Thread by @Dr_KatieG1

Today’s thread is a story about what you decide to do with those ‘overflow’ tasks you haven’t finished when Friday afternoon roles around – Do you mostly ‘catch-up’ on Saturday and Sunday or do you usually roll them over to next week? #phdlife #AcademicTwitter 1/n

Obviously some periods of #phdlife require that you catch up on the weekends. Grant deadlines, teaching crunches, etc. But I want to walk through why you shouldn’t make that your normal response and why it’s hard to resist! 2/n

My personal example: This semester was always going to be rough, there’s just a lot of things I HAVE to get done in order to get some projects moving. And last week it got out of hand. Normally I don’t work weekends or evenings. 3/n

Yes I check email, but instead of finishing all those unfinished Friday tasks on Saturday, I roll them over to next week during my Friday afternoon planning meeting. See description here: 4/n

But this semester, I haven't been doing that. Instead I’ve worked both Saturdays & Sundays for about a month. The result? Exhaustion, mistakes, and supreme inefficiency, the bane of my life. 5/n

After years of self study, I have identified the signs I’m overworked/burnt out. I have ‘popcorn brain’, I can’t focus on any task, I forget things, and I spend 50% of my time surfing the interwebz. 6/n

Usually, when I notice this happening for more than half a day, I stop working. In my mind, spending 10 hours in my office chair trying to accomplish 3-4 hours of actual work is a complete waste. 7/n

Instead I usually stop working & try to come back fresh the next day. And I almost always find I can easily finish the task that felt completely impossible the day before. If you write code or do bioinformatics, you’re familiar with this. 8/n

You bang your head against some mistake or some task for three days, take a day off and suddenly the solution seems obvious. When you’re overworked/burnt out, you make silly mistakes you never would have made. 9/n

E.g., I didn’t notice a spreadsheet sent to me was sorted by ID instead of by name last week and completely screwed up pooling sequencing libraries, which then had to be redone this week. Thank god for the tech who was awake and alert enough to notice my screw-up. 10/n

All of this just adds to your workload, leading to this spiral of overwork leading to more work! And these aren’t even the worst consequences. The worst consequences? Bad decision making, guilt, overwhelm, and eventually a complete loss of interest in this thing 11/n

that used to light up your life. What do I mean by bad decision making? Well continuing to work when you’re exhausted is pretty bad decision making, even if sometimes (when there are REAL deadlines), it’s unavoidable. 12/n

But saying no to asks from students & colleagues takes energy. When you’re exhausted, it seems easier to just say yes because pushing back against the guilt takes ENERGY. Consulting your calendar to see if you have time for this thing takes energy! 13/n

Which you don’t have right now because you’re overworked! How often do you find yourself adding more to your plate precisely when you DO NOT HAVE ANY MORE ROOM?? And this feeds into the overwork spiral. Furthermore, academic work is NEVER done. 14/n

Which means, ‘catching’ up on Saturday and Sunday never really succeeds. It just makes you more tired next week and the to do list never ends (more on this in a few weeks). The scariest thing that happened to me on Monday of last week? I trudged to work. 15/n

Usually, after a weekend of rest, I am READY for Monday! I love this job. I love this work, even when it’s hard. I usually start Monday’s ready to go. But not last Monday. Last Monday all I could think about was how long the week already felt at 9:30 on Monday. 16/n

Obviously not every week is exciting and awesome. Sometimes you're working on projects you don't like, especially as a trainee. But overall, you have to LIKE this job or it isn't for you. Academia is too shitty to do it if you hate it. 17/n

Yes I have hated it for years at a time before. But I knew there was an end. And I could find joy in some things. But not when I'm exhausted. Weeks of that lead to apathy, disinterest, and wanting to quit. Academia is definitely not for everyone, 18/n

but I always believe if you leave, you should leave because that’s what’s best for you, not because the overwork made you hate something you used to love. Now a weekend off is not the magic bullet. I’m still tired. If you are overworked/burnt out, a weekend off is a band-aid 19/n

NOT a cure!! In my experience, the amount of time you worked too much is how long recovery will take. Over time, overwork becomes a habit that is extremely hard to break. Based on years of self-study, I know that the only way for me to interrupt the cycle is to 20/n

get OUT of the house and into nature. So this weekend I went hiking in order to prevent the gravitational force of my laptop from pulling me into work “just for one email!” Last week I was checking my email on my phone every 20-30 minutes. 21/n

This week, I’m back to a less frantic frequency (although it’s still way too often). So how do you break this cycle of overwork? First, you load yourself down with less and you accurately estimate how long tasks take. 22/n

Thus – The thread on self study so you can start to estimate how much time tasks will take (perfecting this estimate takes years fyi) - 23/n

And this thread on how I schedule my academic life so I DON’T commit myself to tasks. 24/n

When Friday rolls around, my schedules never look like they were supposed to! 25/n

Hell this week, Monday things went off the rails. White things are things that got added to Monday before 10 am. 26/n

But by scheduling everything in advance & re-evaluating on Fridays, I can roll with the punches better. And identify when I need to re-plan mid-week because things have gone off the rails already. Or because I need a break! 27/n

What are your signs that you’re overworked/burnt out and need to rest/recharge? Put them in the replies and maybe help someone else realize those are their signals too! 28/28