Phinished

Just over 2 weeks ago I finished my PhD thesis. I’m done. 7 years of part-time work sent off to be judged. The day after I handed it in we went off for a cruise holiday around the Norwegian fjords which was lovely and relaxing and meant that I didn’t really get chance to process the whole “yeah so that thing you were doing that consumed all of your free time for the last 7 years is done now” thing until we got home.

So now I’ve had a week at home without my PhD thesis hanging over me. How has it felt? Well weird I guess. That said it’s been a weird week with a spontaneous public holiday for the queen’s funeral on Monday, catching up with work after 2 weeks away and also having COVID which we unfortunately picked upon holiday. So yet again it doesn’t feel like I’ve had time to properly settle into the new state of being post PhD. However, I did get a little taste.

After Work

For the last 7 years I’ve logged off work, gone for a walk, made dinner, watched an hour of TV and then logged back on to do another 1-2 hours on my PhD (either writing papers, experimental code or more recently my thesis). This week after work I had an extra 2 hours a night to relax. I was pretty exhausted every night due to COVID, so I probably didn’t make the best use of them, but it was weird not having to force myself to log back on. I also felt more motivated to do things like prepare lunch for the next day since I was less anxious about how little free time I would have.

The Length of the Week

Even though it was a 4-day week, this week felt really long because I’m now finally working full time. That in itself is a really weird thing to adapt to. Ever since we started Filament in 2016 I’ve been part-time so me working full time is also an adaptation for my wider team/company. I’m hoping to keep Fridays as a kind of personal development and self reflection day during which I can read papers and stay up to date with new technologies, models and techniques to make sure I’m on top of any new developments in the NLP/ML space. I managed to avoid any meetings this Friday, hopefully I can keep up this tradition.

The Weekend - Guilt and Anxiety

The weekend was the weirdest adaptation for me. For the last 7 years I have spent at least half a day on my PhD. This was often half of Saturday and half of Sunday if we didn’t have plans. This weekend I felt really strange not working on my PhD. For as long as I can remember I’ve felt guilty about not being productive whenever I take some downtime for any reason.

As Christina Luo says in her article Paranoid Productivity:

Productivity becomes a means to evaluate and justify the value of every activity, even those as mundane yet essential as sleep and rest. In this way, paranoid productivity is a “strong theory” in the way it becomes central to how we analyze and interpret the world.

I found it so weird and uncomfortable not to have the comfort of a deadline to fall back on over the weekend . Instead, I felt the need to do some web development to maintain that feeling of “being productive” that I crave. I also got the chance to do some chores in the garden that I’d been putting off.

I’m going to spend some time trying to become more comfortable with the idea of doing nothing and resting in the coming weeks and months. Also, I think some hobbies - new and old - might trick my brain into feeling productive so that I don’t get this feeling as much.

What Next?

I’ve survived a normal-ish week post-thesis, and it was weird. In the next few weeks I’m going to continue to adapt to life without a 2nd job to do, re-engaging with some of my old hobbies and picking up some new ones. I wish I’d kept better notes and journals from what I got up to during my PhD, so I’m also hoping to make more space for regular journaling and blogging.