jrockford27

You'll be busy enough with work (and lacking in money) that you might not notice that you've moved to a substantially smaller town!  
Bloomington is a substantial sized university and a substantial sized college town though, and it's a 90 minute drive from Indianapolis which gets major concerts and shows and has a wonderful art museum. I'm from a medium-large city and now doing grad school in a medium-large city and have always been impressed with Bloomington when I've had occasion to visit.
My fiancé has a saying, she says, "Bloom where you're planted."  It's pretty good advice for this profession, because you might end up on the market and only get interviews in Topeka, Tucumcari, and Tallahassee. You generally get fewer options as you move up the professional pyramid.

You'll be busy enough with work (and lacking in money) that you might not notice that you've moved to a substantially smaller town!  
Bloomington is a substantial sized university and a substantial sized college town though, and it's a 90 minute drive from Indianapolis which gets major concerts and shows and has a wonderful art museum. I'm from a medium-large city and now doing grad school in a medium-large city and have always been impressed with Bloomington when I've had occasion to visit.
My fiancé has a saying, she says, "Bloom where you're planted."  It's pretty good advice for this profession, because you might end up on the market and only get interviews in Topeka, Tucumcari, and Tallahassee. You generally get fewer options as you move up the professional pyramid.

You'll be busy enough with work (and lacking in money) that you might not notice that you've moved to a substantially smaller town!  
Bloomington is a substantial sized university and a substantial sized college town though, and it's a 90 minute drive from Indianapolis which gets major concerts and shows and has a wonderful art museum. I'm from a medium-large city and now doing grad school in a medium-large city and have always been impressed with Bloomington when I've had occasion to visit.
My fiancé has a saying, she says, "Bloom where you're planted."  It's pretty good advice for this profession, because you might end up on the market and only get interviews in Topeka, Tucumcari, and Tallahassee. You generally get fewer options as you move up the professional pyramid.

I live in a reasonably priced mid-sized major metropolitan area. I have no kids.  I have lived with my fiancé the last four years.
My experience is that we manage to live almost as nicely as we'd like, we aren't starving, we eat well, we can run our heater at a modest rate in the winter.  We also are unable to put aside any money for savings. If one of our cars broke down we wouldn't be able to fix it probably (losing a shoe for want of a nail, comes to mind). To buy a new dress shirt is a major luxury. I've been able to buy one new suit (a relatively cheap one) in five years of grad school, and while you might think of this as trivial, I'd ask you, what do you intend to wear to your job interviews/conferences? Things like new shoes become major investments. You learn to take care of what you have, and to fix things yourself.
Let us say nothing of what happens when your computer inevitably dies.
So to sum up my experience. Day-to-day we live like fine, reasonable adults, but you have little room for error or extras (or savings), which definitely creates a nagging subliminal stress on our day-to-day fine living.
 
 

I deal with some of the same issues you do (including attention deficit, anxiety, depression) but over the last few years of grad school I've managed to refine my methods, maybe some of this will help.
First.  I find that a solid work schedule begins and ends with a solid sleep pattern, because this helps you establish a routine which I think is so important to dealing with some of these mental health issues.  If I go to bed on time, and wake up on time, the day goes well.  If I stay up too late and oversleep, surprise surprise, I have a hard time even getting grounded and it can be very hard to recover.  Have a routine, and have set work hours.  It doesn't matter if you work from 11am-7pm, 9am-5pm, or 9pm-5am, routine is important.  If you're struggling with getting to classes and meetings, pick a set of working hours amenable to that.  Keep that time sacred for work (though remember to take a break here and there - though don't get too far afield).  If you're like me, and struggle with focus, there are apps for that!  Don't rapidly snap into this new routine overnight, work your way up to it.  I find that even on the weekend I only deviate slightly from this sleep schedule, I shoot for 7 hours of sleep each night, your body may have different needs.
Second.  Protect some time for non-work stuff and keep that sacred as well.  Don't buy into the myth that you should be putting in 70 hours of solid work each week.  Nobody is really doing that, and even if they are, there is plenty evidence to suggest that working in small, intense bursts actually produces better output than dragging out your workday for the sake of being able to comfortably say you logged a lot of hours.  If you have nothing to look forward to then it will be very hard to stay committed to your work.
Third.  Never go into anything as important as a day in your life without a plan.  Even if you wake up and finish your breakfast and walk your dog and you're just itching to sit down and write until your fingers bleed, take some time to plan out your day.  I have used checklists, but I've found that I've had more success after I bought a small lined notepad.  Each day, I mark out the clock hours I'm going to work, each line represents a 30 minute increment, and I visualize how my time will be spent, accounting for time spent on the bus or walking from place to place, as well as any breaks.  Each day starts with a 30 minute block I label "planning/prep", in which I check my e-mail, check and update my planner, get any old coffee cups off my desk, and get whatever books or materials I'm going to need for the day.  After that, I turn on my website blocking app for the next 6-7 hours and I work.
Fourth.  Try doing creative/intense intellectual work in short, highly focused bursts.  There are studies that show that even highly trained and experienced experts in various skills have a very very finite amount of mental energy/willpower that they can expend on their practice before they start to see diminishing returns.  Since I've started actually producing my dissertation, I limit my actual writing time to two very intense 90-120 minute chunks of writing each day.  I've found that I'm having quite a bit of success this way.  In a typical day, I begin at 9:30 a.m., I take care of prep stuff and everyday tasks until 10, I then write until about noon, at which time I take a 30-60 minute break to eat, walk the dog, etc.  I then write for another 90-120 minutes.  These minutes of writing, of course, are focused and intense (I don't check e-mail, don't use my phone, etc., just write).  I then leave the rest of the day for reading and research, or other less intellectually demanding stuff.  I always take the last 15 minutes of the day to close everything down, make some notes on what I need to do tomorrow, and then I take like five minutes or so to just close my eyes, breathe, and disengage from the work.  The strategy of short, intense, flurries of output takes some practice, but I think is ultimately far more rewarding than the drawn out days I used to spend at my desk distracted and despondent.  If you're still in coursework, you may have to alter this formula slightly in order to keep up on reading and seminar prep, which is demanding in a somewhat different way, but I think the principle still holds true.
It goes without saying that this is a very fragile system, it takes some discipline to adhere to.  I have really excellent productive weeks using it.  There are also some weeks that nothing seems to go right with it, and I can't get a groove.  Consistency is key, good days beget good days, good weeks beget good weeks.  If there is something disruptive coming up like a holiday, or a conference, or research travel prepare yourself for it and figure out how you'll get your groove back when you return. I can't stress enough that the strongest indicator I can find as to whether a week is good or bad is a consistent sleep pattern that helps lock the routine in place.  Also, finding a workspace conducive to highly focused work is essential as well.
There is a book I've found very helpful called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Dr. Cal Newport.  Some of the strategies I talk about in this post come from that, though most are modifications of things I was already working about.  What Newport provides is a solid well researched basis for these strategies and ways of refining them.  It's not geared toward academics, but the author is a professor at Georgetown so the strategies are actually rooted in his academic life.  It's not without its problematic aspects, but overall very helpful. 

Question for y'all! 
My Pitt visit is all planned and in the books. Since it's a top choice, I was pretty confident I would accept, but decided to wait on one other school. Well, I heard from said school today (a no go). So, now I'm 100 percent on Pitt (yay!). Is it a faux pas to go through the formal acceptance before visiting? Or should I hold off until after I visit, since that time/money is usually allocated as recruitment. 
Thanks for your help!

A funded research MA strikes me as a better opportunity to improve your application than trying to find a volunteer RA position. 

"Life is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it."
This sounds like you putting in precisely the amount of effort you should. Some wouldn't even go that far.

With regard to imposter syndrome, there is a relevant proverb from the Analects of Confucius (3.15):
"When [Confucius] went inside the Grand Temple, he asked questions about everything. [Later] Someone remarked, 'Who said that the son of the man from Tsou understood the rites? When he went inside the Grand Temple, he asked questions about everything!'
[Confucius], on hearing of this, said, 'The asking of questions is in itself the correct rite.'"
The whole Analects is actually really great reading for meditations on grad school, and on teaching when you come around to it.

I deal with some of the same issues you do (including attention deficit, anxiety, depression) but over the last few years of grad school I've managed to refine my methods, maybe some of this will help.
First.  I find that a solid work schedule begins and ends with a solid sleep pattern, because this helps you establish a routine which I think is so important to dealing with some of these mental health issues.  If I go to bed on time, and wake up on time, the day goes well.  If I stay up too late and oversleep, surprise surprise, I have a hard time even getting grounded and it can be very hard to recover.  Have a routine, and have set work hours.  It doesn't matter if you work from 11am-7pm, 9am-5pm, or 9pm-5am, routine is important.  If you're struggling with getting to classes and meetings, pick a set of working hours amenable to that.  Keep that time sacred for work (though remember to take a break here and there - though don't get too far afield).  If you're like me, and struggle with focus, there are apps for that!  Don't rapidly snap into this new routine overnight, work your way up to it.  I find that even on the weekend I only deviate slightly from this sleep schedule, I shoot for 7 hours of sleep each night, your body may have different needs.
Second.  Protect some time for non-work stuff and keep that sacred as well.  Don't buy into the myth that you should be putting in 70 hours of solid work each week.  Nobody is really doing that, and even if they are, there is plenty evidence to suggest that working in small, intense bursts actually produces better output than dragging out your workday for the sake of being able to comfortably say you logged a lot of hours.  If you have nothing to look forward to then it will be very hard to stay committed to your work.
Third.  Never go into anything as important as a day in your life without a plan.  Even if you wake up and finish your breakfast and walk your dog and you're just itching to sit down and write until your fingers bleed, take some time to plan out your day.  I have used checklists, but I've found that I've had more success after I bought a small lined notepad.  Each day, I mark out the clock hours I'm going to work, each line represents a 30 minute increment, and I visualize how my time will be spent, accounting for time spent on the bus or walking from place to place, as well as any breaks.  Each day starts with a 30 minute block I label "planning/prep", in which I check my e-mail, check and update my planner, get any old coffee cups off my desk, and get whatever books or materials I'm going to need for the day.  After that, I turn on my website blocking app for the next 6-7 hours and I work.
Fourth.  Try doing creative/intense intellectual work in short, highly focused bursts.  There are studies that show that even highly trained and experienced experts in various skills have a very very finite amount of mental energy/willpower that they can expend on their practice before they start to see diminishing returns.  Since I've started actually producing my dissertation, I limit my actual writing time to two very intense 90-120 minute chunks of writing each day.  I've found that I'm having quite a bit of success this way.  In a typical day, I begin at 9:30 a.m., I take care of prep stuff and everyday tasks until 10, I then write until about noon, at which time I take a 30-60 minute break to eat, walk the dog, etc.  I then write for another 90-120 minutes.  These minutes of writing, of course, are focused and intense (I don't check e-mail, don't use my phone, etc., just write).  I then leave the rest of the day for reading and research, or other less intellectually demanding stuff.  I always take the last 15 minutes of the day to close everything down, make some notes on what I need to do tomorrow, and then I take like five minutes or so to just close my eyes, breathe, and disengage from the work.  The strategy of short, intense, flurries of output takes some practice, but I think is ultimately far more rewarding than the drawn out days I used to spend at my desk distracted and despondent.  If you're still in coursework, you may have to alter this formula slightly in order to keep up on reading and seminar prep, which is demanding in a somewhat different way, but I think the principle still holds true.
It goes without saying that this is a very fragile system, it takes some discipline to adhere to.  I have really excellent productive weeks using it.  There are also some weeks that nothing seems to go right with it, and I can't get a groove.  Consistency is key, good days beget good days, good weeks beget good weeks.  If there is something disruptive coming up like a holiday, or a conference, or research travel prepare yourself for it and figure out how you'll get your groove back when you return. I can't stress enough that the strongest indicator I can find as to whether a week is good or bad is a consistent sleep pattern that helps lock the routine in place.  Also, finding a workspace conducive to highly focused work is essential as well.
There is a book I've found very helpful called Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Dr. Cal Newport.  Some of the strategies I talk about in this post come from that, though most are modifications of things I was already working about.  What Newport provides is a solid well researched basis for these strategies and ways of refining them.  It's not geared toward academics, but the author is a professor at Georgetown so the strategies are actually rooted in his academic life.  It's not without its problematic aspects, but overall very helpful. 

Thanks for your response @a_sort_of_fractious_angel. The visit isn't until the end of March, so I'm just feeling super itchy eager. But I decided today, over a burrito and beer, to just wait until after the visit to officially accept. Because, broom closets and 3-headed dopplegangers!

The most important thing is also perhaps the hardest to gauge: that is, do you have the sense that the program's grad students are well treated, and that they feel supported by the program.  I think you should really ask this of a variety of grads in the program if you have the opportunity to meet them.
You can have a first class funding offer, but if the grad students tell you that they feel like the faculty aren't invested in them and their success, that should be a major, major red flag.  You might also be able to sense this, as I've written elsewhere, in the quality of the program's recruitment.  Do they go out of their way to actually, y'know, recruit you, or do they treat you like an afterthought.
Do not be afraid to ask these questions.  You'll probably find that grads will give you honest answers, and if the answers aren't 100% honest, you might still be able to read between the lines. As many of you already well know, most grad students will not pass up an opportunity to lament a terrible situation.  Remember, this is 5-10 years of your life (depending on the program, you should also DEFINITELY ask about average "time to degree") that you will never get back.  You may take an offer at that school whose name will really impress the folks back home but find that the actual experience of that place isn't so great.

If it makes those dealing with partner issues feel better, I've seen quite a few examples in my program of people making it work, and coming to perfectly reasonable compromises. Often times these compromises can make life more difficult for one or both partners, but they make it work nevertheless.  One of my committee members and his partner lived apart for 10 years before they were finally able to land jobs at the same university - indeed, they had to live apart for a long time so that they could develop their careers so that they could eventually achieve that particular dream. He told me that it was a wonderful thing for their relationship that they were both willing to accept the distance for a little while in order to be able to spend the rest of their lives together.  They're in their 40s, they've both got tenure at the same place, and in 40 years when they retire that 10 years will probably seem like a blip.  Your life is a very very long time.
This is a very very tough business to be in if you're going to have a romantic life, it strains relationships.  If your partners aren't academics, they need to be able to understand and accept that, and you should be very honest with them about it.  You aren't going to have a lot of say in where you get to go for your first job out of school (even less than your say in where you go to grad school!), or if you remain geographically rooted, that will potentially bring its own struggles.
 

If it makes those dealing with partner issues feel better, I've seen quite a few examples in my program of people making it work, and coming to perfectly reasonable compromises. Often times these compromises can make life more difficult for one or both partners, but they make it work nevertheless.  One of my committee members and his partner lived apart for 10 years before they were finally able to land jobs at the same university - indeed, they had to live apart for a long time so that they could develop their careers so that they could eventually achieve that particular dream. He told me that it was a wonderful thing for their relationship that they were both willing to accept the distance for a little while in order to be able to spend the rest of their lives together.  They're in their 40s, they've both got tenure at the same place, and in 40 years when they retire that 10 years will probably seem like a blip.  Your life is a very very long time.
This is a very very tough business to be in if you're going to have a romantic life, it strains relationships.  If your partners aren't academics, they need to be able to understand and accept that, and you should be very honest with them about it.  You aren't going to have a lot of say in where you get to go for your first job out of school (even less than your say in where you go to grad school!), or if you remain geographically rooted, that will potentially bring its own struggles.
 

I'll share the narratives of my two campus visits, which were on opposite ends of the spectrum, and which might help you in planning your visit.
School A: I was admitted and attended a "Recruitment Weekend" with every other admitted student. In groups we met with one faculty member for lunch, who may or may not have been in your area (mine was not). The planned itinerary consisted primarily of events with grad students, apart from a party which was attended by grads and faculty.  It was only after I arrived that I discovered that it was incumbent upon me, beforehand, to have set up appointments with professors of interest if I wanted to meet with any faculty individually!  Since I had not made arrangements ahead of time, and at the time I was quite shy and nervous, I had very little interaction with faculty.
School B: Prior to my visit I was issued a (pretty much) to the minute itinerary for a two full day visit which included scheduled appointments with professors I'd mentioned in my statement, and even some professors I was unaware of who happened to be interested in my application, a brief meeting with the department chair, as well as some seminars to attend, lunch and dinner with grad students, etc.  I didn't really need to prepare at all.
It would be worthwhile, once you start talking to the DGS of programs you were admitted to about your visit, to ask if the visit will be more like School A or more like School B!  Keep in mind that everything may not be taken care of, and you may be in charge of planning your own visit to some degree.
My other advice would be: if you attend you'll have 5-8 years to sit with these folks and show off how much Lacan you've read, but you may only have a day or two to decide whether you like these people, this environment, this city.  You've already been admitted, so you don't need to prove how smart or well read you are, focus on getting to know whether or not you want to live and work in this place.  Likewise, your future colleagues are more likely to want to find out who you are as a person; while research interests are a good conversation starter, yours are likely to change a half-dozen times in the next few years anyway!
By the way, I attend School B now.  While School A is a fine program, B definitely made me feel more like they were invested in me, and cared about who I was, which was an important factor in my final decision. These are things to think about as you visit a campus, as I'm sure you've heard enough tales about grad students who feel adrift, neglected, or abandoned by their programs (and if you haven't, believe me, it happens).
   

If it makes those dealing with partner issues feel better, I've seen quite a few examples in my program of people making it work, and coming to perfectly reasonable compromises. Often times these compromises can make life more difficult for one or both partners, but they make it work nevertheless.  One of my committee members and his partner lived apart for 10 years before they were finally able to land jobs at the same university - indeed, they had to live apart for a long time so that they could develop their careers so that they could eventually achieve that particular dream. He told me that it was a wonderful thing for their relationship that they were both willing to accept the distance for a little while in order to be able to spend the rest of their lives together.  They're in their 40s, they've both got tenure at the same place, and in 40 years when they retire that 10 years will probably seem like a blip.  Your life is a very very long time.
This is a very very tough business to be in if you're going to have a romantic life, it strains relationships.  If your partners aren't academics, they need to be able to understand and accept that, and you should be very honest with them about it.  You aren't going to have a lot of say in where you get to go for your first job out of school (even less than your say in where you go to grad school!), or if you remain geographically rooted, that will potentially bring its own struggles.
 

Rule of thumb, address them as Dr. until they tell you not to (they should do this very quickly unless they're way into titles).

I don't have any advice other than if you are, for example, assigned to read a 250 page theory book in a week (not a terribly outlandish reading assignment for a grad seminar) that it's unlikely you're going to be able to actually read and usefully retain all 250 pages. So do a little bit of reflection, take a look at the table of contents, read the intro and then ask yourself 1) which portions sound like they're most relevant to the seminar; 2) which portions sound most relevant to my own research interests.  Read those portions carefully, and skim the rest, marking pages that seem worth coming back to.  That doesn't mean skipping them, it just means gliding over them a bit more easily, taking only sparse notes. 
While you might feel like a slacker at first, you're really not, your brain is a pretty impressive hard drive.  I've been writing papers years after a seminar when it crosses my mind, "hey, didn't I read something about that in that section I skimmed from...?"  
I don't know, some faculty may think this is utter heresy, but this thread is about self-care and it's one strategy I developed.

Wow, that's a truly impressive acceptance! All of the MCM folks I've met have been impressive, interesting people.  Congratulations.  Who are your PoI's there?

I GOT INTO BROWN!!!!!! I am speechless. Massive congrats to everyone who's gotten good news over the past few days while I wasn't checking this thread as closely. Y'all rock.

I guess I was thinking more about dissertation/comps phase, but I think we can say a similar thing about coursework with the caveat that in my experience the labor involved in the coursework phase of grad school is a bit less demanding and so it's possible to put in more hours.  I mean, I find myself to be a pretty slow reader (I can read about 20 pages of academic carefully, with some notes, in about one hour).  For me, effective skimming was an important skill to develop in grad school (I was at a meeting the other day where several full time faculty discussed the importance of skimming for grad students).
  If someone finds that they are working 10-12 hours a day on their coursework, reading everything with a magnifying glass, and still living their best life, then more power to you. My anecdotal evidence suggests that this is not the case for most grad students (including myself). On top of my snailspace with regard to careful reading, I would also say that there is a definite cap on what I retain and if I had to guess it probably tops out at about 3 hours, and then I need a break to do something else (there have been studies that show diminishing returns for intellectual exercise after about this amount of time).  So I'll switch to writing, or grading, or schedule my day around a talk.
All I'm trying to say is that a great self care tip for grad school is to not get enveloped in pissing contests (with other academics, or with your sibling who does some other kind of work with a completely different set of demands) about how many hours a week you need to work, and don't get intimidated by grad students who claim fantastically long and productive workdays, because evidence suggests that short, intense periods of intellectual work are much more productive than long, grinding days.  I highly recommend the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, it completely changed my approach to my studies, and confirmed through evidence a lot of things I'd believed for a long time, and made me feel better about my habits of mind.  I think the "look how exhausted I am, isn't being a grad student cah-razy, here's an instagram picture of all of the books on my desk, can't believe I'm gonna read those #crushingit" really traps us in the postmodern "Love what you do" ethos that makes us easier to exploit (and we're already really easy to exploit).
I think if most grad students saw people in any other profession working overtime hours for minimum wage with very little promise for substantial upward financial mobility, and then bragging about it and aestheticizing it, they would decry it as exploitation and false consciousness (they'd write a 30 page paper citing Althusser, Rancière, and Derrida), but when grad students do it it's apparently just "the academic life."  After five years of PhD study, I'm pretty sure this is the most important self care advice I can give.  Also, drink plenty of water, take walks, beware of credit cards, learn to cook/bake, and don't get a dog..
 

I guess I was thinking more about dissertation/comps phase, but I think we can say a similar thing about coursework with the caveat that in my experience the labor involved in the coursework phase of grad school is a bit less demanding and so it's possible to put in more hours.  I mean, I find myself to be a pretty slow reader (I can read about 20 pages of academic carefully, with some notes, in about one hour).  For me, effective skimming was an important skill to develop in grad school (I was at a meeting the other day where several full time faculty discussed the importance of skimming for grad students).
  If someone finds that they are working 10-12 hours a day on their coursework, reading everything with a magnifying glass, and still living their best life, then more power to you. My anecdotal evidence suggests that this is not the case for most grad students (including myself). On top of my snailspace with regard to careful reading, I would also say that there is a definite cap on what I retain and if I had to guess it probably tops out at about 3 hours, and then I need a break to do something else (there have been studies that show diminishing returns for intellectual exercise after about this amount of time).  So I'll switch to writing, or grading, or schedule my day around a talk.
All I'm trying to say is that a great self care tip for grad school is to not get enveloped in pissing contests (with other academics, or with your sibling who does some other kind of work with a completely different set of demands) about how many hours a week you need to work, and don't get intimidated by grad students who claim fantastically long and productive workdays, because evidence suggests that short, intense periods of intellectual work are much more productive than long, grinding days.  I highly recommend the book "Deep Work" by Cal Newport, it completely changed my approach to my studies, and confirmed through evidence a lot of things I'd believed for a long time, and made me feel better about my habits of mind.  I think the "look how exhausted I am, isn't being a grad student cah-razy, here's an instagram picture of all of the books on my desk, can't believe I'm gonna read those #crushingit" really traps us in the postmodern "Love what you do" ethos that makes us easier to exploit (and we're already really easy to exploit).
I think if most grad students saw people in any other profession working overtime hours for minimum wage with very little promise for substantial upward financial mobility, and then bragging about it and aestheticizing it, they would decry it as exploitation and false consciousness (they'd write a 30 page paper citing Althusser, Rancière, and Derrida), but when grad students do it it's apparently just "the academic life."  After five years of PhD study, I'm pretty sure this is the most important self care advice I can give.  Also, drink plenty of water, take walks, beware of credit cards, learn to cook/bake, and don't get a dog..
 

While this thread has focused primarily on exercise and nutrition, which are important, don't forget that self-care includes hobbies, socializing with friends, and plain old enjoying things that aren't work.
For example, this academic year I started a new ritual where each morning I wake up, make myself some coffee, and spend the first hour of my day reading something that has zero to do with my work.   I feel like this improves my morale substantially, and gets my brain "spun up" to think about important things.  I wish it hadn't taken me until I was 33 years old to realize that mornings aren't just for rolling out of bed, stuffing food in my mouth and rushing into work.  Make time for things that aren't work or exercise!
You'll probably meet people in grad school who brag about 60 hour work weeks and wear their exhaustion like a badge of honor.  It is so ridiculously unnecessary, and these people are probably vastly overstating their workload, or have an exceptionally broad definition of what constitutes academic work.  While we all inevitably find ourselves putting in a few 10-12 hour days at crunch time,  if you're working smart you do not need to be doing that on a weekly basis.

While this thread has focused primarily on exercise and nutrition, which are important, don't forget that self-care includes hobbies, socializing with friends, and plain old enjoying things that aren't work.
For example, this academic year I started a new ritual where each morning I wake up, make myself some coffee, and spend the first hour of my day reading something that has zero to do with my work.   I feel like this improves my morale substantially, and gets my brain "spun up" to think about important things.  I wish it hadn't taken me until I was 33 years old to realize that mornings aren't just for rolling out of bed, stuffing food in my mouth and rushing into work.  Make time for things that aren't work or exercise!
You'll probably meet people in grad school who brag about 60 hour work weeks and wear their exhaustion like a badge of honor.  It is so ridiculously unnecessary, and these people are probably vastly overstating their workload, or have an exceptionally broad definition of what constitutes academic work.  While we all inevitably find ourselves putting in a few 10-12 hour days at crunch time,  if you're working smart you do not need to be doing that on a weekly basis.

While this thread has focused primarily on exercise and nutrition, which are important, don't forget that self-care includes hobbies, socializing with friends, and plain old enjoying things that aren't work.
For example, this academic year I started a new ritual where each morning I wake up, make myself some coffee, and spend the first hour of my day reading something that has zero to do with my work.   I feel like this improves my morale substantially, and gets my brain "spun up" to think about important things.  I wish it hadn't taken me until I was 33 years old to realize that mornings aren't just for rolling out of bed, stuffing food in my mouth and rushing into work.  Make time for things that aren't work or exercise!
You'll probably meet people in grad school who brag about 60 hour work weeks and wear their exhaustion like a badge of honor.  It is so ridiculously unnecessary, and these people are probably vastly overstating their workload, or have an exceptionally broad definition of what constitutes academic work.  While we all inevitably find ourselves putting in a few 10-12 hour days at crunch time,  if you're working smart you do not need to be doing that on a weekly basis.