Pace Yourself Posted on January 20, 2009 Hilda M. Pantin (bio) explains the effect of time off on a research career.

When you take time off, what it does is it slows it. And not only did I take time off, but once I began working again, I definitely did not work at the pace of many of my male colleagues because the pace of publications and grant writing, et cetera, for me it was very important to have time to spend with my daughters when they were young.

And I tell this to many of the young women that I work with, that you will have time to catch up if you choose to slow down the pace when your children are young. So when my daughters were a little bit older when they were early adolescents, all of a sudden I began to be able to focus much more on my career and to publish much more profusely and was able to catch up.

And for me that was my choice that I made because I really did want to have a balance.

It's very difficult to do everything. I know some people who do and they're very, very successful. But I think you have to have a high level of energy, and you have to have a great ability to be able to do that.

And one of the things that I think is often difficult for young people is that they want to be sort of super people, and that's not for everybody. That can be very stressful, and it can create a lot of problems.

So I think if you can pace yourself at the level that you are able to balance things, I think it'll be better.