How to Grad & Beyond with Betul

If you are in grad school, you are probably familiar with the permanent guilt that looms over: the desire to be constantly productive and yet the inability to(and in fact impossibility) to do so, which then makes you feel guilt even when resting. Sounds familiar? It does to me. Let’s discuss it. 

Modern life demands constant productivity. We are constantly fed the notion that we are the sum of our measurable achievements, so we are always on the go to reach the maximum number of achievements. This is even worse in some contexts such as grad school/academia. You can be the best thinker or researcher in the world, but you are nothing without your presentations and publications (they think so, but this is not true). This pressure foces us to constantly aim to produce something. anything, instead of taking our time with our research. This puts us under a lot of pressure because it is not humanly possible to be productive at all times, making us unable to rest mentally. So how do we deal with it?  

When I noticed the toll this expectation was taking on me in grad school, I started to think how (if at all) I was benefiting from giving into this pressure and I noticed that I was not. Then, I started a hard test on myself: what if I took things slow and steady for a bit? As hard as it was, I forced myself to only work on my dissertation for 3-4 hours a day in the morning and leave it alone for the rest of the day: I mean no look at my dissertation or any research papers. Forget about looking, I was not even going to think about them. As hard as this process was initially because of the immense guilt of not being productive, I eventually (months later!) reached a point where I started genuinely being able to relax. With the ability to relax came the ability to leave that guilt aside because I started thinking that I deserved that relaxation. Ironically, I became more “productive” because I gave myself only 3-4 hours to finish what I needed to finish and not the whole day and night, and I rested well. 

Getting rid of that guilt requires hard changes and a strong will, since it is very strong. However, it is one of the best decisions you can make to give yourself some care. You deserve it! So if you are struggling with it, give yourself some hard rule to foce yourself to relax. Trust me, it will work.