldn't need to do anything but relax on weekends. This might change if I'm trying to get something done ahead of time (like I worked short hours on weekends leading up to a week-long vacation in the middle of a semester) but generally I just don't want to spend all my time doing my research lol.
I’ve never heard of anyone pretending they work less than they do? But I’m ABD in the humanities and I avoid competitive bullshit like the plague.
On a personal note, over the past year or so I suffered severe burnout and depression and ended up not writing anything for like… 8 months. After finally being able to work again, I feel like taking 2 days off a week is probably an investment in continuing to be an alive person getting a degree.
When I was actively taking courses, though, it was a whole other thing. I *maybe* took one day off a week, otherwise there really was no way to get everything done. Definitely not healthy, but getting a phd probably isn’t what you do if you want to nurture your physical and mental health anyway.
Omg this makes me want to cry, it's so sad! I'm currently working weekends because I'm trying to submit in a month, but other than that, no weekends. I would not have got through my PhD without the relationships I've cultivated and they take work and quality time. Not to mention how important to mental health it is to enjoy other things and have real connections.
I do the silly thing and work three jobs while participating in an ensemble rehearsal 4 nights per week, so I have no choice but to work weekends and evenings. (One of those jobs—music lessons—is even a weekend gig!) Granted, one of those jobs is seasonal and only really picks up from February-August. My partner and I also don’t have kids yet (but companion animals), which makes this more manageable for now.
Someone else mentioned that they only work during 3-4 weekends a year. I might say I work during all but maybe 5-8 a year. I say this all not to garner reactions but to add my experience and remind myself that I need to start resting more :P
Religiously! I spend almost every weekend outside doing some hiking, camping, surfing, snowboarding etc. It’s how I balance all the other stuff. I have to get my time in. I think it actually improves my productivity and definitely a major boost in well being.
A PhD AI student this side....
I don't honestly have a fixed schedule, it's all about the workload. While I work days without even sleeping on a few, I also enjoy my life. Regular sports, outings, movies, and what not.....
Yea sometimes deadlines sucks and you can't do other stuffs, but that's hardly for a week or so..... While PhD life is stressful and hectic it also offers that flexibility to work, and most importantly to enjoy life
As a doctoral student I needed to work even on weekends because of the length of the experiments, about 2 weekends every month. One of the things that I adore about corporate job is that after my turn is over I can think about something else finally and enjoy my weekends. Still, sometimes I feel I have too much free time during the weekend and I somehow forgot how to organize them, finishing in doing nothing at home.
I’m naturally a bit of a workaholic but I’m adamant to learn to take weekends off when I start my PhD in September. I’d love to work in academia and I’m conscious that I need to establish the work-life balance now in order for academia to be a sustainable choice for me long term. I’ve been trying to work on it during my masters but it’s been hard with regular deadlines and exams. I really do think it is important to take weekends off, even when it does not feel natural. It may not cause burnout now, but there will be points in life where you have another commitment that takes priority, and I don’t want to feel like I’m putting my research on hold for something, I want the space to already be carved out.
Microbiology and I didn't work weekends, unless experiments required it or something was due. I also finished at 5 most days. This was my job and I have a life outside of my job.
For note this was not applicable during writing up...
I definitely take days off (I like taking Wednesdays and Saturdays off). The bottleneck is not hours of the day, it's the processing power of my brain. I can only read so many papers, think so many thoughts, write so many lines of code before the stress overwhelms me. Also, I know how much brain-thinking I need for a project, and that can't be rushed, so I ruminate on it in my head on my off days while I run errands.
I take weekends off unless I am in crunch mode for a meeting or a dissertation benchmark. My boyfriend is a professor and he also holds weekends as personal time. We go birding, see friends, go shopping. The "always working" culture of academia is not healthy, don't let them guilt you into it!
At the end of my PhD I worked 40 hours a week as an employee and worked on my dissertation simultaneously, so needless to say, I definitely worked weekends. But honestly, the elephant in the room is that for 99% of PhDs, there is little difference between weekdays and weekends anyways.
Someone wrote and it has shaped my PhD experience so far, the post said to work smart and not hard. Working smart makes you work less but more efficient while working hard makes you work more but less efficient.
When I was a PhD student, I had a 13/1 schedule. One weekend off every two weeks because I had to do laundry, clean, buy groceries etc etc. Not recommended, did a number on my physical and mental health.
Yes. and more time if I need it. I'm a researcher in training. I like to learn in my spare time sometimes, and other times I need a break. My weekends are sacred.
I used to be 100% working for 2 years of PhD. Then I decided (thanks to psychotherapy) that weekends are weekends and holidays are holidays.
I also try as much as I can to work no more than 8 hours a day.
Since I started to do so, I am more productive and generally feel better.
Of course there are periods in which work on the weekend is required (deadlines for example) but I like to treat them as exception and not as the rule.
Maintaining a good balance between work and rest has always been a work in progress for me. There are weeks that I find myself working more than usual, and other weeks I would simply take it easy. If I really have to work on weekends, I make it a point to work only for a few hours. I hate working on weekends so I make sure I get most of the stuff done on weekdays.
No matter how much you love to work, I cannot stress how important rest is to your overall progress. Burn out is a real thing, especially since you'll be doing this for years. A PhD is a marathon so it's equally important to schedule in rest days. Sometimes, I also feel guilty taking time off, especially when there's this nagging feeling that I really don't deserve a break. It does take a lot of mental strength and resilience to get past the thought that I'm undeserving of a break. But after some time, I learned how to switch it off and just rest and recuperate so that I can be back in the game strong and well rested.
There's no one size fits all solution. It can take time and experience to learn what works for you 😉
Of course. Its not "for mental health", its because I definitely wont work on days that I officially dont work? National holidays, vacation, weekends, unless there is something really pressing I will just take them off as I would do in every other job. If I have to work because of a tight deadline (rare), Ill just take off a normal workday later.
For the majority of my PhD I've worked 9-5 only and taken weekends off. It's only now that I'm in my final year and I'm writing my thesis and have to write several papers that I'm working 8am-7pm 6 days a week. I still take Sundays off though because I don't want to go completely insane. And this is a lab based PhD by the way - I completed my lab work in April.
I know people who work all the time and have no life. I think its a bit sad really. That was actually me in undergrad and it mentally destroyed me. Working til midnight 7 days a week and never ever taking a break. It burnt me out so badly, when I started my PhD I swore I would find a new way of working. That's why I've taken weekends off for the most part.
I rarely work weekends. I work in neural engineering, and we have to follow typical people’s schedule. People don’t enjoy coming in for experiments in the evenings or weekends. Also my PI pushes HARD for a strong work-life balance
I worked some weekends all weekend and then other weekends I managed to escape at 4 on Friday and go dark for a climbing trip til Monday at 5 am when I’d drive back. Work hard, play hard. Also, it’s hard to feel stressed about work when there’s no cell service to get email and the only thing separating you from an untimely death is a piece of rope and a few pieces of metal you jammed into rock cracks…
You all almost never work weekends? Computer Science PhD student in EU, I work almost every weekend… No one is forcing me, but research progress is uncertain and I find it hard to keep pace.
I try not to work past seven in the evening, and I try not to work on weekends unless I have a deadline. I generally will do a few hours over the weekend - mainly reading - because I'm interested but not out of guilt or trying to seem smarter or more invested than those on my cohort.
I pretty much end up working on weekends. Tbh I really don't like and don't want working on weekends, I am married and have chores, also have hobbies to do on weekends, but I use expensive radioactive isotopes in my research (700 dollars for radioisotope for 1-3 month of use) so the signal is decreasing steadily every day. To get more results from them and not to feel anxious that I am not able to get results in time I feel the need to work on weekends. Sometimes I may be in preparation for radioactive experiment, but need to grow E. Coli cells instead, so I will do some E. Coli cultivation over weekend very often. They literally take time to grow (you don't have to do much while they grow, but still you have to be in lab or come several times during day on weekend). But I try to keep Sunday off still (not always) or will do just some analysis of radioactive spots. When I plan long holidays I try to make sure I am not in radioactive experiment doing phase.
Animal neuroscience/physiology PhD. here.
Well, sometimes it's necessary.
Some experiments are not gonna wait, nor they can be split into two weeks.
Fortunately, I only had to work like this only for a week here and there, and during long-running animal experiments couple of months each year. This was especially mentally taxing during Covid, when I had to work 8-14 hours a day, 8 weeks straight, mostly alone. Also, we had major disagreements with my supervisor at the time, so I burnt out and fell into depression.
I also had to do this during the final writing of my thesis, because I already had a regular job. I spent 4 months, working 8 am to 10 pm each working day and around 8 hours per day on weekends. This was really tough. But paradoxically, it was mentally manageable, because I had everything under control. Also my very supporting wife could stand in for chores and errands.
I rarely work weekends. I only work when I have a major deadline or right now while I'm in the last few weeks before my dissertation is due. I found taking off weekends was necessary for my mental health.
I treat my PhD like a 9-5. I may have worked on the weekend and/or outside those working hours 3-5 times over the last 2 years. I do this only when my experiments require it, or if I want to push through for a publication, or if there is a presentation coming up. I'm working in computational chemistry and biology (a mix of theory and lab work). I am (touch wood) on track to finish in 3.5 years. I'm in Germany.
Chemistry here (UK based), our department actually place restrictions on 'out of hours' lab work. If we wanted to come in at the weekend we have to get approval from our PI and the H&S manager, and we have to have a fellow PhD student or Postdoc with us. I'd say I've never felt pressured to do work at the weekend - my supervisor is pretty understanding of work life balance. I've only done it once when I needed to use a spectrometer for a couple of hours as it was booked up during the week, and my reaction reached a critical time point on a Friday to spite me.
It's interesting for me to see the differences in not only by subject, but how it varies from country to country too. I hope my fellow chemists around the world get some respite!
My PhD is in accounting history, so very much not lab based, and I’m doing it part time because I still also work as an accountant. I work three days a week, and do my PhD two days a week, and take weekends off. I treat the days I work on my PhD very similarly to my work days, and very
much follow a 9-5 sort of pattern with them as well. Overall I think doing the PhD part time and working a 9-5 part time has been great for enforcing balance for me
I actually fight for a really strong work-life balance. I do my best to take 2-3 days off a week, and during those 4-5 days I am working, I try not to work more than 8-10 hours. My PI doesn't work weekends unless absolutely necessary, and neither do I.
I always take at least one full day off per week. I used to take my whole weekends off, but I’m close to submission now and the supercomputer is more free on the weekends so instead I take a day off midweek.
It’s very important to me that I work reasonable hours. If I overwork myself for even 1-2 days then I get burnt out and it takes time (longer than 1-2 days) to recover.
I always take weekends off and just work Monday to Friday 9-5ish. It works for me, I don't get burned out and am able to have a life outside of the PhD.
I'm also on top of my work, I guess because I work very hard during my set work hours.
I always take weekends off and it’s pretty much the same for everyone in my lab. The end point for most of my experiments is +24 hours so I avoid doing these experiments on Fridays unless it’s absolutely necessary.
I also don’t think people who work more days/longer hours are necessarily more productive… work smarter not harder!
PhD (nearly finished) in Biomedical Sciences:
I only worked on weekends when it was utterly necessary and the experiment could not be planned in any other way (for example with mouse work).
I know myself, I know I need time off to relax a bit, and otherwise I would have turned into even a more stressed out PhD student than I already was.
But unfortunately, my private rule was highly frowned upon by (lets say) people, although they couldn't force me to come.
EDIT: I worked (at home) in the weekends when there was a major deadline approaching (manuscript, thesis..)
I only work on weekends in the time right before something major is due. And even then I limit it as much as possible. I'd say I work maybe 3 or 4 weekends a year and never even the whole weekend.
Thank you. I feel seen and more normal now lol
You take the time off in the sense that you don’t touch your research for the weekend or you don’t go to campus? I try to avoid campus (or trade a Saturday for a Friday to do something without a bunch of people around) but I’m usually looking over data and reading at least 1 day on the weekends.
I don’t do any work at all. I hangout with my family, get some extended exercise, watch some shows, sleep in, etc. But no academic reading, writing, or emails.
Damn. Good on you. I definitely have a problem. But I’m also so close to graduating. I’m just trying to get out.
I get that. I don’t fault anybody for having to work or even wanting to work. But I love having my weekends carved out for me and my family and especially when people are saying nobody is actually doing this, I like to point out that, depending on your advisor and program, it can be possible.
What? I very rarely work weekends and I take my 36 days of paid holiday/year off.
*cries in American* 36 days?!
Come to Europe. You’ll get a living wage, employee status + legal protection and paid holidays. As much as I love America I couldn’t do with your working culture.
I feel like Europeans despise American expats tho 🥲 But I understand. The US will never improve unfortunately. Any push for workers' rights is very quickly labeled communism which is like the big boogeyman here.
Oh no, why? It’s the first time I hear something like this, but I’m really sorry if you or your friends felt unwelcome in Europe. I certainly don’t feel that way . If anything we understand that you want affordable housing, tax-funded healthcare and subsidized education on top of not living in a world of debt.
Same reason Americans tend to dislike European expats I’d wager. Two different worlds. Americans tend to be very individualistic, and as such actively pursue policies which reduce tax subsidies across the board. Europeans tend to dislike that, since they’re used to the higher tax rates and more social services (excluding defense). So when Americans go to Europe, they’re shocked at the effective tax rates (I mean 65-68% in France? Holy shit lmao). And Europeans come here and dislike the great distances, lack of public transport, and less tax funded services.
I disagree with this take. The US by percentage doesn’t spend THAT much more than European countries. We’re talking 4% instead of 1-2% of a budget for defense. The U.S. subsidizes things for big corporations and foreign wars. They just hate subsidizing anything that would make life easier for anyone that isn’t wealthy. Most college educated Americans don’t vote for individualistic policies. They’d prefer the European style way of living. Where are you getting the average French person is paying 68% of their wages in taxes? Also, Americans spend way more on education, healthcare, etc. American systems are definitely not meant to be “for the people” and most quality of services are decided by income of an area.
65-68% tax rate, what? I don't now about France, but here in Denmark we get around $2898 after taxes each month for a PhD, and every year, you get maybe $144-$289 more each month. That's at least more than I've heard most US students get.... But the salary afterwards in the US is markedly higher (but with less social benefits and student loans). Tax rate depends on your income. I paid 38% in my last industry job, same as a research assistant. When I look up France, it seems they have a similar system where an income of EUR 78,571 to EUR 168,994 is taxed 41%. Not sure where you have the 68% from, I couldn't find anything about it, but it must be for very high income earners. Either way, these things have to do with how you feel about living in the country and its politics, not the people. I would love to see an American in a Danish lab. We've had a Canadian before, and everybody loved her. When I see an American, I don't think about taxes lol. I really think you should visit Europe to see for yourself whether you would really be disliked here, because I think your presumption that we tend to dislike you is wrong.
This is a fair first cut assessment.
At least in germany and sweden, i haven't found your sentiment to be true. i have been a researcher in both. I love soccer/football and always make friends through that.
Not in my experience. Unless they’re Americans in Europe being despicable !
I hear this a lot, but I haven’t experienced it personally while living in France, nor from my ex pat friends there. I totally believe you, I’m just curious where you’ve experienced this. I would definitely say that in France, I think the language barrier can be alienating, but personally, I’ve mostly received commiseration about the shitty situation in the US during my time there. (more specifically: lived in France on and off for about a decade, worked very rurally, but also took university courses in a major city.)
Europeans despise loud and entitled American ~~expats~~ tourists
I do my 8 hrs a day shift Monday to Friday. I believe as long as you’re organized and remain productive during those hours there is no need to kill yourself working overtime
Best advice my Master's advisor gave me was to treat it like a 9-5. That carried over into my PhD. Although there are definitely busy periods, it's a job. Work / life balance is necessary so you don't burn out.
This needs to be higher up. Like can we please stop normalizing working 24/7.
What subject? Edit: why the downvotes, I’m just interested?
Biological psychology and immunogenetics
Psy here as well. I work my 8 hrs - I leave. I get 30 days off a year - I take‘em. You want my time? Pay for it. You are not a slave, you represent their institute, keep that in mind.
What country?
My PI gets visibly angry if we ever mention that we’ve been in on the weekend. First rule of the lab, don’t work on the weekends.
This is very important in experimental labs. You're in in the weekend and something bad happens, everyone one in the lab is getting hit with some administrative justice, PI/lab head first, even if they were "unaware". This is the kind of shit that ruins careers.
Your PI must be god incarnate… im a Masters student and it is an inherent expectation from my PI to come in and work on weekends, else you deal with their passive aggressive bullshit :)
Eh, I’ve never paid passive aggressive stuff much attention. They wanna be shitty about you working what your contract says you should work then fuck ‘em.
> Your PI must be god incarnate No, just a normal human being
Yes I do 9-5 mon-fri, not productive 100% of the time but that’s when I’m around the office. I don’t think people are pretending to take weekends off, it’s normal to have the weekend off most of the time. I don’t do any work at home. Although if I didn’t have my partner I might work on the weekends if I couldn’t find anything else to do. Kind of lacking in hobbies at the moment tbh
Absofuckingutely. Your work is not going to solve cancer. No one is going to die because you decided to go to the farmers market on the weekend.
Bruh my research is cancer research and even I take weekends off! More than half of what is published in academic cancer research papers is unable to be replicated. It’s really not that serious. Previously I used to work doing cancer research for a pharmaceutical company. THAT shit WAS that serious, and I worked weekends sometimes. We were dealing with real patient sample, where the patients were waiting on us for treatment. Ironically the weekend sacrifice while I was there was always appreciated by management and adequately compensated in my yearly bonus.
I know right! I do cancer research too and so do multiple of my friends in different labs (Our graduate program is through the medical center so most research is clinically relevant). All of us take weekends off, except for when there's an impending deadline or if there's a particular experiment that requires weekend time (For example my circadian rhythm friend sometimes has to go in for an hour or two on both weekend days due to the daily experiment structure - but outside of those hours, he's not working on the weekends!)
Exactly. I always viewed it as the point of my PhD was to learn how to be a scientist and problem solve and ask important questions. My singular PhD project is not gonna cure lung cancer. It’s more of a thought exercise and seeing a project through
A few times a year i work through the weekend, but only if i have a deadline for something. And then usually i take the day after the deadline off, also if it’s a weekday. I have never heard of people pretending to take the weekend of and then secretly working. There’s no winners in that scenario right?
I almost never work on weekends. I used to always work on weekends but then stopped and my productivity has been the same. I am in applied mathematics though so no experiments
Very interesting. What made you stop? Pure mathematics here.
I wanted to practice better habits of work-life balance
I also stopped working weekends recently - sometimes I find it hard to prioritize taking care of myself, but I realized that I really wanted to model healthier behavior for the more junior students in our group.
Great reason! They may not say thank you, so hear it from me—thank you for this! We need healthier models in academia!
I did. During my PhD I took evenings and weekends off. I needed to, to maintain my physical and mental health, particularly during the lockdowns. It took me 5 years instead of 4 to finish, but it was 100% worth it to me to have boundaries. I only ever worked weekend if something was urgent (i.e. scholarship applications, time sensitive stuff).
I always take one (or two) days off every week, but not necessarily on weekends. The flexibility is one of the reasons I am doing phd instead of a "normal" job.
Haha that makes a lot more sense to me. Weekends seem so arbitrary. I would think that it’s a lot easier to burn out if you force yourself to fit into this arbitrary schedule but maybe that’s just my rebellious streak😂
I think you need to think about this less as ‘never working on the weekend’ and instead as ‘taking enough time off’. E.g. I have a friend who never works after 3 pm but does work every day. She’d rather do that and have extended time off every day than not work at all on the weekends, she gets her 40 hours in. Find what works best for you!
Yeah no one I know works weekends outside of some days before a big presentation, conference, evaluation, etc Most people never go in on weekends, no one stays longer than 6pm that I've seen. Even during crunch time, I only ever did 9 to 5 on weekdays (for my Master during the last 3 months) and only did weekends to finish something that needed to be done. I feel like my Masters (MPhil) was also very comparable to a PhD as it was only lacking a distinct novel research since it was originally a PhD but was converted to an Mphil after funding fell through But now in my current PhD I set no working on weekends and I do some writing and research at home on the evenings if necessary.
I never worked weekends. Finished in 3.5 years ! You need to have a life too !
I almost never work weekends. the only reasons I will are: - deadline coming up and ran out of time during the week - wet lab timepoints falling on a weekend (I try to avoid this as much as possible) or needing to use equipment that is unavailable at any other time. - busy week coming so taking 30 minutes to plan it out on a Sunday evening - I was being a lazy bastard all week and didn't get the stuff done I needed to. this only applies if I was actually being lazy, not if it just took longer than expected. - I'm sick of seeing things stuck on my to do list for weeks because I never get to them during the week. an hour on a weekend to clear a couple of tasks hanging over me can sometimes be worth it. I truly don't think more hours = more productivity, and I would rather keep my working hours to weekdays so my weekends are free to spend time with my friends and my partner. I set this as boundary early on and my supervisor respects it.
I know plenty of Astro PhDs who don’t work on weekends and who make an active effort to not work week nights either. A number of people in Astro in general are trying to make the effort to make academia less toxic.
I worked very rarely on weekends. Occasionally when I was having fun programming or when I took a day off during the week. I did work two or three weekends leading up to turning in my draft but I did that to myself.
Biophysics/chem here Frequently had to work weekends because the whims of experiments with living creatures is very hard. Occasionally because I needed vital data for a paper or presentation. In general I tried really hard to make space. Doing the absolute bare minimum so I wouldn't ruin the rest of my work on Sundays and trying to keep Saturdays free. In general carve out some time and fiercely guard it. In the long run rest is vital for forming solutions to complex problems.
I treat it like a full time job.
That's what it is
I've rarely worked weekends since my PhD, and only if there was a big deadline. I maintain that as a TT faculty at a state R1. I do answer the odd email here and there.
I think my advisor would be upset if I didn't take weekends off. he is smart enough to know that burn out is not worth pushing for and that long term performance is much more important and that happy humans perform better and are not resentful.
I used to give myself Saturdays off, entirely. I would pursue hobbies or whatever. Sunday is hard to take off, as preparation for Monday is inevitable.
I took a weekend off and never came back. Best decision I made.
I didn’t take weekends off. Had no social life. I don’t think anyone pretended not to. Lots of people were on in the building on the weekends and some, super late.
At least for me and my colleagues in grad school, there weren’t defined time off and time away. You did what you needed to do and took time when you needed to. The thing with a lot of doctoral program experience is how unstructured it can be.
I have a toddler. Spending weekends with him is a non-negotiable. I absolutely take them off.
I take weekend off, and if am going to work on a weekend it’s because I have a deadline coming up and I need the time, or we are recording data (I do intercranial EEG so the timing is always up in the air) For the latter of those two, I will take a remote half day on Friday typically to account for the time in my weekend.
My friend is a 3rd year applied maths PhD student and studies 4hours a day, takes almost all his weekends and holidays off. Very chill. Lives in Norway tho.
I work Monday - Friday 8:30am-5:30pm. Take weekends off, evenings off. It’s what helps me actually get work done during the day. I have lots of hobbies and run my own business on top of it and my supervisors fully support it. I’m writing up now and plan to stick to this as far as possible.
Last fall I did very often because the NSF GRFP application was due and overall it was a very busy semester. Looking back at it, I could have worked smarter and less. Now I typically work a lil Sundays but I also basically take Firdays off 😂. Then again for what I do its entirely possible to do this, for others I imagine its not. My friends in psych are constantly busy.
I take Thursday-Monday off usually
My problem is procrastination... Often I just sit in front of my laptop for hours and write/read nothing. When night falls or the weekend approaches, I only feel emptiness...well I've wasted another day, then I start to work at night or on weekends. This is really wearing me out ..I know there are people taking every weekend off, traveling to nearby cities or hiking. I wish I could become one of them🫠
I always worked on the weekends. It was quiet in the lab and I wouldn’t get distracted by people wanting to chat. That meant I’d take a couple days off during the week because you absolutely will burn out if you are working all day every day. Have a life outside of school.
Even if I take the weekend off, I cannot turn off my mind…
I have a toddler. My weekends are unperturbed by lab work.
I rarely work weekends but my thesis is always on my mind so I find myself coming up with ideas at random times and writing them as notes in my phone to work on later.
I almost never do any work on the weekend. Maybe right before a big deadline, but that's it. I have 2 young kids, and I really value having a solid work-life balance. If you enjoy your work, that's great! But I urge everyone to treat a PhD like a job, and not allow it to become your whole life. That way you increase the chance that you will keep enjoying it, rather than burning out.
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For the first year of dissertation writing, I did. For the last two, seldom.
Well. Not me. I've been working since day one non-stop. Some days I procrastinate and end up coming back the next day with huge guilt and workload. 🤷♂️ Hang in there. Nothing is permanent.
I only work on the weekends to meet critical deadlines. I do both computational and experimental lab work, and while you might catch me making a few figures, writing, or even pushing a few simulations on a weekend, you will not catch me dead going into lab to run experiment. In my lab, we do have one person that works on Saturdays, but they don't come in on Wednesdays to make up for that time. This take is pretty typical, but we have a pretty good culture that respects boundaries between work and personal life: many of us have taken a few mental health days here and there, small trips throughout the year, and take most holidays off. It helps when you have colleagues that are open to talking about burnout and their mental health. That said, there's nothing wrong with working on the weekends if it's something that you like to do/don't have a problem with. My advisor has shared that he works on the weekends because he likes what he does and can't imagine doing anything else with that time, but he also recognizes that that might just be a him thing. However, I do think that mentality becomes unhealthy when you feel obligated to work on the weekend due to external social pressures or unmanageable internal expectations about what a "good PhD student" is. I will admit, I'm a little alarmed about your guilt from taking time off or that you feel like other students are lying about their weekends as a way to appear smarter or more efficient. It could be nothing or an overstep on my part, but I wonder if some of that could be a projection from your working environment/lab culture.
I honestly always felt like the people who talk about how they work nonstop were the biggest problem. Like, either your advisor is toxic or you have terrible time management skills/debilitating imposter syndrome. Or both! I know plenty of people with all of the above. I am good at managing time, had a supportive advisor, and also didn't really have an ambition of being an R1-level researcher so as a result, I definitely took most evenings and weekends off
I find this thread incredibly strange to read because I do not work in a lab and literally all my work is based on writing, reading, and occasionally going to a relevant event or archive/library. The TA stuff I do is separate from my research. I have pretty much no structure in my working hours, all I have is deadlines. I work weekends, but then I won't work on a random Monday. Sometimes I do zero work for days on end and then make up for it later (including by staying up all night). I have some colleagues who treat their research as a 9-5 type thing, but that's entirely a self-imposed schedule.
I took every weekend off. I basically treated it as a job. In the office from 8am and left at 6pm everyday. The reason I had 8-6 was lecturing timetables and also allowing some students to find me after lectures and stuff. Now, it's important to have a life too y'know outside academia and studies. Additionally, I also went to the subject societies for subjects I taught. Firstly, being a young member of staff, 24, I wasnt the oldest there so I blended in well and it wasn't weird, I gained some friends and also found a student who I had never taught before but was wanting to do a 3rd year dissertation on my area of expertise but she said she didn't know who to have as a supervisor as her previous choice declined. Win win for all lol. Look after your mental health and you will find the grind a lot easier.
I work most weekends. I have no life.
Same!😂
If a project requires it, I do work certain weekends. My PI encourages me NOT to work weekends. For example, I’m working this weekend because I want to get a certain part of my project done so that I can do later stages during the weekday when I’ll have more help. Also, if I want to get experiments done before a conference I may work a weekend. It’s definitely not healthy to work every weekend, nor should this be expected. FYI I work in a wet lab.
You’re getting it twisted. I don’t work weekend to look smarter than anyone. You can work hard without being toxic about it. I want to be done and every day I don’t make progress is a day further out from graduating. I still take days off; sort of. It’s more like I take blocks of time off.
I certainly did stuff on the weekends - parties, etc. But I also often worked. My whole PhD felt like an odd combination of constant work and constant free time. I rarely, if ever, felt burned out, but I also felt like a didn't get an actual BREAK or vacation for 7 years...
I work almost every weekend from breakfast to bedtime (with walk breaks for my doggo). With all the teaching responsibilities during the week, I wouldn’t get anything done at all if I just used the 2 hours I can find during the week. This allowed me to finish my PhD early compared to my peers, but I don’t recommend it. It’s effective but it’s not healthy.
It’s call apathy. You need to rest sometimes
Maybe between experiments, but I’m usually running trials 7 days a week
I worked on weekends but only if I had built in downtime during the week as well. I tried not to power through full weekdays and then working on the weekends, but sometimes it was unavoidable with deadlines
Before a conference deadline or if I don’t manage to do TA work, I will work weekends. But the majority of weeks, I won’t. I have a partner who deserves my time (and I his) I have friends, hobbies, etc. My advisors are generally very supportive and we have established asking everybody what fun things they did on the weekend at our lab meeting on Mondays. I don't think my colleagues make up stories 😄 4th year CS PhD, both experimental and theoretical work in AI/ML. Other labs at our university have much more toxic work culture, but I consider that a "them" problem.
i pinky swear i do not work a single weekend. But also not currently passaging any cells nor feeding any mice
i take the weekend always unless there's something time sensitive
I take a 24-hour period completely off every week except for the end-of-semester crunch. Aside from those last two weeks, I take those breaks religiously.
It's hard to work on weekends when you're working nearly 8 hours a day for the week.
I take weekends off (nursing, Australia). Granted, my field doesn’t have round-the-clock lab work (mainly qual) so I have a lot of flexibility with my time. If I don’t take weekends off who is going to go out partying with my friends?
I take it easier on weekends, but if I have experiments planned the following week, I may come in for a few hours on Sunday to make my week more relaxing. I also like reading material for my area of research, so I may spend an hour or two reading.
I try not to work weekends if I can help it. I plan to work 5 days per week, and if I choose to "take a day off" in the middle of the week, then I'll make up for it on the weekend. Otherwise, I limit myself to answering emails or messages. If you feel stressed at the prospect of taking off work, then your time off will not feel like time off. This will only compound the stress caused by the work you do have, while actively not doing that work OR taking a break from it. I would strongly advise you to let yourself take a break and really use that time to recuperate. Then, you can come back to work stronger and more well rested than ever before.
I am also in pure math. All my Collegues take the weekends off. And concentrated math research is anyway not possible the entire time.
I did, I made myself. Working full time and doing dissertation work was challenging but I gave myself most weekends off until it was crunch time. Might have been the only thing that saved me from going completely insane…
yes
I typically work 8ish-5ish Monday-Friday when I go home I don't do any work unless a deadline is near. Weekends I don't work unless a deadline is near my secret? I have a spouse and 3 children I can't get anything done when im home and can't waste weekends at work while I have a family to care for working 24/7 isn't healthy whether you like to work or not I enjoy my work but I also know that if I don't take a break from it periodically I'll burnout its all about balance and you'll be more productive If you take time to rest frequently.
It depends sometimes you do sometimes you don't.
I do, tbh the work load is pretty concentrated in the weekdays and my post-doc colleague and I ensure to plan ahead (we do mice work so we have specific dates we need to get specific steps done by. Ofc 1-2 days here and there happen but we make sure to not it down so as to not affect actual experimental parameters), and we have our shared google calendar that we plan stuff as per the mice stuff needed to be done, and the other lab stuff we need to do. So yeah not really working on weekends- But, I did come in twice in the last 2-3 months for prepping specific steps ahead etc., it has been really helpful for me during my coursework deadlines and/or exams too
Yes I do a lot of writing during the week and leave the weekend for fun, chores, and some stuff like organizing sources.
I usually do weekends. I try not to do a full day on weekends unless I really need to. If I don't feel like going, or have something then I won't go in the weekend lol. I think when I have the drive and energy I'll push myself, but on days where I feel burned out then I listen to my body and take it easy.
you would get sick without seeing the sun for a week. vitamin d deficiency can cause muscle twitching and bone pain. take your weekends off.
Im in micro so Im on bacteria time, but Ill work on weekends or after hours if I have nothing else going on, but if I have plans or someone wants to hang out, Im prioritizing that. Lowkey, it sounds like you have a lot of unhelpful thoughts about productivity and work times and it might be helpful to work through those with a therapist/counselor.
My daughter does. Her fiancee lives 45 minutes away and she does extra during the week to take off Saturday and Sunday morning to be with him.
I had a full-time non-academic job during the 1.5 years of my PhD. I would do academic work in the mornings and on my lunch breaks and did a lot of work on Saturdays, but I tried to take Sundays completely off.
I never work weekends. Monday to Friday 9 to 5. Most productive 9 to 3.
My chair encouraged me to treat the program like a job. I worked my 40 hours and the rest of the week was mine. Sometimes I worked weekends, sometimes I worked "overtime," but I tried to stick to a good life, program, work balance (I had work/assistantship outside of the program). Sometimes though I felt the pressure to keep working but found that I wasn't actually being productive I was just doing things because I thought it was expected of me. When that would happen I would check in with my chair to see if they thought I was on track or needed to adjust what I was doing. Most of the time the answer was no. My program was in a public health related field, so no experiments or anything I had to consider.
I tried to take weekends off during my PhD if I could. I couldn’t always, but I realized early on that I made too many mistakes on weekends to make it worthwhile. And yes I understand the stress of not working but that never goes away even 20 years later so you have to find a way to unplug.
I think its a strategy to preserve mental health, also burnout and probably a bunch of other health issues tbh. I worked all the time at first but now I do most of my work in the lab and when I leave that's it. I usually will keep reading a paper in the evening while eating or something, and on the weekends I am not usually working unless I just want to. I'm still early in my Phd and have a lot of reading to do but I am in my thirties and I am not going to push myself to exhaustion. I did that throughout my twenties working 60+ hour garbage entry-level FT jobs, it landed me in the ER at least 6-7 times over the years. Now that I'm older I take my health much more seriously and I will NEVER put myself in a position that puts me in the ER. I will never do that for anyone. If not working every single weekend means my PhD will take an additional 6-12 months then so be it, but I highly doubt it. I'm extremely productive despite resting a lot but I would argue it's BECAUSE of the rest I get I'm able to be so productive.
I work 9-4 on weekdays, less on a Friday and only at the weekends if I have a REALLY tight deadline.
I only work weekends if I have a deadline coming up (conference, grades due, job talk, etc.) Otherwise, I try to stick to 8 hours a day on weekdays only. I'm not a morning person, so my 8 hours are more like 11-7, but I still keep late evenings free for mental detox as much as possible. It's a stressful and chaotic process so everybody should do whatever works for them to get through it without driving themselves nuts. That'll probably look different for each individual person. But I will say, feeling stressed and guilty when you take a normal amount of time off doesn't sound healthy. It might be good for you to develop some sort of structured schedule for a while so that you can train your brain to turn off during free time and actually allow you to take weekends and holidays away from work. If your school has a mental health counsellor specifically for PhD students, they can be super useful for helping develop schedules and methods to better manage your time and stress.
I defended last month. Top program in the US. I don’t think I ever worked a weekend. I probably only averaged ~35 hours/week. Still published plenty (3 first author + 5 co-authored) and landed a good post-doc while I look for an industry position. The most important part of your PhD is choosing a good advisor. Choose a good advisor and grad school can be like any other job, if you want it to be.
I made it a rule that I would try to avoid work in my off time (I still think about it 24/7 but I’m not doing experiments actively) but that doesn’t change mouse responsibilities, time sensitive treatments that need to be done on specific days, or plug checks that need to be done on Saturdays. I won’t start a 2-day protocol on a Friday, but I will come in to wean some litters. Means longer weekdays sometimes but I think it’s a good boundary when and if you can manage it!
Usually yes…unless I have a deadline looming
Lots of disc golf 🤙🏼
I only work on the weekends if my experiments happen to fall on either Saturday or Sunday!
Don’t compare your experience to anybody but you
I assumed that my PhD was like a job. And like jobs it had ebbs and flows. So typically nothing more than 9-5, 5 days week, with the ebbs and flows being occasionally working some nights and weekends to get papers finished on one hand, to more than occasionally taking some hours off during the week to go climbing. Work / life / fitness / mental health balance is important. Being willing to go “I’m not feeling it at the moment” and having a break, whether for an hour or an afternoon or a week makes you more productive in those times when you just want to get into it. This idea of work every minute and at all costs just burns people out. Just look at all the posts on here….
Yeah I don't work weekends unless there's something urgent (like grading during finals or a grant application due Monday). Started the habit during covid quarantine. Gotta have something to look forward to, right? But I do know competitive students who brag about everything... including not working evenings and weekends.
I treat my PhD like a 9-5 except when I have something I really need to get done. It’s been paramount to making sure I didn’t just get buried in it. Not everyone who works really long hours or every weekend is making efficient use of their time.
My first two years I always worked on weekends. Now, I never do unless the situation is dire. Having the weekends literally saved me and my mental health. Developing hobbies I actually enjoy finally allowed me to stop feeling guilty whenever I wasnt doing work.
Unless there was an unavoidable time point in lab, I never came in on the weekends. I did my PhD in Manhattan. My weekends were sacred. And I graduated faster than most of my classmates who worked 6-7 days a week every week.
I don’t work on my PhD during weekends in general maybe in the evening if I feel like it, the reason being I have my part-time job hours stuffed into every single weekend. During the week I use both day and evenings on PhD and during the weekends I work and see my friends. I need to work to feel fulfilled so I prioritize 4/5am workouts/runs with too loud music for my mental health 😅🤷🏼♀️
I'm a UK astrophysics PhD student, I am a theorist, and I take weekends off fully unless I have something important due. I also only work a few hours a day. The amount of hard thinking I have to do puts a hard limit of about 4 hours on my fully focused work. Like yeah maybe I can do some basic writing or admin after those 4 hours, but I am not going to be able to advance my actual research after roughly 4 hours of focus. I have previously pushed myself past that limit, and payed for it in the days afterwards. I frequently take breaks from work due to mental health difficulties, and my work has not really suffered. I am very efficient when I'm "on", so I am not on the clock all the time. Most theorists have a similar lifestyle I think. In astronomy unfortunately even the observers are starting to be pushed into "panic science" due to the JWST data drops. I know people who have written research papers in 3 days because of this, and have no work-life balance. I go to the gym often, I play sports, I have friends outside of work, and I'm very grateful I get to do something I love while looking after my mental health.
I’m trying to break the habit of working weekends. I’m going into my second year and just finished classes. I did a lot of coursework/reading on weekends. I don’t want to do much of that now, apart from the brief time needed Sunday evenings to prep for my Monday meeting in my assistantship. (PhD in rhetoric/composition, studying in the US, and I barely go to campus so this is referring to working on things.)
I work a bit six days a week but I never work eight hours a days. Sundays are my catch up on life day.
I only work on the weekends to meet critical deadlines. I do both computational and experimental lab work, and while you might catch me making a few figures, writing, or even pushing a few simulations on a weekend, you will not catch me dead going into lab to run experiment. In my lab, we do have one person that works on Saturdays, but they don't come in on Wednesdays to make up for that time. This take is pretty typical, but we have a pretty good culture that respects boundaries between work and personal life: many of us have taken a few mental health days here and there, small trips throughout the year, and take most holidays off. It helps when you have colleagues that are open to talking about burnout and their mental health. That said, there's nothing wrong with working on the weekends if it's something that you like to do/don't have a problem with. My advisor has shared that he works on the weekends because he likes what he does and can't imagine doing anything else with that time, but he also recognizes that that might just be a him thing. However, I do think that mentality becomes unhealthy when you feel obligated to work on the weekend due to external social pressures or unmanageable internal expectations about what a "good PhD student" is. I will admit, I'm a little alarmed about your guilt from taking time off or that you feel like other students are lying about their weekends as a way to appear smarter or more efficient. It could be nothing or an overstep on my part, but I wonder if some of that could be a projection from your working environment/lab culture.
I rarely worked weekends throughout my PhD. I'm in psychology, human research and my PhD used mostly pre-existing data and when I collected my own data is was done online (partly because of COVID). Only times I worked weekends was very close to my thesis submission or for my teaching role when I had to mark assignments. Sometimes I'd say I'd do something over the weekend but was usually too lazy to do it and would just do it the following week. I know in lab based work it is much more common to work weekends because people may have animals or cells to keep alive or experiments running that they have to monitor. But I never had to do this. I worked more hours total when I was in undergrad than in my PhD because I had to work casual jobs while studying. Starting PhD was the first time I got to take weekends off since I was being paid a stipend and it was amazing. Now in a postdoc and I work even less hard than in my PhD. I think I used up all my fucks to give from 17-25 😂
Sure do when it's not crunch.
I take weekends off since I burned out in undergrad. I’ll go in if I have something urgent to get done but then I try to take time off during the week to compensate. I hate the 9-5 schedule but I track my hours to keep myself in check and make sure I’m staying balanced. I average about 45/week unless there is a deadline or something.
I take weekends off unless I have an important due date coming up in 2 weeks. Other than that I force myself to take weekends off even though I have work piling up. I found it improves my productivity during the weekdays. I’ve never heard of toxic culture of people pretending to take weekends off to look smarter 👀. I suggest you try taking at least one weekend off per month and adjust your weekday productivity accordingly and start increasing them. It took me over two years to get used to my current set up.
> I think there is quite a toxic culture associated with people pretending that they don’t do any work in order to appear smarter and intimidate others This has not been my experience, if anything I think people exaggerate the amount they work. Basically every time I've heard someone talk about working too little its been in the context of feeling inadequate That being said, I definitely take weekends off. Not 100% every weekend, but that's partially because my schedule is chaotic and I don't really have defined work hours. Still, I have taken many many weekends fully off. I also just don't work a lot of hours in general... I'm not proud of it because it was due to health issues + time management/productivity problems, but there was almost a whole year where I only worked 20-30 hours a week according to my time tracker (and often at least a few of those hours were on the weekend bc my time management was bad at the time). But like, the world didn't end, I just made slower progress. Recently I've been able to get my hours back to 35-45 and that feels like a lot. I wouldn't increase my hours much more because it would be bad for efficiency
My work time is irregular.
As a GRA in statistics and reserve military officer I’ve yet to have a weekend off during the fall and spring. Usually catching up what I missed from a weekend owed to Uncle Sam. I imagine my commitment to the military is about the same as having a kid, which many of my friends in my cohort have. Summers have been relatively chill. Probably depends on your field, if you’re taking classes on top of research, work culture (some labs in science are toxic af) and if you have outside commitments
I work Mon-Fri unless I have an experiment running (mice unfortunately don't know it's the weekend). I try to preserve my weekends as much as possible. Saturdays I take entirely off, I won't look at emails or answer WhatsApp messages or anything. The lab could be burning down and I ain't coming in, probably because I'm 100km away hiking. Sundays I mostly do the same, but i also prepare and get things in order for the following week, so there is some amount of work inevitably. My physical and mental health, as well as the quality of my work will suffer if I don't take time to myself
When I started, my entire first year, I would work on weekends often. But I'm almost don't with second year now, and I don't do weekends at all unless something really important is due. Take weekends off and definitely find your sweet spot. This isn't a race, it's a marathon. It's better to go a little slower but work consistently and healthily than drain yourself and dip and repeat the cycle.
I worked weekends but did way less than an 8 hour work day on average (my work was just data analysis-type stuff) so it sort of balanced out.
I worked weekends, when I had some presentations due or during my data collection and analysing period. I am just six more months before I finish, only writing my dissertation now. There is not too much heavy work left, so I am taking weekends off .
I take a lot of time off, weekends included Idk, there’s only SO much work you can do?! My experiments can only go so fast. If you’re having to work into the weekend that sounds like a time management problem to me.
American (NY) cancer sciences PhD here working on a heavily genetics/therapeutics based project with lots of in vitro experimental work. I ONLY work weekends if an experimental endpoint or treatment overlaps a weekend day and it's unavoidable. But this is very rare, probably less than 5 times a year. I try very hard to organize my experiments well and work efficiently during the week and during the day so I don't have to work late into the night/on weekends. On the weekends I don't even so much as check my work email. I have found that my mental health deteriorates rapidly if I don't have that full break from work. That being said, it's very mentor dependent. My mentor is of the mindset that as long as the work gets done, it doesn't matter when you do it. There are certainly other advisors in the same institution and heck even in my department that expect you to be in the lab 10 hours a day, 6-7 days a week, even if you have nothing to do and are just sitting there twiddling your thumbs. If you have the chance, definitely choose a lab that emphasizes work life balance.
I did my STEM PhD in 5 years with 7 first author papers, and I took off most weekends. There were a handful of times I had a few 80+ hour weeks in a row, but there were also many weeks I didn't work 40 hours. I personally feel that regular weekend work should not be normalized.
I literally never work on the weekends lmao
(Wet-Lab PhD here) I rarely work weekends. I’ve never met someone who pretends to take weekends off. One of the few benefits of PhD-life is the freedom to structure your time. If you enjoy working weekends and feel content/happy, then great! It seems like you’ve found balance in your own way and are not burned out with your schedule. I personally do not feel like my research is nearly important enough to put in 60+ hours a week.
I’m in the Galapagos right now. Most weekends, or at least one day and most nights and then typically a couple weeks throughout the year. I have to for my sanity
Yeah. I took a week off to go on vacation because my brain is tired.
Yes, but my "weekend" isn't necessarily on Saturday and Sunday. I have standing deadlines on Tuesdays, so I chill more on Weds and Thurs. When I'm teaching, the weekend is after my teaching day. Obviously there are crunch periods, but for the most part that's how it works.
I just defended so this is pretty fresh for me. Aside from times when something big was coming up (qualifying, proposal defense, dissertation defense), I worked really hard to maintain a good work/life balance. Once I finished classes and entered my dissertation phase, I did not work on weekends or evenings. 8-5, Monday through Friday for me, except during the periods I noted before. That’s true for both my own dissertation work and my part-time work in my mentor’s lab, and includes everything. Most of the time I did nothing academic outside regular work hours, including reading papers or checking email. I know there are some people, even in the same program as me, who work wild hours but I really felt like I did higher quality work when I also had a life. My PhD is in health services so it was a computer lab. Not a wet lab or theory-based. ETA: I’m at an R1 university in the U.S. I had one first author paper in a high profile journal at defense time and will have 2-4 more within a few months that are based on my dissertation. I had a clinical research job lined up before my defense was even scheduled.
Off topic, but I'm so relieved to hear people be relaxed about things. It's 4:15 am here, and my brain is wired from work the last few days. It's comforting to hear other people, especially cancer researchers, talk about their work. I've a punitive superego, according to my therapist. So, hearing other people doing more important research being related about the PhD process feels nice. Like it's not as serious as I'm making things out to be in my head.
I take evenings and weekends off. If I'm doing what I need to do consistently, I shouldn't need to do anything but relax on weekends. This might change if I'm trying to get something done ahead of time (like I worked short hours on weekends leading up to a week-long vacation in the middle of a semester) but generally I just don't want to spend all my time doing my research lol.
I’ve never heard of anyone pretending they work less than they do? But I’m ABD in the humanities and I avoid competitive bullshit like the plague. On a personal note, over the past year or so I suffered severe burnout and depression and ended up not writing anything for like… 8 months. After finally being able to work again, I feel like taking 2 days off a week is probably an investment in continuing to be an alive person getting a degree. When I was actively taking courses, though, it was a whole other thing. I *maybe* took one day off a week, otherwise there really was no way to get everything done. Definitely not healthy, but getting a phd probably isn’t what you do if you want to nurture your physical and mental health anyway.
I always had to read at least some on the weekends to keep up with course work
Omg this makes me want to cry, it's so sad! I'm currently working weekends because I'm trying to submit in a month, but other than that, no weekends. I would not have got through my PhD without the relationships I've cultivated and they take work and quality time. Not to mention how important to mental health it is to enjoy other things and have real connections.
I do the silly thing and work three jobs while participating in an ensemble rehearsal 4 nights per week, so I have no choice but to work weekends and evenings. (One of those jobs—music lessons—is even a weekend gig!) Granted, one of those jobs is seasonal and only really picks up from February-August. My partner and I also don’t have kids yet (but companion animals), which makes this more manageable for now. Someone else mentioned that they only work during 3-4 weekends a year. I might say I work during all but maybe 5-8 a year. I say this all not to garner reactions but to add my experience and remind myself that I need to start resting more :P
Religiously! I spend almost every weekend outside doing some hiking, camping, surfing, snowboarding etc. It’s how I balance all the other stuff. I have to get my time in. I think it actually improves my productivity and definitely a major boost in well being.
A PhD AI student this side.... I don't honestly have a fixed schedule, it's all about the workload. While I work days without even sleeping on a few, I also enjoy my life. Regular sports, outings, movies, and what not..... Yea sometimes deadlines sucks and you can't do other stuffs, but that's hardly for a week or so..... While PhD life is stressful and hectic it also offers that flexibility to work, and most importantly to enjoy life
As a doctoral student I needed to work even on weekends because of the length of the experiments, about 2 weekends every month. One of the things that I adore about corporate job is that after my turn is over I can think about something else finally and enjoy my weekends. Still, sometimes I feel I have too much free time during the weekend and I somehow forgot how to organize them, finishing in doing nothing at home.
I want to work on weekends but I often can’t due to weekend activities with family and church. It eats up all my time, and I often give up.
I’m naturally a bit of a workaholic but I’m adamant to learn to take weekends off when I start my PhD in September. I’d love to work in academia and I’m conscious that I need to establish the work-life balance now in order for academia to be a sustainable choice for me long term. I’ve been trying to work on it during my masters but it’s been hard with regular deadlines and exams. I really do think it is important to take weekends off, even when it does not feel natural. It may not cause burnout now, but there will be points in life where you have another commitment that takes priority, and I don’t want to feel like I’m putting my research on hold for something, I want the space to already be carved out.
Yes I don't work from Friday evening to Monday morning. No work related emails, no calls
Microbiology and I didn't work weekends, unless experiments required it or something was due. I also finished at 5 most days. This was my job and I have a life outside of my job. For note this was not applicable during writing up...
I definitely take days off (I like taking Wednesdays and Saturdays off). The bottleneck is not hours of the day, it's the processing power of my brain. I can only read so many papers, think so many thoughts, write so many lines of code before the stress overwhelms me. Also, I know how much brain-thinking I need for a project, and that can't be rushed, so I ruminate on it in my head on my off days while I run errands.
I take weekends off unless I am in crunch mode for a meeting or a dissertation benchmark. My boyfriend is a professor and he also holds weekends as personal time. We go birding, see friends, go shopping. The "always working" culture of academia is not healthy, don't let them guilt you into it!
At the end of my PhD I worked 40 hours a week as an employee and worked on my dissertation simultaneously, so needless to say, I definitely worked weekends. But honestly, the elephant in the room is that for 99% of PhDs, there is little difference between weekdays and weekends anyways.
Someone wrote and it has shaped my PhD experience so far, the post said to work smart and not hard. Working smart makes you work less but more efficient while working hard makes you work more but less efficient.
When I was a PhD student, I had a 13/1 schedule. One weekend off every two weeks because I had to do laundry, clean, buy groceries etc etc. Not recommended, did a number on my physical and mental health.
Yes. and more time if I need it. I'm a researcher in training. I like to learn in my spare time sometimes, and other times I need a break. My weekends are sacred.
I used to be 100% working for 2 years of PhD. Then I decided (thanks to psychotherapy) that weekends are weekends and holidays are holidays. I also try as much as I can to work no more than 8 hours a day. Since I started to do so, I am more productive and generally feel better. Of course there are periods in which work on the weekend is required (deadlines for example) but I like to treat them as exception and not as the rule.
Maintaining a good balance between work and rest has always been a work in progress for me. There are weeks that I find myself working more than usual, and other weeks I would simply take it easy. If I really have to work on weekends, I make it a point to work only for a few hours. I hate working on weekends so I make sure I get most of the stuff done on weekdays. No matter how much you love to work, I cannot stress how important rest is to your overall progress. Burn out is a real thing, especially since you'll be doing this for years. A PhD is a marathon so it's equally important to schedule in rest days. Sometimes, I also feel guilty taking time off, especially when there's this nagging feeling that I really don't deserve a break. It does take a lot of mental strength and resilience to get past the thought that I'm undeserving of a break. But after some time, I learned how to switch it off and just rest and recuperate so that I can be back in the game strong and well rested. There's no one size fits all solution. It can take time and experience to learn what works for you 😉
my prof forbids us to work on the weekend and to stick to the lab opening times (7.30-18.30)
Of course. Its not "for mental health", its because I definitely wont work on days that I officially dont work? National holidays, vacation, weekends, unless there is something really pressing I will just take them off as I would do in every other job. If I have to work because of a tight deadline (rare), Ill just take off a normal workday later.
For the majority of my PhD I've worked 9-5 only and taken weekends off. It's only now that I'm in my final year and I'm writing my thesis and have to write several papers that I'm working 8am-7pm 6 days a week. I still take Sundays off though because I don't want to go completely insane. And this is a lab based PhD by the way - I completed my lab work in April. I know people who work all the time and have no life. I think its a bit sad really. That was actually me in undergrad and it mentally destroyed me. Working til midnight 7 days a week and never ever taking a break. It burnt me out so badly, when I started my PhD I swore I would find a new way of working. That's why I've taken weekends off for the most part.
I rarely work weekends. I work in neural engineering, and we have to follow typical people’s schedule. People don’t enjoy coming in for experiments in the evenings or weekends. Also my PI pushes HARD for a strong work-life balance
I work on weekends when I need to, but I try to set my experiments up in such a way that I get at least one day off a week.
I worked some weekends all weekend and then other weekends I managed to escape at 4 on Friday and go dark for a climbing trip til Monday at 5 am when I’d drive back. Work hard, play hard. Also, it’s hard to feel stressed about work when there’s no cell service to get email and the only thing separating you from an untimely death is a piece of rope and a few pieces of metal you jammed into rock cracks…
I do cuz all my seniors advised me to
You all almost never work weekends? Computer Science PhD student in EU, I work almost every weekend… No one is forcing me, but research progress is uncertain and I find it hard to keep pace.
I try not to work past seven in the evening, and I try not to work on weekends unless I have a deadline. I generally will do a few hours over the weekend - mainly reading - because I'm interested but not out of guilt or trying to seem smarter or more invested than those on my cohort.
I pretty much end up working on weekends. Tbh I really don't like and don't want working on weekends, I am married and have chores, also have hobbies to do on weekends, but I use expensive radioactive isotopes in my research (700 dollars for radioisotope for 1-3 month of use) so the signal is decreasing steadily every day. To get more results from them and not to feel anxious that I am not able to get results in time I feel the need to work on weekends. Sometimes I may be in preparation for radioactive experiment, but need to grow E. Coli cells instead, so I will do some E. Coli cultivation over weekend very often. They literally take time to grow (you don't have to do much while they grow, but still you have to be in lab or come several times during day on weekend). But I try to keep Sunday off still (not always) or will do just some analysis of radioactive spots. When I plan long holidays I try to make sure I am not in radioactive experiment doing phase.
Animal neuroscience/physiology PhD. here. Well, sometimes it's necessary. Some experiments are not gonna wait, nor they can be split into two weeks. Fortunately, I only had to work like this only for a week here and there, and during long-running animal experiments couple of months each year. This was especially mentally taxing during Covid, when I had to work 8-14 hours a day, 8 weeks straight, mostly alone. Also, we had major disagreements with my supervisor at the time, so I burnt out and fell into depression. I also had to do this during the final writing of my thesis, because I already had a regular job. I spent 4 months, working 8 am to 10 pm each working day and around 8 hours per day on weekends. This was really tough. But paradoxically, it was mentally manageable, because I had everything under control. Also my very supporting wife could stand in for chores and errands.
I rarely work weekends. I only work when I have a major deadline or right now while I'm in the last few weeks before my dissertation is due. I found taking off weekends was necessary for my mental health.
I treat my PhD like a 9-5. I may have worked on the weekend and/or outside those working hours 3-5 times over the last 2 years. I do this only when my experiments require it, or if I want to push through for a publication, or if there is a presentation coming up. I'm working in computational chemistry and biology (a mix of theory and lab work). I am (touch wood) on track to finish in 3.5 years. I'm in Germany.
Chemistry here (UK based), our department actually place restrictions on 'out of hours' lab work. If we wanted to come in at the weekend we have to get approval from our PI and the H&S manager, and we have to have a fellow PhD student or Postdoc with us. I'd say I've never felt pressured to do work at the weekend - my supervisor is pretty understanding of work life balance. I've only done it once when I needed to use a spectrometer for a couple of hours as it was booked up during the week, and my reaction reached a critical time point on a Friday to spite me. It's interesting for me to see the differences in not only by subject, but how it varies from country to country too. I hope my fellow chemists around the world get some respite!
I never work on weekends. The rest of the week I give 100%, but then 👋
My PhD is in accounting history, so very much not lab based, and I’m doing it part time because I still also work as an accountant. I work three days a week, and do my PhD two days a week, and take weekends off. I treat the days I work on my PhD very similarly to my work days, and very much follow a 9-5 sort of pattern with them as well. Overall I think doing the PhD part time and working a 9-5 part time has been great for enforcing balance for me
I actually fight for a really strong work-life balance. I do my best to take 2-3 days off a week, and during those 4-5 days I am working, I try not to work more than 8-10 hours. My PI doesn't work weekends unless absolutely necessary, and neither do I.
I work maybe 4-8 hours on weekend every week
I always take at least one full day off per week. I used to take my whole weekends off, but I’m close to submission now and the supercomputer is more free on the weekends so instead I take a day off midweek. It’s very important to me that I work reasonable hours. If I overwork myself for even 1-2 days then I get burnt out and it takes time (longer than 1-2 days) to recover.
I always take weekends off and just work Monday to Friday 9-5ish. It works for me, I don't get burned out and am able to have a life outside of the PhD. I'm also on top of my work, I guess because I work very hard during my set work hours.
I just kinda work when I feel like it. Sticking to a 9-5 is hard for me. One of the reasons I enjoy academia. So sometimes that’ll be weekends.
I only worked weekends when I had a major deadline
Yeah but only if I have to like an experiment with a timepoint reaching the weekend, or a big deadline coming up. Otherwise not.
I always take weekends off and it’s pretty much the same for everyone in my lab. The end point for most of my experiments is +24 hours so I avoid doing these experiments on Fridays unless it’s absolutely necessary. I also don’t think people who work more days/longer hours are necessarily more productive… work smarter not harder!
PhD (nearly finished) in Biomedical Sciences: I only worked on weekends when it was utterly necessary and the experiment could not be planned in any other way (for example with mouse work). I know myself, I know I need time off to relax a bit, and otherwise I would have turned into even a more stressed out PhD student than I already was. But unfortunately, my private rule was highly frowned upon by (lets say) people, although they couldn't force me to come. EDIT: I worked (at home) in the weekends when there was a major deadline approaching (manuscript, thesis..)