Managing overcommitment in academia
I have too much to do. If you have a job with somewhat ill- or undefined responsibilities, you probably do too. The inevitable outcome of jobs like this is that sometimes we get overcommitted, and work/life balance becomes impossible.
In academia, overcommitment can be even harder. Tenure-track faculty engaged in research often commit to things that span one, three, sometimes five years of work, as grant-funded projects progress, academic programs slowly unfold, and we develop our doctoral students careers over 5–7 years. Nowhere is this more clear than when someone goes on sabbatical: faculty on leave for 12 months often talk about only really having the last three where they have excess time to explore things they haven’t already committed to. They spend the other 9 months finishing prior commitments.
One complicating factor in all of this is that academia is full of opportunities, and because of academic freedom, there’s little organizational constraint on what goals are reasonable to pursue. To be faculty is to be endlessly inundated with new collaborators, new projects, new questions, and new students. And even the institutional roles we play, such as admissions and hiring, are designed to intentionally bring new diverse people. These processes not only guarantee a steady annual workload.
One of the standard strategies for avoiding overcommitment is to just say no. No, I won’t admit that new student. No, I won’t do that new project. No, I can’t collaborate with you. No, I won’t write that grant. No, I won’t improve this process. No, I won’t teach that class.
But saying no in the context of an institution that’s defined by its pursuit of the new and the unknown can feel highly inappropriate. When it’s someone senior asking you to do something, it’s even harder, since our reputations (and promotions) are shaped by their opinions. And if we’re interested in the opportunity, it’s even harder! It’s only a deep commitment to self-care that gives me the courage to resist so many interesting, important things.
As I’ve written about in another post, one strategy I’ve used to boost my confidence to say no is to maintain a commitment calendar. I keep a record of all of the research, teaching, service, and travel I’ve committed to 3–4 years out, month by month, and try to carefully estimate how much time all of those commitments amount to. I aim to have no more than 45 hours a week of work, 8–5 weekdays. Then, when an opportunity comes my way, or someone asks me to do something, I check my calendar: how long will that task take and do I have excess time to do it? How stressed out am I willing to be? If I estimate wrong, all of this breaks, but I find that having an estimate is better than having an impression of how much I’ve committed to.
Of course, there’s always far too many opportunities, and always unknown future opportunities, so a critical skill is deciding which ones to say yes to. For this, I haven’t found a better way to decide whether something’s worth the time than having clear long term goals. For example, at the moment, my goal is pretty clear: I want to help the United States prepare hundreds of thousands of excellent teachers capable of teaching computing to youth. I say yes to grant proposals that will give me the resources to do this, yes to doctoral students who have the same goal, yes to service that helps me implement infrastructure for this goal, and yes to anything that gives me the expertise and reputation I need to achieve this goal. I say no to everything else, even the things I’m super interested in.
Inevitably, I overcommit. While it’s always an option to just be overworked and overwhelmed, I’ve find I don’t thrive too well at work or home by working too much. So to keep myself to my self-imposed 45 hour week, I’ve coverged upon a few strategies for dealing with this:
- Do some things less well. I’ve developed a pretty good instinct for what’s good enough for some tasks, and what the consequences of mediocre work will be (especially cases where mediocre work just creates more work). For example, I regularly make administrative decisions that are just good enough, rather than belaboring them, because I’ve learned that many decisions are more about deciding than deciding “right.”
- Do some things more slowly. When I have the flexibility, I might not move so fast on a commitment. For example, I have a lot of commitments right now to support CS for All initiatives in the state, but sometimes I can’t find time to move things forward in the week. I delay a week.
- Pay off commitment debt. I’ll spend a fixed portion of my personal time catching up, getting to a more neutral place. I try to only do this for the things that I’m really passionate about, lest I get bitter and resentful about my assigned duties. This might mean spending a few Saturdays on campus a year, just to take some of the stress off.
- Un-commit. It’s never ideal to break a promise as it costs some social capital, but sometimes it’s necessary. I personally find it really uncomfortable to break promises, so this is really a last resort.
When I do all of this well, my job just feels manageble. I go home and I’m not worried about work. I go to work and I know what to work on. I have weekends where work doesn’t come to mind at all, and I can just be present with my wife, my daugher, my friends, my community, and myself. And it feels great!
And other times, I fail at this miserably. I misestimate a commitment. I forget to write one down. I knowingly say yes to too much. Work comes to me from top down that I can’t say no to. I don’t think there are strategies that can avoid these times entirely (aside from just working more self-contained jobs), but some of the strategies above might help make them infrequent.
How do you manage overcommitment? Do you thrive on stress or detest it? I’d love to hear your tricks and tips!
