The Philosophers' Cocoon

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

I have a question about motivation.

Some of you (those who run the Cocoon) have mentioned that you were on the market for years before getting your TT position. During that time, how did you maintain the motivation to continue publishing, continue working, despite multiple rejections.

For me, I'm struggling with finishing my book, completing some of my submissions because of the relentless pile-on of rejections, and the way that staying on the market via adjuncting might not be sustainable for me.

So, is there any advice for folks in my position?

This is a great query, and I'm curious to hear how readers answer. I definitely empathize, as I spent a long time (7 years post-PhD) on the market, and struggled with this myself. Allow me to briefly share my experience before opening up things for discussion.

As I explained many years ago, the thing that I personally found the most helpful here was to try to focus on what I was doing–namely, teaching and writing–and trying to having fun: specifically, by exploring fun ideas in the classroom with students, writing papers on things that I was genuinely interested in, etc. My experience was that it's all too easy to get caught up in the 'rat race' while on the market (e.g. am I publishing enough?, in good enough journals?, etc.). The more that I focused on those things, the more that I struggled with motivation–and honestly, the less I liked actually being a philosopher. But here's the thing: it's easy to lose sight of what (probably) led one to want to do a career in philosophy in the first place: namely, that philosophy can and should be fun. As a job-candidate, there is so little that one has control over. Journals can take forever, referees can be slow and unforgiving, the job market brutal, and so on. What you do have control over is your actual work: your teaching, research, and service. And here, again, is my experience: you'll probably be better at these things once you actually focus on having fun with it. The more that I focused on having fun with what I was doing, the more productive I was as a researcher and the better my teaching reviews got (because, in having fun in the classroom–exploring wild ideas and arguments–I was also giving students a better experience).

So, that's one thing. Another related thing that I found helpful was pursuing philosophy authentically, viz. one's own conception of the kind of philosopher (and teacher) one wants to be. Early in my career, I felt like I had to be a certain kind of philosopher: namely, the kind that I was trained to be in graduate school, and the kind that (in my experience) one is often told one must be to publish effectively (viz. 'Find a really narrow problem, write a very focused and rigorous paper on that, etc.'). Here's the thing, though: that's never the philosopher I ever really wanted to be. Indeed, I kind of always rebelled against it, finding more systematic philosophy that focuses on 'big ideas' more exciting. So, at one point, I figured, "You know, if I fail at this philosophy thing–if I never get a job–I at least want to do it by being the kind of philosopher that I want to be." So I started writing papers and books like that, found it a lot more fun, and started publishing a lot more…and lo and behold: I ended up getting a job.

Here's a third thing that I found very helpful: setting good limits on when and how much I work, and leaving time for life outside of philosophy. At one point while I was on the market, working all of the time really affected my well-being and my relationships. So, I decided to set firm limits on work hours: I only work M-F between 9am-5pm, and never on weekends. This worked wonders. My experience is that it's hard to maintain motivation if you're always working. We all need breaks, and some time time enjoy life, if at all possible.

Anyway, these are just my thoughts: when the job market got me down (which it often did exceedingly well), I always found it was helpful to return to what made me fall in love with philosophy in the first place: having fun with ideas in my writing and in the classroom, doing philosophy in a way that felt authentic to who I am and the kind of philosopher (and teacher) that I wanted to be, and having a life outside of philosophy. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? If you have struggled with maintaining motivation (particularly as a result of the job market or other features of the profession more broadly), what have you found helpful?