,
19 tweets,
6 min read
Read on Twitter
I am so tired I can’t think properly this afternoon, and so I thought I’d write a twitter thread about academia and exhaustion and work hours and a reminder to others (and myself) that you are more than your productivity.
This morning (Thursday) I had already worked 38 hours this week (w a bunch more required work still to do). I know this because I am currently tracking the hours I work. I am also evangelising the tracking of work hours to all & sundry at the moment because it has been revelatory
I started formally tracking my hours a few months ago. I was coming off research leave, back into a teaching/research role, with an additional (large) new service role. I decided to do it for two reasons.
1. Because academic work tends to expand to fit (all) the space and simultaneously it tends to make you think you should make more space and aren’t giving it enough space…
(As an aside: I had a what started as a good metaphor of academic work being a fungus, that at first it is delicious mushrooms to eat & insidiously it becomes a fungus that creeps into every crevice of your home but I bailed on it bc it got weird)
And 2. Because as the old adage says, the immediate can crowd out the important, and I wanted to track not only hours, but what I was spending those hours on.
So my favourite spreadsheet-making-human @brkeogh made me a simple document and I started recording my hours. I have the usual research/teaching/service categories (from our workload) as well as supervision (not counted for us), reviewing (out of curiosity), & Misc. 
Tracking my hours has not only helped with knowing what I’m doing, but it’s also allowed me to give myself permission to stop working at times. That when I’m feeling exhausted and like I’ve been working heaps, there is evidence that this is TRUE, and I can rest and recover.
A few initial findings:
a. in news that will surprise no one, research is the first to suffer unless I made time for it. I have regular time-slots in my calendar as appts w myself for research—early each morning, & with a fab weekly writing group (shout out to writing groups!).
a. in news that will surprise no one, research is the first to suffer unless I made time for it. I have regular time-slots in my calendar as appts w myself for research—early each morning, & with a fab weekly writing group (shout out to writing groups!).
b. That service roles and the ‘miscellaneous’ meetings take up much more time than I thought (even though I knew this would be the case). Some of this is that it is a new role, but some is just the reality of many small tasks adding up.
c. Despite having evidence, I still get anxious that I’m not doing ‘enough’ or should be doing ‘more’. I’ve found the spreadsheet a helpful addition to continuing to strategise & resist, & to practice a feminist ethics of care (as I tweeted about ages ago)
As academics we don’t always work a 37.5 hr week-teaching or confs or deadlines may mean we do more work in a particular week, & that’s fine! The flexibility is one of the benefits of academia... but flexibility shouldn't hide overwork.
QUT's Enterprise Bargaining Agreement has a definition of an ‘unreasonable workload’, which is if you can’t do your work in allocated hrs & are regularly working over them. I assume other unis have similar statements (maybe find out for your context!) www2.qut.edu.au/jobs/working-a…
Tracking how much I’m working & what I’m working on (& getting done!) is helping me both practically and mentally negotiate my day-to-day work. A reminder: to-do lists are never ending, & the work will be there the next day. So anything you do is progress:
I’m super grateful to @brkeogh (among several others) for conversations on this, for solidarity, & for efforts to name & resist practices that individualise & obfuscate. In part from those conversations also, he has some important thoughts on workloads:
I also think to focus on the hours you work—especially in ongoing roles—is a good reminder that some ppl are only paid for certain hrs. We can be better allies to increasingly precarious colleagues by recognizing work as labour & advocating for colleagues to be paid for all work!
So anyways, all of this is a work-in-progress. Check back in with me at the end of the semester and I can update folks on what it looked like across the life of a teaching period. If you’re really lucky I’ll get fancy and make graphs.
I absolutely love my job. What a privilege it is to do this work. But it is work. Don’t give it away for free, & don’t do it at the cost of your mental or physical health. Passion only takes you so far, & you are more than your productivity. (Also spreadsheets are great) /FIN
bonus, ps. if you wanted to track your hours and aren't a spreadsheet whizz, @BRKeogh has made it in google sheets. You can access the template here (just save-as it for your own version): docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d…
