{
  "video_id": "reddit_1t9mwqy",
  "channel_slug": "MachineLearning",
  "channel_handle": "r/MachineLearning",
  "title": "PhD students in ML, how many hours on average do you work? [D]",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/1t9mwqy/phd_students_in_ml_how_many_hours_on_average_do/",
  "external_url": null,
  "upload_date": "20260510",
  "published_at": "2026-05-10T23:54:02+00:00",
  "transcript": "I generally work around 9–10 hours a day, but not contiguously. I can usually carve out a dedicated chunk of time in the morning, take lab or project meetings in the afternoon, and block out around 6–8 PM for commute, exercise, socializing, and dinner. I also get more work done in the evening, since my focus is often best then. On weekends, I mostly run errands and try out new food spots, but I also make sure to do at least a little bit of work every day.\n\nI try to schedule my Slurm jobs so they run when I’m not actively working, so I can collect results when I get back. When I don’t have at least some Slurm jobs going, I feel anxious. I also feel pressure to use coding agents whenever I can. At the same time, I find that these agents can create an illusion of productivity: I end up with more “dead time” where I’m just waiting for the agent to finish thinking.\n\nI’m in my 3rd year as a PhD student at a top-5 program for my field in the US, and I’ve been thinking a lot about time management recently. I'm done with classes and not TA'ing this quarter. I mainly target the 3 main ML conferences (though I would love to make every deadline consistently and don’t), plus core NLP venues and journals.\n\n\n\n--- Top Comments ---\n\n\n[109 upvotes] absolutely no way i could work for 9 hours a day. more power to you, but yeah that just burns me out. i'd say 8 hours a day, half of that which is actual work and research, half which is getting coffee/being social/reading group/etc. i also work outside of the PhD so bandwidth for in depth research work is a bit lower than for most.\n\n[57 upvotes] My friends in AI labs (Chinese) are doing 15+ hours 6 days a week.\n\n[55 upvotes] I'm like 6-8 hours a day (5th year at Dartmouth, planning on defending at the end of the year). \n\n\nRealistically I can't productively think deeply about something for more than like 3 hours, with another 3-5 hours of less-productive coding/writing. For whatever reason those 3 hours are right when I wake up, too, so I'm typically at my desk 7-10 or 8-11, then I go for a run and eat lunch, then I'm back on in the afternoon until I feel like my GPUs are going to be properly utilized until the next morning. \n\n\nI'm sure this is pretty dependent on the researcher, but I personally work a lot better when I'm able to take my mind off the problems intermittently. I'm very intentional about not working on the weekends, and forcing myself to do/think about other things after 5/6pm. I've forced myself to try a bunch of hobbies, and have a healthy personal life. I'm lucky to have an advisor who is supportive of this, though, I know not everyone's is. Also those numbers go out the window for the 2-3 weeks before deadlines lol.\n\n[36 upvotes] I’m at the end of my third year and preparing to submit. Usually I try for between 9 and 12 hours a day, but obviously this can increase further before deadlines and during rebuttal periods.\n\nI think in general if you can do between 8 and 10 hours a day it can be more beneficial than working yourself ragged. A healthy schedule and balance in life does wonders for productivity, and there’s less of a risk of burnout.\n\nIt’s also good to find something to do during the “dead time” you describe. Often getting up to date with writing or just reading a few extra papers is a great way of using that time. Best of luck for the rest of your journey!",
  "transcript_chars": 3370,
  "ingested_at": "2026-05-12T11:04:37.208412+00:00",
  "source": "reddit",
  "yt_meta": {
    "score": 127,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.89,
    "num_comments": 55,
    "author": "akardashian",
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