Just wondering how many hours per week, on average, people spend working on their PhDs, either in the office or at home?

Hey! Pretty much full time work hours I guess plus whatever else is required! So at least 8 hours per day in the office or testing, sometimes a bit more in the evening, sometimes weekends and sometimes not. I go through hectic patches and slightly less hectic patches and like to take some time to chill at the weekend if I can so I don't burn out, but sometimes PhD stuff doesn't fit from 9-5 Mon-Fri as most of us will know! KB

I'm a part-time student and am allowed 6 years to complete. I've spent a ridiculously small amount of hours on the PhD though. In the early years it was typically 10 hours a week. Now, as I near the end, it's dropped to typically 5 hours a week. I'm seriously ill long-term, getting worse as time goes on, and have very few good hours in which to be productive. Still, I've nearly finished.

I'm also doing my PhD full-time, and spend about 50+ hours a week on it. I work on it every day, with the occasional morning or evening off. This also includes time goofing off on forums!

Hi Lilbo,

This week, after today, I'll have done about 15 hours. I'm part-time and teaching for the best part of three days a week, even so, I'd love to fit more in, but I fnd I have a productivity cut off point in each day, and need to work in two hour bursts, fitting in two, maybe three bursts in a day. I can work more solidly if I'm just reading, but I'm writing at the moment. During the holidays I work more, for example, this summer I wrote a a paper, and worked, what felt like, 24/7 on that for about three weeks, but then I took two weeks completely off, which I needed badly by then (the only time off I've had since last Christmas). The rest of the summer I worked about 35 hours per week, I wish I could concentrate for longer than that! However, when I do work, I am totally switched on to what I'm doing, I tend to get lost in it.

Oh, the hours I've given you apply to researching and writing, not to library visits and emails etc.

I've just started but I'm mainly doing theoretical work...so I count any time sat down thinking about stuff as time on my PhD. As such, I racked up a good week of work this week.

I keep work mainly to the office, and try to be as productive as possible when at work. I usually do around 38-45 hours a week (8-4/5/6pm). If I'm working on an article/conference paper or something else with a looming deadline, I put in more hours of course, but lately I try to concentrate on my main work and don't distract myself too much with side projects. So I'm one of those sticking to office hours and for me the relatively strict separation between work and free time works really well. I sometimes read field-related stuff also in my freetime, but that is rarely directly Phd-related.