This series of posts is aimed at academics, particularly early-career researchers (ECRs). While some of the topics I cover will be relevant across the board, ECRs will find them particularly relevant.
A major area of concern for ECRs, such as myself, is scholarly productivity. I have found that scholarly productivity is different from productivity in less 'thought-based' employment. In most jobs, even highly skilled ones, productivity is mostly about time and project management. Scholarly productivity also requires these skills in substantial amount, but that is a topic for another post. What I want to focus on here is the additional structures that I have implemented in my life in an attempt to wring every drop of scholarly output from my intellect. Because one's brain is always taking in and processing information and one's brain is the primary tool for scholarly work, every aspect of a scholar's life contributes or detracts from scholarly output. From the way we interact with the news, to the way we use our exercise time and what we choose to do on the weekends. Everything is either contributing to or detracting from our output, so it is important for us to structure our lives so that as many things as possible contribute to and as few things as possible distract from our output. If we get this right, then we can be satisfied that we gave the world our most creative, insightful and helpful outputs. To borrow a phrase from Cal Newport, if we structure our lives well, then we can engage in the increasingly rare activity of 'deep work'.
I want to cover this topic in three parts. In this first part I'll cover structures I've put in place for managing the news and social media. In the second part, I'll cover non-work reading, meditation and exercise. In the third part, I'll cover structures I've put in place for managing recreation, friends and family life. Maybe you'll find it useful to kickstart your thinking about how you structure your life. Failing that, I hope you at least find it interesting! I've included headings so you can just skip to the bit that is most relevant to you.
There are three underlying principles that have guided my thinking on these topics. The first is that boredom breeds creativity (this idea is supported by data; see, for example Danckert & Eastwood, Out of My Skull: The Psychology of Boredom, Harvard University Press, 2020). The second is that humans are at their most productive when they are happiest and this requires regular periods of rest and work; if the balance becomes skewed too far towards either one of these both our happiness and the quality and depth of our work will plummet (I don't have data on this idea, but I've heard it in a variety of forms over the years from people I trust and it intuitively makes sense). The third is that solitude is important for creativity, focus and deep work (this idea is discussed at length in Cal Newport's book Digital Minimalism).
The News
It's no secret that the way we engage with the news has changed dramatically since the internet became widespread. For a long time, I thought that being informed was essential to being a functioning adult and involved checking news websites, like ABC, SBS and Sky News, multiple times per day. But essentially all this constant checking achieved was putting me in a heightened state of arousal and staving off small moments of boredom (e.g. waiting in line at the kebab shop, or a few seconds waiting for a webpage to load). Essentially, my compulsive news-checking stole all of these little moments of boredom until my brain was frequently flitting from work to the news and back again. This behaviour stemmed from the desire to be informed, but actually I barely remembered anything I read and my scholarly creativity and focus were suffering.
After trying a variety of different approaches to engaging with the news, I have landed on the following structure.
- Every morning at 5:40 AM while lifting weights I listen to The Squiz Today, which is a free, weekday, Australia-centric podcast that covers 4-6 major news stories in under 10 minutes; this keeps me up to speed with important national and global events.
- Every Saturday morning, I walk down to the local servo and buy The West Australian and then spend the next few hours devouring it; this keeps me adequately informed about news from Perth and its surrounds (and provides newspaper that can be used for window cleaning!).
- Once or twice a year (usually during my annual leave) I read some longer form journalism, such as The Monthly; this gives me a chance to take in some more in-depth reflections on big events.
Alongside the news, social media appears to me to be one of the biggest detractors from scholarly output. The problem with social media is two-fold. First, social media, like the news, fills every spare moment of boredom without giving much in return. Our brains need boredom, not constant input. Second, social media platforms are designed to keep as much of our attention as possible for as long as possible (the so-called 'attention economy') and as long as our attention is even partially on them, we cannot be engaged in creative and focussed work. However, unlike some others, I am not an advocate of completely dissociating from social media; I think it has its value if used correctly. One of the most useful exercises I did when thinking about this is to precisely define what you use social media for (as suggested by Cal Newport in Digital Minimalism). Don't just think, 'I use Twitter'; instead, think, for example, 'I use Twitter to keep an eye on developing trends in the medical research field.'
- Check Twitter and LinkedIn for five minutes each workday morning, while eating breakfast. These are valuable tools for maintaining my professional network, so it's important I stay active on them.
- Post to Twitter and LinkedIn once a week (usually on Fridays).
- Spend a maximum of 15 min on Facebook on Saturday mornings.
