i don’t know that i’ve ever met anyone who felt like they were taking exquisite care of themselves all the time.
most of the time, people say things like:
“i do workout pretty regularly but i’m so terrible at sleep.”
“i get enough sleep but i have 0 hobbies or interests that are active right now.”
“i eat pretty well but i can’t remember the last time i was ahead of the game on my work.”
and at the heart of it is often the fact that we need to do so much to keep stable physically, mentally, and emotionally, and there just isn’t enough time in the world to do that and be a grad student, too. in order to do everything that you “should” as a grad student, there is always something that could be working on, something you could be reading, something you could be writing.
so where do you fit in the care you need? and how are you making those decisions?
i have a few questions that i ask clients when we’re getting to the bottom of something like burnout, or any other situation where time is disappearing and there isn’t enough left:
where is your time going?
what informs your decisions about what you do and when?
what evidence do you have to support those decisions? where’s the data?
it’s really easy to internalize the “publish or perish” model in academia and believe that anything in your life that doesn’t directly move your work forward is at best, a distraction, and at worse, keeping you from getting a job one day. who can justify working out when the choice is “work out now or have a job later”?
but if you’re well rested, you think more clearly. you often get things done more quickly. you can switch between tasks more easily. you’re more engaged and present when you’re rested. at least if you’re me, you’re also a nicer person and more pleasant to be around.
and even if you couldn’t measure the impact of care on your work:
you still deserve to care for yourself.
so this week, think about how you can get some evidence for the file entitled “reasons why i deserve to take care of myself despite what my brain gremlins think”. that might look like:
tracking your time to see where you are actually spending your days and nights
tracking your mood to see if it is impacted when you care for yourself
tracking your output to see if there is a connection between how and when you work, and what you do to take care of yourself
keeping track of what thoughts come up when you think about taking care of yourself - “i don’t have enough time”, “after i’m done i will” and the like
the more evidence you have, the easier it is to make data-based decisions about your schedule, and what you include as non-negotiable in your daily, weekly, and monthly routines. the more evidence you have, the more you can see your own patterns and start to address them. this isn’t a magical solution - knowing that sleeping more helps you focus won’t magically make your to-do list shrink. but knowing that sleeping more helps you focus might make it easier to say, at 9 pm - “it’s time to wind down, this can wait until tomorrow” rather than pushing through until 1 am. and that makes a difference.