One small habit that helped me survive my PhD

[crumbsofsanity]

Hi everyone,

I finished my PhD last year and was reflecting recently on the small things that helped me get through some of the tougher stretches of it.

For me, one surprisingly important thing was cooking. When I was deep in thesis mode or feeling burned out, making something simple in the kitchen became one of the few routines that helped me switch off for a bit. It wasn’t anything elaborate — sometimes just porridge or granola — but it gave my brain a break from thinking about research.

It made me realise how much small rituals can matter when you’re doing something as mentally consuming as a PhD.

Out of that experience I ended up starting a small blog where I write about food and the slightly chaotic realities of academic life — food as comfort, procrastination, survival, etc.

If anyone’s curious, it’s here:
https://www.crumbsofsanity.com/

But I’d also be interested to hear what other people’s “coping rituals” were during their PhD or postgraduate studies. Was there anything small that helped you reset when things got overwhelming?

[Maya Reyes]

For me it was building a rigid separation between "input time" and "output time." For 2 years I was doing both simultaneously: reading, highlighting, half-writing notes, getting pulled into new papers mid-draft. It was mentally draining and I never got the sense that I was advancing on either axis.

What changed: I blocked off mornings strictly as input time (reading, note-taking, processing) and afternoons as output time (writing, revising, outlining). No exceptions during those blocks. It meant my writing sessions had material to work with, and my reading sessions weren't shadowed by anxiety about not writing.

And the other little thing was the 'daily stuff', real finishable tasks I hoped to close the day with. Helped with the PhD-specific feeling that you're never actually done with anything. Cooking is a great one too, somehow having one part of your day with a definite start and finish and a physical result is really stabilizing.