| This post is a month overdue. My bad. I won't go on about why. (Okay I will, but only in the endnotes¹ because I've been up to fun stuff.) I don't want to belabor the tardiness of this post because The Culture of Busy in academia is an epidemic. I get how the Culture of Busy has taken hold. I'm not immune to it. I don't think I complain about being busy, but yet the people around me see that I am. That's my fault, and it's a genuine problem. When early career researchers move up into experienced levels of academic science, the nature of work is quite the same. Grad students do the same stuff as full professors. The differences are the scope of impact and our efficiency. We get more done in the same number of hours because we're seasoned pros and we can identify the heart of what needs to be done, and we know how to knock it out in a relative flash. Any given day, like all y'all, I'm juggling a range of things. Any fellow experienced juggler will look at what I'm juggling and see that it's just like a normal day plying my trade as a juggler. But if you're not a fellow busker, it's easy to get amazed to those bowling pins and flaming torches spinning arond, and closing out the show with two pool balls and a chainsaw, it's impressive. When I see students in my lab getting through coursework, preparing a poster for a conference, writing their first manuscript, and submitting a fellowship proposal, I see their growth in progress and know how hard it is, I remember being in that position. I see what they're juggling. But if they see the stuff that I'm juggling as a professor who has been in the game for a while, then that looks really different from their perspective. Even if I look as casual a possible while juggling the mentoring, committees, grant paperwork, teaching, manuscripts, travel, and all that, I too often give off the impression that I'm busy. This makes sense, because I indeed am busy. But is this a thing that the students in my lab need to know? Busy is normal. Busy means you're getting things done. If you're not busy on the regular, then what the heck are you doing? I do my best to work within about 40 hours per week, and when I'm doing that work, I'm locked in. (When I'm really excited about a project, sometimes I'll do more. Which also is fine.) One research project naturally leads to other projects. The same with teaching: while there are diminishing returns in lesson preparation, putting in more effort generally results in better teaching. If we're in the right line of work, we're often excited to get to the next project and to teach the next lesson. That means we are busy. Which is fine! In our line of work, work is an infinite project. There is always more. This means we need to define our priorities and ensure that the people who are this priority geninely get to experience that status . Busy is one thing, but living in the The Culture of Busy means elevating busy to a position of honor. I suppose it's a natural consequence of the productivity fetish borne from the perverse incentive structure in our line of work. If the pathway to getting reward is more pubs and grants, etc., then if you look like you're always busy working on this stuff then maybe you look like you're more successful? To all that, I say: Ick. Eeew. But this vibe is deeply ingrained all around us. Expressing busyness is essentially an ineffective manifestation of egotism.
The unintended victims of our busyness are the people we serve: our students, trainees, and other mentees. Even if we make all the time in the world for the people who we prioritize, it's possible we're doing them a disservice because they may not necessarily know they're a priority. Even if we tell them explicitly that they're a top priority, if we seem too busy to them, then this can get in the way. How often have you heard, 'I know you're busy, but...." and then there's a simple request. For a recommendation letter, feedback on a draft, an opportunity to talk about a problem in the lab, a session for planning for their professional development. Straightforward things all of which are our job to provide for the people we serve. I admittedly hear this far too often. I interpret this as a sign that I am doing a piss poor job of going about my workday with the aplomb that is deserves. Okay, even I'm am dealing with some Serious Stuff, don't we all? When I'm dealing with other people, how should it come out that I've been task-switching all day, have hit a point of decision fatigue, and might not have enough time to attend to our shared business? Why is this happening? It's the big things and the little things. I have been splitting my time between two offices over the past year, and sometimes working from home. When I'm on campus, I've got one meeting, then another, then another. When people catch me, and ask me if I have a moment, odds are that I don't. Those are the macro-scale issues. I can't do much about that other than structure my calendar differently. But I have control over the micro issues. I can control how I comport myself and what I choose to say in each moment. When I'm with others, am I fully present? If my open door means that I'm available, does it mean that I am truly available? I feel I've done a good job being accessible but have done a poor job recently being available. What can we do about this? I suggest two steps. First, can we just stop talking about being busy? If we are busy, it's because it's our choice. We chose this. The Culture of Busy is built on idle chatter, it sets the tone of the culture. Second: Anticipate the needs of your people. Build supporting your people in the foundation of your work, rather than waiting for them to bring things up. We can do this by holding more structured and regular meetings. By meeting even if you think there's nothing on the plate at the moment that requires immediate attention. Accessibility isn't the key to good mentorship. Being approachable is only useful to the subset of people in your midst who feel well entitled to your time. I'm writing this principally as a confessional, because I haven't been meeting my own standards. If my students are reading this (do any of them read this, I don't think so?) then clearly they'd be the first to point out that I have fallen short over the past year. Have I majorly f'ed up? I don't think so. Could I have been better, and can I do better? For sure. Recommitting to priorities is always a good idea. I hope you're having a great summer.
¹ The past month has been a confluence of pleasing distractions. First, in my new line of research a bunch of projects have culminated the data-collection phase. I genuinely haven't been this excited about science since grad school. Normally writing here is a magnetic draw, but I've been pulled away by the science. Which is fun! Second, senate chair stuff got unexpectedly busy at the end of the academic year. Yawn. Third, we've been doing work on our house, had wholly moved out and we just moved back in. It's been 20 years in this place, and we're not hoarders, but nonetheless moving ain't trivial. Fourth, there's been a bunch of mostly good personal family stuff. Fifth, now there's the World Cup. Lots of huge matches in the group stages! Sixth, a book project is choogling along and at some point in the moderate future I'll have the privilege of asking you to pre-order. Did I just break an unwritten rule by vagueposting prematurely? Probably. But anyhow, my point is I've not been not writing. Seventh, the protracted application, multi-stage interview, et cetera process for the AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowship just finished up this week, and contingent on federal not-defunding, I'm going to be a AAAS Policy Fellow in September! So I'm temporarily relocating again and not just down the block this time. So, it's been a quite a month. Is telling you all of this feeding the Culture of Busy? I hope not. I'm just excited to tell you what I've been up to! |
No comments:
Post a Comment