I would offer another ‘it depends.’
What I learnt in grad school is that the *worst *thing you can do is compare your work habits and schedules to other people (the second worst is to tell other people!)
I had a professor at the University of Minnesota, my advisor, who told me that unless I worked for 18 hours a day, 6 days a week, I did not have the drive and discipline to earn a PhD. I found out from one of his grad school peers that my advisor spent about 75% of his time in grad school outside playing touch-football…anyway, I tried actually to maintain that schedule for about 3 weeks, and when another professor asked me why I looked so tired and upset, I explained my work schedule.
She thought for a minute, and told me, if I maintained that pace, I would finish the quarter’s worth of work in about a month, and then what? Well, I had asked my advisor that, and he had told me, to go to the library, start at one end of a bookshelf, and read my way through the stacks.
Another professor at Minnesota once challenged me in front of the class to ask how much time I spent on her class (one out of 3) outside of the class. I said, About two hours a day – which does seem like quite a lot of time. But she came back with, ‘What?! You spend only 10 hours a week on my class?!’
A completely different grad school professor told me to treat grad school like a 9-5 job (or whatever you want your 8 hours to be) and at the end of the work day, that would be the end of the work day. Your unfinished work will always be there the next day waiting for you, so don’t sweat it. That was his method, and it worked for him.
My first year at UVa (which was the year after I left Minnesota), I took 4 courses a term, and was working and studying almost constantly – I would feel guilty if I took an evening off to go shopping, or just to see a movie! The second year, I had 3 courses each term, TA’d 3 sections each term, and was writing my MA thesis – but I had learnt to manage my time efficiently, and didn’t have time management problems, and could take time off.
As it happens, I learnt that I could work very efficiently and carry a huge load, and get stuff done that might take a colleague much longer, if at all. My mistake was when I mentioned to anyone how much I was studying, or how far along I was in my thesis. In my dept, competition was cutthroat, and there were people who played off this sort of thing, and would seize on this info to make me feel panicked and anxious that I wasn’t ‘doing enough’ and slipping behind. Fortunately I TA’d for a really level-headed professor, who told me, ‘Just do your own work, at your own pace, and don’t worry about those other people.’
As for one of my UVa colleagues, who enjoyed that sort of baiting – she was making me feel about an inch high when comparing how far along either of us were on dissertations, telling me that she already had in a completed draft of the entire thing, and that her committee was very pleased with her, and how ‘terrible’ it was that I was only 100 pages into mine, &c – when her advisor, who hadn’t heard any of this conversation, walked up to us, and asked, cheerfully of her, ‘Hey, Mxxxx! When in the hell are you going to get me chapter one of your dissertation?! It’s been 6 months since you promised; how long does it take to write 20 pages?’
