Absolutely right. I think though higher education is this respect a subset of a wider problem with what folks might call "neoliberal managerialism" (or several alternative framings) in which incremental improvement and addition by addition are always mandatory at the *same moment* that institutions present themselves as permanently mired in scarcity and always needing austerity. The additive sign of that coin is about middle-ranking professionals needing to always present themselves as doing more, working harder, making things incrementally better within fixed resources--what I call "proof of life" exercises; the flip side of the coin is to tell people that they have to do more with less *so that* addition that is not actually expansion can happen. e.g., To have more administrative leaders to deal with new priorities or compliances, we must have fewer tenure-track faculty; it is zero-sum: you will just have to work harder on more things if you think there are new priorities that must be addressed within your domains of professional responsibility, and we thank you for identifying those priorities which you must now work harder to satisfy.
Thanks for this, Robert. It reminds me of a recent piece from David Epstein on a similar topic. https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/the-christmas-tree-effect. I’ve been chewing on the idea for a while too and now have your piece to add to the hopper.
I also love plaintext editors but haven’t done much of my non-coding or website writing there. Will have to try it out for a future Substack piece. One thing I find helpful is putting every new sentence on its own line. Obviously helpful with error messages when you’re compiling it, but also can help to visually show where you have short and long sentences.
The SEALs say slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Seems like there should be some parallel to this phrase for the concept here.
Absolutely right. I think though higher education is this respect a subset of a wider problem with what folks might call "neoliberal managerialism" (or several alternative framings) in which incremental improvement and addition by addition are always mandatory at the *same moment* that institutions present themselves as permanently mired in scarcity and always needing austerity. The additive sign of that coin is about middle-ranking professionals needing to always present themselves as doing more, working harder, making things incrementally better within fixed resources--what I call "proof of life" exercises; the flip side of the coin is to tell people that they have to do more with less *so that* addition that is not actually expansion can happen. e.g., To have more administrative leaders to deal with new priorities or compliances, we must have fewer tenure-track faculty; it is zero-sum: you will just have to work harder on more things if you think there are new priorities that must be addressed within your domains of professional responsibility, and we thank you for identifying those priorities which you must now work harder to satisfy.
Thanks for this, Robert. It reminds me of a recent piece from David Epstein on a similar topic. https://davidepstein.substack.com/p/the-christmas-tree-effect. I’ve been chewing on the idea for a while too and now have your piece to add to the hopper.
I also love plaintext editors but haven’t done much of my non-coding or website writing there. Will have to try it out for a future Substack piece. One thing I find helpful is putting every new sentence on its own line. Obviously helpful with error messages when you’re compiling it, but also can help to visually show where you have short and long sentences.
The SEALs say slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Seems like there should be some parallel to this phrase for the concept here.