The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reflections on my upcoming 40th birthday, hitting targets, and our relevance in the profession

In less than a month, I will be 40 years old. 

In my early 30s, I took away my date of birth from social media and from my CV.

The reason behind this was that I worried about being regarded as "past my prime", especially for hiring committees. It took me a while to get funding for my PhD and then it took me a while to get a second PhD, as well as several postdoc positions. I also had two children. My partner was the primary caregiver for both through their early years, so I only took a few months off for each birth. Still, this all takes time--and time goes on inexorably. 

In the past I could not help thinking, "By age 40, I should..."

• Have a permanent job, check. Still, what is permanent these days? 
• Bought house, nope. Too expensive. 
• Published a paper in one of the top-3 philosophy journals, nope. (I should start writing in a different way and actually submit to these things, so it doesn't seem to be that big a priority). Etc. 

We use age as a measuring-rod, a series of checkpoints that we should have reached. Seeing younger people getting all sorts of accolades and accomplishments fills us with gladness for them, but also amps up our insecurity, as if we're missing the targets we need to hit. A bit like looking at the ultrasound of a gestating fetus, there are these set checkpoints that we evaluate ourselves by. By age x I surely should have accomplished y. Otherwise, there's a problem.

Balance Series, Part 10: Resisting Digital Distractions

Midway through graduate school, following numerous arbitrary increases in my monthly bill, I abandoned Comcast’s cable and internet service. Afterward, I struck a deal with a friend in a neighboring apartment to use his wireless network and cover half the expense. Six months later, he moved to a different complex, and I was stuck with no cable or internet at home. But my bitter dislike and distrust of Comcast was so strong that I refused to go back to them, even if they were the only provider in my area. So for that summer and the semester that followed, I had no internet access in my apartment.

And this is where the story gets interesting – not because of what happened but because of what didn’t happen. My life did not get any worse.

Balance Series, Part 9: Protecting Your Hobbies

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.

Rubrics

By JG

In an earlier post I gave the advice of using rubrics rather than comments in grading, which started a good conversation in the comments. So I thought the idea of rubrics merited its own post, especially since it’s finals time for many of us. So join me below the fold...

Productive in Pedagogy: Some Advice for Instructors, Especially Grad Students

By JG

Recently there was a bit of a dust up over at Daily Nous about a guest post by Jason Brennan on productivity in publishing, with a response by David Enoch. Jason’s advice is actually pretty good, as far as it goes, and its better after he clarifies a few things in the comments on both posts (this is one of the few times I can remember learning something in blog comments, when the debate got more sophisticated as things went on).

However, as Jason notes, his advice is pretty restricted in scope, to grad students who want to publish a lot and are on track for jobs where publishing a lot is the most (only?) important thing. Most of us aren’t in that position, which means his advice is of somewhat limited value (I'll leave to one side the debate about whether we should want to be in that position, though you won't have to do much detective work to see what I think about that).

So, I thought I’d write a companion piece inspired by Jason’s post, about how to be productive in a teaching-centered position.

How do you get things done?

In my experience, one thing early-career academics [and some non-early-career people] often struggle with is getting things done. In fact, I had serious problems here in the past myself. In graduate school, after I completed my comprehensive exams I got basically nothing of any consequence done for about two years. It wasn't for lack of trying. I did "work" just about every day: reading, writing [or, at least, attempting to, often unfruitfully], etc. I just struggled actually getting stuff accomplished. And my problems did not end when I finished my degree. In my first year at my first job [at UBC], I remember spending my entire first semester messing around with a couple of paper drafts for months on end, never finishing either of them. I was wasting a ridiculous amount of time, but, for all that, I just didn't know a better to approach things.

My wife, who is an early-career academic in another field [and who happily encouraged me to mention her in this post], reminded me of these issues when she approached me yesterday asking how I manage to get things done. You see, right now she is struggling with many of the same things I struggled with early on in my career: getting papers drafted or revised in a reasonable amount of time while studying for her comprehensive exams and doing all of the other things she needs to do [respond to emails, meet with collaborators, etc.]. My wife approached me with her question because, whatever limitations I have [and, as with most people, I admittedly have very many], not getting stuff done is no longer one of them. I get stuff done now--I get papers drafted and revised quickly, and manage to get all of the other things I need to get done [teaching, assessment duties, volunteer work, etc.]--without missing deadlines. This isn't meant to be self-congratulatory.  It's simply a descriptive fact: I used to struggle mightily to get things done, and I don't anymore. As I explained here, I recognize that in sharing my perspective there is always a risk that saying things like this may come across as self-congratulatory--but, for all that, my sincere aim in sharing is to try to be helpful. I hope readers take my remarks in that spirit. I don't "know it all" by any means, but what I can do is share some of my struggles and experiences grappling with them, in the hope that my remarks can potentially help others facing similar struggles. 

Anyway, because I used to struggle with these issues, and know there are others out there who probably struggle with them as well, I thought it might be a good idea if we shared with each other some of our strategies for getting things done. I will begin by sharing mine, and hope some of you share some of your strategies as well. As always, I do not suppose that "my ways are the right ways." I fully recognize that we are all different, and that what works for one person might not work for another. Still, be that as it may, I think it may be useful to share our strategies with each other--as, from experience, I can say that simply trying to find effective strategies through little more than personal trial and error isn't...well, all that effective. Sharing our strategies with each other may, at the very least, help us see how other people do things, and perhaps try out their strategies to see if they are useful in our own case. In any case, this is my hope!

I will begin by sharing a general macro-level strategy for getting things done that I have found very useful, and then turn to some much more specific micro-level strategies. The macro-level strategy is simply this: I have found that, for me, the single most important strategy for getting things done is having effective daily routines. Allow me to explain.