What's your mental 9-5?
"Work/life balance": everyone wants it, but who really has it?
People tend to define work/life balance (let's call it WLB) purely by how much time they're clocking into the office. By that metric, you might think doing a PhD is a fast track to no WLB at all. After all, it's pretty common for grad students to say that they live in the lab. That's hyperbole sometimes, but reality other times (the lab I tech'd in had a collapsible camping cot). We've all pulled crazy hours for time course experiments or sacrificed weekends to grind out edits for a manuscript or application.
At first, I thought that if I stuck to a 9-5 schedule with few exceptions, that I'd have no trouble with WLB. I was very, very wrong.
You see, I may have been sticking to 9-5 in the lab and classes during my first year, and roughly 9-4 or 10-5 in my second and third years, but did I feel like my life was balanced? Based on my tears of frustration and disappointment after scoring poorly on exams, or messing up my third Western blot in a row, or getting negative results after a months-long experiment, I'd say a resounding NO.
Turns out, it's because I didn't have a WLB when it came to how I valued myself. Even now, I still struggle with this - I look for validation entirely in my accomplishments and progress in my work and rely on external confirmations that I'm doing a "good job" and that I'm doing "enough".
It's not always a bad thing! Caring about what you do is a positive attribute. But, if I only feel deserving of a break or happy with myself when I get a gold star, we have a problem. Science is (famously) an unfeeling bitch and doesn't usually work on the first try - so it's a dangerous game to play if you rely completely on tight qPCR curves or cloning giving you colonies to feel positive about life.
What's the solution? Finding value outside of your work! My therapist started by challenging me to come up with non-work related adjectives to describe myself (this was very hard). Yeah, maybe your cells all died, but that doesn't mean you're not witty, or a good listener, or easy to make friends with, or loving towards those who matter most.
I also found that it was crucial to have a fulfilling hobby (more on this another time). When my experiments found no difference, at least I could feel accomplished by lifting heavier weights at the gym than I did last week or cooking something yummy for myself.
As for time? Well, sometimes I'd be working overtime in lab before rushing off to orchestra rehearsal - but rehearsal actually served to bolster my attitude so I could finish off the day with a sense of having tried hard and done something good. So it goes both ways - WLB can exist with and without a pure 9-5. It's how you see and judge yourself that is more telling.
You're a person outside of lab, too! Embrace it, and it'll help you to maintain an identity besides "overworked and tired grad student".