Robert, thanks for the post and Happy New Year. Wishing you all the best on the start to the semester and looking forward to following along with what you have to share here especially in your next few posts about GTD for academics.
I really appreciate your four truths and especially the last point about the importance of consistency within a coherent larger framework. This really resonates with me and is something I love about teaching at a liberal arts institution where we value and strive to support whole-person learning. This is also something that my students can benefit from as they launch into their professional careers.
As a pre-tenure professor with a young family, your reflections are encouraging to me as I navigate the academic minefield of trying to find the points of balance. I'm increasingly convinced that work-life balance is the wrong frame and that something akin to work-life coherence is a better one.
Looking forward to continuing to read and learn from you!
Happy New Year, Robert! Do you think faculty need to "pay their dues" with 14+ hour work-days and weekends, sacrificing time with family, etc., in the initial stages of their career, then after they achieve tenure or full professor rank, then they can relax?
Happy new year to you too Grace and thanks for this interesting question. The answer is No. I do think that in the early stages of a person's career, there's a lot of work to be done to build the foundation, and a lot of that is just irreducibly hard and time consuming. (For example I'm not sure Ph.D. programs can be turned into a smaller time commitment.)
But, a new faculty member is not an indentured servant and does not owe their time and life to their employer. I am fully convinced it is possible to do the work needed to build a successful career without all the exhaustion of 14-hour workdays, etc. and live to tell the tale as a tenured professor. There are no "dues" to pay in other words, just work that needs to be done, and which with a careful application of good habits and systems can be done in a way that makes both the faculty member and the university happy.
Also, "relaxing" is just as much a discipline and a habit as GTD, and we're kidding ourselves if we think we can work for seven years at an exploitative pace and then suddenly, spontaneously "relax" once we get tenure.
Robert, thanks for the post and Happy New Year. Wishing you all the best on the start to the semester and looking forward to following along with what you have to share here especially in your next few posts about GTD for academics.
I really appreciate your four truths and especially the last point about the importance of consistency within a coherent larger framework. This really resonates with me and is something I love about teaching at a liberal arts institution where we value and strive to support whole-person learning. This is also something that my students can benefit from as they launch into their professional careers.
As a pre-tenure professor with a young family, your reflections are encouraging to me as I navigate the academic minefield of trying to find the points of balance. I'm increasingly convinced that work-life balance is the wrong frame and that something akin to work-life coherence is a better one.
Looking forward to continuing to read and learn from you!
Great starting points, good luck to this new effort Robert. Looking forward to your future posts.
Happy New Year, Robert! Do you think faculty need to "pay their dues" with 14+ hour work-days and weekends, sacrificing time with family, etc., in the initial stages of their career, then after they achieve tenure or full professor rank, then they can relax?
Happy new year to you too Grace and thanks for this interesting question. The answer is No. I do think that in the early stages of a person's career, there's a lot of work to be done to build the foundation, and a lot of that is just irreducibly hard and time consuming. (For example I'm not sure Ph.D. programs can be turned into a smaller time commitment.)
But, a new faculty member is not an indentured servant and does not owe their time and life to their employer. I am fully convinced it is possible to do the work needed to build a successful career without all the exhaustion of 14-hour workdays, etc. and live to tell the tale as a tenured professor. There are no "dues" to pay in other words, just work that needs to be done, and which with a careful application of good habits and systems can be done in a way that makes both the faculty member and the university happy.
Also, "relaxing" is just as much a discipline and a habit as GTD, and we're kidding ourselves if we think we can work for seven years at an exploitative pace and then suddenly, spontaneously "relax" once we get tenure.