How to allow less than enough to be enough

Plus dated pop culture references, multiple chocolate mentions, and information about my next book!

Hello and welcome to Academia Made Easier. I am so glad that you are here.  

One of my favourite commercials in recent years features an older man overdoing it at the gym and an on-the-nose narrator explaining the consequences of such choices. “Look at this human trying to get in shape,” the narrator tells us. “You know what he will get? Muscle pain. Give up! The couch is calling!” 

“Indeed,” I think from my own couch, shovelling chocolate into my mouth.

I have deep personal experience of both the temptation to test one’s limits (like the guy in the commercial) and of the later consequences (as warned by the commercial narrator). Living with chronic illness, I have learned not to push myself too hard concerning physical activity as there is no run, hike, or gym workout worth triggering indescribable fatigue, brain fog, or paresthesia. 

But while I am good at managing my limits regarding my health, I continue to need to keep watch on myself when it comes to work. When I look at my agenda from now until the end of June, I see two very large leadership projects, work surrounding the release and promotion of my new book, an unusually high amount of travel, and service work on an important university committee. I have neither the capacity nor the time to take on anything else. 

So why does it feel like I should be doing more? 

The challenge is not managing external pressures. Through decades of practice, my ability to say no to requests is well-honed. The challenge is managing my ambition. I want to achieve particular work goals. I want to pursue particular research and writing projects. I want to travel and learn and engage and do all of the things. While Auntie Mame famously quipped that “Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death", I instead have an embarrassingly overflowing plate. I am a different type of sucker.

Work ambition is tricky. There are many rewards, both intrinsic (feeling satisfied with work accomplished, feeling like I am making a difference, the delicious dopamine surge of hitting “submit” or achieving Inbox Zero) and extrinsic (nice words from others, lines on the CV, invitations to do even more stuff). But our bodies have limits for work just as they do for physical activity. “Look at this human trying to keep the pace of late-stage capitalism,” I imagine the narrator saying. “You know what she will get? Burnout. Give up! The couch is calling!” 

Indeed. Pass the chocolate.

If you, like me, struggle to allow enough work to be enough, today’s small thing to try immediately is for you.

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Embrace “enough minus one”

In my experience, overwork – even overwork that I choose willingly – eventually has consequences. I get tired, anxious, and impatient. I ignore the fact that some of my commitments were self-selected/-imposed and start complaining about them, forgetting the agency I have around their deadlines and scope. I start skipping workouts, drinking more coffee, and eating more chocolate. I become annoying to myself, and almost certainly to others as well.

Sound familiar? Here are some steps to walk it back.

1. Brain-dump your work commitments. Using pen and paper, make a top-of-mind list of your work commitments (teaching assignments, research projects, travel, service responsibilities, and so forth) for the next three to four months. Just brain-dump it all onto the page. Make it visual.

2. Assign your collective work commitments an “enough” category. Look at your list of activities and categorize the list in its entirety as “more than enough”, “enough”, or “not enough”. How do you make this assessment? Easy: check your gut reaction to the list. If you look at it and feel dizzy, select “more than enough”. If you look at it and think it looks manageable, select “enough”. And if you look at the list and fear that you are going to run out of things to do before the February 29 leap year bonus day (as if 2024 needs an extra day….), double-check your list to make sure that you included everything you are committed to. (While I included the “not enough” category to be exhaustive, I don’t anticipate (m)any academics actually falling into this space.)

3. Edit your commitments to get to “enough minus one”. Coco Chanel allegedly recommended that women look in the mirror and remove at least one accessory before leaving the house. To the extent that you have the agency to do so, take this approach to your work commitments. This allows you some margin for when life occurs and unplanned events blindside you. If you have “enough” work commitments, select one to remove to create some space in your calendar. If you have “more than enough” work commitments, select multiples to eliminate to get yourself down to “enough minus one”

Editing your work commitments can take many forms. You can cancel things (as I recently did to two trips). You can postpone a project (as I recently did for some data collection). You can put boundaries on the extent of your involvement (as I recently did for one paper). Chances are good that as you look at your list, you will see things that could be reduced, delayed, or cut entirely. Select those low-hanging fruit. 

4. Resist the urge to keep adding. Once you have edited your work commitments down to “enough minus one”, you may feel a temptation to add more things in. “Now that you postponed that book chapter,” a voice in your head may say, “you have time to prepare a new grant application.” Doing this, while tempting, misses the point of the exercise entirely. So: don’t add anything. Even though you want to.

Enough minus one is enough. And the couch is calling.

Until next time…

Are you teaching this semester? If so, my most recent Skills Agenda column “How lectures can help build students’ listening skills” might interest you. I fear listening is becoming a dying art in contemporary society (Gen X professor shakes her fist at the clouds…) and would love to hear your own thoughts on how we can help students develop their listening skills. Please take a look at the column and let me know your opinions.

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. Earlier I mentioned my new book, For the Public Good Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities, which will be released on March 21, 2024. If you are involved in any way (supervisor, administrator, staff, student…) with social science or humanities graduate education, please preorder now and consider inviting me and/or one of my coauthors to speak at your campus about the future Arts graduate education. Just reply to this email and I will get back to you. 😊

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