The time is now
The Educationalist. By Alexandra Mihai
Welcome to a new issue of “The Educationalist”! As we are slowly coming back from holidays and getting ready for a new Academic Year, I think it’s probably a good moment to talk about how we spend our time. And no, I am not really talking about how to be more efficient and fit more in our tight schedules, nor will I go on about “to do” lists and productivity hacks. Instead, I want us to think about how we can spend our time meaningfully: being productive while not going totally overboard and burning out. About spending time on things we care about, at work and beyond. As usual, I don’t claim to have the silver bullet, I just want to share my thoughts and some ideas that could help us stay balanced in a world that seems to be running at a pace we can’t keep up with. Enjoy reading and please share your thoughts and strategies!
Coming back to work after a long real holiday (yes, I mean no checking emails or doing any work for one full month) can be daunting. It feels hard to regain your rhythm, to reconnect with your routines, even to remember where you stopped and what you need to do next. I found that it really helps to just plunge into something (a project or a task) you really like and do this for a while, to help you ease into the workflow. This will both help you feel like you accomplished something- a quick win!- and will remind you what you like about your job- a more important motivational factor.
Sounds good, right? But wait a second: do we always know what aspects of our work we like best? What fills us with energy? And, conversely, what drains our energy? Do we have time in our busy days to even reflect on it? We march through workweek after workweek like zombies, sometimes feeling happy, other times angry, often tired, sadly too often overwhelmed. It seems like we never have enough time for everything we have on our plate. So we speed up. And, inevitably, soon enough we run out of steam.
If you read this and you are nodding, I see you. And that is why I want to start this new Academic Year with a sort of personal manifesto on slowing down. On regaining control of our time and making it work for us and not against us.
Re-evaluating our relation with time
Our perception of time is often distorted. We either feel we have all the time in the world for a certain task and thus we procrastinate, or we rush because the deadline is looming (or we waited till it was looming). We overestimate the amount of thigs we can (humanly) do in a day. We underestimate how long certain things take, if done properly. In short, we go about our lives with little to no clue about the real value of time. Until it’s sadly too late.
How about we think of time realistically? As a finite resource. And precisely because it is finite we need to be smart about how we treat it. For me this does not mean packing more into each hour for fear we might run out of time for all the things we want to do. It means exactly the opposite: resisting the pressure of acceleration and making each hour count, as we will never get it back.
But back to our lives in Higher Education (yes, time for a reality check!). With many competing demands for our time (remember: limited time)- research, teaching, other projects and duties-, our calendars are often fully booked weeks, if not months in advance. I started colour-coding mine and while it does make it slightly more appealing to look at and it shows the diversity of tasks I am working on, reality remains the same: it feels like I am not in control of my time. As I try to block any small gaps I can still find, I can’t escape this feeling of being on hamster wheel. And as if this weren’t enough, technology adds to this pressure: the need for quick answers, the expectation of being reachable online throughout your day, etc.
And all this in a context where I really like my work. I am passionate about supporting teachers in growing professionally and innovating their courses. I love connecting with my students in class and learning together with them. I appreciate being able to do research that eventually leads to better learning. And I am determined not to let this passion get lost in a packed colourful calendar. I am determined to make smarter decisions about how I use my (limited!) work time, so that at the end of the day I not only check my promotion criteria but I can proudly showcase my work and connect with peers over it. How do I want to do this? Here are some of my thoughts.
Slow down and make time to…
There are moments when you just need to go with the flow (intensive teaching with a fixed schedule, grant application deadlines, etc). But there are also moments where you can claim some time back and use it for something very valuable: reconnecting with your work. Finding what makes you tick, what you care about in your work, what brings you most satisfaction. Figuring out where you can really make a difference with your skills, passion and personality. This exercise does not need to take very long, it can also be done in a few hours, but I can guarantee it’s time very well spent. Not only do you emerge from it with a clear overview of your current tasks, but also with an idea of where your energy comes from and where it is most easily consumed. Just one note: be honest with yourself and be realistic. Some of the parameters of your work won’t change but you can grasp some unique opportunities to do more of what you like.
For me, this exercise resulted in a few small changes in how I plan and spend my time that made a difference for my motivation, wellbeing and productivity:
“Thinking time”. So we work in academia, right? One would think “thinking time” is the least of our problems. Still, our calendars beg to differ. I realised I missed having time to engage with my work at a deeper level (i.e. beyond simply “doing it”). I have so many ideas after teaching a class, but never have time to write them down and follow through. I am lacking the time to get inspiration for potential future projects. I often leave meetings with some brilliant thoughts but quickly forget them as I am heading into the next meeting. So I blocked some “thinking time”, I made it a recurrent feature in my calendar. Sometimes the thinking is very targeted: an upcoming training or meeting, other times it’s more like blue sky thinking, not directly linked to anything I am currently working on. And this is often when the best ideas present themselves.
“Connection time”. One of the things that make me tick is connecting with peers inside and beyond my institution. Exchanging ideas, getting inspiration, planning joint endeavours. This really brings me energy and often results in valuable input for my work. So I also added some regular “connection time” blocks in my schedule, which can be more formal or informal- anything from a meeting to a coffee chat, often making use of technology to connect with people who are geographically outside my area of reach. I see this as a sort of “recharging station”. Depending on what makes you tick you can dedicate time to make sure you get more of it done.
Regular quick check-ins at the beginning and the end of the week: the moments when I revise time allocation for the week and reflect on how I spent my time. The key here is not too be too hard on yourself: the truth is, some weeks I could not even go close to my scheduled “thinking time”; but the fact I had it there to remind me was already a step further.
Dedicated time for specific activities- it can be designing a course or a workshop, thinking through a project proposal or starting a new article. These are longer blocks of time (ideally a day or at least half a day) when I am totally immersed in that piece of work, free from meetings and other distractions. It’s an invitation to deep-dive, without time pressure.
And while we’re at it, and we are educators, I think we can apply the same principles to our students, too. Help them re-evaluate their relation with time. Have an open dialogue with them about how much time they spend on certain tasks (this is very useful in the course design process) and how they spend their individual study time. Give students the opportunity to immerse themselves in a larger task, with the appropriate support and scaffolding. Design your interaction with them so that they learn that an immediate response - and a quick reward- is not always necessary and not always the best thing. Above all, learn to value time together.
I'm no longer in professional life, but your article has triggered me to think about what I'm doing and why. I'll give your article another read, it's very thoughtful, written in a style that shows an emotional engagement with your professional purpose [does that make sense?] 🌞
Wonderful read, hits the chord, its so serendepitous that I was thinking in terms of slow productivity term I was introduced by Carl Newports book. Of coursw timely topic dicussed in many ways by other authors like Eckhart Tolle and others. Issue is the chronos time itself is not under your control especially depends on the work environment. Ofcourse we can always have kairos under our control. Which brings back to self awareness.itz definitely a constant tug of war with our own identities personal and professional.