Last updated on May 3, 2025
This is a snippet of an email I periodically send to my PhD students. “Let’s not break the head” is a good related quote, from my PhD student, Ilkka Kaate.
Dear team,
(cc other supervisors)
you’ve all seen this place.
You know you’re there when weird things start to happen: the research comes into your sleep.
You can’t focus on anything else.
You feel stressed and on the edge.
You might have trouble eating, your stomach might have pain.
You might get a nosebleed.
(All of these have happened — to me and to you, based on what you’ve told me.)
You’re in the place called extreme: the in-between-area of creativity and obsession.
This place is sometimes necessary. Great ideas and outcomes can come from the visit. Like they say, diamonds are born under pressure. I want to highlight that this is different from burnout – in this place, you are very focused and very efficient. You might not notice your biological needs — you’re driven, you’re focused, and you can make big leaps of progress with your research.
But the place is toxic: it’s hazardous to your health.
You should visit it seldom and only for a short time. Only for days at a time (or *a* day), not weeks.
And the more mature you get, the less frequent should those visits become.
I’m writing this because you can’t avoid this place completely.
Because you’re PhD candidates or young post-docs, you have to push hard to overcome the many obstacles.
That has some price, but the price can’t be too much.
Your health must come first.
Nobody else except you knows when you are the limit. Your supervisors, including me, can throw a lot of things at you. Unfortunately, we cannot see where your breaking point is. We of course think about it, and we don’t want to overburden you. But we do want you to be *close* to the limit at this stage of your careers — “close to limit” is the place where you grow.
“Close to limit” is okay. “The place called extreme” is not – it’s a danger zone you need to just briefly visit when you have no other choice, and then quickly escape.
Some tactics that help here:
-learn to approach deadlines differently: instead of thinking, “Deadline is Friday, so I’ll complete it on Friday”, think “Deadline is Friday, so I’ll complete it on *Monday*” or “Deadline is September, I’ll complete it on May” (<= real approach in our team that has elevated our productivity while decreasing our stress)
-learn to say no to things — it’s tempting to say yes to things, especially at early stage of your career when you’re looking for opportunities. Every opportunity, even if it doesn’t really advance your career, seems like worth taking. You’re eager to work. But the graveyard is full of careers of people who didn’t learn how to say no! Unfortunately, there’s no fixed rule on when you should say “no” and when “yes” — sometimes, you make mistakes with both categories!
-keep moving forward. Got a rejection? Keep moving forward! Got another rejection? Keep moving forward! Didn’t get the job? Keep moving forward. You get the picture. The people that endure are those that don’t give up. But, there’s an important nuance here – you *can* (and should) give up on things that are doomed. Projects and people that won’t elevate you – get rid of those. What “not giving up” means is not giving up on the big picture, your “ultimate goal”. Again, it’s really hard to distinguish between when to let something go and when to keep enduring. But with *some* things, you must endure, whatever they are.
-enjoy the journey: after you’ve reached your goal posts, be it PhD or Professorship, you’ll notice yourself thinking, “Is this it? Is this all there is?”. And you might take on some new, imaginary goal post to chase. We can never be really satisfied when we chase the goal posts because there’s always another one in the horizon. So, it’s more important to work with people who you enjoy working with — it’s much more fun and exciting. Try to find (or create) that team of people that’ll stand by you through the good and the bad! The worse situation in academia is doing research alone. The best situation is doing research in a good team. Like I said to Waleed, “you’ll KNOW when you get there.”
Anyway, the main point here was about the place called extreme. Listen to your body and don’t overdo it. Communicate clearly with your supervisor if you’re overworked – I guarantee you that we’ll understand. You don’t need to suffer alone.