The Philosophers' Cocoon

A safe and supportive forum for philosophers.

Owned & Moderated by Marcus Arvan (University of Tampa)

Contact: marvan@ut.edu

Blog mission & moderation policy

IMPORTANT NOTE on how to ensure anonymity in commenting
Job-Market Reporting Thread (2025-26)
Job-Market Discussion Thread (2025-26)

recent posts

about

How many hours per day do you work on research?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How many hours a day do you work? I mean real, serious, research work (reading and writing)? Even on my research days I can't do more than 4-5 hours… anything more than that my brain is mush.

Lots of scientists claim to work 80 hours a week, but of course a lot of their research is quite different. Just curious what the experience of pother philosophers is.

I'm pretty productive. Not a research star, but I got tenure at a decent place.

Due to my teaching and service workload, I only really have time to focus on research during the summers, but when I do have time I'd say 5 hours is my median. Sometimes I'll work significantly longer than that, for example if I have an impending deadline. But, like the OP, I tend to find that after 5 hours or so, my brain goes to mush. I also virtually never work in the evenings or on weekends, as I find I'm more productive when I give myself time off to recuperate and do other things in life.

What about you all?

Posted in

9 responses to “How many hours per day do you work on research?”

  1. Michel

    At least fifteen minutes every day, though most days it’s an hour. Once in a while it’s more like 2-3 hours.
    I publish on average 2-3 articles a year, and teach at least eight courses.

    Reply
  2. RJM

    I typically work around 37 hours a week, sometimes more and sometimes less. I try to work in the evenings once or twice a week but that usually isn’t particularly successful. I take at least 4 weeks completely off a year, plus many days where I do a bit of work here and there but not a full day. I do try to listen to work-relevant stuff when walking to/from work (audio books, podcasts) but that is usually stretching the definition of work relevant a bit.
    Permanent position with a good number of outputs and a standard (by the norms of my country anyway) teaching load. I’m not doing as much service as more senior members of my department but every year there’s a little bit more to do.

    Reply
  3. Tenured

    I strictly limit myself to no more than 40 hours or university related work per week per week, and of that 10-15 ends up being research. Since I don’t work weekends, I never end up having blocks of research time that extend beyond three hours per day. I like my job, but never saw the attraction of 80 hour work weeks (tenured, R1)

    Reply
  4. Tim

    I teach a 2-2, and average 3 hours of research a day during the semester.

    Reply
  5. l*ve

    I teach a 5/5 and the expectations for getting a TT job seem to be that I should be working every waking minute of my life. Is this wrong?

    Reply
  6. Jacob Joseph Andrews

    I teach K-12, equivalent of a 8/8 load, no research expectation. I try to carve out an hour a day for research. Most days it’s more like 20-30 minutes. but sometimes it’s 2-3 hours if it’s a light grading week, students are on a field trip I’m not chaperoning, etc. I’ve managed to get a publication a year since graduating.
    Like RJM, besides that number, in my free time I do a lot of listening to audiobooks/podcasts, reading philosophical books out of personal interests, and sketching out “for fun” future projects (papers I’d like to write but won’t for many years; or eg I’ve been planning out a philosophy podcast in my free time—does that count as “research”?).
    When I was in grad school, 5-6 hours was typically the point where I stopped being productive, but there were definitely days where I did a lot less and others where I did a lot more.

    Reply
  7. Caligula’s Goat

    I’m 12 years post PhD and have averaged 1.75 publications per year not including a solo-authored book and an edited collection. Some years are really good (3+ publications) and some less so (0-1 publications).
    I think my own schedule is more like Marcus’ than most of the others here in the sense that I consider myself a researcher of opportunity. I teach 6 courses a year and have quite a lot of (ever increasing) administrative duties all of which take up the vast majority of my mental work time. Whenever I have some mental energy I try to make progress on research. That tends to be dominated by summer research.
    One trick that I’ve hit upon in the last few years is collaboration. Collaborative research is a great way of being more productive, if only because it holds me accountable to others. Over the past five years I’ve collaborated with tons of people: colleagues in my own department, faculty in other philosophy departments, and even some of our undergraduates. Working and publishing with undergrads has been a blast. It definitely doesn’t make research easier (because I’m functioning as much as a professor and mentor) but it does force me to get on a more regular reading/writing schedule.
    As with just about every question that gets asked on this blog, questions about how much time or energy to spend on X are always going to be particular and contextual. What are your publishing goals? How quickly do you work? How much mental energy are you able to devote to research? Etc etc etc.
    I’ve discovered about myself that if I try to spend more than about two hours doing research that the quality of what I’m doing (and the enjoyment it gives me) really starts to drop so I give myself two hour time limits, even in the summer, for work. Your mileage will vary based on your idiosyncrasies.

    Reply
  8. B

    I can’t sustain more than 3 hours of focused research work a day, and that only for a few days in a row.
    However, I never really stop thinking or talking about research regardless of what I am doing. In fact, I don’t consider research to be work at all now that I’m tenured and I have to teach.

    Reply
  9. C

    I’m a postdoc, no teaching responsibilities. I study 3 hours per workday with the exception of one weekday, when I work 5 hours. No work on weekends. If I am off social media and the news, I find I have the mental energy to get a lot done on each day. But I still need the weekends to recover/ruminate.

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Discover more from The Philosophers' Cocoon

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading