How to Balance a Healthy Life While Working on Your PhD

To an outsider, the time allotted to attain one’s PhD is extraordinarily generous, especially when compared to ordinary school calendars. A term is three months; a semester, six. You can earn a Bachelors degree in four years or less and a Masters is just two years more than that.

By contrast, the average time to attain one’s Doctor of Philosophy degree is five to six years! The disparities go further…

Up to the Masters level, education is diversified in the USA: a bit of Maths, a bit of English, a few courses in this subject or that one – all to make for a well-rounded future contributor to society. Not at the doctorate level, though. Here, the focus is on a single subject.

While the work may be profound and exacting, how hard can it be to have just one subject to study?

If you’ve not yet embarked on your PhD work, you may consider yourself one of those aforementioned outsiders. Not to say you know nothing of the degree of work such an achievement requires but, until you’re in the thick of it, you cannot know the stress those candidates labour under.

If you are that candidate, you know exactly what that’s all about. You also know that you could drive yourself mad trying to stay on track and meeting the demands of both your daily and academic lives.

For those embarking on this journey as well as those whose work is already underway, these tips can help you strike a balance between your academic requirements, the need to earn a living and the compulsion to embrace your life outside of those necessities.

Avoid isolating yourself

In theory, PhD work involves a whole cast of characters – from your advisor to those you might interview during your research but, in practice, much of it is a solitary affair.

You’ll spend large blocks of time looking for, sorting through and analysing data, and compiling results that will inform your dissertation’s conclusions. There’s also quite a bit of reading involved; an activity that only occasionally lends itself to merry group arrangements.

Reading to children or seniors is an example of such.

In fact, should your topic have anything to do with seniors, children or literacy, public reading events would be a great way to take a break from your work while not breaking away from your topic. It may even count as a fun way to add to your research.

As your work progresses, you may find that sharing your discoveries helps to keep you motivated. No matter what your subject is, you could volunteer to speak on it at your local schools or other appropriate public forum.

Make time for yourself

This seems a rather obvious suggestion but you might be surprised at how many people working on their PhD overlook this commonsense practice.

But then, again, maybe not. Even people who aren’t pursuing the highest academic achievement often neglect their own well-being.

We’re not just talking about cultivating friendships and engaging hobbies – though they, too, are important and should be a part of everyone’s life.

If you’re regularly on campus, maybe at the library for research, why not participate in other university activities? You could join a society, maybe, or attend cultural events such as concerts or theatre productions.

You may even help to put on such a show.

Many schools have clubs for chess, cycling, choir, dancing, and other activities. Mine had a Tai Chi club that I eagerly signed up for.

Taking part in such activities takes the onus to find diversions off of you. They allow you to switch mental gears; back up so you can see the forest even as you’re in the trees, to misuse that idiom.

Pace yourself

This is the most valuable advice of all.

PhD candidates tend to fall in one of two categories: they become consumed with their work or they reason that they have such a generous amount of time that they can afford to slack off for a while, especially after their marathon trek through 18 years of academics.

Neither of these positions is effective or helpful.

You might want a break from academia, especially if you didn’t take a gap year at some point along the way. But you have to understand that researching your dissertation topic is unlike the academic processes you’ve undergone so far. You’ll not have classes and assignments and exams to contend with.

Aside from periodic meetings with your doctoral advisor, your work is independent of any standard school structure. Your work may outlast your funding if your progress lags too far outside the norm but nobody will call you to account for how slowly – or praise you for how quickly you work.

New PhD candidates used to completing assignments on time may find this sudden lack of oversight and due dates disconcerting. Indeed, their habit of handing in work on time compels them to race headlong into their doctoral work.

That approach may be detrimental.

Your dissertation is not an assignment. It has no due date and, outside of the structural and academic requirements – formatting and proofs, what it contains is entirely up to you.

You won’t get a grade for it, either. This is a Go/No Go proposition so, if you want to earn your Go on your first go-round, it’s best to take your time.

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