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Between 33% and 46% of Ph.D. Students don’t complete their degree [1].

I don’t know about you, but that sends shivers down my spine. In my reading and previous article on how to succeed with one’s doctoral pursuits, we discussed the many ways that professors have seen graduate students fail to finish their degrees. While most agree on the big things: write consistently, learn by doing, don’t aim too high or low, a major point of contention was time management. The cornerstone argument: does a 9–5 schedule work for a Ph.D. Some claim the doctoral pursuit requires zealous around-the-clock devotion, while others assert that the 9–5 gives you the rigour and structure you’ll need to succeed.

As you may have guessed by the title, I side with the 9–5. Look, Eminem works a 9–5. if it’s good enough for the real slim shady, it’s got to be good enough for me. Right?

So let’s take a look at why I fit my academic pursuits into a 9–5 schedule.

⏳ Why I Fixed my Time Management

My transition to the 9–5 has not been abrupt. Over the last 2 to 3 years, I’ve been slowly moving towards running a tighter ship. During the first and second years of my undergrad, I lived the usual student life. Left to my own devices, out of the house for the first time, I stayed up until 4 am, did my assignments the day before they were due, and spent my days floating between the classroom and the SOCIS club lounge with little regard for the time.

This worked fine enough when my workload was light, but when the going got tough, I found myself in trouble. As an academic perfectionist, a die-hard procrastinator, and the proud owner of an anxiety disorder, I was carving a road to burnout — and burnout I did.

The worst of this culminated in multiple final programming assignments due in the same week — yet to have been started, an 8 am deadline that I started at midnight, and exams rapidly rounding the corner. I did manage to complete all my final projects, submit that midnight assignment just as the sun peeked over the horizon, and get through exams but at what cost? I suffered recurring panic attacks as deadlines nipped at my heels, slept an average of 4 hours a night, and my diet consisted of junior chickens and black coffee. It was not my finest hour.

Don’t get me wrong, I had a lot of fun too, it wasn’t all deadlines and panic. However In my third year, shortly after the week of death, I realized I couldn’t keep up the pace. I wanted to do more, take leadership opportunities, stay on top of my grades, and most of all wanted to protect my mental health. I needed a better system. That’s when my shift to the 9 to 5 began.

These days I’ve got my schedule organized and set well in advance of any deadlines. My calendar is booked with work periods and meetings, my weekly tasks planned the Sunday prior, assignments finished well before their due date. The best part — I’m the happiest, healthiest, and most productive I’ve ever been.

So that’s why I changed. Now let’s talk about why specifically the 9–5 and what research supports it.
3 Reasons to work 9–5 as an Academic

1. Habit is the foundation of diligence: why relying on willpower to drive you is ineffective

A little while ago I read Atomic Habits by James Clear. A lot of what I got out of it was concise, and effective summaries of what most of us already know. Namely: we are creatures of habit, and habits form the foundation of what we do. What we turn into habits — the behaviours we automate — are what we do even on our worst days.

When I first started trying to give myself some structure I started small — I made my bed. Not just sometimes, not when I felt like it, every day. Over the years, this habit has become so deeply ingrained that even on the days I barely sleep, even if I’m rushing out the door, I stop to make my bed.

It sounds like a minute change — making your bed — but it’s how I learned to automate my behaviours. I don’t think about stopping to make my bed, it just happens. That’s how I want the decision to write, to contribute to my work, to advance myself to be made — unconsciously and automatically.

Will waxes and wanes, but habits are automatic and shape everything that follows.

Researchers estimate that 40 to 50 percent of our actions on any given day are done out of habit. This is already a substantial percentage, but the true influence of your habits is even greater than these numbers suggest. Habits are automatic choices that influence the conscious decisions that follow. Yes, a habit can be completed in just a few seconds, but it can also shape the actions that you take for minutes or hours afterward. — James Clear

This ties into tip 5 of my previous post — Write Consistently. The 9–5 helps me achieve that. By establishing the habit: “At 9 am I sit down to my computer with my coffee and work for 3 focused hours on one goal.” I sidestep inspiration. I’m prepared to work because it’s a behaviour I’ve automated. Some days passion drives me to focus and work on something I love. Other days I sit down at my desk with relative indifference. Nonetheless, I still sit down at my desk. On good days and bad, with feverous motivation or through creative slumps, I wake up prepared to work because that’s what I do at 9.
2. Reducing “Crunch Time” — the slow burn vs the heavy lift

Speaking of writing consistently, let’s talk about the slow burn vs the heavy lift. The heavy-lift is doing a ton of working all at once — lifting your entire workload in one go. This is what I did in my undergraduate degree, a whole assignment from 12 am to 6 am right before it was due.

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Heavy Lift Work Leads to:

Creates pressure cooker levels of stress in small windows of time

Gives you no time to reflect and fix mistakes

Leads to large periods where no work happens

Before I had my schedule, I was relegating myself to the heavy-lift method. I did assignments just before they were due. It created intense pressure and gave me no time to reflect on the design of my code or the efficacy of my solutions. Then, once the assignment was done, I’d wait in academic limbo for the next assignment to force me into action. This is not at all conducive to learning

The slow burn, on the other hand, is about working regularly on several projects. This reduces stress by spreading work and deadlines out over longer periods, gives you the time you need to reflect and fix mistakes, and maintains momentum. My 9–5 schedule is built around this concept. Every day I schedule time to work on this blog, to work on my thesis, to work on classwork, etc.

These days I rarely face Crunch Time. My projects are all well underway, I’m more relaxed and creative as I work without the impending doom of deadlines. I regularly take time to go over what I’ve worked on, evaluate how it can be improved, and plan out how I should tackle similar tasks in the future. Most importantly I keep engaged and excited about my work by contributing to it regularly.
3. Creative Processes require time and rest

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“Recovery from work is key to restoring resources expended during work, and to maintaining health, well-being, mental productivity, and performance (Sonnentag and Geurts, 2009)”

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the research process, regardless of your field, is a creative one first and foremost. I will gladly die on this hill if you want to argue with me about it. With that in mind there’s a lot of great research that points out the value of rest, sleep, and vacation time for processing, creativity, and problem-solving.

The 9–5 gives you room for the valuable rest you need. I can’t tell you how many of my friends and colleagues I’ve seen grinding through work on the weekends, lamenting their fate — that of the lowly grad student. You may think I’m crazy, and I’d love to have the discussion (@NathanLaundry) but I take my weekends off and I refuse to give them up regardless of what deadlines approach. Here’s why.

Burnout kills momentum. A Ph.D. is not a sprint, it’s a marathon. 4 years to produce a thesis. 4 years for a single project. This is a matter of long-term health and performance.

By taking weekends off I take care of myself and get the rest I need. This, however, doesn’t mean I do nothing productive, I just work on what I find most enjoyable.

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“… employees may get closer to a creative solution if they do not fully detach, but keep the work-related thoughts active on a low level (Vahle-Hinz et al., 2017).”

The science of motivation tells us that staying loosely engaged with your work during your off time leads to increased creativity. To take advantage of this I keep sticky notes on my wall with all my working ideas. It prompts me to think about my work early in the day. When I go for walks or chat with friends and colleagues, my work is processing in the background and may even seep into the conversation. Some of my best ideas come while I’m walking and talking.

Spending my weekends focused on producing new work, whether grading assignments, writing, or running meetings, prevents me from doing this type of passive processing.

😤 The Critics

This brings me to the most interesting discussion — why then do some successful researchers abhor the 9–5? It often comes down to the notion of devotion. The Ph.D. should be, say these critics, a labour of love and a gruelling pursuit. It should be something that consumes you and your time.

Honestly, I agree to some degree. I think your graduate work should be something you love and it most certainly is a daunting and monumental task. Where I disagree is the solution to that problem and the definition of the “9–5”.

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“Spending more time thinking about work during leisure time could help to think outside of the box in order to make clever and complex connections (Vahle-Hinz et al., 2017)”

I love what I do. As a result, I don’t relegate all my thinking and working to the 9–5 schedule. I love to listen to my colleagues talk about their work and discuss my own; it often takes the lion’s share of chats with friends and colleagues. I prompt myself to think and process my work, reflect on it, and prepare new ideas, during my downtime. This is where the definition conflict is. The 9–5 is not a prison for my academic thinking, it’s a tool I use to ensure that inertia is working for me, not against me.

🔚 Conclusion

So we went over why I decided to change my time management habits and the evidence that supports my choice. That being said, I’m not going to pretend that the 9–5 schedule is a one size fits all time management system — that’s nonsense. Instead, what I hope to show is that establishing any system that builds consistency is valuable. As long as you get focused time, build up good work habits, and ensure you get adequate rest, you’re setting yourself up for success.

Good luck out there and Thanks again for listening to me ramble 😃

Cheers,
Nathan Laundry

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If you liked this post you may like my previous 2:

Finding Opportunities as a University Computer Science Student
From Undergraduate to Masters/PhD: How to Handle the Mindset Shift

If you’re curious how I manage my 9–5, check out my Notion Template for managing weekly todos
https://nathanlaundry.com/notion-templates/weekly-sprint-template
References

[1]N. Curtin, A. Stewart, and J. Ostrove, “Fostering Academic Self-Concept: Advisor Support and Sense of Belonging Among International and Domestic Graduate Students,” American Educational Research Journal, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 108–137, 2013, doi: 10.3102/0002831212446662.

[2]C. J. Syrek, J. de Bloom, and D. Lehr, “Well Recovered and More Creative? A Longitudinal Study on the Relationship Between Vacation and Creativity,” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 12, 2021, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2021.784844.