Fruitfulness versus productivity--thoughts for writing what you want to write

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

If you are in a procrastination cycle (dread/not daring to come back to a neglected project) I recommend the 20 non-scary minutes "I will spend 20 minutes just looking at this project with no set expectations. Just looking over what I wrote etc for these 20 mins is fine". The bar needs to be lowered when you are at a psychological low point, tough (self)love doesn't work, and you can ratchet yourself up.

 

Give yourself permission to work at something "unproductive"

 

It is also fine to take time to work at something that does not produce immediate results or translate itself into immediate outputs. The temptation is high, particularly if one is on the job market, to think "I need to write/think about things that are going to translate into articles in high-ranking generalist peer-reviewed journals", and while strictly speaking such papers are important, you cannot treat your work purely instrumentally. For instance, I spent a substantial part of my time while on the job market writing blog posts. A few of these grew into papers in peer-reviewed journals, most did not. Still, it was a very useful experience. It helped me to discuss work with others and fostered good writing habits. Moreover, you never know where a useless project might lead to. Drawing thought experiments for fun led to this book. 

 

This gives rise to something of a paradox: it seems I am suggesting we do useless things because some of these will turn out to be useful after all. It's undeniable. Still, a lot of great ideas are born out of play and wandering, and you should give yourself permission to engage in this for some time every week. Also, if nothing else, it brings us in tune with why so many of us want to be academics in the first place, which is to study and expand the mind.

 

Sometimes, you really do need to say no 

 

So, you need some time (weekly, even if only half an hour a week) to just explore and allow your mind to grow. If you find you keep on being at the brink of deadlines, and have no time for that kind of growth then you need to re-evaluate your time management.

 

Sometimes we get just too many tasks heaped upon us. Then we need to say "no".

 

To be able to say no, it is helpful to not say yes immediately. Never agree on the spot but carefully consider the balance between your duties and obligations (to your fellow department members, the profession etc), and your own time. Some things are hard for me to refuse, such as tenure reviews. Few people can do them, and repeated refusals to evaluate one's tenure and promotion dossier may send a bad signal (though if you are in the impossibility to do it, it is of course fine to decline).

 

Note that some things are best to say yes or no immediately, such requests to referee papers (otherwise valuable time gets lost for the author, even more so if you forget to respond. This is very, very common and a source of delay and frustration). You can use a simple algorithm to decide whether to referee a paper quickly. My algorithm is: only one paper under review at one time (I do not count papers I review as associate editor for Ergo or as executive editor for JAT in this), judging from a quick skim or the abstract, I need to feel confident I'll be able to referee it without outside reading, and I will not do more than 12-15 referee reports in total per year (this does not include editorial work or revise/resubmit re-evaluations). This helps me to quickly decision these requests, and if no, I suggest alternative reviewers. 

 

In any case, for more fuzzy requests it is helpful to not say yes right away. For instance, my head of department asked if I would teach a new big course next year, with all new preps to fit into our core. So I said "I will think about it". I carefully took into consideration that I have a middle-sized grant-based project coming up this summer, which comes with a course release. If I took on the all-new course then I would spend a lot of time in preps, and I would not have the course release. So, eventually I said no, explained about the grant, and it was fine. Similar with other projects: giving a talk, even on Zoom, requires many hours of preparation (if it is an all-new talk). Writing a paper for a special issue or a volume, idem. If you are tenured, suggest more junior people as potential replacements for you. 

 

I realize it is not always possible to say no, but it is fine to do sometimes. You can be a good citizen in academia without being burnt out. Don't feel guilty for doing research that is fun, mind-expanding, and exploratory without an immediate productive return. 

Comments

[Current PhD Student]

This is wonderful, thank you! I really love this idea of fruitfulness, and all of the advice here is very helpful to me (especially about tracking how long things actually take).

[Anon TT]

You might imagine something like
(a) # of articles you can publish and
(b) # of articles you can publish that your heart is really in (i.e., you really care about getting your views out there).

Presumably, (b) is a proper subset of (a). Then what's the utility-maximizing combination for you?

Presumably some combination. Sure, maybe (a) and (b) are coextensive. But, more likely, there are tradeoffs and (a) is neither 0 nor maximal, and the same for (b). If so, I'd think it best to try to publish a bunc 1-3 years (given peer review lag times) before going on the market.

Then, if you secure a permanent position or end up caring less about that, focus increasingly on (b). Or, if you find that your publishing success comes chiefly from focusing on (b), then that is good for you, so do that.