How I am preparing for summer work (and breaks!)

I’ve found that if I don’t intentionally set aside time to be a full break from work, I won’t take it. Not only will I not take it, but sometimes it actually feels difficult to allow myself to relax. Instead, I’ll feel like I finally have time to work on research and writing, so I should make the most of it! And I have so many projects to finish that have been waiting for my attention! And I want to prep for fall so it’s not so stressful! It’s easy to think about how to fill up (and actually overfill) the coming weeks and months. And also: I know that this is the wrong decision. 

Here’s what I do instead: I map out the weeks of the summer so I can see where my time is going. It’s the same basic process I use for the semesters, but the main focus is on protecting time when I won’t work. And again, this is harder to do than I’d like!! When I have to work on a paper revision, or I finally have time to meet with collaborators, I don’t want to say no to anything. But the truth is, I’ve not been taking substantial breaks from work since starting on the tenure track (...or more accurately, even before), and I FEEL it. This is the perfect recipe for burnout, especially coming off an academic year that had higher demands, stress, anxiety, and exhaustion than ever. 

I am reminded when doing this sort of planning that if YOU don’t protect your time, no one else will. 

Also: do you know what it feels like to not work for a full week or two… or even a month?! I mean, not checking email, not mentally organizing projects, not projecting into the future to address what’s coming up. Really taking time off is a challenge, in terms of the planning for it, the allowing yourself to actually do it, holding boundaries with people who might want things from you, and holding a boundary with yourself to not slip back into working during these times. For me, this is the hardest part: I’m pretty good at knowing on the calendar when I should be able to take time off, but then letting myself do it feels so much harder than I think it should. 

Given how stressful this past year has been, it is more critical than ever to make and protect time to recharge and rest. Here’s how I’m doing this:

• Making a list of all the projects that I NEED to get done or make progress on this summer

• Protecting time in the first half of the summer to do that work and to get where I need to with those projects (and teaching a summer class!)

• Working during May and June KNOWING that I will take time off in July and part of August.

• Prioritizing the most important projects and accepting that the other stuff will have to wait until fall (this is deeply uncomfortable, btw!)

• Marking dates on my calendar for travel with family (1 week in June, and 1-2 weeks in August), for family visiting us (1 week in June, and 1 week in July), and then ALSO carving out at least a week in July where I know I will be completely away from work and will do things that feel fun/restful 

Part of this plan also requires me to have a sense of what I’m doing with my time off, otherwise it also tends to feel overwhelming. To do this, I have a list of what I want to do for pure enjoyment-- not out of obligation or duty. For me, this list looks like reading books for fun, going on long walks or hikes, baking, quilting, and watching fun tv shows. 

What I’ve noticed in the past is that the first couple of days of taking a break look like mostly catching up on rest (naps, moving slowly, not trying to do too much!), and then the next couple days I have more energy for fun projects (though to be fair, I often get sucked into organizing or cleaning parts of the house!).

One thing that I want to note is that this often feels deeply uncomfortable. Academic culture does not value or support this approach, and I feel this physically in my body when I try to really take time off. I remind myself that the discomfort is ok; it’s a good thing to sit with because it confirms how deeply entrenched I am in my work and how deeply I need the break from it.

And here’s the (ironic) thing that is so critical for me to remember: it’s when I get into this groove of doing other non-work enjoyable activities that I start to get the BEST work ideas; frameworks for papers, connections between research ideas, easier ways to do things, they start to emerge! In fact, it can become tricky to not give myself over into work time when this happens; if I have a great idea I can’t pass by, I’ll give myself a short sprint of work time (30-40 min) to do a brain dump and catch everything I can about the ideas, and I’ll leave them to marinate for later. My best/most inspired work nearly always starts this way. 

The thing to remember is to clear the space so that there’s room for the good stuff to rise up to the surface; it’s clear that this doesn’t happen for me in the midst of the semester when I’m feeling buried under email and meetings and obligations. And it’s not ok to wait to take breaks, because once Fall rolls around again, the train has left the station for another year out there on the rails-- hanging on until the next break. 

Should you Write Every Day?

For the longest time I really bought into the idea that you need to write every day a for a minimum of 30 minutes in order to be a successful academic. This is popular advice, especially amongst academics, because it is true that consistent and steady work produces great output and can help avoid slumps or gaps in your work, and helps prevent falling out of the habit of writing and avoiding hard things.

Writing can be a hard thing, especially when you don’t do it regularly. All of the arguments for writing every day made sense to me: if I committed to writing every day, I would make great incremental progress and I wouldn’t be able to avoid the "hard" tasks in my work, and ultimately I’d be successful, too.

But the truth of the matter is the writing every day is not what works for everyone, and this is OK too. The catch is: when you expect yourself to write every day, and you fail to meet this goal, feelings of guilt, shame, and failure are likely to be present.

When we hear the message over and over again that we need to write every day in order to be successful and we internalize this message, then the days that we don’t write we are setting ourselves up to feel like a failure.

There were days when meetings, class, and office hours kept me so busy, and it would have been great to get a few minutes of writing in before it all started, but this wasn’t always possible. Importantly, failure to write on those days brought about negative self-judgment. When I couldn’t get that writing in, I would feel guilty and anxious because I thought I was doing it wrong.

Personally, I have found that I need periods of rest in order for ideas to germinate. I need to let my brain reset, and sometimes I just need to break from writing. And some days I am focused on the other aspects of my job— teaching and service— and trying to pull my brain back into writing was an internal battle that was costing me my energy.

In the “you must write every day” model these breaks always felt terrible because they felt like I was avoiding the simplest task that I needed to do to be successful. The truth is, I need rest and to have a little space in my brain in order to be successful.

Recognizing that the current mainstream advice about writing wasn’t the best for me was very helpful, because I realized that there is not a one-size-fits-all model for being successful in writing and in academic work. Some people thrive when they write every single day, but this doesn’t make them better people than those who don’t write every day. This idea was a tough one for me to manage at first, because deep down I really believed that “good” academics DID write every day.

It felt like a moral failing to not keep up work habits that I had idealized without considering if those habits were always working for me.

More importantly, I recognized that the negative feelings that came up when I failed to meet these expectations were the thing I needed to avoid in order to find flow in my writing.

I have found that different seasons bring different work habits, and that this is OK! As long as I’m moving my projects forward on a timeline and in the manner that works for me, I am meeting the goals of my job.

It has been exceptionally hard to put down the anxiety and the guilt that came along with not writing every day. These feelings ran even deeper than I initially realized, in part because advice like “you need to write every day” seems so practical and doable, and I subject myself to harsh criticism from my inner narrator when I don’t keep up this work practice. But breaking up with anxiety and guilt about not writing every day has been critical for coming back from being burned out.

In recovering from burnout, I needed a break from research and writing. Even more though, I need to change my practice of feeling anxiety and guilt for not working every day. This was much more difficult to do, because these messages are implicit and are often embedded at the unconscious level, so I was not always immediately aware of their presence, even when taking planned time off.

I’m here to say that it is OK to not write every day, and this does not mean you’re not a good academic. It also does not mean your projects won’t move forward! It may be more helpful to evaluate your personal situation, acknowledge guilt and anxiety and other emotions tied to work, before pressing on so that you don’t end up burning out. You need to rest and clear a little space for your thoughts and ideas, and trust you’ll write when you’re ready.

Writing every day when you’re also suffering from burnout feels like pushing a rock up the hill. You can be tough with yourself and make yourself do it, over and over again, But this is not the only way.

What I recommend doing instead of writing everyday:

One alternative is to track your minutes of focused work each (work)day instead of writing time specifically. This works better for me because I tend to do some sort of focused work every day, but some days this is in the other areas of my job, like teaching and service. This work takes focus and attention and energy too, and I often am hard pressed to keep going once I’ve exhausted myself regardless of whether the focused work was on teaching or research.

I also suggest keeping an eye on what will get you tenure (or a job, or a postdoc), so that you can consciously evaluate where that focused attention is best spent! For me, I needed to make sure that enough of my focused work was on research and was steady so that my research pipeline never ran dry. But allowing myself to focus on other parts of my job without feeling anxiety has been key for remembering how to find balance and how to enjoy the work.

Last, if you’re currently feeling burned out, I recommend taking a break from writing and investigating the emotions that arise when you take time off. I suspect that for a lot of academics, taking time off is often not restful or restorative when guilt and anxiety cast a shadow over this time. In addition, shifting towards working with your own patterns of focused work and energy, and agreeing (or saying no) to projects that work on your timeline will also help. This is a longer process to shift, as many current projects, deadlines, and commitments will need to be wrapped up before truly making this shift, but it’s worth the attention and consideration, as this can impact levels of burnout and quality of life in the long run.

How to Manage Stress and Overwhelm

I often feel frustrated when people give the advice to “manage their stress” or to “be less stressed.” To me, this is as frustrating as saying “just think positively.” Like, yeah, great idea! Why didn’t I think of that?? If it were this simple, we’d all be doing it. Really.

So why isn’t it this simple? And what can we do to feel better? How can we try to intervene to feel less stress and overwhelm, or to feel more positive emotions? This is a particularly relevant question right now, as so many things in the world are feeling destabilized, uncertain, and threatening. (And for many people, this has ALWAYS been the case, it’s just more in-your-face for people who have enjoyed (and currently enjoy) relatively more privilege).

What I’ve noticed is that very infrequently is there concrete advice for how to accomplish these things. Simple suggestions often seem underwhelming, trite, or like a waste of time. But, in some cases, these small suggestions can have a big impact, especially when they’re repeated and practiced regularly. That’s where a lot of the magic happens.

In addition, understanding what's happening in your body and brain can help reinforce actually doing these behaviors, because knowing how and why they help and can help us process why it makes sense to prioritize and continue these actions.

So I’m going to give you three suggestions that you’ve likely heard before, but I’m going to give a bit more background to help you understand why these aren’t throwaway suggestions.

(One issue is that we’re often looking for either a quick fix or a panacea, in part because we’re really desperate for help, and in part because the real answer— slow and steady changes we maintain and practice regularly— can feel impossibly hard to maintain. As I walk through these, I’ll address some ideas to make these more accessible and to integrate them into your daily life).

My top three recommendations for a slow and steady approach to stress and overwhelm management:

A) Rest (but not just the traditional kind; rest = reframing how we think about mental downtime as a means to simmer on problems, be creative, and restore our bodies)

B) Deep breathing (also to signal to your body that it is safe)

C) Exercise to complete the stress cycle (signal to your body you're safe)

First: Rest.

I think rest gets a bad rap because it takes time, it’s uncomfortable when we’re programmed to constantly be productive to prove our worth, it feels lazy or indulgent, we feel judged by other people for making/taking this time, we judge ourselves for making/taking this time, and finally, because we’re so disconnected from the idea of rest as a necessary component to be energized, creative, generative, present, and productive, that we see it as the opposite of these things, rather than a much needed precursor to them.

When you shift your thinking to see rest as a much needed prerequisite to doing, well, anything— it gets easier to allow yourself to rest. The truth is, when we’re well rested (or even partially rested?? Really anything other than exhausted) there’s more room for creative problem solving and widening our field of vision. It’s much easier to approach your days with an open and curious perspective when you’re not exhausted. When we are chronically stressed, we’re trying to outrun our problems by continually triggering the HPA axis and flooding our system with the hormones that help our body survive tough times. Rest helps signal to the body that it is safe, it can stop running, and it can reset and prepare for what comes next.

Second: Deep breathing.

You can’t breathe deeply when you’re moving fast. When you slow down and take a deep breath, you trigger the vagus nerve, which is part of the parasympathetic nervous system. This system slows your heart rate and lowers blood pressure. It helps bring your body down from the fight-or-flight response and helps bring you back to homeostasis. There are marked, measureable, and reliable changes that happen in the body and in the brain when we engage in deep breathing that counteract stress and literally help our bodies relax and slow down.

Third: Exercise. (actually, finish exercising).

Exercise is one of the ways other than deep breathing that helps to re-set the stress hormones in our bodies. When we experience stress (or feeling overwhelmed), our body ramps up our cortisol production and other physiological changes to help prepare us to survive the threat. Researchers have suggested that exercise helps because when you get to the end of your exercise, your body is signaled that it is safe to stop moving and to revert back into the rest-and-digest mode. Exercise can simulate how our bodies respond to stress: our arousal is heightened and we are engaged physically, much like we would be if we were trying to fend off a predator or dispatch another threat. Interestingly, researchers have suggested that when we ramp down our exercise, we’re showing the body that it’s safe to do so, and signaling the end of the stress cycle. Even a short bout of physical activity followed by rest can help transmit these signals.

I find that the more I understand about how something works, the more likely I am to appreciate the value it brings as a practice to keep the cumulative effects of chronic stress from piling up.

And, importantly, the results are in the doing. Knowing that these are what your body needs to manage stress isn’t enough— you have to actually (regularly) rest, breathe deeply, and move your body.

Further reading:

Rest by Alex Pang

Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski

Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

Proper Breathing Brings Better Health from Scientific American

Exercise and Stress from the Mayo Clinic

Stress Narrows our Field of Vision

Stress and overwhelm make our field of vision narrow and focus our attention on what's right in front of us.

This is an adaptive behavior, because it concentrates our attentional resources on the threat that we are trying to handle. Our brain's main goal is survival, so anything that is seen as a threat becomes the focus so we can attend to it and deal with it so it doesn't take us down.

This matters a lot in our modern context, because our stressors are varied, they are are psychosocial (meaning, they come from our social situations + perceptions), and they often go unresolved. When being attacked by an external threat, we generally mount a stress response that gets us through that situation. When we mount the stress response again and again and again, against all sorts of psychological and social stressors, we never really complete the stress response cycle and it runs on repeat.

How does this affect us?

First, when we are stressed on repeat without resolution, this contributes to wear and tear on our bodies, and is associated with poor mental and physical health.

Second, that narrow field of vision keeps us from seeing situations from multiple perspectives. In turn, we have trouble accessing creative solutions to our problems.

Third, the stress cycle on repeat causes us to be exhausted. Exhaustion ALSO keeps us from finding ways out of stressful patterns or situations.

It's common for people to advise others to "be less stressed" but very infrequently is there concrete advice for how to do this. In my next post I'll share some research-backed suggestions and will explain how and why these work. Understanding what's happening in your body and brain can help reinforce actually doing these behaviors, and can help us process why it makes sense to prioritize these actions.

If Only I Were _______, I'd be Happy.

I remember when I first came across the article “If only I were thin like her I’d be happy like her” (best article title, IMO). I found this contingent thinking applied to so many aspects of my life.  If only I had tenure, I’d feel secure. If only I had a prestigious job, I’d feel validated and respected. If only I had my shit together, I’d feel like I had good work/life balance. If only I could do more, I’d feel like I had it all. But these are false equivalencies, and they leave us feeling worse, rather than motivated, in the long run. 

So much of what we do (or don’t do) is driven by how we want to feel. We are often chasing a feeling-- of comfort, security, love, acceptance, validation, accomplishment, inclusion, happiness.

Critically, we tell ourselves that we can’t have —and don’t deserve— that feeling until we accomplish our goal. 

 We tend to fear and avoid the things that threaten these goals. In many cases, rejection is the thing we think is standing in our way (both socially and academically). Our brains evolved to favor these feelings, and to encourage us to seek them because these are the things we believe, on a conscious or unconscious level, will ensure our survival.

But.

We tend to hold ourselves hostage while we are waiting for these good things to arrive. I can’t let myself relax, I need to worry about how much work I got done. I can’t feel accomplished, I am not running a big research lab at an R1. I can’t feel good about my small accomplishments, because [some other person I compare myself to] has more. I can’t let myself enjoy a dessert, I need to hold myself accountable and don’t deserve this unless I’ve exercised. Let me be clear: this type of thinking, while common, is not usually helpful to us. It reinforces negative messages about who we need to be or what we need to do in order to be worthy of success, gratitude, security, happiness. 

We allow ourselves to perpetually stay on the hook with the guilt, or shame, or criticism, or fear, because we are afraid of what might happen if we loosen up that tight grip of mental control. We are afraid that we will be lazy, and won’t get our work done. We’re afraid we’ll gain weight, that we will be unproductive. We are afraid we will lose our status or our job, or we won’t get promoted. We tell ourselves that we can’t slow down or we might fail, we might lose our edge, we might stop striving. We might not reach our potential and we will never be happy.

There’s another way to handle this.

Give yourself permission to feel the good feeling first, before you accomplish whatever the “thing” is. This will feel foreign and uncomfortable at first. And, it is easier to do this when you allow yourself to feel less tied to the outcome. But you can also feel less tied to an outcome when you stop believing that feeling good or deciding that you’re ok/successful does not depend on the outcome.

Rather, figuring out how to transform the process of reaching that outcome is the key. Transform it by letting yourself feel good now, before you accomplish all the things. Recognize and acknowledge all of the things you HAVE already accomplished.  

Once you start feeling good first, the work and accomplishments will flow in a way that feels much easier and more enjoyable than when you were striving really hard for those things. We want these things to feel a certain way; if we can feel that way now, what’s the downside? Here’s my suggestion: do an experiment where you let yourself feel good first. If this doesn’t work, you can go right back to the contingent thinking of I need to do/be ____ in order to feel ____.

Sustainable Academic: "Nothing really changes when you get tenure”

I had the realization a while ago, around when my daughter was 9 months old, that the way that I was living and working was not sustainable, at least not for me. I had been back at work full time for a few months after my maternity leave, and if I had been writing a memoir, the title would have been I. Am. So. Tired. All. The. Time.

This feeling made sense when I considered the conditions of my life at that moment: working full time, commuting an hour each way to campus, adjusting to parenthood and caring for my baby, struggling with the feelings of inadequacy that many working parents feel—guilt about being away from the baby and guilt about not working enough. Oh, and did I mention, I was in year 4 of a tenure track job? I went up for tenure in year 6, so year 5 was the big year to get ALL THE THINGS DONE. Although I had gotten positive feedback in my annual reviews and had no big red flags, anyone with a history on the tenure track knows how critical this time is. I had one more year to make my case for tenure. Even writing about it now brings up the very real feelings of anxiety from this time.

I was working and working and pushing harder and harder to get things done, and yet there was a little voice I could not quite ignore telling me: “there has to be a better way.”

I needed to find a sustainable way to the job I love, otherwise I would hardly recognize myself as the years went by. I didn’t want my baby’s days to pass by so quickly, and I wanted to be able to enjoy her at each stage. I wanted to enjoy time with my partner, and our dog, and my family when I was able to see them. I wanted to be able to rest, and to spend time on my hobbies and friendships. All of this was feeling so out of balance, and last spring I reached what might be called a breaking point, but was more like a moment of realization.

I was in my annual review meeting with my department chair and the dean, which happens every spring to review my progress and for me to get feedback. The meeting was going well, which was a big relief—I really thrive on reassurance. And somewhere in the middle of that meeting, the dean commented, “you know, nothing really changes when you get tenure.” [As an aside, this comment in and of itself was weirdly reassuring, as everything changes if you don’t get tenure (!!!) and that wasn’t part of the conversation]. My department chair reiterated this sentiment—I should know that nothing big was really going to change! I would keep doing my work, showing up, teaching, researching, being a good community member. OK! I thought, I can do this!

That phrase really resonated with me.

“Nothing really changes when you get tenure.”

I did not have tenure yet, so I could not attest to the truth in that statement. But I could see where they were coming from: in all, getting tenure and promotion is akin to the prize in the pie eating contest being more pie. [At least this tenure metaphor includes a dessert!].

And here’s the thing: I only want to eat more pie if I’m still enjoying the pie. I want to enjoy the pie now. I want my enjoyment of the pie to make winning the pie eating contest feel satisfying and amazing.

And here’s the other thing: if nothing really changes when you get tenure, I needed to change now. I needed to experiment with how I approached my job, the boundaries I placed around my job, how I showed up energetically for my job, NOW. I needed to establish patterns that work for me in shifting towards a healthy, sustainable way of doing this job, so that A) going up for tenure would not burn me out, B) having tenure would feel like something I want (i.e., I want to continue to do this job!), and C) I enjoy the crap out of my life as I’m in it. 

This is no small feat. And it’s not something that is happening overnight. But there are a number of small and critical changes I’ve made, and shifts in perspective I’ve learned to sustain that have created a much healthier work/life balance for me. And it’s noteworthy that I didn't wait until tenure to do it. The reality is, I don’t think I could wait. I had a very rough postpartum period and adjustment after having my baby, and taking care of myself wasn’t something that could be put on the backburner. The first shift I made was that I decided to prioritize myself, and taking genuine care of myself, so I could show up for everything else in my life. The somewhat unexpected side effect of this is that I ended up developing a whole set of skills and tools to help me in sustaining this change.

How to Change Your Work/life 

So, this is what sustainable academic is about. Subtle shifts, a change in perspective, and showing up for work (and life) in a way that works with your energy instead of against it. It’s finding joy in the work, even the most mundane tasks. And it’s about recognizing that it takes some intentionality to keep going with this shift in perspective, because the default mode is to be right back to feeling stretched too thin, feeling overwhelmed, being reactive, and feeling totally exhausted. And I still find myself there, especially at busy times of the semester, when the emails and requests and students and classes and research is piling up. But now I have a roadmap to find my way out, and it’s a much shorter path to get back to feeling good.

As I prepared to go up for tenure the following year, my main focus was twofold: be as productive as possible, while resting when I need to. At first glance, these may seem like opposites. However, when I’m feeling calm and collected, I remember that productivity and rest go hand in hand. So my challenge in the year preceding my tenure decisions was: rest when I need it. For as long as I need to.*

(*If you’re an academic reading this, I know you might be thinking right now: but—but—what about committee meetings/classes/students emails/collaborators/paper reviews/grant deadlines…. The list can (and does) go on and on.) And I’ll say this: I honor all of my commitments to the best of my ability. I never miss class unless I’m ill, and even then I will make it an online class so we don’t fall behind! [true story—I went to campus the day I was supposed to have my annual review in year 3 even though I didn’t feel so great because it was so important to be there. About 2 hours before my meeting, in a brownbag attended by a large number of faculty in my college as well as the deans, it became apparent that I had the stomach flu. I barely made it to the bathroom before I threw up. It was harrowing. And I had an hour drive home, while trying not to vomit. And I felt terrible telling the dean I needed to reschedule. But it was fine! Life went on. And I realized that if I’m not feeling great, I should stay home—even if I have to cancel an important meeting.]

I prioritize all of these things as needed, and I put the most important things first. I work well ahead of deadlines whenever possible to build in flexibility in case I’m feeling run down. I feel run down every week, and try to adjust my schedule to allow for this. I have started selectively saying no to things. I’ve started to keep track of how long things really take. And this includes the energy and time I spend thinking about them, not just the hours doing the actual work. I am very efficient when I am working, and I am deliberate in focusing fully on the task at hand. If I find I’m too tired to focus, it’s a sign that I’m not being efficient and I stop. To be fair, these guidelines apply to the writing and researching work I do on my own. When I’m in a meeting, or meeting with an RA, or I’m in class, I push through even when it feels like I can’t remember half the words in a sentence.

I’ve stopped caring so much about things that don’t concern me, or that I don’t want to give my energy to. That is another practice that takes some work, but it is wholly worth it.

The unofficial results are: I’m still tired a lot, but I don’t feel guilty about it, or about resting. It’s a glorious thing to just take a nap when you need it. I am getting much better about working ahead and watching for deadlines approaching or stacking up. I am unofficially much more productive this year, while also happier and better rested. And now that I’ve received my tenure decision, and I can confirm that “nothing changes,” I feel quite alright about it.