Get a Life! A Chart for Living
a Balanced Life
(Even if You're an Academic)
"Half our life is spent trying to find something to do with the time we have rushed through life trying to save."
-- Will Rogers
"Sorry, can't meet you this week. I
have so much writing to do; I'm just swamped."
"I can't go away/make that doctor appointment/spend
much time at the neighborhood party. I've
done nothing on my dissertation and I don't
deserve to do anything else.
Have you said things like this to yourself? If
so, you're a typical academic. And your
life is seriously out of balance.
Why do academics lead unbalanced lives?
You can never do enough. The
academic life is a writer's life, only
worse. This
is because the academic constantly feels
that he or she has not done enough. This
unpleasant feeling is partly caused by
a system that insists that teaching and service are
the most important aspects of getting tenure, while
what really matters for getting tenure
is publishing. And of course, the tenure process itself
breeds uncertainty, fear, and paranoia.
There is always someone better than you. Academics
constantly compare themselves to each other. This
invidious tendency to compare and find
oneself lacking stems from early academic
success. Used to being at the top of the
class, future grad students and professors
learned early on to get pleasure and a sense of identity
by comparing themselves to others. Once they
got to graduate school, they realized that
there were others at least as smart and
capable as they were. And
face it: no matter how good you are at
some aspect of a profession or field, there
is someone else who does another part of
the profession better.
Guilt-caused imbalance. Academics
tend to feel guilty when they are procrastinating
and are not doing what they really should
be doing (which is working on the all-important
long-term writing project, whether dissertation,
article, grant application or book). When
you feel such guilt, you don't let yourself consciously
plan to do fun, relaxing things. Sure,
while procrastinating, you can whittle
away your time reading your favorite political
blogs, doing crosswords, or chatting to a colleague;
but you can't say, "I'm
done for the day; I've done enough; I'm
going to relax or do something fun."
Ironically, this mindset is common among those who
have the "luxury" of a lot of free time;
such as graduate students who aren't required
to be in a lab on a daily basis, professors
on sabbatical, or professors during summer break. I
often hear from professors at the end of a sabbatical
who are feeling desperate because they
wasted all that free time by frittering it away procrastinating.
In the long run, this is no way to live a life. You
will end up with health problems and not
enjoy your career, if you don't balance
your life better. There
is more to life than academia! On the other
hand, I'm not suggesting that you shouldn't
work on your career. I am suggesting that
you work smarter, not harder.
Recently, I helped a graduate student client who has
the "too much time" problem. Despite
my exhortations to spend a reasonable amount
of time daily on writing, and then to engage in behaviors
that were relaxing, fun or important, she just didn't
feel she "deserved" to do them.
So we created a "Balanced Life Chart." You
can download
it here, and also download
a sample
Balanced Life Chart, to give you an idea how
to fill it out. In this chart, she gets
points for the various activities the she
had not been engaging in enough, such as socializing,
writing, non-writing academic work, exercising and
house cleaning. She
even got points for "life
maintenance." We also included a section
of the chart where she could define and
give examples of each activity or task.
She created both daily total point goals and weekly
total point goals. Then we created a reward
menu: a list of the weekly rewards that
she would get if she earned certain numbers of points
for each week. We played with the point system over
the weeks until she found a reward level that worked
to motivate her.
It worked like a charm! She is now writing on
a daily basis, making progress on her dissertation,
and also enjoying her life more.
If you don't write enough, and also don't
spend enough time on the things that matter
in life, try the
Balanced Life Chart. Tweak
yours to meet your needs, and let me know
how it goes!
Warmly,
Gina
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