I’m not talking about the University Workload Allocation Matrix or whatever fantasy football equivalent your particular institution runs. We all know what we know: they are not accurate, they are not realistic because if they were the University would need to hire 50 more people in your department.
So let’s just get over that now, move past it, this is not a discussion about that.
Time and stress management
I’m talking about how YOU manage the workload YOU have been allocated, how much mental real estate you give to various parts of that allocation, and how you manage and sometimes bargain - because, yes, people do this - so that you optimise YOUR particular workload into something that won’t lead to burnout for YOU.
As you can see, my feelings are: this is different for people.
I talk alot about time management in my training because ‘not enough time’ is a preoccupation of many academics not getting to their writing. Whilst time management is important because efficiency matters, and unpicking stories around time is central to making sustainable writing progress, what if you already have all the time management systems in place?
You are a time management ninja.
You have good systems of capture, you have a way of allocating time to task, and you know why you are writing what you are doing and have multi-scale planning down to a fine art? What then?
What if the writing problems are located not in how much you have to do (yes, we know too much) or how you manage that, but WHAT you have to do. We all have more or less tolerance for certain things in our working environment, and if you are consistently rubbing up against the thing that stresses you out in particular, your stress levels are high and then your capacity to engage in deep work - and particularly writing – is vastly diminished. So, it’s important to identify, what is it for you?
In his podcast, Cal Newport gives 4 categories of the type of stress that you might find in the work environment.
· Time stress- overload of tasks, not enough time to do it in
Expectation stress- that you have to deliver a very high quality outcome (real or perceived)
Uncertainty/Risk - possible bad things will happen (eg if you set boundaries, if something isn’t done) or you don’t know the next steps
Conflict - toxic workplaces or individuals, or systems that encourage conflict
I am going to add one here which is related to uncertainty and risk, but not the same.
Control – control over your tasks (not allocation) – but execution
Less things to do is not always the answer
The mistake I see both individual academics and institutions make over and over again is the concentration on ‘how many tasks’ a person is allocated as for example the root cause of burnout, failure to perform or failure to produce quality outputs. A classic response to a member of staff coming back from sick leave caused by burnout is in fact to take away the number of tasks. And of course if that was the root cause, GREAT. Problem solved. Rarely though is the problem this clear cut. Sometimes fewer tasks being allocated cannot and will not cure the problem, and that is why return to work practices can fail.
We need to think more carefully about the things that gives particular individuals huge stress, to prevent burnout yes, but also to create greater capacity for everyone so they can get their writing done.
Let’s give a concrete example. A classic way to game the WAM system when I was a wee small academic was to teach across many small modules – to avoid the core subjects at all costs - but not be in charge of anything. Essentially you taught across a breadth of subjects, but you did little else except grade the papers of those students. You had no responsibility for course leadership, exams and other assessments, meetings and so on and your WAM figures looked very impressive. This type of approach leaves you with no control, but little risk, low expectations, low conflict and fewer tasks. You deploy as a teaching robot, but otherwise your mental real estate is preserved for other stuff.
For some, this is optimally low stress and high capacity, because breadth of teaching is not the stressor. Stress for this person might look like one of the other things – high number of tasks, high expectations, high level of responsibility, perhaps conflict.
In other cases (me) I would rather have MORE work - more tasks, more responsibility, high expectations /or conflict, because lack of control is my number 1 stressor. I don’t mind allocating work (possible conflict), being the decision makers (high expectations and accountability) and I can tolerate risk well (if I get it wrong, it’s on me). Task overload is not then my stressor as I am a very organised person and have good time management skills, so ‘too many tasks’ is not what leads to burnout in me. But if I lack control over my work and my schedule, because Barbara is my course leader and she is a chaos monster, I am on my last nerve in 3 minutes flat. I can’t tolerate working with Barbara, and I will take on more tasks to avoid her. I will have more work, but less Barabra and less stress. If I were to burn out and my back to work was you only have 1 class to teach, but you guessed it, it’s with Barbara, I am back on sick leave.
Review what stresses you out
Do an audit about what really pushes your buttons. Is it that you just cannot stand ONE MORE MINUTE working with Barbara? You would rather teach 3 more courses - take it. Bargain your way out of the stress triggers. Is it the uncertainty around the role you have been allocated (very common in academia where roles – and tasks😂 - are never defined)? Uncertainty feels like you are doomed to fail because you cannot know what you are meant to be doing, and high expectations around ill-defined tasks cause some people to allocate a lot of metal real estate to unsolvable problems.
Don’t conflate stressors: I’m not afraid of conflict with Barbara – I’ll do that all day long. My stress is Barbara is chaos and no amount of shouting will undo that. I need to avoid the chaos caused by Barbara – the uncertainty, the lack of organisation, the last minute requests, the student unhappiness caused by Barbara’s chaos that ends up in my inbox. I can’t deal with THAT, not Barbara. Of course sometimes a toxic co-worker should just be avoided because it ‘gets on us’ like radiation, and we don’t want that.
When these stressors are gone, you’ll be amazed how much capacity appears for writing when your mental real estate is spacious and untroubled. How much you realise it was not the number of things to do, but the other stuff that dragged you under.
If in fact it IS task overload – you need to get rid of some roles and keep others – remember not all roles bring the same level of task exposure, or the same type of stressors. Boundaries are your friend, negotiation is key and not everything requires 100% of your capacity. Choose wisely, and deploy your real estate judiciously.