Fallacy: work hard, tweet harder
Academia is a pressured place. The work is fascinating. There is more work to be done than can be done, and the humans doing the work are often prone to self-pressure induced by feelings of insecurity, guilt and vulnerability. Recently, I’ve seen this play out on the twitter sphere.
I think this is a huge problem, as in glorifying our sacrifice, we normalise bad practice and damage everyone in the process. This practice affects our mental health and in the long run is unhealthy.
This pressure cooker of academic work-load used to be viewed only by spotting who’s office lights were left on on a cold winters night, perhaps with the odd escape to the pub to tell your mates “just how hard you have been working”.
In the days of social media, we can be done with the pub and the pretence of unwinding. Instead we just dash off 280 characters at midnight to validate our choices in reviewing a new batch of grants, or eeking out some semblance of coherent thought into a prior manuscript draft. Or perhaps we might self congratulate ourselves on “not working this weekend” thus normalising the act that the only way to get ahead is to routinely work on weekends, thus making a special treat when we take some time off.
As many know, I’m a massive proponent for social media, as it does enable us to share a bit more of “life behind the scenes” and the reality of an academic existence. There is heart warming solidarity out there, and the sharing of better practice fills me with joy.
I am also well aware that I write this from a place of privilege. I am a ~tenured academic, with a job at a very shiny University. Life is different for others, but I know that people look up to other folks, especially those who they want to emulate, and say “well Joe did 13 hours today and they’re successful, so I’ll do 14 hours and I’ll be more successful than them!”.
This is a race to the bottom. We need to move towards celebrating taking time off, to enjoying variety in life, and ultimately being more efficient at what we do. Part of this efficiency will come from simply saying “no” or “no, that’s unreasonable to do in this timeframe”. Each of these conversations is difficult, but the more that everyone does it, the easier it will be for everyone.
It would be a lie to say I am immune to tweeting about how brutal my day has been, you can check my tweet history. Some of my behaviour is motivated because I want to others to see “behind the veil” about the realities of academic life. However, the more I think about how we project ourselves and how people look up to our behaviour I worry about the impact that this has on people around me.
In light of the difficult discussions happening across the UK sector regarding pay and pensions, I am reminded that clarity about ‘overwork’ was brought home by the strikes where I decided to “work to contract” (i.e. what I’m paid to do) and learnt an art of switching off and not engaging with “work stuff” outside of my hours. For instance I now don’t regularly check my email on weekends, and I won’t check my emails if I’m on the tube home from a night with friends — leaving my brain the chance to properly switch off and enjoy a semblance of real life.
Academia is littered with survivorship bias. The culture can be set by those who simply had the constitution to stay in the game for longer, and you can see this even more when considering ‘those at the top of the profession’. These people often are disconnected, necessarily, from the realities of the current day-to-day. Even for myself, it was almost ten years since I started my PhD and the world has moved on, and I know I was ‘lucky’ to have sailed through many of the hurdles relatively unscathed.
Now there are multiple justified reasons for why people will work strange hours. Academia is fantastic in that it is a profession which can allow for flexible working. One day last week for example, I left work at 4 pm to meet a friend from Australia. If I had kids, I’m sure I’d relish the opportunity to time-shift my day to balance family life.
As with any job, there are many reasons why (on occasion) we might work longer hours. I have been known to pull long days, e.g. when having to prepare for some teaching and I haven’t been organised/efficient. However, the routine chatter of “work long hours or you can’t survive” does not resonate with me anymore. Do I want to survive in a profession where this is the only way to manage?
Increasingly I’m involved in work to encourage a culture shift in academia to enable more people to participate. What’s the point of all this work if we ask them to particulate in a system that punishes people for wanting to have a life outside of the office?
In all of this, I recognise that people will be working odd hours, and on occasion they will want to vent about the pile of stuff that’s on their desk. If you’re in that position, please have a brief pause for thought and consider adding a bit of background to your tweet as to why you are working all hours of the day, and help us collectively promote a better “work-life-balance”.
This only involves little and subtle tweaks to how we communicate, perhaps instead of sharing “I worked 13 hours today! #HERO”, we could utter “I worked 13 hours today, as I needed to finish some work so that I could have a clear head to watch and enjoy my kid’s school play.”
Now please excuse me a moment while I get up and enjoy myself making breakfast…
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