Three mindsets for the new year

Are you ready?

Photo by LUM3N on Unsplash

So, it's August. I warned you it was coming. I enjoined you to spend your summer wisely, investing in a balance of work and play that you have been happy with. But whether you succeeded in this or not, the stark fact now is that classes are starting in two weeks or less. Are you ready?

You can answer that question from two points of view. One is systems -- the plans and strategies you have for yourself, your students, your work, and your life as a whole. GTD, OKRs, and the Payoff Principle for grading are examples of useful systems, and I still believe that taking simple actions consistently within a coherent system is the key to being an intentional academic.

The other point of view is mindsets -- what you believe about yourself, your students, your work and your life as a whole. I have not written much about mindsets here. In fact the only place they explicitly appear is in the "Four Truths" laid out in this early post. But you don't have a system without a mindset preceding it; systems, like budgets, are how we express what we believe and value.

So today I want to write about mindsets, three of them in fact that I think every academic needs to adopt or consider adopting in order to be intentional about the year.

Advocate for yourself

In 2019, I was in the hospital for two weeks for open-heart surgery. It was a major procedure and I could easily have died, if not for the great skill and care of individuals such as my surgeon and the nurses in the heart hospital. It was a life-changing experience and I wrote a little about that here. But after going home, I shifted from being in the care of individuals, to being in the "care" of the hospital and insurance system, and things got weird. One day I got a bill from the insurance company for $250,000, the entire cost of my procedure and hospital stay. I was on the phone with them for two days explaining that I did not in fact owe a dime of this. Finally, someone discovered that a low-level clerk had failed to check a box on a computer form for the original claim. Our bad, they said, and it went away.

This story illustrates two important facts about systems. First, systems are not people, and as such they are not capable of "caring" about a person in the same way another person does. Second, if you are within a system -- a patient in the hospital, a citizen subject to a government, or a faculty member at a university -- you must advocate for yourself. The system will not, even cannot, do it for you because it is, again, not a person. And it's irresponsible to wait around hoping that this will change.

I bring this up because I sometimes see well-meaning people say things like: We can't expect faculty to start taking charge of their careers, as you write about, until we have systemic change first. This just puts faculty in vulnerable positions and that's unfair and irresponsible.

I agree to some extent about the "unfair" part because there's no doubt that in some universities, doing simple things like blocking out your time, putting limits on your communication, or even just giving reasonable attention to your teaching can lead to negative consequences for some, and definitely some more than others. This isn't fair.

But if the system is so bad that it will punish faculty for taking harmless, inexpensive steps to live fuller lives, then you will likely be dead and gone before any meaningful systemic change happens, if you just wait for it to happen or expect someone else to make it happen. Imagine if I had insisted on systemic change in the insurance industry before I got off my couch and started making phone calls.

Instead, the smart mindset is: Nobody is coming to rescue you. Not your provost’s or dean's office; not the government; not the faculty union; not the AAUP; nobody. You are responsible for your own career. It’s on you, and any of your colleagues who might be kind enough to help. In fact those of us in protected positions (tenured, etc.) have a moral obligation to help. But sadly, even this help from colleagues can’t always be counted upon. And you definitely can’t count on systems to change themselves, or be changed by others.

So in the end you have to learn to advocate for yourself, or risk being consumed by the system. It’s not a kind or attractive thought. But it’s necessary if we want to actually live the lives that we want to live.

Mindset 2: Work with what you've got

As I said, this is all easier for some than it is for others. I am a white, male, tenured full professor and so I have it relatively easy, and I think about this every day. Others don't have the same privileges. Some labor under constraints that cannot simply be thrown off. This isn't fair,. But unfortunately it doesn't change the fact that each faculty member is primarily responsible for their own careers. So instead, we work within constraints. We work with what we've got.

With the publication of my new book on alternative grading, I'm doing a lot of work with faculty at different institutions, and at all different employment levels and career stages. Some get frustrated because they read about all the useful alternative grading methods in the book and desperately want to embrace them, but they can't because of college and department (and sometimes government) constraints.

What I've had to really stress is that small wins are still wins. Maybe ungrading is off the table for you; but can you at least give helpful feedback, or find a way to allow a reattempt on an assignment? Can you work with what you've got, to gain some small wins you can iterate upon? If so, this is good enough — more than “good enough”.

I believe there is always something that you can do to advocate for yourself and choose a more intentional and balanced approach to your work. It may be small, it may seem silly and inconsequential. But if you can do it under your present constraints and it makes your life better, why not go for it?

Or if you disagree with this, and believe there's not really anything you can do for yourself, I have some questions for you: What might you do? What have you tried? What happened when you tried?

Mindset 3: Be a hedonist

I've decided I'm basically a hedonist at heart. After spending this entire summer single-mindedly pursuing only the things I really enjoy doing -- playing bass guitar, riding bicycles, reading books, learning computer languages, etc. -- I've decided life is too short to do otherwise. And I encourage you to join me in this mindset.

I'm not saying that I'll from now on be refusing to do things that are hard or uncomfortable. Quite the opposite: I'm more ready and willing than ever to put in hard work and effort on activities that rational people would find bizarre or uncomfortable or even painful -- as long as it leads somewhere. But I think it's a waste of one's life and talents to do things that are not directly plugged into a higher goal that has real meaning. From now on, if I am asked to do something that does not build my capacity in the things that sustain me beyond my career — the answer is "no".

Take grading for example. It's a thoroughly unpleasant business and nobody likes doing it. But I do like serving my students and seeing them grow, so I have no problem putting in the work to get my grading done. (Although I'm going to have a system for doing it, and I may still complain about it anyway.)

On the other hand, I've had experiences with certain job tasks that I thought sounded like good ideas at the time, or I said "yes" to make someone happy, and in the end all I got was a lot of stress and grief, I had to do a lot of pointless bullshit work for no apparent reason, and I got nothing out of it except horror stories that I cannot be specific about because it would make mad the very people I was trying to make happy, plus a few more gray hairs. Those tasks, and anything that smells like them, are what I'm henceforward saying "no" to automatically.

Can every faculty member always so no to such things, and choose only the things they find personally meaningful? No. But what might you do? What have you tried? What happened when you tried?

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