I have been both a PhD student and a research staff at NUS. My experience is that a researcher at NUS never crosses 8 actual working hours a day. As a staff I could never meet this benchmark, but as a student I did during my first year, particularly when I was preparing for my qualifiers (QE).
This does not mean that I spend less than 8 hours in school. In fact, for more than an year, I used to sleep in the lab regularly on the pretex of working hard. When I look back now, I feel my actual working hours were less than 8 during that time too.
In NUS it is very common; PhD students and research staffs spend around 12 hours a day in school, but only manage to work 4-5 hours. So what happens to those remaining 7 hours?
When we spend 12 hours or more in school, we get a very strong feeling at the back of our mind. The feeling that we are working VERY HARD, specially, somewhere deep in our mind, we start feeling that we are working MORE THAN WHAT IS REQUIRED. This feeling is the root of all problems.
Below is my analysis of what we generally do during those 7 hours:
This does not mean that I spend less than 8 hours in school. In fact, for more than an year, I used to sleep in the lab regularly on the pretex of working hard. When I look back now, I feel my actual working hours were less than 8 during that time too.
In NUS it is very common; PhD students and research staffs spend around 12 hours a day in school, but only manage to work 4-5 hours. So what happens to those remaining 7 hours?
When we spend 12 hours or more in school, we get a very strong feeling at the back of our mind. The feeling that we are working VERY HARD, specially, somewhere deep in our mind, we start feeling that we are working MORE THAN WHAT IS REQUIRED. This feeling is the root of all problems.
Below is my analysis of what we generally do during those 7 hours:
- As I am working MORE THAN WHAT IS REQUIRED, let me spend more time on facebook, xiaonei, youtube, QQ etc.
- As I am working MORE THAN WHAT IS REQUIRED, let me spend more time on discussions, though they are not related to my work at all. I think I have earned enough time to explain whether communalism is better or socialism.
- As I am working MORE THAN WHAT IS REQUIRED, I have enough time to see this interesting documentary/movie/funny-video which I happen to find accidentally.
- Its been more than an hour, why the NEWS headline is not changing? I think I have earned enough time to update myself on which actor/actress is involved in what scandal.
- Will add more later...
The bottom-line is, an 8-hours-a-day plan (excluding lunch and dinner time) works best; no more no less.
