How to assess your current work load

Plus another new worksheet! You know how I love worksheets!

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

How heavy is the load you are currently carrying? As I wrote in my last newsletter, “I find it useful to consider the idea of ‘loads’ – the cumulative effect of the various things weighing on your mind, occupying your calendar, and consuming your attention.” In that newsletter, I introduced the idea of your ‘life load’: your nonwork responsibilities, supports, context, and the associated mental load of these. 

Today, I build off this idea to consider the work sphere. But in doing so, I go beyond the narrow concept of ‘workload’ – a single word that aims to sum up the total amount of work we are responsible for completing. My reason for doing so is that people don’t experience the same work responsibilities in the same way. The person whose work includes high levels of emotional labour, for example, carries a heavier load than their colleagues, even if their work responsibilities are the same. Similarly, holding work responsibilities constant, the person whose work feels full of meaning and fulfilment carries a lighter load than the person whose work feels pointless, and the person who enjoys their colleagues’ company carries a lighter load than the person who only comes to the office at certain times so to avoid “that guy”.

The load you carry at work is more than your responsibilities. Some of your work-related mental load is unseen and unacknowledged, and certainly not captured on your CV. So today I am introducing the idea of ‘work load’. This two word phrase intends to capture both your work responsibilities and your work realities — this is, your supports, context, systems, and the associated mental load of these. Simply put, whatever is going on for you at work is part of your work load. 

If this resonates with you, spend some time on today’s small thing to try immediately. 

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Assess your work load

Thinking about work load makes the full weight of work visible to yourself, and can provide impetus to make some or all of this load visible to others. It can serve as a way to stop and think about how academia is prone to burnout culture, how you are engaging in this culture, and where you have agency to make changes to lighten your load.

Try the following:

(1) Understand that work load goes beyond work responsibilities. For many in traditional academic faculty positions, our official work responsibilities are grouped under the labels ‘research’, ‘teaching’, and ‘service’. These responsibilities consume our calendars and our attention, and are captured in annual CV updates, performance/merit reviews, and standards for tenure and promotion or other advancement. Many of us don’t have a good sense of our full work responsibilities and there is value in simply sitting down and identifying these. 

Our work load includes these responsibilities and goes beyond them to include context, emotions, systems, and other factors of our work lives. Some people feel in control of academic ‘overhead’ work such as research project management and email communications because they have established effective systems (or better yet, their university has provided them with such systems!). Other people lack such systems and find that such work adds considerably to their mental loads. For many people working in academia  – disproportionately women and racialized and marginalized people – their load includes barriers and challenges, such as systemic discrimination, harassment, bias in student evaluations, and heavy emotional labour demands. When we understand that our work load goes beyond our responsibilities, we can better assess what areas are weighing on us.

(2) Determine your current ‘work load’. In my last newsletter, I provided you with a Life Load Calculator worksheet. Today I continue the worksheet approach with the Work Load Calculator worksheet. As with the previous worksheet, this reflection tool is intended to be entirely adaptable; if your responsibilities don’t include teaching, for example, change that section to include something more appropriate to you. I strongly encourage you to spend time on the reflection questions, as this is where you can identify how you might lighten your work load.

(3) Decide if, where, and how you want to make changes. If your current work load is meeting your personal needs, great! But if there are areas where you want to lighten your load, explore what might be possible for you. You might be able to adopt new systems, delegate work to a research assistant, use AI to make your work easier (and yes, I know this is a complicated subject for a future newsletter!), or just stop doing something entirely. Identify your easiest first step and take action.

You might be in a situation that requires a discussion with a trusted colleague, your department chair, HR, or your union; if so, consider how you might do so most effectively in a way that feels safe to you. And if you are feeling like your work load is a lot, take some time to plan how to get to a more sustainable place. As I wrote last time, “the line between ‘overloaded’ and ‘overwhelmed’ can be thin and porous.” Look to strengthen your support systems by talking with your doctor or mental health provider and/or working with a properly trained executive coach. 

(4) Recognize that everyone else is dealing with their own work loads. In My Backpack is Heavier than Yours: The Plight of Marginalized Students, Dr. Edwin Garcia Jr. writes, “Many of our students are walking around with the heavyweight brought on by the bricks of adversity in their backpacks. They carry their extra weight around them all day” (2023, 4). Your students, colleagues, team members, and leaders are all carrying different weights and different loads, and some of these loads are very heavy. Show empathy for others. Be conscious of how you might unintentionally be adding to others’ work loads. (Maybe that meeting could have been an email…) Be thoughtful about creating and sustaining positive and inclusive work environments. And consider if there are ways that we can all work collectively in our own workplaces to address burnout culture within academia. We call stand to benefit from systems that promote humane work loads.

Until next time…

Several people have told me that they found the life load idea helpful. Thank you for this feedback — it warms my heart. I hope the work load idea also resonates with you and would love to hear your thoughts. Please connect with me through the comments below. As always, thank you for your readership. It is a privilege to be part of your day.

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. I have been very happy lately, in no small part due to the season. Autumn is my favourite time of year. The air is crisp, the leaves are stunning, and it seems like everywhere I go there are small bowls of mini-chocolate bars free for the taking. Living in Saskatchewan, I know this amazing season could be snapped away from me at a moment’s notice, so I am doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts. In the words of the Dave Matthews Band, “life is short but sweet for certain.” I encourage you to also lean into the sweetness.

Do you find Academia Made Easier useful? Please let me know by supporting my chocolate habit through my Buy me a coffee page. This site allows readers to show their appreciation for the unpaid labour of writers like me. 🍫🧁🙏

If you like the look of classically styled women’s clothing and the feel and functionality of athleisure, I strongly recommend SophieGrace, a Canadian company. Be sure to use my discount code AcademiaMadeEasier to get 20% off. 

I have another Substack! My For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities coauthors and I launched “Reimagining Graduate Education” to advance discussion about improving graduate education. Please sign up, and consider asking your university library to get a copy of For the Public Good. Reviewer feedback of note:  

• “It is the kind of quietly good book we need to see more of. … This book provides a very solid description of the process of defining and developing excellent, sustainable arts programs that serve students rather than academics. And not only is it dead-on in terms of its recommendations about how to design and evaluate programs, it has a lot of helpful matrices and worksheets to help those who are put in positions requiring them to do exactly that … More like this, please." - Alex Usher

• “Nearly half the book is dedicated to charting a transformative course for liberal arts departments.... If For the Public Good can provide the impetus for social sciences and humanities departments to refine their graduate studies programs, the career outcomes for tens of thousands of grad students will be the better for it. That alone would move the needle on Canada’s public good problem." - Literary Review of Canada