How much time do you PhD's put in each day?

[Topher925]

My adviser has been yelling at me a lot lately telling me I'm to lazy and need to be smarter. Along with that argument, she says I don't spend enough time doing research and spend way to much time doing course work and helping other people. She also says that I should be putting in about 20 hours a day and should only work on my course work when I'm at home or on the weekends and should only be doing research during the day.

I typically put in about 14 hours or so a day including research and course work but interested in what some other people do as well. I think 14 is a pretty good balance between work and sleep, especially since I have class on Saturdays and will also put in a few hours on Sundays. I know some people that didn't even do research their first year and a half as a PhD so I'm also wondering if she's just exaggerating a bit.

 

[Tom Gilroy]

I officially began as a Ph.D student almost 2 months ago, studying vertex operator algebras.

Typically, I get into the university at 9am and study until about 7pm, granted with about an hour of a break inbetween. So that's 9 hours. I often might spend another hour to an hour an a half studying after I get home too, provided I don't have to prepare for the tutorials I give, or correct a set of assignments.

That said, I'm not doing research yet either. I spend most of the day studing the literature in VOA theory, as well as studing the necessary topics in Lie algebras, representaion theory, modular forms and elliptic functions.

I don't understand how somebody could work for 20 hours a day and still have time to eat, sleep and maintain basic hygiene.

 

[Matterwave]

20 hours a day? That leaves only 4 hours for sleep, and eating, and showering...I think that's exaggerating a bit haha.

 

[G01]

Hopefully your adviser was joking with you!

 

[proof]

well i voted 8-10 but that's only because there wasn't a lower option. average is between 5-8 hours

 

[Philosopher_k]

My cousin, who is quite a talented young physicist, spent quite minimal time on his phd and still graduated from a top 20 institute. If you lack the talent, you must spend more time on your project, but some of us breath mathematics/physics to the extent that we could spend all day at a cafe whilst still progressing.

 

[Caramon]

I'm so glad that idiot got banned. What an absolute fool, I hope he attempts University so he garbages himself with how hard it is to juggle 5 upper-division courses.

Also, I think Topher925's adviser voted 20+ hours! Haha.

 

[Pengwuino]

If your adviser thinks you should work 20 hours, they're mentally challenged. Seriously. I'm not even sure humans are capable of surviving with that amount of sleep.

 

[Caramon]

Maybe I'm a little slow, but to maintain a high GPA in the latter years of undergraduate school I have to sell myself short on sleep... >_>

I can't imagine how much harder graduate school will be.

 

[Shackleford]

Maybe I'm a little slow, but to maintain a high GPA in the latter years of undergraduate school I have to sell myself short on sleep... >_>

I can't imagine how much harder graduate school will be.

I know the feeling. Unfortunately, I have work during the week so I can't just stay up all night or sleep in!

 

[cristo]

Why is there no option for fewer than 8 hours?

 

[LAHLH]

I personally spend usually 8-9 except occassionally when something really needs to get done before a certain date. Typically then I also work one of the two days of the weekend and it seems to be working out just fine. I think balance is such an understated idea for PhDs in Physics, if you deprive yourself of sleep and stop enjoying any life outside of Physics you just burn out, start hating what you're doing, be less creative and so on.

If you can manage 14+ hr days everyday, and know that each hour you work is productive, and think you can keep this up for the duration of your PhD, then good for you, you a certainly better at this than I am. I would be wasting my time after 10hrs, my mind would just be shot and it would be going in one ear out the other. I can't see how mathmaticians or theorists can concentrate for this long, and derive anything meaningful from the time spent. Sometimes when I do work super late, I end up just making mistakes anyway and finding I have to do it all over again the next day, or I need to re read the chapter from scratch anyway because it's not sunk in.

 

[cristo]

It also depends what you count as work for these hours. I would only count the actual hours doing research, not the admin, teaching, emails, generally procrastinating, etc..

 

[Choppy]

For me it varied considerably.

I'd like to say that I put in a solid 8 hours every day (and on average I think I did), but there were more than a few days when I'd show up around 10:30 and then feel frustrated if I had to stay past 5:00. (I'll throw in that I had a part-time job that often had shifts that went until 03:00 or 04:00 am on the weekends so getting up for an 08:00 am start was always difficult). However, as conferences approached, as I prepared for my candidacy examination, supervisory committee meetings, finished the thesis, etc. my hours increases significantly.

I've seen many successful students who put in a regular, consistent, productive 8 hour day over the duration of their studies and completed their thesis on time.

A supervisor who tells you that you need to regularly be spending 20 hours a day on your PhD work is either kidding or unreasonable. (And to be honest, if she's yelling at you literally, I'd be looking to find a new supervisor).

 

[stevenb]

My advisor's standing joke was that he only expected his students to work "half time". By this he meant 12 hours per day, 7 days a week.

Joking aside, I think this is actually reasonable. The good thing is that you have flexibility and can modulate that pace to keep from burning out.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

For me it varied considerably.

I'd like to say that I put in a solid 8 hours every day (and on average I think I did), but there were more than a few days when I'd show up around 10:30 and then feel frustrated if I had to stay past 5:00. (I'll throw in that I had a part-time job that often had shifts that went until 03:00 or 04:00 am on the weekends so getting up for an 08:00 am start was always difficult). However, as conferences approached, as I prepared for my candidacy examination, supervisory committee meetings, finished the thesis, etc. my hours increases significantly.

I've seen many successful students who put in a regular, consistent, productive 8 hour day over the duration of their studies and completed their thesis on time.

A supervisor who tells you that you need to regularly be spending 20 hours a day on your PhD work is either kidding or unreasonable. (And to be honest, if she's yelling at you literally, I'd be looking to find a new supervisor).

Seconded for essentially everything Choppy is saying.

I had lots of days where I spent as little as 6 or 7 hours actually 'working' - with some of that including messing around, reading, playing games or whatever. The idea of working 20 hours a day is ludicrous.

I don't even see how someone could work for 10 hours a day on an academic subject, never mind 14. My productive work tends to be completed in bursts, I have an idea then go with it and see what happens. That might take an hour or two, then I have another unproductive period of sitting around waiting for something else to happen. This happens a lot for me, so I would say that I actually *work* for maybe two-thirds of the time I spend in my office. Anything more just fatigues me and I've always been careful to avoid the sort of burn-out I went through during undergraduate.

 

[fasterthanjoao]

Why is there no option for fewer than 8 hours?

There definitely should be. I would consider selecting it reflecting on my experiences of my PhD, and would definitely select it after agreeing with your next point:

It also depends what you count as work for these hours. I would only count the actual hours doing research, not the admin, teaching, emails, generally procrastinating, etc..

 

[Pyrrhus]

I agree with most (I spend less than 8 hours on research, I am also a TA and I am taking three heavy load courses!), and I also agree that if you advisor is literally yelling at you then she's the one being unreasonable (to be honest from the conversations I've had with my advisor and other professors about their life as grad students, I hardly doubt they put 20 hours a day). In fact, your advisor being quite selfish towards you as she's only considering her benefit of research output you can produce, instead of your sanity (mental and physical health) during the grad school process.

 

[bleedblue1234]

You can probably focus for about 5-6 hours of actual "work" each day... and I mean the real "work" (hard focus that builds skill) not the "browsing Facebook while calling my friends and playing Call of Duty- work"

 

[Topher925]

Why is there no option for fewer than 8 hours?

I just assumed that if your a full time PhD student you're not going to be spending less than 8 hours a day on your studies/research/responsibilities.

Given some of the responses of this thread I guess I should define "work". By work I mean how much time do you actually spend on tasks related to you being a student, which includes but not limited to, studying, research, teaching, grading, and of course all the menial tasks professors make their students do. I usually don't spend 14 hours just studying or doing course work. I spend a lot of that time helping other fellow students (I'm the only one with any technical skills around here) working on my research projects and a bunch of other stuff. If I had my way I would just do research all day every day (well, maybe not Sunday) as I really enjoy it and don't mind spending tons of time on it.

Even though my professor might be serious about spending 20 hours a day doing research I don't really take any sense of authority seriously. I think what I'll do is just make the work I do more transparent and more "ME friendly" as a lot of it very multidisciplinary.

 

[Topher925]

Who were the two that voted 20+ hours?

 

[stevenb]

Who were the two that voted 20+ hours?

Oh those are the guys that think sleeping :zzz: counts towards work on their PhD.

Actually, in their defense, I've gotten many of my best ideas and solutions to research problems in my sleep. Still, i doubt anyone's professor is going to count that sort of thing.