Reconsidering Productivity in 2017

I have not stopped to breathe since starting graduate school in the Fall of 2007. Productivity has been my name, with each year more productive than the one before.

This year I've taught two new preps, I've prepared an edited volume for publication, worked to pull another edited volume together, and begun building the scaffolding of a solo authored book. I've written and revised journal articles and reviewed others for publication and conference presentation. The syllabi for the classes I teach have been finished long before they need to be and I've wrapped up grading before some of my friends and colleagues have final projects in.

I have been busy. I have been productive. And while I am starting to feel the edges of burn out creeping in, I still wonder if I am being productive enough. 

Graduate school trains you to always be working. In class you are working to make sure your professor knows who you are and that you have mastered the material. You work at home pulling together research papers. You also work on collaborative projects or, if you are a TA, on grading. Graduate school trains you to feel like you are always behind. You are the cyclist in the Tour de France who can see the peloton, but who is not part of it. 

You are productive and sweaty from the stress of it.

The hoped for result of all this sweat and stress, of course, is gainful, fulltime tenure track employment at an institution of higher education. 

A result I realized beginning Fall of 2015. 

My first  year and a half has flown by as I worked to find my place at the university -- both physical and otherwise. I've taken on service commitments that are deeply meaningful, taught classes which stretched my students and myself, and worked on research that is important to me. 

Although I have plants growing in my office (I hope they are still growing; I haven't checked on them in a week), I haven't taken the time to stop and smell them. I barely remember to water them sometimes. 

I like feeling productive but, at the same time, I think I need to slow down some. I need to be unafraid of letting the peloton get a bit farther ahead of me so I can catch my breathe.

My dear friend, and sometime research collaborator, Jessica Birthisel (who is on the tenure track at Bridgewater State University) published this blog post about her resolve moving into 2017. As always with her writing, it is thoughtful and thought provoking. 

It provoked in me a consideration of how I want to approach 2017 as an academic. Which brought me back to my own blog and this post which I started writing in August but abandoned because I got too busy. While I certainly have a host of things I plan on working on in my personal life in the coming year, here is my plan for reconsidering productivity in 2017.

1. Be more mindful about what I say "Yes" to. 

• I am a huge Hamilton fan. The hustle inherent in the story Lin-Manuel Miranda tells of Alexander Hamilton is one that resonated deeply with me. Like Hamilton, I grew up poor and, like Hamilton, I relied on my intellect to help me acheive my goals. The line from the musical, "Why do you write like you're running out of time," has been my mantra for the last year. That said, I tend to overcommit. I always have. It's why I was in a million clubs at one point in high school and held down four jobs at once while in undergrad. The things I say yes to I do out of interest or excitement; the problem lies in the fact that I find so much interesting. Taking a more mindful approach to what I commit myself to could help me craft experiences that have more meaning for me while also helping me carve out space to breathe a little. 

2. Be more mindful overall.

• I am part of a mindfulness faculty community at Miami. We meet once a month during the semester and discuss how to bring mindfulness into the classroom as well as work on developing mindfulness practices for our own lives. When school is in session I've been attending a weekly mindfulness meditation that helped me tap into a clarity and calmness that sometimes gets overwhelmed in the rush of the semester. When I'm practicing I'm more patient, kinder, and better able to handle crises as they erupt. My writing after practicing a mindfulness meditation tends to be more focused as well. That centered, calm space is one I want to inhabit more fully in the coming year. 

3. Set aside time to read deeply. 

• Like Jessica, I love to read for fun. Reading is what set my course toward academia. I am also a speed reader, which while useful when chewing through hundreds upon hundreds of pages of reading in graduate school, does not always allow for a deep engagement with a text. My mornings are spent speeding through the biggest news stories of the day and then maybe skimming a big longform story I came across during lunch. There's the refresher reads I do of course texts before I teach them and then my skimming of social media looking for interesting things I may have missed. I haven't fallen into a book in a long time, unless it's been a cookbook. Taking the time to read, to really focus on a text - whether it's a book or a magazine article - makes me feel human and whole. It also gives me time to think about what I'm reading. Ideas from Thomas Mann's Doctor Faustus - a German novel published in 1947 - have influenced my thinking about our relationship to technology. That kind of connection would not have been possible had I not taken the time to read and think about the book and what it was in the text that resonated with me. I need more of that in my life. 

4. Be more selective in the research I do/projects I commit to. 

• There is a running joke among a group of academic women I am connected to that I am always coming up with reseach ideas. It's true. I can't help myself. Or, I haven't been able to in the past. On my desktop right now I have a folder full of tweets about Aleppo I collected as they were published and shared. I have no idea what I might do with them, but it felt like data I needed to collect. On the one hand, yes. They are important. On the other hand, I have folders full of material for other research projects. I don't have the ability to research everything I find interesting or important. As I embrace mindfulness more fully in 2017, that also means being more mindful about the research I choose to work on. It's about learning to say no not only to requests from others but also to myself.  

5. Just stop sometimes. 

• The best gift my husband has given me is the swing sitting on our back porch. When the weather was nice I'd take a book out there, lie down, then look up at sky and the trees, thinking about nothing, and just letting the sun and the breeze wrap themselves around me. Having the book with me felt like I was trying to be productive, but then I could blame my lack of reading on the seduction of the sun and the sky. As with the mindfulness meditation practice, I'd feel so calm and centered after sitting out there that my writing was better, the feedback I gave my students was better, my overall thinking and being were simply better. It's too cold to sit outside now, so finding something similar to do indoors might be the challenge. Although I did get a Turkish teapot for Christmas. I could see sitting in my kitchen, sipping tea, maybe listening to music serving as a nice standin for sun and sky until the weather warms up again. 

6. Set firmer boundaries around my personal life. 

• By this I mean, when I'm home I need to be able to be home. Now, I rush home, cook dinner, do a little bit of cleaning then it's launch into grading or revising or writing until it's time for bed. Or, you know, email. I'm terrible about answering email as soon as I see it. I have an office I like. With plants I hope are still alive. There's art and books and action figures and a stuffed Bing Bong from Inside Out to keep me company. I try to do most of my work there, but I still drag it home. In 2017 my plan is to more firmly mark off the time when I'm home spent on work and not allow it to bleed into everything else. Maybe I'll actually keep my "No email after 7pm" rule this time.

I don't think anything I'm suggesting for the new year is groundbreaking, but for me it's all going to take such a conscious effort. I don't stop. Really ever. I like the buzz I get when I am busy, when I'm being productive.  

I really enjoy working.

But I like living as well. 

I don't imagine my level of productivity will be all that different if I can do at least some of these things, but I do hope that fear I have of never catching up, of falling forever behind, will ease up a bit.

Now if you'll excuse me, it's still 2016, and I have several things to check off my to-do list before the new year rolls around and I actually have to try to embrace this.