There are a lot of people in my field who manage to work morning, noon, and night. I’m not sure how they ever manage families, and I’m not sure how they manage to do it for decades at a time. As I’ve gotten older, I find myself increasingly unable to devote hours sitting in one position, even if I’m having a good time solving problems. Also, I’ve started to get extremely tired in the afternoons, and for the first time in my life I actually feel like naps are needed.
Working some exercise into my day has helped break up some of the inevitable monotony. Biking to work on Tuesdays, one of two mornings where I have late meetings, has also been great. However, I still feel pretty beat by the end of the day. One of the things that has been particularly frustrating of late is that I want to spend more time with Jodi during the evenings, but I’ve had a flurry of tasks to finish. Doing them ahead of upcoming conference travel is important, but so is recovering in between. I’m beginning to worry about how to cope with all those duties, while getting rest and socialization. It’s pretty easy to get so focused on the task, you not only forget why they were important, but you forget that it’s important to put them away for a while and do something else.
I wonder how other people cope with this problem? As a student, I got to commiserate with other students. I’m not a student anymore, and finding post-docs to socialize with is harder than you’d think, even on an experiment like mine. I don’t even want to know how professors cope with this. Actually, whether they cope with it or just accept the workaholism is actually a question that worries me.
