Ask HN: Tips for Efficiently Managing Full-Time Job, PhD, Side Hustles, Gym? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Tips for Efficiently Managing Full-Time Job, PhD, Side Hustles, Gym?

12 pointsahil9517 comments

Hi guys, I find myself juggling a multitude of commitments – a demanding full-time job, pursuing a PhD, managing side hustles, prioritizing workouts, and maintaining a social life. While I'm passionate about each of these aspects, I'm struggling to strike a balance that allows me to excel in all areas without burning out. I tried a variety of ways but it seems as though it is virtually impossible to do all of these things at once. How do you organize your time efficiently? What strategies or tools have you found most effective in maximizing productivity? How do you ensure that your health and personal relationships don't take a backseat in this busy schedule? Thank you!

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PhD and side hustles seem diametrically opposed. It is surprising you want to do both, so ask yourself why.

If you want to become rich, then ask how much you want to do that, and would you sacrifice all the other things. Quit your job and PhD and do startups, or maybe double down on the job, get up the FAANG levels and build investments.

Or is it curiosity driven, maybe you love going deep in the PhD but miss building stuff, so you do the side hussles. Could the PhD be steered towards something more "buildy" (even though it is mainly research and thesis writing). But a lot of AI PhDs they seem to at least build something, and some of it looks like fun stuff.

I have a theory about workouts, in that it is a slider scale, not all or nothing. You don't need to do 10 hours a week at the Gym to tick the box (I have mild CFS, which is like having the flu 4 days a week, and I do 2 hours a week, slow paced, to help with that. 0 or 10 would be very bad for me).

How much does going to the gym mean to you, maybe you could buy some weights and do most of it at home.

Finally you said commitments. I think a lot of that stuff is choices.

In my opinion, it IS actually impossible to do more than one of those things really effectively at the same time.

Even with socialization, any serious commitment to pursue a goal can routinely be detrimental to relationships or social appointments.

If you are doing a PhD, then that is your side hustle. Or figure out a way to make make it into one. But you have no bandwidth left for normal side hustles.

Prioritizing workouts in this situation is just vanity and poor judgement. With so many other things going on, the minimum needed for adequate health is what you should target.

You have to be extremely targeted with your socialization. It should include some video, text or voice meetings for efficiency sometimes.

If you are able to keep the job and complete the PhD at the same time, that is a major feat. Not that others haven't done it. But both things can easily demand most of your energy. So one of them probably needs to be somewhat lightweight for it to work out. I don't know a ton about it but maybe you can stretch the PhD out a bit to make it more feasible.

If you can somehow manage financially to drop the full time job and you are serious about the PhD, then you should quit that job. Unless it's literally just standing or sitting around with hours every day that you can focus on the PhD while supposedly working. Maybe replace with a part-time job.

Sleep, food, exercise. Those three form a pillar for happiness and success. Some tricks which I’ve found helpful:

Instead of focusing on doing the thing, focus on doing the things that makes doing the thing easy.

For example, don’t focus on going to bed early, focus on avoiding caffeine after noon and winding down your routine an hour before your target bed time. Don’t focus on going to the gym but focus on living somewhere that is close to a gym. Same with eating well, develop a system that makes it convenient to eat well. For example, I do a mix of grocery delivery and meal kits because I know I hate grocery shopping.

By focusing upstream on making downstream execution easy, things fall into place and it all feels more actionable.

Something has to give in your situation because simultaneously pursing both a PhD and full time job really limits your free time out of the gate.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to even try to pursue side hustles in your situation, it makes no sense and I’d be surprised if you’ve even been able to give any attention to this at all - just stop telling yourself you need to do it/forgive yourself for not doing this even if you think you should.

One thing that helps me squeeze in exercise is working out by 1. commuting via bike/walk to work 2. going on a run at lunch time when I wfh 3. lifting weights during regular work hours around 2-3pm (easier than you think in most office jobs. not always possible though)

(PhD and math professor here)

What do you want out of your PhD? If you want the initials after your name then great, but the only way to juggle a full time job with PhD (which itself is a full time job) is to half-ass both. Maybe this suits your goals, but I find this difficult to imagine. Are you in a position where a mediocre PhD, with a weak recommendation from your thesis advisor, would actually do something for you?

Personally, as an advisor I wouldn't even take a student with a full time job, let alone side hustles in addition. I'd assume they'd have too little time and energy to accomplish anything. And are you even able to attend seminars, go to conferences, etc. etc. which are a normal part of graduate work?

I definitely agree that it's worthwhile to maintain physical fitness and at least something of a social life no matter what. Beyond that, I'd agree with what everyone else is saying: choose what is most important to you, and focus on that more narrowly.

I only have side hustles, PhD, workouts (running, powerlifting) and trying to prioritize life outside the university and already find it quite hard. Sometimes it is indeed feel impossible, and you just have to accept it. You just have to learn to be able to accept that if you want to focus more on PhD, your side hustles will suffer and vice versa. You also need to know what you want to get from your job and your PhD and only focus on those things, ignoring as much what is wanted from you by your boss or supervisor, but not aligned with your interests - because otherwise it will simply suck your time. You have to stop being perfectionist. You have to learn what the most productive hours of the day for you, what hours are good for doing what kinds of work (deep, shallow, etc), when is optimal for you to go to gym (I usually go after I am really done with all the work for the day). Sometimes there are busy periods, when one part of your life should take the majority of your time, and that is OK too. Hope, that some of it helps.

Start saying 'No'.

Replace side hustles with "parent of toddler age children," or with "second full-time job" is a more realistic measure of commitment, and I'm in the same boat as OP.

The above should be and will be the top comment in this thread, because it's the only advice I can think of that has worked so far.

The benefits of learning to say no generalize to many other areas. Although I like to think of it inversely, as making my "yes"es very hard, and thus every no becomes a reaffirmation of a higher-value yes I had made in the daylight of reflection and conviction.

Drop some commitments. If you're pursuing a PhD there's no reason to have a job and side hustles, focus on your research, a PhD isn't something to half ass. Drop one of the other two. That's my 2c!

- Quit your job: save up to survive a year or so, then quit and focus on other stuff. This is really a stand in for: pick 1, not all 3.

- Read "Deep work": 3-4 hours of deep work on 1 thing gives you more time to spend on the other things.

- Wake up early: Get started at 6-7 am and be done with your deep work session by noon. And/or work on it at night.

Is it possible that you are doing too much?

Timely podcast on tools for goals: https://hubermanlab.com/goal-toolkit-how-to-set-and-achieve-...

Yes, it is impossible. Something a lot of zoomers/millennials unfortunately never learned: you can't have it all. Sorry. Pick what's most important to you and sacrifice the rest.

I would try to combine whatever you can. Make a side project about your PhD or workouts. Unfortunately though, there's only 24 hours in a day and there's no getting around it.

If you have to have a full time I would find one that has a lot of downtime so you can work on other things while on the clock.

Your PhD is your side hustle

it is hard enough to combine a job with side hustles…

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