Hi Reader!

Apologies for the last couple of weeks without newsletter, as travelling, funding deadlines, and life in general interfered with our usual schedule (it's being a really bumpy Spring this year!). In the PhD there are also times when deadlines seem to magically align and we get suddenly close to time famine and task overwhelm. This week, we bring you a couple of tricks to squeeze the most out of your limited mental and physical resources to sustain your productivity and survive those hard times.

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Flashback: Notes on chronobiology for the PhD (I): Circadian rhythms​

(Tweet-length gists of past posts, so that you don't have to read through the whole blog backlog)

The harder parts of the PhD (designing your experiments, analyzing data, writing papers, etc.) require quite a bit of energy, attention and self-control. How to make the most of what you have? A starting point is our chronobiology (how our biology works differently at different times):

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Tiny practice: Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR)

(Small ideas or practices –told bluntly and without much background– that I first share with newsletter subscribers)

During my last deadline crunch, I was short on time and I decided that I had to cut my sleep hours short for some days (something I generally advice not to do) if I was to make this deadline, which I considered important. Over the years, I have learned that just white-knuckling through these periods does not work (too many errors are made, progress becomes too slow). Thus, I had resorted to strategic napping, with reasonably good results (when we work a lot with little sleep, seldom the results are really good!).

This time, however, I decided to try something I had come across in Andrew Huberman’s podcast: what he calls “Non-sleep deep rest” (NSDR). Basically, this is a structured set of instructions that combines elements of mindfulness, breathwork, progressive muscle relaxation and hypnosis, to try to induce a deep state of relaxation, which may help our body and mind recharge – and which can be done in relatively little time. You can find several protocols for this kind of practice, for different durations (e.g., 10, 20 or 30 minutes) on Youtube. I personally like the 10-ish minutes one in the video shown below, as I find it gives me a high rest-to-time ratio when I’m pressed for time (which is often).

The science about the benefits of this kind of practice is not there yet, but my subjective experience using NSDR has been very good. I now use it regularly, especially after lunch (my post-prandial attention dip, remember the chronobiology!) on those days when I get a bad night of sleep (which, being a new father, has become sadly frequent). Sometimes, I do fall sleep while doing it… but that is also fine :)

Try it out, and see if it works for you!

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May you never run out of energy for your PhD!

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