Stress, Uncertainty, and Learning Balance

How do you manage stress, uncertainty, or work-life balance?

Mahmoud: My guiding principle is rather simple: if I cannot change something, worrying about it is merely suffering twice... once in imagination and once, perhaps, in reality. Uncertainty is not an unfortunate interruption to the human condition; it is the human condition. We are cast into an incomprehensibly vast universe without instructions, guarantees, or even reliable access to objective reality... yet we remain terribly surprised whenever life refuses to follow our plans. Imposter syndrome is equally ordinary. It is uncomfortable, certainly, but it can also teach humility. As children, we imagine our parents to be invincible figures who understand the machinery of existence. Then we grow older and discover that they, too, were improvising. The same revelation eventually occurs in graduate school: the senior students, professors, and distinguished scholars who appear to possess secret knowledge are usually just fellow travellers who have become slightly better at concealing their confusion. As for work-life balance, I am not entirely convinced that life and work can be placed neatly upon opposite sides of a scale. The more sustainable approach is to weave them together... to make one’s work part of a meaningful life without permitting it to consume the whole of it. Beyond the laboratory, I remain connected with friends scattered across the world, practise hot yoga, dine with friends, and retreat into classical music and quiet works of nonfiction. One must occasionally remind oneself that the universe existed before the latest deadline... and will, rather rudely, continue after it.

Peter: It's easy to lump stress and uncertainty together, since one can cause the other. I try to separate actionable items from unactionable, and not stress about the unactionable ones, since that just eats into precious cognitive capacity. Actionable stress is trickier though. Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should; I try to maximize efficiency. For example, blocking off 1-2 hours in my calendar for a specific task yields better results than leaving an open stretch of time. If I'm stressed, it kind of ruins my day, I start to dissociate and it eats away at my attention and mood. So, I focus on what must be finished versus what can be finished in the future. Identifying when I’m working inefficiently and stopping helps with stress and work-life balance. Being off the clock is the best time to work on yourself and do things you're interested in, for me that's cooking, playing volleyball, and video games with friends.

Challenges and Unexpected Lessons

Were there any major challenges or setbacks? How did you work through them?

Mahmoud: My intial supervisor left during my first year, which required me to change supervisors and redirect the course of my PhD. At the time, it appeared to be a significant disruption, although I navigated it more smoothly than I might have expected. Beyond that, research offers a fresh collection of smaller inconveniences each day... analyses that fail, code that revolts, manuscripts that return decorated in reviewer comments, and computers that choose moments of particular importance to develop philosophical objections to functioning. One simply meets these difficulties as they arrive. My brother once advised me not to take life too seriously, and a friend later offered the same wisdom. When identical advice arrives from independent sources, one ought perhaps to treat it as a replicated finding. We are temporary creatures attempting to impose order upon chaos... becoming excessively solemn about the enterprise seems almost impolite.

Peter: Challenges come in all shapes and sizes; everything from a frustrating code debugging to a publication getting scooped. Each one needs a different approach. As a general rule of thumb, I try to work through things myself first, and if I require more help, I reach out to a peer with documentation of what I've already tried.

What's been your biggest professional growth moment?

Advice for New Students

What do you wish you had known when starting your degree?

Mahmoud: I would tell my younger self that things will, in all likelihood, work themselves out. You will learn as you proceed, adapt to the unfamiliar, and eventually catch up with those whom you mistakenly imagine are far ahead of you. Every new environment initially feels like a performance for which everyone else received the script. They did not. Most are simply delivering their lines with confidence. So breathe... remain curious... and try not to interpret every temporary confusion as evidence of permanent inadequacy. In less philosophical language: relax a little.

Peter: Things only get busier, so take the time now to enjoy life around you. Every struggle is really just a new opportunity to learn.