I’m mid-career and I’ve just realised I have never received any mentoring on how to manage my workload, on how to explicitly recognise when I’ve taken on too much and how to proactively regulate the things I’m committed to.
I have had conversations which touch on this, but the focus has tended to be productivity – how to manage your tasks. What about a system for working out when you should say No to more things? I asked the question on mastodon, and got some good replies. Here I’ll attempt to summarise and reflect on those and other advice I’ve heard. Thanks to everyone who has make contributions, online and offline, over the years.
The ur-wisdom: you can’t do everything. So if you’re not prioritising then you’re letting the Universe select for you (and the Universe, probably in the form of management, will allow you to over-commit).
Rule one: you should be honest about how long things really take, and plan out accordingly. You should have a plan which covers a foreseeable distance into the future (1 month? 6 months? 5 years?) and you should set out your commitments over this period, so you know when you’ll be doing them (and when they clash). Gantt charts are a planning cliche for reason.
- Schedule holidays and other time off.
- Include a regular task review/planning time (Monday mornings?).
- Keep work in its allotted slots. Do not expand your working time into your leisure time, because there is an infinite amount of work and you will be just encouraging burnout and/or delaying your reckoning with priortisation.
- Think about when things will end and what system you have for pruning your commitments.
To work out how long everything will take you can try these things:
- Assume everything will take 3 times longer than you initially think (If I have a task which I estimate will take 30-60 minutes, I will schedule half a day to complete it).
- Only every schedule yourself some fraction of your total time, such as 60%. You need that flexibility for undocumented tasks, transfer costs, etc.
- Put preparation time in your calendar. If you are going to a meeting schedule time before to do the associated prep work, and maybe also after for dealing with things which arise.. At the least this will prevent you from filling your entire calendar meetings with no time to actually do any of the work. If you take on a role which is supposed to take 5% of your time, try blocking that in your calendar too, so you know to reserve that time (and to help track how much of your time the role does demand).
- Track how long different things take. This will help you improve your estimates of how big a commitment different things are.
Rule two: say no more. It’s okay to say no to things, and knowing your priorities helps. Practice phrases like (“I’d like to, but I’m fully committed right now”). You can add “Feel free to ask me again after [date in the future]” if you’re open to the idea. Principles in this space I like are:
- If it isn’t ‘Hell Yes!’ then it’s a No.
- Never say ‘yes’ immediately. Sleep on it, and see how you feel in the morning (then see above).
- Don’t get tricked by temporal discounting. Ask if you’d want to do this thing if it was tomorrow. If not, you’ll get to six months down the line and probably not want to do it then.
- Know the going rate: it helps to know what is expected of you, especially for opt-in and voluntary activities. (how many reviews? How many examinations?, etc). If I know that, say, my department works if I help with 2 PhD examinations a year, I can accept the first two requests and decline subsequent ones. Its two more than zero, but I have a sense of equanimity for my choice about all requests, accept or decline.
- Rate limit. A rule I like is never to accept a journal review when you have one outstanding. This means my accepting of requests is regulated my actual – rather than optimistically hoped for – ability to complete reviews.
And, perhaps most important for me
- Is this something you can make a unique contribution to and/or will it contribute to your personal priorities? I’ve learn that there are things I am asked to do, even things that I might be good at, but if they are just things I can do, rather than things I get some unique value from or contribute some unique value to, then I end up resenting the time.
Rule Three: You don’t find time for deep, creative, work, you have to make it. If you wait for a moment when you aren’t busy you will never do the most important things. Block out time and schedule those things in, build everything else around those. If you are an academic, writing is one of these things, and you should probably set aside time every day, probably first thing, to do this. (this is verging on productivity advice, but it is important enough that I thought it needed to be said here).
Rule Four: Part of you likes being busy. My own workload goes in predator-prey cycles – I feel overworked, free up time, and then my native excitement takes over and I pick up more projects. Knowing this helps me feel better about the busy bits. I made this happen, and some part of me doesn’t want to cut back. Most importantly, the right level of busy for me isn’t the same as for everyone else. I’m focusing on finding my level, not trying to match busier people.
Obviously, like most advice, this is really me talking to myself. If you find any of this useful, if you think there’s anything missing please get in touch. I’ll add to this when I can.
Recommended reading
This meme: pick your battles
Daniel Nettle on Staying in the game
Simon Breakspear on the Pruning Principle. The art is not to be so busy that long term flourishing is not sustainable.