Academics are drawn to an academic career – in part at least – because of the freedom it gives them to pursue their own interests and, to an extent, retain the fruits of their own labour. As any good Marxist will tell you, this is a good thing. But it can come at a cost, because to an academic there are so many things that are interesting.
This is compounded by the increasingly competitive environment that academics – particularly early career researchers – operate in. Those interesting opportunities are also opportunities to enhance one’s CV, making it more difficult to turn them down. Interesting AND career enhancing? That’s hard to say no to.
Very quickly, the opportunities begin to outstrip the time available to complete them. They emerge slowly at first…but over time they grow and grow. Once you’re on a publisher’s or funder’s system as a reviewer, for example, you’ll start to get ever more requests. We feel flattered and needed – making it even harder to say no…
All these factors conspire. We find lots of things interesting. We’re presented with more and more interesting opportunities. And we find it difficult to say no: Will I be asked again? Will I miss out on future opportunities? Will I upset the person who asked me? And surely these opportunities will just make my CV stronger!
It took me a long time to realise how pernicious this can be. For periods throughout my career – particularly as an early- and mid-career researcher – I was simply too busy because I was saying yes to too many things. Controversial as it may sound, workload pressures are at least partially self-inflicted because we overload ourselves.
Did this benefit my career progression? With hindsight, probably less than I thought it would at the time. Quantity often comes at the expense of quality – you can’t do your best work if you’re spread too thinly, time spent doing one thing is time not spent doing another thing, and some things don’t actually enhance your CV that much.
This realisation came when I found myself yet again getting up at 4 am to catch a flight to give a talk to a small audience where the opportunities for genuine networking or raising my profile would be limited. I would effectively lose a day of work, and probably not be at my best the next day either. And all for relatively limited gain.
What can we do, particularly in a hyper-competitive environment? One thing is simply to try to take a more balanced view every time an opportunity presents itself. Is it very interesting? Is it going to really enhance my CV? Is it worth giving up something else for – whether it be another opportunity, a day of work, or even an evening of leisure time?
One thing I did learn early on was to be more selective about the journals I reviewed for. If I hadn’t reviewed for a journal before I would say yes, to grow the range of journals I’d supported. But, over time, I started to say yes to journals I’d reviewed for a lot, in the hope of raising my profile and eventually being invited onto the editorial board.
In other words, it helps to be selective and identify the best use of your limited time.
I also learned to imagine – when a request came in – how I’d feel if the deadline, talk or whatever was tomorrow. This approach counteracts temporal discounting – the natural cognitive bias whereby we under-appreciate how things will feel in the future. My diary 6 months from now looks clear, but when I get there it will be just as busy…
If, in that scenario, I would still be excited about getting up early to travel to give a talk then I would say yes to the opportunity. If not, I learned to say no (or suggest some else, making it easier to say no and creating opportunities for others). And it worked! I was able to say no to more things, and learned that the invitations didn’t dry up.
(and I didn’t upset anyone, at least to the best of my knowledge – sorry if I did!)
Now that I’m in a senior position, I often have people comment on how busy I must be. I always say that there are only so many hours in the day and we’re probably all just as busy as each other – typically working flat out. But there’s a difference between working flat out sustainably, and doing so unsustainably.
I like to be busy. And I love the fact that I have a job that is (still) fundamentally interesting and exciting. But one of the reasons I’ve made it this far is that I learned to say no relatively early on (although, with hindsight, not as early I’d have liked). But I still need to fight my inner urge to say yes to interesting possibilities!
Saying no is just another skill that we need to learn – as important as study design, grant writing and all the rest. Others can help us – whether line managers, mentors or friends – to identify which opportunities are really worth pursuing, how so say no politely but firmly, and so on. Sometimes we might need to ask for that help though.
As academics, we are enormously lucky to have the freedom we do, however much this has been squeezed by growing demands on us, and the sector as a whole. Most of us do what we do because we love our work. That is a real privilege. But it’s also worth remembering that work doesn’t love us back…
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