How is everyone doing with self-care?

[Sanman]

I'm curious, particularly from those out in the field, how everyone is doing with self care. With pressure to see more pts, increased paperwork, and, in my case, to manage new clinicians I am finding myself working more hours and struggling to find time for the gym and other self-care issues. Any irony for somebody who spends a lot of time promoting it to my clients. So, what are your tricks to leading a balanced lifestyle?

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[erg923]

I'm curious, particularly from those out in the field, how everyone is doing with self care. With pressure to see more pts, increased paperwork, and, in my case, to manage new clinicians I am finding myself working more hours and struggling to find time for the gym and other self-care issues. Any irony for somebody who spends a lot of time promoting it to my clients. So, what are your tricks to leading a balanced lifestyle?

I have always hated the word "self-care", btw. I'm sure anyone with a full-time job and children struggles with this.

My VA job is only 40 hours, and I never stay past 430 and only occasionally arrive before 8, however, I do have other 1099 consulting work that I do from home on weekends. I gave up sleeping-in long ago, so i usually do this in the mornings before fam starts their day. I have a treadmill and free weights in the basement. I dont use them as much as I should.

All that said, I did take this whole week off to go to Augusta. 🙂

 

[WisNeuro]

I almost never work more than 40 hours. With the exception that I will occasionally take a manuscript home that I am working on to look over for errors. When it's 15 minutes to quitting time, I start closing up shop, so that when 4 o' clock hits, I'm out the door. Other than that, maintaining physical activities is huge (hiking, camping, rock climbing) and having regular date nights is also key.

 

[erg923]

I've never understood the appeal of camping.

 

[WisNeuro]

I grew up camping, backpacking, trail riding on horses. I enjoy being outdoors. I'm talking about real camping, not just going to some crappy campground just outside of the city.

 

[MCParent]

I love camping!

No one has a "balanced lifestyle." I've always thought "work/life balance" was a bunch of bs. I prefer "work/life flow." That idea is based in greater separation of work and other stuff--eg not checking your work email during your gym/family/whatever time, and not goofing off with games and face book during work time. The most unbalanced people I know let their work/life/leisure all bleed together into a mess.

 

[bmedclinic]

I grew up camping, backpacking, trail riding on horses. I enjoy being outdoors. I'm talking about real camping, not just going to some crappy campground just outside of the city.

Camping has a much more broadly interpreted meaning, I've discovered, when talking to some people. When I say camping, I really mean something closer to backpacking. And when others say camping, sometimes, they mean "only staying at a 3 star hotel".
To me, the appeal of camping (as defined by me above) is the change of pace it forces on me. I cant exactly say why, but it works wonders for me. Even if its only for 2 days.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

It's much better than my first year or two out, when I consistently worked 50+hr/wk and stressed about climbing the ladder. Now there is an ebb and flow to my work/life balance. Some weeks I work 35-40hr, other weeks I work 45-50hr. I work probably 1 Saturday and 1 Sunday a month to catch up on reports. Those two (sometimes three days) are my tradeoff for not bringing work home and being able to have more flexibility during the week. If I want to take a long lunch, duck out early to get in a round of golf, go in late bc I stayed late the night before, etc...I don't worry about it.

As for tricks to promote balance:
1. Learn to say No.
2. Join a rec league (e.g. indoor soccer).
3. Schedule regular vacations. I travel a lot, though even someone who doesn't can take a long weekend every few months to get away.

 

[Sanman]

Helpful advice, I like hiking but am not a camping buff. I am jealous of you 40 hr/wk people and need to have more of that in my life. Thought my biggest issue has been workload since my company was bought over. 5-8 evals or 12-16 follow up sessions is a brutal work day and rarely ends in 8 hrs, with all the new places and new people thrown in.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I'm scheduled for 40 hours/week, which generally works out to about 45 most of the time (i.e., stay an hour or two late/come an hour early a couple times per week). Some weeks it gets closer to 50-55, but not often. That's not counting research, reading, talk prep., etc., that I often do at home, much of which I just don't consider to be "work" in the typical sense.

To maintain appropriate work/life flow (like MCParent, I hate the term "work/life balance"), I workout 5 or so mornings/week, minimize the amount of work-related anything I do on the weekends, make conscious efforts to spend time with friends even if I'm feeling a bit worn out, get out of town on a semi-regular basis (every few months), and pepper in a few random Mondays and Fridays off throughout the year. It's amazing how much difference a 3-day weekend can make.

 

[PsyDr]

After years of an 80-100hr work week, I've finally cut back to a ~30hr week. I met some economic goals, couldn't find anything super interesting to study, and didn't see the point anymore.

Right now I'm taking some downtime and planning my next move.

 

[WisNeuro]

Right now I'm taking some downtime and planning my next move.

King's pawn to e4.

 

[PsyDr]

The Lopez opener is a great, but I'd wager you know the Berlin defense.

 

[MCParent]

struggling to find time for the gym and other self-care issues

Just another point IMO for OP… you never "find" time for anything. There is literally an infinite amount of stuff to do with this work. Even if you were the most renowned expert in your area, you could become an expert in a new thing, too. So time is never "found" for anything; it's created. As in the work/life flow thing: just now I decided it was gym time this afternoon between lab meeting and my clinical stuff. Stricter divisions between work and other stuff really help, I think.

 

[WisNeuro]

That, or the Sicilian, depending on that next step

 

[Ollie123]

Coming off internship, which for me included about 6 months straight of 80-90 hour weeks I feel I've found a much better balance. I still probably work ~50-55 hours most weeks, but that feels so much more reasonable. The work is far more enjoyable. Wife and I still have some stress related to scheduling, but a vast improvement from where we were.

To me, a big part of it is just getting things on the books and sticking to it. I'm unlikely to cancel plans no matter how much "I should be working" rumination is going on. I didn't take much away from my internship beyond learning when it is permissible to aim for the "minimal professional standard." This frees up a lot of time, particularly on the clinical side. My notes and intakes are short and contain typos, but the likelihood that any of that will ever matter in the slightest is basically zilch. This saves me significant amounts of time. Delegation is a struggle, in part because I don't (yet) have funding. Thus, my support staff is provided through the good graces and generosity of the center I'm a part of so I try not to be overly burdensome. I'm getting good mentorship here though and once I start pulling in larger funding that should help immensely.

Exercise has to happen in the AM for me or it won't. I wake up at 6AM every day (Sat/Sun included) - sometimes I go to work very early and other days I go for a run. I also try to 2-for-1 my time whenever possible. For instance, my wife and I now take a walk 3 evenings a week during our "how was your day" time after work. Otherwise, we sat on our butts on the couch while we caught up and then it was too late to do anything. The biggest issue I'm having right now is figuring out how to carve additional work time into available windows. I flipped from a night person to a morning person at some point, so sitting down to write a paper or run some analyses at 9PM after my wife has gone to bed just doesn't work anymore. T/R I have "permission" to work late, but if I'm not feeling it on those days I end up in trouble since I can't just move it to the next day instead. Still trying to figure out how to handle it.

Its an ongoing struggle, but an important one!

 

[psych844]

If I can get good sleep on a consistent basis, work for me is not work at all...it's fulfilling and I don't mind working 50-60hrs. If i can't, work is the most stressful thing ever.

 

[Therapist4Chnge]

Prioritizing professional pursuits has really helped me. I came in w. an R1 Superstar or Bust desire. Thankfully I realized about two yrs into my push that my priorities had changed. Tenure isn't necessary and I can carve out a nice career while enjoying my life outside of it.

I rewrote my annual goals awhile back (and tweeked my 3yr and 5yr plans), and as a result I feel a lot better about my progress and annual reviews. I stopped spending as much time pursuing complex research ideas, aiming for large grant funding, and trying to climb the political ladder. As a junior faculty member, it was a lot to bite off so early in my career. Instead, I focused more on collaborations, I re-focused my clinical efforts to streamline my duties, and I cut my hours so I could travel more extensively. I also spent some time soliciting feedback from team members and trying to implement some specific changes to improve my effectiveness and our effectiveness as a team. I spend less overall time but get more done clinically now.

It's been about a year or so, and I'm in a much more comfortable place. I'm not in a position to go up for Associate Professor during my Year 5, but I'm okay with that. I redistributed my research time bc I didn't get the grant funding I needed. I still will chip away at the mounds of sata I have, but it gets done when it gets done. My extra time now is spent golfing/traveling, mentoring, and volunteering for state/national committees. It's still a lot to do, but I enjoy the time a lot more.

Being more targeted in my research collaborations has really paid off. I have a few active research groups that all are moving forward and I should have 3-5 accepted manuscripts by the end of the year.

There will always be stressful aspects of any job, but we have a lot more control over our own stress (and expectations). Once I got my "other duties" figured out, the clinical work went more smoothly.

 

[123EW]

Coming off internship, which for me included about 6 months straight of 80-90 hour weeks I feel I've found a much better balance. I still probably work ~50-55 hours most weeks, but that feels so much more reasonable. The work is far more enjoyable. Wife and I still have some stress related to scheduling, but a vast improvement from where we were.

Holy crap, I sure hope you didn't do internship where I am headed.

 

[Justanothergrad]

I've never understood the appeal of camping.

Come visit my family reunions. It will all make sense afterwards.

I almost never work more than 40 hours. With the exception that I will occasionally take a manuscript home that I am working on to look over for errors. When it's 15 minutes to quitting time, I start closing up shop, so that when 4 o' clock hits, I'm out the door. Other than that, maintaining physical activities is huge (hiking, camping, rock climbing) and having regular date nights is also key.

This is basically the story of my life, especially with the hiking/rock climbing. It keeps me zen even if things get crazy.

 

[PsychMajorUndergrad18]

As a undergraduate I would have to say that I have a good school/life balance (except for the week before and the week of finals and also the first week or two of the semester). I regularly try to spend time with my family and take time out during the week to go to church and do personal bible studies, etc. during the week and weekends. The best trick I could offer to you is to find a good hobby or distraction to get away from work. But then again I'm a full time student so my idea of and experience with self-care is different than a person working 40+ hours a week or a doctoral student working day and night.

 

[psypipe]

Recently, I have been eager to get a much deserved break before starting my doctorate, but I am still working full-time at a clinical job. What helps me? I do not work more than 40 hours, exercise 4 times per week, eat healthy (I try), and I started meditating. Meditating 20 minutes in the morning before work really seems to make my day easier. I definitely recommend it , but I recommend taking a class to make sure you are doing it right in terms of posture.

 

[Ollie123]

Forgot what might be the biggest one - now that one is finally earning a grown-up salary, one can act like a grown-up and throw money at problems to make them go away. This was huge for us and also probably the hardest adjustment to make - we were used to being poor students and doing everything ourselves.

$50 every 2 weeks for a housekeeper was one of the best decisions we've ever made. Sounded like a fortune in graduate school and now barely makes a dent in the budget - even with me still on a post-doc salary. Gives us back half a weekend day and quite frankly, gets our place cleaner than we'd be able to do on our own. We're in an apartment now, but we'll probably do something similar for lawn care when we get a house.

Holy crap, I sure hope you didn't do internship where I am headed.

To be fair, that wasn't just internship. That was ~50 hours. The remainder was my dissertation and the fact that I was trying desperately to avoid giving up the research momentum I had built up leading into internship so was spending evenings/weekends trying to keep that going. I nonetheless lost quite a bit of momentum and will be lucky if I have 1-2 pubs come out this year (compared to 6 in 2015).

 

[PsyDr]

Just another point IMO for OP… you never "find" time for anything. There is literally an infinite amount of stuff to do with this work. Even if you were the most renowned expert in your area, you could become an expert in a new thing, too. So time is never "found" for anything; it's created. As in the work/life flow thing: just now I decided it was gym time this afternoon between lab meeting and my clinical stuff. Stricter divisions between work and other stuff really help, I think.

The former CEO of GE, Jack Welch, was quoted a piece in the WSJ about the myth of work life balance. He redirected the conversation from "work life balance" to "work life choices". “There’s no such thing as work-life balance. There are work-life choices, and you make them, and they have consequences.”

http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2009/07/13/jack-welch-no-such-thing-as-work-life-balance/

 

[deleted760483]

I've found that I can pretty much adapt to any schedule. When I think back on the last 10 or so years of my life, I didn't work at all my first year of grad school, had no kids, a low stress relationship, and did maybe 30 hours a week of work total counting class time and homework. 5 years ago I was working about 60 hours a week at 2 jobs in 3 locations and writing my dissertation. Currently I have a pretty normal 40 hour work week, a 3 year old son, and I'm studying for the EPPP. I don't think my overall happiness or life satisfaction has really changed much in any of these very different circumstances or any of the others in between. I love what I do and I love my family, so I've found I don't really need "me time" although a couple nights a week I stay up for about an hour after everyone goes to bed to play Call of Duty.

 

[PikminOC]

I'm curious, particularly from those out in the field, how everyone is doing with self care. With pressure to see more pts, increased paperwork, and, in my case, to manage new clinicians I am finding myself working more hours and struggling to find time for the gym and other self-care issues. Any irony for somebody who spends a lot of time promoting it to my clients. So, what are your tricks to leading a balanced lifestyle?

Thank you for posting. I find our jobs are more taxing than some of my non physician and therapy friends. 40 hours a week is variable. Our jobs carry over especially when we are worried about a client.

 

[Sanman]

Just another point IMO for OP… you never "find" time for anything. There is literally an infinite amount of stuff to do with this work. Even if you were the most renowned expert in your area, you could become an expert in a new thing, too. So time is never "found" for anything; it's created. As in the work/life flow thing: just now I decided it was gym time this afternoon between lab meeting and my clinical stuff. Stricter divisions between work and other stuff really help, I think.

Thanks for that and to everyone else who commented. My wife and I are carving out some time today to sign up for a new gym membership that is much closer to our house (recent move) than our current gyms. I think one thing I need to start doing more is setting up boundaries for myself at work and learning to walk out or not do things as necessary. My position in particular just seems to be filled with "emergencies" daily and I need to start putting that aside more as a salaried employee. I enjoy work, but revisiting my goals has become necessary at this point ( as well as speaking to my wife about her goals).

 

[MCParent]

Thanks for that and to everyone else who commented. My wife and I are carving out some time today to sign up for a new gym membership that is much closer to our house (recent move) than our current gyms. I think one thing I need to start doing more is setting up boundaries for myself at work and learning to walk out or not do things as necessary. My position in particular just seems to be filled with "emergencies" daily and I need to start putting that aside more as a salaried employee. I enjoy work, but revisiting my goals has become necessary at this point ( as well as speaking to my wife about her goals).

I just had to get a new phone. I've not yet connected my work email to it, and don't intend to.

 

[WisNeuro]

I just had to get a new phone. I've not yet connected my work email to it, and don't intend to.

Yup, and I refuse to enroll in our secure server that allows us to access our outlook e-mail at home.

 

[deleted343839]

I started getting work emails on my iPhone. I thought it would be convenient, and it is, but reading these replies makes me realize how sucked in I've become. 🤔

 

[PSYquailman]

How is everyone doing with self care

I could be better, but things are winding down as I approach the end of the semester and trying to finish up dissertation before internship.

 

[Sanman]

I started getting work emails on my iPhone. I thought it would be convenient, and it is, but reading these replies makes me realize how sucked in I've become. 🤔

Yeah, I have a separate work phone. So , at least a little separation. However, no choice regarding email and such. I still will not answer calls on nights and weekends unless I am on-call. Email I will check at night and on Sunday evenings, but not between Friday and Sunday afternoon. That is one boundary I am strict about.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

One of the advantages to the VA--unless you're approved for telework, you can't get work emails at home.

One of the occasional disadvantages to the VA--unless you're approved for telework, you can't get work emails at home.

 

[smalltownpsych]

Self care? Not much of that lately, more like hanging in there treading water right now. As long as I am coping better than my patients, I'll call it good for now. 🙂

 

[erg923]

One of the advantages to the VA--unless you're approved for telework, you can't get work emails at home.

One of the occasional disadvantages to the VA--unless you're approved for telework, you can't get work emails at home.

I have remote access due to my internship involvement/role. But I never use it.

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I have remote access due to my internship involvement/role. But I never use it.

I don't think I ever would, either, if I had it. The only thing I'll occasionally even consider doing remotely is TMS training. Telework was in the conversation when they hired me (due to a variety of factors, including limited office space), but I actually prefer physically being at work while working; I'm too unproductive otherwise. And, as others have said, it blurs that fine line between work and home. I did enough of that in grad school.

I do work on research at home, but I don't get paid for that anyway.

 

[Pragma]

I just had to get a new phone. I've not yet connected my work email to it, and don't intend to.

Yup, and I refuse to enroll in our secure server that allows us to access our outlook e-mail at home.

I started getting work emails on my iPhone. I thought it would be convenient, and it is, but reading these replies makes me realize how sucked in I've become. 🤔

I was a late convert to using a smart phone (postdoc) but it has ALWAYS been my philosophy to never connect a work email directly to the device such that I receive a notification when an email comes in. I do that for personal emails/gmails only. That way, I only am looking at work emails when I choose to through the browser.

In my line of work (multiple positions involving teaching, research, and clinical work) it is essential that I compartmentalize work to some degree. It would be too distracting to get those notifications all of the time. I just have to be disciplined and check my emails as often as needed. Moreover, it's awesome to just shut off at the end of the day. I have a friend that uses the "Do no disturb" feature - that's a little extreme for me but I appreciate the concept.

All of that said, I find that with my non-clinical work, sometimes I have to use momentum when I have it. Sometimes I write grants or papers at night if I am on a roll, for instance. Sometimes an idea is fresh and I'll get information put together for supervisees on a weekend and that saves me time the week after. All of that gets offset by me having more flexibility during the day, so I do things like workout and grocery shop at times when everyone else is at work. It's all about balance.