Academic Minimalism

I just read this article on the myth of the 80-hour work week in academia. It is an interesting read and worth taking a few minutes out of your 11.43-hour workday to read it. Go ahead, I don’t mind waiting.

It makes some important points. One is the idea of posturing. The correct response in academia to “how are you doing?” (or the academic version: “how is your semester going?”) is something along the lines of: “I’m crazy busy” or “I’m way behind” or just plain “busy…as usual.” Now part of that can be explained by the insanity of being expected to crunch the equivalent of 12 months of work into two 4-month semesters. But part of it is also posturing. Academics are supposed to be working too many hours and are always supposed to be “super-crazy-busy.”

I’ll confess. There are times (even now as Chair) in the semester when I’m not “super-crazy-busy.” There are even times when I’m (mostly) caught up. But when I’m asked, I don’t offer this information. Instead I say something to the extent of “well, you know,” with a knowing look and a chuckle. Is this posturing? Partly. But it is also a defense mechanism. In academia everyone wants to volunteer you for additional work. Our first line of defense is to be “just too busy” to take that on right now.

But I think the more important point to take from the article is that we are not actually working as many hours as we think. I agree with the author that if we were to count our hours of actual work it would fall far short of our expectations. In part this is because it is difficult to work 8-10 hours in a row nonstop. There are natural breaks, social breaks, and procrastination breaks. Some of the ramifications of this knowledge is that you can be more efficient with these breaks.

As Chair I find myself in more meetings and, because of how meetings are scheduled, with smaller units of “free” time. When I find myself with 15 free minutes between meetings it is easy to use them up with socializing or scanning emails. Neither of these are an “efficient” use of my time. On my good days I identify simple tasks that can be done during the in-between times. On my bad days I just feel overwhelmed. I know that I can write with only 15 minutes of free space. While I’ve done this many times before in my life, I haven’t managed to pull it off yet in my new role.

But I would also ask the author – what is work in academia? If all of my small pieces of time were used socializing I’d get nothing done but socializing is an important part of any work environment and great ideas can come out of brief hallway conversations. In academia we are paid, in part, to think. So if I’m thinking about teaching or research while hiking with my dog, am I working or not?

I am not a proponent of counting hours of work. It seems like adding another task onto what seems most days to be an endless list of tasks. Neither am I a proponent of working 80-hour weeks (for me or any of my faculty). As the author suggests, I believe 40-50 hours most weeks is not only adequate to getting the work done but more than that (except in rare circumstances) is detrimental. Honestly I think 50 hours a week is pushing it, unless you count thinking on hikes and in the shower.

But even if you are working 40-50 hours a week, it doesn’t help you if you feel like you’re working 80-hours a week. In the not-too-long run, you’ll feel burned out. So I think we should strive to be honest with ourselves about not only the hours we work each week but what we can reasonably expect to get from those hours. Of course, if you ask, I’ll still say I’m “super-crazy-busy.”