What do we want to achieve when we manage our time better? I do not think that productivity should be the aim per se. Productivity, especially in tenured academics, is overrated, and there is already so much to read. The world isn't worse off if a tenured academic publishes a bit less in a given year. Productivity is also overrated in untenured academics, I think, but here lurks collective action problem. In a job market where people have to come with heavier CVs, you have no choice but to be productive.
Still, even in that context, I think the focus on productivity is misguided. Productivity plays into ableist narratives, neglecting how much variety there is between people in getting various academic tasks done. It also frames people as being a means to their employer's or (in the case of job market), their future self's end.
It is more helpful to think management in terms of fruitfulness. Getting your projects to fruition, flourishing as a human being who is also an academic, sowing the seeds of later projects. Sometimes you do a lot of work, but it doesn't immediately turn into a payoff. A writing project (paper, book etc) can be done in a matter of weeks, or years.
This excellent blogpost by University of Edinburgh's chaplain Harriet Harris probes this distinction between fruitfulness and productivity. As Harris writes "imagine if trees had been forced to produce apples non-stop. We can make nature do such things for us – turning dairy cows into continual milk-producing machines, for example. We can treat ourselves this way too, expecting endless productivity."
But that's not a sustainable way to live (in fairness, the years I spent on the job market this was exactly how I lived). You cannot treat yourself this way for years on end without burnout. So first and foremost, it is helpful to step away from a narrow focus on productivity toward feasibility and goals you want to accomplish without being burnt out.
To this end, I propose the following tips (you can read an early version, slightly shorter, of this in a series of tweets here). They are not tips to be more productive, per se, but to
- accomplish more what you want to accomplish, and hence reduce frustration
- give you enough time for projects that otherwise go on the back-burner forever, or projects that simply help you to flourish and thrive as an academic though less urgent than others
- feel less stress or the sense you're forever running behind.
Log your time to get a sense of how long a given task takes
The first thing to recognize is that given task take a lot of time, more than you think. This post is very useful. Try keeping a log of how long a variety of mundane academic tasks take for you. I tried this on for size and noticed that I can grade about 3, 4 papers of 3000 words in an hour (no wonder we feel so burnt out grading final papers!). Writing a letter of recommendation from scratch takes 2-3 hours, updating one 30 minutes. Reviewing a paper takes about 2-3 hours. Writing a presentation from scratch on a topic not unfamiliar to me, but still slightly new, took a whopping 7 hours (spread over several days). Writing entirely new class notes take about 4-6 hours (this was on an unfamiliar topic), minor updates to class notes I prepped last year about 20-30 minutes. And so on.
You may be slower, or faster, than me, but the basic point remains: getting a clear sense of how much everything takes will be crucial for helping your time management. Relatedly, it is helpful to keep a time diary. Academics are notably unreliable in reporting how much they think they work, usually overestimating by as much as 5 to 10 hours weekly. You can try this for two weeks in a time in semester that is not very busy (not finals, for instance).
Having an accurate sense of how much time you spend at your job doing various tasks. This, of course, does not modify in any way the workload that higher ed institutes foist upon us, but at least it helps you to get a sense if you are overworking (note that even 45 to 50 hours of work a week is a lot and can make one feel burnt out). It may help you to say no to anything you can possibly say no to (more on this below).
Time boxing
A time-tested technique for time-management is not to spend your time scattered "multitasking" (which few people can do, and so in effect requires you to pull your attention away and back into something else). Simply put, you focus a time slot to a feasible task.
What if the project is big, e.g., a 5000-word grant proposal, a 100,000 word monograph? You can cut it into manageable bits and project what you want to achieve for that bit of time, e.g., "I will read the following central paper for my project (and make notes)", or "I will write at least 500 words of the introduction to chapter 2".
It is sometimes useful to use a time boxing technique like pomodoro, which consists in setting a timer for 25 minutes just doing a given task, then taking a short break, etc. and set your aim for a number of pomodoros (focused work time). In my experience, this works best for very tedious and repetitive tasks such as grading, but YMMV.
Don't set yourself unrealistic standards, rather carve out defensible and realistic times for your projects
Many of us feel inadequate because of bad advice that circulates, such as "write every day". In fact, as Helen Sword found that only 12.8% of highly productive academics she interviewed wrote every day!
Instead, Paul Silvia, author of the delightful book How to write a lot recommends, "Picking the right days and times is most of the battle. The actual days and times don’t matter much, as long as they are defensible and biologically realistic."
Of all the writing tips I have read in recent times, Silvia's advice to carve out space deliberately in your schedule has been eye-opening. With biologically realistic, he means it needs to be in line your circadian rhythm/other aspects of your life. Some people get a lot of writing done between 9 PM and midnight, but personally, it doesn't work for me as I am too tired then. Pick a time that works for your body and mind.
But foremost, defensible is so important.
Pick at least a day, or if high teaching load, a morning or afternoon per week there aren't a lot of meetings etc going on and then just put that as sacrosanct "I'm writing don't disturb me" time. Now you will find (and I have found) that tasks will creep on you anyway on this writing day/afternoon(s).
Specifically, people will want to schedule meetings. It is important not to let these tasks creep up. If you feel you can't say that then just make something up. Silvia writes “If you say “I’m writing then,” they hear, “Oh, she’s free then.” It’s okay to say simply that you “already have a meeting then” and sell it with a knowing eye-roll." Kantians among us can simply say "My Thursdays are very busy, I cannot organize any meetings then," which is the truth.
Getting out of the spiral of dread
Leave a Reply to Anon TTCancel reply