A lot of this is eerily similar to what happens to many PhD students once they finish coursework and start prepping for comps and then writing their dissertation: independent work can be overwhelming & isolating. So, FWIW, here& #39;s what I tell my PhD students: a short thread. 1/6 https://twitter.com/DalGazette/status/1322209979516870661">https://twitter.com/DalGazett...

1. You know yourself best. Which are your best thinking hours? Are you a morning person, or a night person? Schedule academic work for those best thinking hours, to the degree you can. 2/6

2. What are your worst thinking hours? Don& #39;t use them for academic stuff. Protect them for downtime. Talk to your friends, go for a walk, watch a movie, whatever. Do it guilt-free, because these are NO-academic-work hours. 3/6

3. Academic work is intense & often creative, in the broadest sense. Poets have complained for centuries that they can& #39;t control creativity, & neither can we. Do non-creative stuff instead: read, transfer duedates to a calendar, plan out your time for next week. 4/6

Respect your brain & what your brain needs. Give it guilt-free non-work hours. Give it mundane tasks when it& #39;s too tired to do the intensive stuff, so that you still get the sense of accomplishment and avoid the frustration of trying to start a car that& #39;s out of gas. 5/6

We all have bad-brain days, even weeks. But if the bad days start to pile up, talk to someone--your instructor, counselling services, a friend--before they start to look like a wall you can& #39;t climb over. We& #39;ll try to find you a ladder. :-) 6/6