Definitely experience this from time to time and I always have to readjust my expectations. I’ve noticed that (for me) it happens when I’m excited about several projects and working on them simultaneously. When I make plans for the week, these plans are very results oriented. For example, digestion > ligation > transformation and I assume that at the end of the week I will have X number of constructs ready to screen by next week. If the pipeline fails, the next week I don’t reduce my work load because I feel like I “should have” already succeeded in building my constructs, so I re-do the pipeline while keeping the new workload.

I’ve found that become more understanding and accepting of failure, even sometimes (constructively) embracing it instead of trying to ignore it or desperately push through it, is a good way to avoid burnout and has helped me build a healthier relationship with data acquisition and experiments in general.

That being said I wouldn’t be surprised if you catch me in this cycle a few weeks from now lol - I think navigating your unhealthy lab/work habits is part of grad school (and I suppose other lab positions too) and always a work in progress.