My supervisor has suggested I work from 8 till 6, 6 days per week if I want to treat the PhD like a job. I asked this question before and everyone here said "oh no it's possible to work 9-5", but I'm beginning to suspect otherwise!

I have no problem working those hours and I probably will do that and more, but I don't like the expectation that I will. Subtle? Pedantic? But an important distinction.

What is the consensus about this in general? How have your hours changed through the years?

I guess 'number of hours' has become important to me, and perhaps other PhD students, because it gives us a measure that could enable us to disengage from PhD work on our time off. A justification for relaxing in an industry that, by character, doesn't have many feedback mechanisms or measures of mid-project success.

Hi there

I am in year two of four on my PhD and funded. My funding 'contract' stipulates that I work 37 hours a week and have 8 weeks a year holiday. I don't take that much holiday at all, and find that some weeks I work hardly at all (or, rather, produce little but am 'at work'), and other times (like now!) I work all day every day to meet the deadline.

Last year I was in the first year and worked 6.5 days a week, to get on top of the work and because I was constantly. However, I realised that without evenings and weekends off I would burn out before a few more months was up, let alone another three years. I would say as well that hours seem to differ between lab-based scientists and humanities people. The former seem to work under a lot more sustained pressure in a work environment. I am the latter though so this is a generalisation...

Jayney

Yeah.. my supervisor said the same... to my friends.. he expected them in 24/7 basically and his wife (another supervisor of some of my friends) said 'The PhD is your life... that comes first'

Does it bollocks. I got in about 9:00.. went home about 3:00 or 4:00 and never did any work at weekends.. sometimes I did work late.. but very, very rarely..

Now, bear in mind, I went over my 3 years and spent year 4 working full time and writing up... I had finished my write up after 3 years, but my 2nd supervisor said I needed to change a lot of it before I could submit...

So, with that in mind.. I suggest you work NORMAL hours.. don't create a rod for your back, the more you work.. the more you'll be expected to work.. My supervisor and I understood each other so we didn't have any arguments.

'The PhD is your life... that comes first'

I so hate that attitude. I don't think any of the academics in my dept (ruthlessly competitive as many of them are) would say that - thankfully.

I think in reality the work pressure really waxes and wanes for most people.

Supervisors who say 'the PhD is your life' and 'I worked 16 hours a day as a student' fall into one two two categories:
a) the obsessives
b) the liars
You can tell the difference because those in category a) will probably continue to put their research above anything else in their lives. Either way it's pretty difficult to explain that while your research is important to you, so are other things.
I wouldn't recommend being in the lab 9am til 3 or 4pm, a PhD isn't supposed to be LESS work than a real job. In the end you'll have the easiest life if you try to start and finish around the time other people in the lab do. Also that way you'll have people to talk to while you're there.
Obviously if you're doing a non-science PhD then please ignore all my advice, I can't say anything because I'd find it very hard to spend many hours a day just reading and writing (not looking forward to writing up!).

Grrrr... I hate that attitude too!!!

I can think of one particular fellow postgrad who "works 16 hours a day" and says that "the PhD must take over your entire life - or else you don't stand a chance"... ummmm right... How come this person is now in their SIXTH year??? Obviously working 16 hour days hasn't worked out too well for them lol

I think this is the second time that you have posted about number of hours worked Graham? Maybe you are a bit too hung up on it... if you think you have done enough work to achieve whatever you wanted for the day then I reckon that is enough hours!!! It's kind of like asking "how long is a piece of string" really

It depends from the period. I am not a morning person, so I start around 10-11 am. Some days I finish around 5 pm, other days around 9-10 pm. Depends from the experiments, conferences, deadline, papers etc.
My supervisor thinks that this is not a classic job where you switch on your brain at 8 and off at 5pm. It has to be very flexible, taking in account to work over the weekend or late in the night or better just few hours. So he doesn't control me at all, but we have a meeting every week or two less or more, discussing of everything.

It is my second post about this topic Rosy, perhaps because I'm looking for 'permission' to go home! I could generate work to keep myself going 24/7 and probably do a spectacular PhD, but it's a question of knowing when to call it a day. At around 6pm I'm choosing between my coat or the coffee pot and wondering what other students are doing.

My supervisors technique is to make students always feel like they've fallen short of their potential, to drive them harder. He doesn't need to do that with me anymore because I do it to myself!

I just had a similar discussion with my sup. Because of the stress i've been ill and I was trying to explain to her that the balance I need in life was gone and that it felt like it was all PhD and no life. My sup told me they warned me for this and that I should have expected it and once again stressed how I would need to put in a lot more hours than somebody that actually has a life and (literarily) have no lunch breaks. How's that for a useful, constructive answer! I am more than willing to put in the hard work and long hours when needed (I didn't get to this point sitting on my bum all day). But I refuse to walk the 60-hours a week line because it is supposed to be part of the package. I am still convinced one can actually enjoy doing a PhD, but with the stuck up attitude of research workaholics I have met over the past few months, I'm starting to wonder.

My supervisor has never said to me you need to work x many hours a week/day/month to get your work done. If I ever ask them a question about length or time, their answer is "how long is a piece of string".

I probably don't work as hard as other people but I do get my work done. I take holidays and have odd days where I find I don't do anything for whatever reason. I never work at weekends or evenings (unless a have a tight deadline). My supervisors are happy as long as they see progress and I make sure they know whats happening (from time to time).

I guess this is quite a laid back approach but everyone in my research group seems to finish (submit and viva) between 3rd and 4th year so it can't all be wrong.

When I first started my PhD, my supervisor told me I should expect to work 9am-6pm 5 days a week, and late evenings and weekends as necessary. It means if I work shorter hours than that I feel I'm not working hard enough and I will be judged for it, but in reality the number of hours I'm at work never really has any correlation with how productive I'm being. My productivity varies week by week and so do my hours. I'm glad to have some sort of guidline, otherwise I'd be tempted to work shorter hours on a regular basis (even though I know I shouldn't), but it is just a guideline- no point working really long hours if you don't need to, but it's definitely worth putting in some serious hours if it's required.