I suspect it might be the same for all of us, as increasingly colleges—even the research 1s—are being “brought to accountability” for improving the overall student “experience” as economic forces beyond our control place pressure on every level of academia. How do we as maintain professional productivity while also committing fully to pedagogical aims (truly the latter being what drove most of us through graduate school)? I offer here a few tips, admittedly from someone at a teaching-oriented college, but one that has been emphasizing more traditional research goals as well. (I also speak as someone tenured, realizing that the pressures are significantly different pre- and post-.)

1) Find someone in your department with whom to build a trusting relationship…and be that person for someone else. Both before and after tenure, there will be times when you feel overwhelmed…Sometimes by the sheer amount of hours needed in a semester to plan classes and conference presentations and write papers and develop that book….Sometimes by the curveballs that life can throw you with health, family, and golden opportunities that you can’t pass up. You need one person you can spill your guts to, no questions asked and no judgment proffered, who can a) make you feel better and b) intercede on your behalf when necessary. I recently witnessed a stellar teacher killing herself to finish a documentary, teach a new multi-departmental class, write a report for a new administrator, and all while dealing with (no exaggeration) a brain tumor that needed to be removed. I stressed to her that one semester of a lackluster class wouldn’t kill her—but not removing a brain tumor might. Sounds logical, but you all know you’ve been paralyzed similarly (if not as extremely) by the pressures to actually teach meaningful classes, deliver professional productivity, and have a literal or symbolic “life.” Have a sounding board and a mediator—it will mean all the difference. By the same token, think of your department humanistically: be there for someone else when you are able and it will come back to you.

2) Know yourself as an academic, in the most glorious sense of this position—and then know your limits (and those of your institution). We know there are certain things we must do to achieve tenure and maintain our employment. But we often become so obsessed with this—or the next step up after—that we forget to consider our reasons for going into the field to begin with. What are your priorities in terms of your career? Are you more driven by research? More by teaching? Equally so? Do you aspire to periodic forays into administration?  Is it important to you to be connected with the local community in which you work? Figure this out—in short, figure out what makes you happy as an academic, and then foreground that in your choices. A caveat: your priorities might shift—as might those of your institution (the latter clearly more nerve-wracking). Allow this to happen; Freud be damned, we keep developing way past 4 years old. Changing with the times, your personality, your environment, and your life circumstances doesn’t make you fickle—it is what makes you better at what you do. Students know if you don’t care; your family and friends know if you don’t care…in the end, you need to know what matters at any given moment and choose your activities accordingly.

3) Lay claim to your rights and needs as a human being…but realize you’re not an island. This is admittedly easier after tenure, but see #1! There are only so many hours in a day. Your health matters, your relationships matter. And no matter what your priorities (see #2), your happiness as a scholar matters as well. We sacrifice a lot to go into academia—better pay elsewhere, deferment of other activities, buying a house instead of a student loan :D…And most of us do this with noble intentions. Take pride in this—and remind others to respect your choices. And quite frankly, minimize your exposure to those who don’t respect your choices. This means at times saying “no”—to the committee invitation, to the request to serve administratively, to the pleas to review a book or article, to the student demands for a new class…You get the drift. A second caveat, however: Your choices impact others—your colleagues, your students, your family. Take heed of the fact that you are in academia—in other words, you work in conjunction with a complex of people who are human beings trying to do the best they can. Respect them—but make sure they respect you, no mater where you are on that ladder.

So, much is vague here, yes? How do I survive wanting to teach—loving to teach—but also yenning for time to research and write (and yes, even administrate)? I don’t have all the answers yet…but what lets me breathe is accepting that not having all the answers and making the occasional mistake is ok. This fall I’ll figure out what to embrace letting go of; I may sleep a little less, but in the end I’ll also sleep better knowing that I’m not trying to do it all.

Figure out how you work. One of us, for instance, writes best in the morning and maintains a 9-5 approach (or at the most productive worked 6-6 with lunch at the desk) but isn’t much good by late afternoon, which is therefore when to schedule student meetings, grade papers, course prep, and the other stuff that doesn’t require deep thought. Once you know when you work best, protect it vigilantly from all intruders. Others can work in coffee shops, burn the midnight oil, etc. If what you are doing isn’t working, audit your time, see where you are losing opportunity, and try something new. And may we recommend firm rules regarding checking and responding to email and other social media. Remember, many people get no more than 2 weeks vacation a year and don’t get paid for time off. The most straightforward answer to how we have been so productive is that we each maintained about a 50-60 hour work week (not counting evening viewing or any non work-relevant computer use) and took very few hours or days off in the first decade of our careers.

Related to this, procrastinate by doing other work. There are times when your head’s just not into what you’re doing. But if you’re struggling with writing, read, assemble your bibliography or something wholly mechanical like that, compile data, watch and take notes on something, read the trade press, etc.

Be strategic about what you choose to write and where you send it. As you start a project, think about what journal or press you could see it ending up at, and make sure there’s more than just one option there, so it doesn’t get caught in publication limbo. Think carefully about the fit of your article to the journal; many rejections come simply from being a poor match, but this can set publication of your work back by 6 months to a year. Double or triple up by making your big conference presentation this year feed into and inform that article you’re working on, which in turn forms the basis of a chapter for a book. When people ask if you’ll contribute to a special issue or a book they’re editing, think about whether this will help your research profile, or whether it’s time away from it (the latter may well be worth doing, to be clear: but you should go into it knowing that’s what it is).

Always meet your deadlines. On one hand, the more that you miss, the more that you’re required to be late with other things. On the other hand, meeting deadlines gives you capital with presses and journals. Precisely because so many academics are late, when you meet your deadlines, you win editors’ love and respect, which in turn  may lead to them treating your work with more care, trying harder to find reviewers who will be as serious about a deadline as are you, and siding in your favor if you’re in a grey area.

We’re probably writing to an undercurrent of anxiety we witness that holds up R1 jobs as the highest pursuit. This often happens because graduate training only takes place in R1 institutions. R1 jobs aren’t right for everyone and people in R1 jobs aren’t the smartest or best around, even if your advisor suggests that’s the case. R1 jobs are a good fit for people who feel that half of their job performance should be based on their scholarly productivity. But real success is a curious thing. Although we rarely talk about it, if we want to be honest, we’re not curing cancer here. At the end of the day, having a shelf of authored books is only one form of gratification, and not one that keeps you all that warm at night. Though our universities may never acknowledge it, the most significant work most all of us will do is in the classroom, by touching lives and opening up new ways of thinking and understanding the world. Think on these things and make your peace with them in thinking about the version of this career and level of productivity that’s right for you.

Questions? We’d be happy to field them. Or your own suggestions? Please share.

[This post marks the beginning of a new column at Antenna in which a range of authors will discuss issues related to the profession of being an academic – publishing, parenting, pedagogy, “para-academic” professions, prestige, productivity, and many other topics, not all beginning with “p.” We also invite you to pose topics for us, either that you wish to write, or that you’d like to see covered but can’t write yourself. As always, just contact us at antenna@commarts.wisc.edu]

The two of us are often asked how we’ve been so productive and published so much. It’s cute sometimes when people expect a single answer—eat a bunch of cauliflower, sleep with your head on your laptop, write with vetiver incense burning—but below, we’ll offer a few tips, and we encourage others to post their own tips to continue the discussion.

First, figure out what you want this job to be for you and come to terms with the varied expectations. The day-to-day and the measurement of performance in academic careers vary widely. One of us started at a small liberal arts school, where the provost said that the job was half teaching, half service, and that an active publication profile was required (and indeed it was a job whose expectations seemed to add up to more than 100%). A recent memo from one of our Research 1 Dean’s, related to “buying” oneself out of teaching (for those privileged to have grants) catalogued the university’s expectation as 50% research, 40% teaching, 10% service. While the actual make up varies over a career (10% service would be a dream), recognize that jobs at different places require very different levels and types of publishing.

What jobs are available in a given year and the specializations most sought are beyond anyone’s control. If you don’t initially land in a job that fits you, you need to do all that is expected in that job and develop the profile required for the job you want so that you look like you fit when it comes along. In other words, you will need to publish at the rate and the kinds of things that your hoped-for next job will want, not just at the rate and the kinds of things that your current job wants.

Understand that productivity isn’t an abstract requirement and think about why you need to be productive or why you’re publishing. This has a broader level—recognizing publication as participation in a dialogue that advances the field and wanting to participate in that conversation, and recognizing that good research feeds into good teaching—as well as a specific level related to the practicalities of job expectations noted above. If you resent the need to publish, that’s unlikely to help you … and you may need to ask why you’re choosing this career path at all.

Some other tips:

To those in grad school, read a lot. All the time. Many people are slowed down in their progress by having an idea of something they want to write on, then needing to spend several years reading into that topic. If you’re constantly reading, and trying to keep up on a variety of fronts, however, you’ll have more already in the tank. Trust us: you will never have more time to read than you do in grad school, and the more you read now, the faster you can work later.

Similarly, always be writing. Don’t be scared of writing. Start a blog or write for other blogs if you need a little extra help. Or simply write drafts of sections now and then. Commit to it. Don’t ever look at writing as the thing that happens once you’ve finished research: see it as a process of discovery, and hence as a vital stage of ongoing research. And don’t be scared to share this writing, whether with a few others, or in a conference or publication. No writer is happy with everything s/he’s written, and you won’t be an exception, but you can react to that either by never writing or by recognizing that writing is part of a dialogue. Some of the smartest, most highly revered scholars regularly revise earlier statements of theirs, so you can too.

If you started other writing, like blogging, to overcome a block, stop when unblocked, or at least be aware of “what counts” and allocate your time accordingly. Blogs can be a helpful supplement to the dialogue of the field, and may create a public, but peer-reviewed publications are still the coin of the realm in terms of hiring and promotion. If you aren’t where you ultimately want to be, think carefully about what you put out there. You want to contribute your most fully-considered ideas that represent the skill of your thinking to the dialogue.

Part 2 tomorrow …