Too Busy to Stop and Check
When I was working as an academic, my dentist noticed that I was grinding my teeth. I had no idea. I had also stopped exercising regularly, and when I noticed that, I let myself off. I was busy. Everyone was busy.
Looking back, ‘I’m so busy’ was the reason I gave myself for ignoring what my body was telling me.
When busy becomes normal
If you’re an academic, busy is probably an accurate description of your week. Often that’s because you care about doing the job properly. UCU research has found that academics work the equivalent of around two unpaid days a week. When demands outstrip your time week after week, feeling stretched stops being a warning and just feels like ‘the job’.
For many people, the body notices before the mind does. You might not feel stressed in the way you’d expect. You’re coping and getting things done. Meanwhile your sleep has slipped and your patience is shorter. You’ve cancelled plans with friends three times this term. You lean on coffee to get going and a glass of wine to switch off. Your digestion has changed. Exercise has moved down the priority list. The signals that something needs to change keep arriving, and you stop seeing them. Ill health is much harder to brush aside than these early warning signs, but by the time it arrives, you have less choice about how you respond.
Comparing yourself with ‘normal’ doesn’t help much, because when busy is constant, your sense of normal shifts with it. More useful questions are whether things are getting worse, whether a weekend still restores you, and what has dropped out of your life. Listen when other people notice something. My dentist saw what I couldn’t.
Are you building the case against yourself?
Academics are trained to weigh evidence and construct arguments. Whilst that is useful in research, it’s less useful when you turn this skill on yourself.
The arguments that whirl around our minds when we consider taking a break are usually familiar. If I slow down now, I won’t get the promotion. I’ll let people down. Nobody else is slowing down. I can slow down later.
Each contains some truth, which is why they can feel so persuasive. Slowing down might cost you something. Colleagues might be relying on you. And everyone around you does seem to be keeping pace, although many of them may be making the same private calculation.
The weakest argument we tell ourselves is the one about slowing down later. Academic careers don’t come with a natural pause. After probation comes promotion, then the next grant, the next role, the next responsibility. Whenever ‘later’ is, it just keeps moving.
So it’s worth asking where these arguments lead if you keep following them. And if you find yourself assembling a detailed case for why you don’t need a break, notice what that argument is protecting.
Deciding before your body decides
You can’t rely on winning the argument in the moment. So while you’re feeling good, decide what your early signs are and what you’ll do when you see them. When you’ve cancelled plans twice in a month, perhaps that’s a weekend without email. When a weekend no longer restores you, perhaps that’s the point to look at what you could put down. The response can be small. The point is to agree it with yourself in advance.
What could you put down?
When I ask academics what they could put down, the usual response is a long pause, followed by reasons why each thing has to stay. If that is what you are thinking right now, it makes sense, because when everything feels urgent, nothing looks optional.
I also notice that when we think about dropping something, we tend to focus on what we’d lose and overlook what we’d keep or what opportunities it may open up. Putting something down for a while doesn’t remove it from your CV, and it doesn’t mean you’ll never pick it up again. Pruning helps a tree grow and it can help a career too.
You can’t choose everything. Some of your work is required, and how much room you have depends on your role and career stage. But there are parts of an academic’s week that are based on discretionary effort: the extra committee, the additional reviewing, the side project, the favour that became a permanent fixture. That’s where you might have the most choice.
These questions can help you see where your energy goes.
Is this required, or is it discretionary?
Does it still move my career forward, or has it already done its job?
Does it connect to why I came into academia?
Does it give me energy or take it?
Would I keep doing this if nobody noticed?
Any task, project or responsibility that does not fare well on most of these questions is a good place to start with your pruning. Choosing where your focus goes makes room for the work that matters to you, and makes it easier for others to see what you stand for.
But what about...
You may have objections. Here are the ones I hear most often.
‘Everything I do is required.’ Sometimes that’s true, particularly early in your career. It’s still worth testing item by item. Even with required work, you often have choices about the standard, the timing or the time it gets. Where you have no room at all, that’s a conversation with your line manager, and the questions above give you something specific to bring.
‘If I slow down, I’ll fall behind.’ You may be weighing one risk more heavily than another. Running on empty also has costs, in illness, lost time and the quality of your work. Pruning discretionary effort is different from cutting your core output.
‘Those signs could be anything.’ They could. Check physical symptoms with your GP. And if you’re explaining each one away, you may be back to building the case against yourself.
‘This puts it all on me, when workload is a wider issue.’ Individual choices won’t fix workload across the sector. But wider change is slow, and your health can’t wait for it. Looking after yourself doesn’t stop you caring about, or ignore, the bigger picture.
Most of this starts with noticing. So which of your signals have you been explaining away?
If you’d like to talk through what you could put down, a free thirty-minute call is a good place to start.
Hi, I am Wendy.
I work with academics to help them build sustainable careers so they can progress with autonomy, intellectual challenge and impact.
Packages start from £499.
With me you can expect to achieve:
A comprehensive mapping of where you are now, and where you want to be.
Clarity on what matters to you both professionally and personally.
Practical tools to set work boundaries that actually stick in academic environments.
Strategies to protect your wellbeing while still delivering quality work.
Emotional support and understanding.
Confidence to make decisions to support your future personal and professional life.
Book a chat in my diary, it is free for a 30 minute conversation to find out if working with me can help you take the next steps in your academic life. https://tidycal.com/drwendynicholls/letschat
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