Hello burnout

After pulling a twelve-hour workday on monday and feeling really beatup until late yesterday evening, I’ve decided that keeping my working hours lower cannot be a sin. I entered university working way too little and not even going to most lectures. This worked the first semester, but resulted in sharply declining grades and even two failed exams in the second and third semester; after that, I started kicking my own butt a little bit more and fortunately pulling up quite a bit. My diploma was the high point of my academic career with perfect grades. So, the lesson from my first five years was

I am lazy and when I work longer for some reason, it’s good.

In fact, working less with the excuse that it’s more efficient was one of the things that got me into the initial problems, so I mistrusted skipping something because it seemed less helpful. Sometimes I did it anyway, but I’d normally feel guilty in some way.

Now, however, I’ve started my thesis, and despite getting paid 20 hours a week, I work 40-50. I try to be at work 8 hours a day, and unless I have some important appointment, I work longer whenever it seems useful. This is normally the case when an experiment is starting to work late and I want to be there to see the entire process. For the time being, I’m learning the most from watching other people operate the lab. A situation like that is what led to the twelve hour monday. I’m feeling a lot better now, but yesterday was not a very good day – I felt worn out, twitchy and a little depressed the entire time.

I think what I have to learn now is that there is a limit to how much I can work and keep feeling well – this limit may be lower than some of my colleagues’. But frankly, my colleagues are all leaving a long time before I get my thesis, and at the moment, I’m learning a lot more from them then they are from me. So, nobody else is affected if I work a little bit less (say, 8 hours a day, not counting lunch). The only thing I should really care about is that I learn enough to pull off a good thesis when the time comes. I’m pretty certain that whatever position I take afterwards will be less work than being a grad student. So, for the moment, I should try to get a healthier and more efficient perspective on how much time I spend at work.