PSG #002: 3 Pillars for your successful, balanced and healthy PhD life

A PhD is really stressful and you, as a PhD candidate, feel a lot of pressure. This leads to low self-esteem, exhaustion and sadly also sickness. You often don’t know where to start and how to move forward. All of this is building up a huge amount of stress and frustration.

You would be happy to be prepared for all the challenges and build some confidence. You want to find some time to relax, meet friends and have hobbies. Feeling at ease, and enjoying the time off from work without remorse because you are not working, would be great.

Game changer 1

The first game changer for us was not only to work on stress management but also on our mindset and time management to avoid as much stress as possible in the first place.

Pillar 1: your mindset

During most of my PhD, I really struggled with imposter syndrome and a really negative mindset. I felt stupid and not good enough. I was afraid that my boss would realise he made a mistake in hiring me for a PhD position. New challenges, experiments, and analyses scared me because I was afraid to fail and embarrass myself.

When you have a poor mindset, everything will be hard. Your imposter syndrome is controlling you. You are scared of challenges and have low self-esteem. All leading to internal stress and pressure. Without a proper and strong mindset, you can’t handle stress effectively. This makes your dream, of finishing your PhD, so much harder to achieve!

Instead, with the right mindset and tools, nothing is holding you back. You know you can handle challenges and understand how to grow through them. The boost in your self-esteem is also really handy for your next career step.

Be aware that you need to work on your mindset like a bodybuilder trains his muscles, it's the foundation of everything you do!

Pillar 2: your time management

At the beginning of my PhD, I was working a lot and doing as many experiments as possible. I was exhausted and overwhelmed. The longer I worked per day the more mistakes I did. Additionally, I did not know the most important steps I had to take to finish my PhD.

If you don’t have proper time management, you increase your stress tremendously. You miss deadlines, put too much into your day, work too long without taking proper breaks, neglect recharging and lose your focus.

You need good time management to be successful in basically every area.

Don’t be busy, be productive!

Pillar 3: your stress management

Of course, in addition to these (partially) self-made stressors, you face a lot of stress during your PhD. Endless to-do lists, seminars, meetings, reports, posters, bosses, colleagues … all sources for more stress. You need to learn how to cope with these stresses in a healthy way.

Without the right mindset and time management, you will struggle hard, for very long.

But not knowing why you are stressed and how to handle and change that, will lead to sickness.

If you know the why, who, when and where aka the sources of your stress better, you can change your status quo. You will handle challenges and pressure with more ease.

Thus, we found it is important to work on these three pillars for more success, balance and health in your PhD life.

Game changer 2

The second game changer for us was really implementing things we were reading and hearing about.

You can have all the knowledge in the world but if you don't actively do something with it, it’s basically useless.

Unfortunately, there is no magic potion, magic book, or magic course you can just take to make all your problems disappear. Books, videos, and courses can inspire you and provide tools and tips. However, in the end, YOU have to take action and do something with it.

We really wish you success, balance and health!

Now, see this as a sign to get started. Take an inventory of the three pillars. Where are you at? Where do you want to change? Which little action could improve your life right away?

Go do that!

See you next week.

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