[pcmaffey]

Finding the time for experimenting while doing ____ exhausting, responsible thing, is incredibly hard. It really has to be a matter of life and death for your soul.

But here's the thing, finish your PHD. You'll be in the same situation in the "real world", when you have to work a job you don't really, really care about, and find time to explore other things you do. So start learning how to balance that now, while you've got the 'cranking papers out' down.

A few practical tips:

If you're wiped at the end of the day, get up an hour earlier and use that time instead.

Weekends.

Set very small, meaningful goals / questions / experiments you can hit. When you have to make time, it's all about momentum. If you get bogged down / unmotivated on your side projects, you don't stand a chance.

Good luck. Persevere.

[tostitos1979]

I agree with this comment. If you are near the end, just finish and get done with the PhD. Also .. take it from someone who is more than a decade into their professional career in CS research. Things change. I used to be able to crank out papers easily. Then, I got older and so did the field. All the easy stuff was gone. It is much harder to publish in my particular sub-field now. I tried expanding to include other related areas but it is also tough. I kinda wonder at what point to throw in the towel.

[tmoot]

Thanks for the response. One of the main reasons I'm unhappy with my work is I do the bare minimum to publish and submit. So far I've published 3 first author papers and somehow they've gotten into decent journals for my field.

I'd much rather have only published 1 paper with a more expansive coverage of that topic. I feel intellectually dishonest because I know the end game is adding an extra line to the grant application/progress report.

[tostitos1979]

Haha .. that has a name: MVP - minimal viable publication. I wouldn't feel bad about it. The main suggestion I'd give my younger self is to build expertise on a challenging topic. Hinton is a good example btw. He worked on Neural networks when it was a pariah topic. Look at him now. Of course, you can pick the wrong topic and get screwed (like the majority of folks) :-p

[eli_gottlieb]

> Thanks for the response. One of the main reasons I'm unhappy with my work is I do the bare minimum to publish and submit. So far I've published 3 first author papers and somehow they've gotten into decent journals for my field.

From the outside, that actually sounds like very good work.

[tmoot]

Good point about waking up early and working. That's what I'm doing now with my coursework.

I also do research during weekends, but I've been experimenting with taking one day off to try to explore other things and spend time with my SO.

One of the reasons I want to leave is the work culture. I have the freedom to work whenever I want, but there are just too many deadlines to not stop working. Most of my labmates pretty much live in the office, although, they're all international students. I'm fairly disillusioned with academia now.

My advisor would be a bit upset if he knew I was taking classes. I know my research productivity has been down lately.