Comments on: Getting things done in academia

By: Spring Break = Think Week for academic scientists « Jabberwocky Ecology

Spring Break = Think Week for academic scientists « Jabberwocky Ecology — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 17:16:04 +0000

[...] post for inspiration (and check out some of the posts in the Study Hacks Primer), start saying no so that you have a chance to assign time to bigger things, and try to find at least a few days over [...]

By: Ethan

Ethan — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:59:38 +0000

Hi Wes – first off, thanks for our first negative comment (though it’s possible that this was a negative comment, but I read it as a funny play on words). I was starting to think we were failing to get people to think.

I think before getting into detail it’s worth noting this quote from the first paragraph of the post:

Since the goal of the workshop is getting through the first phase of tenure, this is about what you need to do to accomplish that goal, not what you should be doing in any sort of broader philosophical sense.

Regardless of whether one reads this post as being general guidance or a specific treatment related to getting tenure I, perhaps not surprisingly, see things somewhat differently than you. As Morgan describes in her response, this is about making decisions about what you are going to do and how well you are going to do it. One approach is certainly to say yes to everything and allow it to be scheduled any time that you are literally not in another meeting. I would characterize this approach (perhaps somewhat unkindely, but since I’m a jerk and all…) as the do everything badly approach. I at least, and I think this is true of academics in general, have far more to do than I can possibly accomplish (my To Do list after all of that saying No is 120 items long at the moment) so if I do everything I either have to do a shoddy job of it or take forever to get it done. I have chosen to take the approach of trying to do fewer things and do them better. That will certainly on occasion make me come off as a jerk to the people that I say no to, but it also makes the people involved with the things that I do focus on happier. For example I think you will find that the people in my lab and the folks I do research with don’t think of me as a jerk (well… at least not for the reasons you describe ) because I regularly make time for them, answer emails quickly, and turn manuscripts around in a couple of weeks. When I review for journals my reviews are submitted on time and are far more thorough than the average (which incidentally leads to me being asked to review a lot and therefore having to say No more often). Likewise for the classroom I spend a lot of time preping every class period thus leading to a (hopefully) much broader experience than simply reading the book. None of this is intended to toot my own horn (I certainly wouldn’t want to be an arrogant jerk), the goal is to illustrate the fact that we are always making choices about how much we are going to do and at what quality. The fact that time is finite makes this a tradeoff by defintion. Everyone has to find their own comfort point along that tradeoff, mine is simply closer to the few things well end of the curve.

If you’re interested in hearing what a few other folks have to say about this philosophy in some other contexts I recommend checking out Study Hacks and 43 Folders.

…I wrote this before you’re second response, but just got it up because, relevently, I’ve been being constantly interrupted all morning.

By: Wes Sprinkle

Wes Sprinkle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:53:28 +0000

Dan Binkley (Colorado State) lists 3 strategies used by successful scientists, which you can find in the workload section of his Prospectus on Graduate Studies and Advising: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~binkley/prospectus.htm. The strategy you advocate in this post in his strategy A: focused hard work. My point is that the other two strategies Binkley lists (B: clever and efficient, C: science as a lifestyle) also work- that is, they also allow scientists to investigate interesting topics and write high-quality publications, etc. Which strategy or combination of strategies a scientist uses should be the one that works for them (this is where personality and lifestyle come into play).

I agree that it is incredibly unwise to try to be everything to everyone. I think it is equally unwise to be so focused on our own advancement that we are as little as possible to as many as possible. Somewhere in the middle is where I want to be.

By: Morgan Ernest

Morgan Ernest — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:40:51 +0000

I actually prefer to think of it as “do your duties in the percentages that you were hired to do them”. From my experience, despite the fact that service (which includes service to the department, university, scientific societies, journals, funding agencies, any outreach beyond the walls of academia) is only 10% of my job description, it would be trivially easy for that load to jump to 30-50% if I did not say no to anything. If I accept that service load then the only way to accomodate my other, higher percentile and thus more important, duties to the university is to work insane hours every week. This of course means that maintaining a personal life is difficult at best. I know this attitude that I would not be willing to selflessly devote 100 hours per week, every week, to my job is considered sacrilege among some quarters, but I believe STRONGLY that the perception that the only way to be a successful professor is to say yes to everyone and then work 100 hour weeks drives a lot of talented women out of the field. Unless they have a willing house husband (or for the Harry Potter fans out there: house elf), they cannot perceive of how they could possibly be a mother and balance that type of workload. In the medical fields, when you have more patients than you can possibly treat, you triage. I do not believe that triaging the myriad requests for my time makes me a jerk. However, my goal is to be a productive research scientist, a good teacher, a good advisor to my students AND spend time with my daughter at the end of the day. Triaging requests for my time is the only way that works for ME to do all of those things. If someone else has another strategy for doing this job well (which I do not believe means being everything to everyone), please share. Ethan and I (and I bet the other readers here) would love to hear it.

By: Wes Sprinkle

Wes Sprinkle — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:50:35 +0000

Here’s the short version of your post from my perspective:

To get tenure (the only thing that matters):
1. be unhelpful
2. be unflexible
3. be inaccessible
4. ignore/neglect some of your duties

In other words, be a jerk.

A lot of good, tenured professors are jerks, but in my experience at least as many aren’t. The strategy you advocate here is only one possible approach, and I don’t like it.

For a comical take on this issue, view this work by Jorge Cham: http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1060