More than 5 years ago, I wrote my first post on the Cocoon. It was the first of several posts addressing issues concerning work-life balance in academia. Given that the last entry in the series was close to 2 years ago, readers might have thought it was over.
Nope. That ideal balance among the things I value still eludes me, and there’s plenty more to write about it. Fortunately, I’ve learned some things over the years that have proven valuable in pursuit of that equilibrium. I want to share one of them today, one that I wish I had better understood when I began graduate school.
Graduate students, if they are aware of their circumstances, will feel significant pressure through their graduate career to be productive and build their CV. Otherwise, their chances of faring well on the job market are slim (except perhaps for those from the highest ranked programs). This creates a strong incentive to get fully immersed in one’s work, and for those who enjoy philosophy, the temptation is even greater. You’re in graduate school, after all: what better thing to do than get sucked wholly into your studies? Isn’t that what you went to graduate school to do in the first place?
The allure of such a lifestyle can be strong, and some of the most influential philosophers get deeply wrapped up in their work. Consider Jeff McMahan’s remarks about the lifestyle of Derek Parfit:
There are many anecdotes about the ways in which Parfit simplified his life to take as little time as possible away from his work. He ate only twice a day, with almost no variation in what he had at each meal. He ate cold food only, mostly fruits and vegetables without any preparation. Even when he could have had freshly ground coffee with only a minute’s additional preparation, he drank instant coffee, often with water straight from the tap. He sometimes kept a book open on the chest-of-drawers so that he could read while putting on his socks… Wanting to preserve his mental and physical capacities, he took an hour every evening during his last decade to get vigorous exercise on a stationary bicycle, but never without reading philosophy (or occasionally physics) while furiously pedalling.
Even when Parfit was engaging in other activities (e.g., getting dressed, exercising), he was still trying to do philosophy. These activities were, it seems, a hindrance to what he really wanted to do: read, write, and think. McMahan’s lifestyle has some of the same characteristics. Olivia Goldhill’s profile of him provides some details:
He wakes at 9.30 am, has a piece of fruit for breakfast, and immediately begins to work. His only breaks are a salad for lunch and granola from the university dining hall for dinner. Sometimes he goes to Corpus Christi; sometimes he works at home all day. He stops at 11.30 pm or midnight, has a bath, reads a biography or novel, and then goes to bed. He lives alone.
McMahan doesn’t go on vacation, as he’s “overcommitted, overworked.” Any hobbies? “I listen to music and I play squash and tennis,” he said, though, “I don’t have enough time or enough partners.” Most of his friends are philosophers and, though he seldom has dinner out, he does go to the odd social event. “I do have friends I meet at the pub,” he said. “I enjoy a meeting at the pub in the evening. I can work until close to closing time.”
McMahan’s commitment to philosophy, like Parfit’s, appears to overwhelm other pursuits and activities. To be fair, Parfit and McMahan may well be content with their lifestyle choices, and there is something admirable about having this level of commitment to one’s craft. Nonetheless, I suspect that this level of immersion in philosophy is neither sustainable nor desirable for most in the profession.
To reiterate a point from the final post in my series about dissertations, the rewards associated with academic life tend to be a kind of long-term gratification and usually require substantial investment to be obtained. These rewards can be very powerful, but the effort and frustration required to attain them sometimes overwhelms (at least in the short term) the good feelings they eventually produce. For this reason, a worthwhile life in academic philosophy will usually require more sources of enjoyment than just reading, writing, and teaching philosophy.
I imagine some readers will think this is obvious. It may even be hard for them to imagine pursuing a life that doesn’t include a few non-philosophical hobbies. That’s a fair point, but the matter isn’t so simple. Given the pressures one is liable to feel in graduate school (e.g., to publish, to teach effectively, to present work at conferences, to network with others in the profession, to attend departmental events), the hobbies that populate one’s life can quickly become stifled. There is always something else to do in graduate school – another paper to draft, another lecture to prep, another article to read. When you’re relaxing and not working, it’s easy for one’s mind to drift to the work that lies in wait and for feelings of guilt or anxiety to emerge. Over time, it’s easy for one’s life outside philosophy to erode until it becomes little more than an afterthought.
Something like this happened to me during my first few years of graduate school. It was gradual and so went unnoticed initially. I did not realize the extent of it until I was already a few years into the program. Perhaps surprisingly, I didn’t make the observation when things were going badly but when things were going well – right when I hit two milestones in short succession: the completion of my Master’s Thesis and the acceptance of my first solo-authored journal submission for publication. At that time, everything seemed to be going about as well as it could be, but I was gripped by a lingering sense of dissatisfaction. I was certainly not unhappy, but I felt unfulfilled. Something was missing.
When I dug deeper into what had gone wrong, I realized that many of the activities that had featured prominently in my pre-grad-school life had vanished. I was no longer playing tennis, despite being a varsity tennis player for my entire undergraduate career. I was no longer doing any creative writing, even though that had been my primary college major. I was no longer reading fiction – in fact, almost everything I read was philosophy-related. I had unwittingly sacrificed these things to progress through my graduate program and fill up my CV. There were definitely some benefits to doing so, but on the whole, the costs felt too significant. And so over the next several years, I tried to reintegrate those hobbies back into my life. (In many ways, that is still a work in progress.)
The lesson to be learned here is not that one must usually have some hobbies outside philosophy to stay sane but that one must make a concerted effort to protect these hobbies. Many in the profession advocate guarding one’s writing time as if it were sacred and not allowing outside influences to compromise it. That’s good advice in my view, but I think it is equally important for one to accord the same level of protection to at least one non-philosophical passion. Doing so is not just better (in most cases) for one’s well-being, but it can also boost one’s productivity. Our cognitive resources are limited, and doing philosophy is a mentally strenuous activity. Regularly taking time to recharge one’s mind can help one work more efficiently and produce higher quality work. Moreover, hitting the philosophy grind 10-12 hours per day, even if sustainable in the short run, can easily lead to burnout in the long term.
I don’t think it particularly matters what your non-philosophical passion is, so long as it its pursuit isn’t immoral and the hobby isn’t prominently connected to an addictive substance. Earlier this year, a series of posts on the Cocoon highlighted the non-philosophical passions of several philosophers and showcased just how varied the personal interests of people in our discipline can be. Whatever yours might be, don’t let them drown in the sea of philosophical thought and professional development as your graduate school career progresses. Resist the temptation to eat, drink, and breathe philosophy. Devote some time every day or two to something outside of philosophy that matters to you. In the long run, this will usually make you a better and happier philosopher.
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