It’s Thanksgiving break week here at Penn State, so the undergrads have evacuated campus and things have quieted down. As students, we technically have the week off, but most of us are using at least part of it to run experiments, catch up on work, and carry on with our research. This resulted in me coming up with this week’s tip: take care of yourself.

A recent article in the Times Higher Ed by University of Michigan Professor Meghan Duffy squashed the rumor that an 80-hour workweek is necessary to succeed in academia. Sure, you have to work hard, and you have to get your work done, but this shouldn’t come at the expense of you. Other research has shown that working more than 56 hours is useless and that productivity is reduced when workers don’t take a day each week off of work.

Dr. Elizabeth Haswell, associate professor (and plant biologist) at Washington University in St. Louis, gets this point across with a simple phrase (more great advice in this blog post):

Take care of your biology before your Biology.

So take care of your biology this week and take a little break.