Steve Tippins Ph.D. watched music students work in 45-minute blocks with half-hour breaks for walks and talk. Without regular breaks, you waste time and hurt your mental health, even when you feel like you're working straight through. Structured pauses protect both productivity and sanity during dissertation work.
One of the things I learned, and I've had a number of people confirm this, is over the course of a week, you're going to waste time even if you think you're working all the time. When I was in undergraduate school, there were a lot of— there was a music school there. And I would walk through the music school and see all the practice rooms. And about half of them would be empty with an instrument sitting in the room. And then I'd listen to the music students and say, oh my God, I practiced 9 hours today. Well, I don't know if you can really play the piano or the flute or whatever it is for 9 straight hours in a day. But what they did do is have their instrument in a room for 9 hours. And they would practice for 45 minutes and then get up and walk around and talk to people for half an hour. And they'd come back and do some else— something else and go talk to people. So, yeah, they were there for 9 hours but they were protecting themselves by taking sanity breaks every once in a while. If you're looking for a community, join our free dissertation help group
