This is another blog post in response to a reader request, and you can tell that by the title they supplied - here at Academic Coach, we don’t believe you ‘make time’, ‘find time’, or ‘manage time’. Time is immutable. But in the spirit of the request, I think I get to the nub of it here.

Academic reading

One of the most difficult things to get right as an academic is seeing ‘reading’ as your job, and consequently, scheduling time for it. Reading is of course an integral part of your job without which you can neither teach nor research, nor do service. But how do you find a balance between all the reading you have to get done. In other words, when to ditch what, or how to prioritise?

Different types of reading

There are a lot of different types of reading to get through in any one academic day (I’m not counting emails here).

Teaching related reading:

• reading essays to grade, and reading teaching related material to prepare for class.

• reading student work for continuous feedback such as PhD and master’s dissertation students (not ditchable but time spent doing it is elastic and within your control)

Internal service reading:

• Committee paperwork, Boards of Study paperwork, departmental memos and instructions, policies, guidelines and a plethora of bureaucratic nonsense

• Reading to review colleagues’ work for feedback, mentoring, REF review reading (at your discretion and on your timetable)

External service reading:

• Reading to enable review of articles, book proposals, book manuscripts, grant applications

• Reading submissions for conference calls, workshops and in preparation for chairing panels (ditchable in the sense of don’t take it on)

Research Reading -Required

• Reading that you need to do in order to carry out research - books, papers, chapters, articles, primary and secondary literature, and a plethora of other source material

• Instructions for filling in journal submissions, article guidelines, grant submissions

Time constraints

Of all the things you do as an academic, reading is one of the most time consuming activities, yet how many of us schedule time in our diary to read? How many of you have that entry in your diary - not many, I’m betting. Reading for research requires what Cal Newport calls ‘Deep Work’: concentration and long periods of it. Yet, as we are pulled from pillar to post, the idea of scheduling a diary entry to ‘read’ seems laughable. The truth is though we MUST read to do most of our job, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to research without reading. So whilst some reading is indeed optional or can be put on the long finger, some cannot.

Finding the balance

So how do you find a balance? You can see from the list above what is discretionary and what is not, what involves other peoples’ deadlines and what does not. So first things first. Schedule your own reading for research. You should have scheduled time for teaching prep already. Internal service reading should be allocated into your admin slot if it is core to your role, put in a folder for ‘later’ or ditched altogether. This prompts feelings of guilt and all the things, but tough. You don’t have inexhaustible time.

What about reading colleagues work for feedback? Well, if you have a trusted circle (they read yours) you should have an explicit understanding that you will return that work in x days/week with comments, and schedule that task - this is reciprocal help and you both need it. If it is one way traffic - get a new circle. There is not the time to be the only one everyone comes to in the department and serious writers will understand this. If you are somebody’s mentor, this is part of your core role as a mentor, and this should be prioritised alongside your own research.

External service reading is purely discretional, so if you do take it on, do it swiftly. Do not agree to peer review and then hold some poor author hostage for 8 months because this was not a priority for you. If you cannot do it within one month (by this I mean identify a two hour slot in your diary to complete the task within the next 28 days) don’t take it on. No-one is making you. A good rule of thumb is to review 2 pieces for every article you submit within 1 year. When viewed through this lens, you are providing a service to colleagues which is in line to the service you expect to receive in return. It is not too onerous.

The point is to remember that reading is time-consuming and takes up a large part of your job, so you need to schedule time to do it.