I lurk here quite a lot reading various peoples experiences, with a general sense that I am not getting enough done! I was dying to comment on the thread about how many hours people put in, but when I worked it out it just made me worry more. I do a lot of teaching, and this takes up more time that should (I do love teaching though).

Anyway, I had my first panel review meeting yesterday, and all three were very impressed with the progress I'm making and very positive about the direction of my research! So I must be doing something right after all.

Just thought I'd share that with everyone. I guess I'm trying to make the point that a few (sometimes very few) focused hours work just as well as a lot of unfocused ones.

That is really good to hear barnaby It is especially nice in comparison to the 'you must work 60+ hours a week or you're doomed' line that we are usually fed!

Ok if I could work that many hours i might finish quicker... but worrying constantly about the amount of work I had to do has hampered my productivity for the best part of a year now... Lately I have started just trying to make a little teeny tiny bit of progress every day - and I find that I can get more done in 3 hours than I used to get done in 3 days (due to time taken up with sheer panic lol!)

I think you have to keep a clear line in your head that more hours does not mean more or even better work...at some point there are diminishing returns where you are better off walking away from the work and calling it a day, than slogging away at it for more long hours. Your brain can honestly only do so much. I was in the full time practice of law for the first two years of my PhD ( doing it distance learning, but with full time expectations on submissions nevertheless), and I managed to keep up. It was hard, but it just meant being highly organized about time, and very planful about how to meet deadlines.

Frankly, after working and doing the PhD, "only" doing a PhD is a bit boring sometimes! I sort of miss, in an odd way, the constant pressure!

I do think there's a lot to be said for other demands on your time. It means that when you do have a few hours to devote to the PhD you make them count. I am incredibly good at titting about when I should be working when I have loads of time to do something, but the pressure of not much time seems to help.

So far anyway!

You watch, in six months I'll be giving you all the details of my mental breakdown.