Tips for grad school work-life balance

Jessie Luna
3 days ago
7 min read

Jessie’s Tips on Time Management and Work-Life Balance in Grad School

First of all, all of this advice is subjective, based on my own experience. And I could do a better job myself of following all of this. But I wanted to share these thoughts on how to survive and thrive in graduate school. Of course, many other factors can make or break grad school experiences, from the realities of grad student poverty (due to horrifically low stipends paid in many social science programs, in particular at state schools), to relationships with mentors and fellow grad students. As a sociologist (and political economy-minded one at that), I'll be the last to pin grad school success on these individual factors. Nonetheless, I hope these tips can still be useful as you navigate the system we are in.

1. Make a plan:

Step back and think about why you are here and what your goals are.

Use an IDP – CSU offers one on the Grad school website, and there are others available online. Discuss this with your mentor.

Make a timeline for yourself. How many years do you want to be here? What does that mean in terms of coursework? Where do you see yourself heading after the program? Knowing what you expect to do with your degree (academic job, teaching/research tracks, non-academia) helps you craft a plan to prepare yourself. You can always change your plan, but it’s hard to focus your work if you don’t have a direction to aim for. Ask yourself:

1. Why am I in graduate school? (i.e. what do I hope to do after grad school?)

2. Based on my goals, what do I need to achieve while I am here? (IDP is useful here)

Make a realistic list, and prioritize it. Add dates (working backwards can help).
Graduate program deadlines for exams, proposals, and defense
Publish academic articles? (How many? How long will this take? When should I start thinking about this? Should I discuss with advisors the dissertation model - article v. traditional format?)
Get work experience? (what kind?)
Later years of grad school: Major conferences with deadlines for submission of abstracts and proposals (discuss this plan with advisors; when to start going to conferences, how to strategize, networking, etc.)
Job market deadlines

3. Each semester, revisit the above questions and write a “micro” plan, laying out your calendar for the semester with all major deadlines, time-consuming tasks like grading assignments, etc. Identify “crunch” times and try to plan ahead for these.

Use these plans to help you prioritize your activities and try to create a week-level plan for your time (i.e. Tuesdays for data analysis, Fridays for writing…).
Continually ask yourself: “How important is working on X right now… or should I focus more of my energy on Z?”
Consider creating a visual version of this plan to hang up in your workspace, to help remind you of your priorities (and to check stuff off when it’s done!)

2. Managing your time to achieve your goals:

The Eisenhower matrix can be useful, and can be used to help you identify contradictions in how you are using your time, and whether you are devoting enough of your time to the important things (and especially the non-urgent, important things, like writing a dissertation). Unfortunately for grad students, it's not always easy to delegate or decline, as recommended by these models, but it can be useful to try as much as possible to decline or remove the "non important" tasks from your life.

Identify your work patterns

Identify some of your positive work patterns:

What time of day are you most productive?
What situations/settings/places are you most productive? Picture it. What is the place? Sound? Lighting? Are there people around or not? How can you create a productive space for yourself?
Do you work best in long chunks of time or shorter, segmented periods of time? How can you arrange your time to your advantage?

o BUILD ON THESE: Try to build more of these positive work patterns into your day, or create a physical space for this.

Then identify some negative work patterns:

When do you work poorly, or when do certain work patterns lead to negative consequences?
What situations tend to get you really stressed out? Is there anything you could change ahead of time to mitigate that stress?

Some common concerns regarding time management:

“I SIMPLY CANNOT DO IT ALL!”

Write out how you are spending your time. Can you remove anything? Can you say “no” to anything? (Remember: saying “yes” to something is also saying “no” to something else)
Can you trim the amount of time you spend on certain things that are lower priority for you?

“I WASTE TOO MUCH TIME!!” (don't we all?)

Identify your own distractions and think about how to minimize them.
- Do you need to check e-mail so often? Consider setting specific times of day to check e-mail.
Turn the internet off. There are apps you can get to overpower your own weak willpower, such as “Stay Focusd,” which can prevent you from opening up certain webpages.
Consider phone settings too – do you waste time on your phone? Phones also have focus apps. Consider removing “notifications” so you don’t see new e-mail notifications, for example.
Consider noise-cancelling headphones, especially when working in a loud place or where conversations will be a distraction (i.e. at coffee shops or in grad offices). Ebay.
Procrastination! We all do it…. Consider why you procrastinate…
- Is it perfectionism in disguise? Sometimes people procrastinate as a way of dealing with perfectionism: if you put it off to the last minute, then you don’t have to hold yourself up to your own standards (“I just did it at the last minute, so of course it’s not perfect”….). Consider a mantra taped to your monitor: “Done is better than perfect.”

“THERE’S TOO MUCH TO DO! HOW CAN I GET IT ALL DONE?”

Try to set specific chunks of time for a given task. When that time is over, that task is over. Period. You may have only read half of whatever it is. Skim, read the conclusion, take your notes, and stop.
Set a timer for grading papers.
Utilize in-between times if you’re really busy, like reading on the bus, or reading in the ten minutes before class.
Again, prioritize. Some stuff is less important. Don’t spend as long on it – just get it done. Less than perfectly.

“ I’M EXHAUSTED! AND NOW I CAN’T GET ANYTHING DONE!”

This brings us to the connection between time management and work-life balance. Remember that we aren’t machines, and that there’s a downside to always being efficiency-maximizing, rational workers cranking away like cogs in the machine. We will be distracted. We will browse Facebook when we should be working. And hopefully we will go bike riding when we have lots of work to do. And that’s okay. We also need to re-charge!

3. Work - Life Balance

Finding a sense of balance between the various parts of our lives is an ongoing challenge, that each of us will do differently. It’s the task of living, after all!

SLEEP. Seriously. Grad school and academic work is not always about logging hours. It’s about getting good, quality work done. So working 10 hours with a foggy, sleep-deprived brain may actually be less productive than working 5 hours with a sharp, well-rested brain.

“I FEEL GUILTY WHEN I’M NOT WORKING”

No one can (or should?) work all the time. Find time to carve out where you do not allow yourself to work. This is crucial. If you plan to be a professor or a similar profession that might look similar to grad school, remember that you cannot sustain a break-neck pace for the long haul.
One strategy: split up your work life and your “you” life:
- Make your work time productive, and your non-work time YOUR time.
- Treat grad school like a job. Show up at a given time (even if it’s a desk at home), and finish at a given time. Close the computer and be done.
- Work outside of your house if you can, if this helps create this split.

“I JUST FEEL STRESSED ALL THE TIME”

At the risk of sounding like a neoliberal wellness guru (!), it is nonetheless useful to find ways to get out and decompress. Find what that is for you. Yoga, art, getting exercise and spending time outdoors. When I'm stressed out I try to remember how lucky I am to get to study exactly the topics that I’m fascinated by, and to read and write and teach about stuff I care about. Academia can really be an awesome privilege. Try to remember what called you to be here in the first place.
Make friends with your cohort-mates but also try to find community outside of academia. It’s nice to make friends and get involved in activities unrelated to grad school.

Some other tid-bits and tips for managing time in grad school

Get a citation manager and start using it, particularly if you are a PhD student or planning an academic career. Starting early and building a library of citations is EXTREMELY helpful and time-saving down the road. I use Zotero and love it, but others use EndNote, Mendeley, and others. The library can offer trainings.

Reading. The first few years of grad school are all about reading, which is where a lot of your time goes. Some tips:
- Take notes, but keep them concise. No notes? You’ll forget, which means: why bother reading?
- When reading, look for:
  - What literature/academic conversation is this article or book taking part in? Who are they responding to?
  - What “gap” are they filling in that literature?
  - Methods?
  - Findings? (Ask yourself: Are you convinced? Did the data support the argument? Are other interpretations possible?)
  - Is there a theoretical contribution?
  - What are the limitations? (Do you see anything fundamentally flawed? What critiques do you have?)
  - What new questions emerge, and how does this reading relate to other literatures/conversations?
- Check out this resource: https://christophersrose.com/2019/05/15/grad-school-survival-guide-how-to-read/
- Develop the art of skimming. This is hard to do at first, but as you learn how articles are laid out, you can focus your attention on the important parts, and skim or skip the pieces that are less important. If you’re reading an article for a methods class, for instance, focus on the methods. If you’re reading it for content or findings, skim the methods. In books, the intro lays out the plan of the book (and often specifies the methods and theory), so it’s really important, but some chapters you may be able to skim through.
- Use Voice-to-Text on a smart phone to take notes on readings (I use the “Word” app, and I then download my notes onto my computer). This enables you to read and take notes anywhere, including outside. This is a nice way to get out of the office when you are bogged down with readings.

Jessie’s Tips on Time Management and Work-Life Balance in Grad School

1. Make a plan:

Step back and think about why you are here and what your goals are.

Use an IDP – CSU offers one on the Grad school website, and there are others available online. Discuss this with your mentor.

1. Why am I in graduate school? (i.e. what do I hope to do after grad school?)

2. Based on my goals, what do I need to achieve while I am here? (IDP is useful here)

Make a realistic list, and prioritize it. Add dates (working backwards can help).

Graduate program deadlines for exams, proposals, and defense

Publish academic articles? (How many? How long will this take? When should I start thinking about this? Should I discuss with advisors the dissertation model - article v. traditional format?)

Get work experience? (what kind?)

Later years of grad school: Major conferences with deadlines for submission of abstracts and proposals (discuss this plan with advisors; when to start going to conferences, how to strategize, networking, etc.)

Job market deadlines

3. Each semester, revisit the above questions and write a “micro” plan, laying out your calendar for the semester with all major deadlines, time-consuming tasks like grading assignments, etc. Identify “crunch” times and try to plan ahead for these.

Use these plans to help you prioritize your activities and try to create a week-level plan for your time (i.e. Tuesdays for data analysis, Fridays for writing…).

Continually ask yourself: “How important is working on X right now… or should I focus more of my energy on Z?”

Consider creating a visual version of this plan to hang up in your workspace, to help remind you of your priorities (and to check stuff off when it’s done!)

2. Managing your time to achieve your goals:

Identify your work patterns

Identify some of your positive work patterns:

What time of day are you most productive?

What situations/settings/places are you most productive? Picture it. What is the place? Sound? Lighting? Are there people around or not? How can you create a productive space for yourself?

Do you work best in long chunks of time or shorter, segmented periods of time? How can you arrange your time to your advantage?

o BUILD ON THESE: Try to build more of these positive work patterns into your day, or create a physical space for this.

Then identify some negative work patterns:

When do you work poorly, or when do certain work patterns lead to negative consequences?

What situations tend to get you really stressed out? Is there anything you could change ahead of time to mitigate that stress?

Some common concerns regarding time management:

“I SIMPLY CANNOT DO IT ALL!”

Write out how you are spending your time. Can you remove anything? Can you say “no” to anything? (Remember: saying “yes” to something is also saying “no” to something else)

Can you trim the amount of time you spend on certain things that are lower priority for you?

“I WASTE TOO MUCH TIME!!” (don't we all?)

Identify your own distractions and think about how to minimize them.

Do you need to check e-mail so often? Consider setting specific times of day to check e-mail.

Turn the internet off. There are apps you can get to overpower your own weak willpower, such as “Stay Focusd,” which can prevent you from opening up certain webpages.

Consider phone settings too – do you waste time on your phone? Phones also have focus apps. Consider removing “notifications” so you don’t see new e-mail notifications, for example.

Consider noise-cancelling headphones, especially when working in a loud place or where conversations will be a distraction (i.e. at coffee shops or in grad offices). Ebay.

Procrastination! We all do it…. Consider why you procrastinate…

“THERE’S TOO MUCH TO DO! HOW CAN I GET IT ALL DONE?”

Try to set specific chunks of time for a given task. When that time is over, that task is over. Period. You may have only read half of whatever it is. Skim, read the conclusion, take your notes, and stop.

Set a timer for grading papers.

Utilize in-between times if you’re really busy, like reading on the bus, or reading in the ten minutes before class.

Again, prioritize. Some stuff is less important. Don’t spend as long on it – just get it done. Less than perfectly.

“ I’M EXHAUSTED! AND NOW I CAN’T GET ANYTHING DONE!”

3. Work - Life Balance

Finding a sense of balance between the various parts of our lives is an ongoing challenge, that each of us will do differently. It’s the task of living, after all!

SLEEP. Seriously. Grad school and academic work is not always about logging hours. It’s about getting good, quality work done. So working 10 hours with a foggy, sleep-deprived brain may actually be less productive than working 5 hours with a sharp, well-rested brain.

“I FEEL GUILTY WHEN I’M NOT WORKING”

No one can (or should?) work all the time. Find time to carve out where you do not allow yourself to work. This is crucial. If you plan to be a professor or a similar profession that might look similar to grad school, remember that you cannot sustain a break-neck pace for the long haul.

One strategy: split up your work life and your “you” life:

Make your work time productive, and your non-work time YOUR time.

Treat grad school like a job. Show up at a given time (even if it’s a desk at home), and finish at a given time. Close the computer and be done.

“I JUST FEEL STRESSED ALL THE TIME”

Make friends with your cohort-mates but also try to find community outside of academia. It’s nice to make friends and get involved in activities unrelated to grad school.

Some other tid-bits and tips for managing time in grad school

Reading. The first few years of grad school are all about reading, which is where a lot of your time goes. Some tips:

Take notes, but keep them concise. No notes? You’ll forget, which means: why bother reading?

When reading, look for:

What literature/academic conversation is this article or book taking part in? Who are they responding to?

What “gap” are they filling in that literature?

Methods?

Findings? (Ask yourself: Are you convinced? Did the data support the argument? Are other interpretations possible?)

Is there a theoretical contribution?

What are the limitations? (Do you see anything fundamentally flawed? What critiques do you have?)

What new questions emerge, and how does this reading relate to other literatures/conversations?

Check out this resource: https://christophersrose.com/2019/05/15/grad-school-survival-guide-how-to-read/

Use Voice-to-Text on a smart phone to take notes on readings (I use the “Word” app, and I then download my notes onto my computer). This enables you to read and take notes anywhere, including outside. This is a nice way to get out of the office when you are bogged down with readings.