How to claim time to think

Plus more dated pop culture references and an awkward but hopefully unforgettable acronym

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

Like any good Gen Xer, I have seen the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off sixty gazillion times. I have watched it with my kids, referenced it in published work, and recreated the “Anyone? Anyone?” scene in my classes for decades, long past students having any understanding of the joke.

At the start of the movie, Ferris utters one of the movie’s most popular lines: “Life moves pretty fast. You don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Oh, 1986 writers. You had no idea how much faster things would get.

I am not sure when exactly busyness culture set it. All I know is that in the 1980s we Gen Xers leisurely enjoyed highly processed after-school snacks in empty houses, and in the 2020s Zoomers and Gen Alphas gobble organic after-school snacks en route to soccer while their chauffeur-parent participates in their seventh Zoom meeting of the day over a cellphone. Somewhere between those two points, things went a bit bonkers.

Everyone is busy. EVERYONE is busy. Eight-year-olds are busy. Retirees are busy. The kid working at the fast-food drive-thru is busy. Busyness is not a mark of importance anymore, if it ever was. It is simply part of contemporary human existence. And while we try to produce more and achieve more and do more, we have less time from other valuable activities that we used to have time for. 

Like thinking.

In my experience, busyness becomes a spiral of motion. I often reflect on a lyric from Neko Case’s “Nothing to Remember”: “I'm just action. And at other times reaction.” In this constant state of action-reaction-rest-repeat, time for thinking is crowded out. 

I believe this is a problem for academic work. Academic work requires creativity and strategic insight. We need to plan our research and reflect on our findings. Select and refine our teaching approaches. Identify ways to make student services more effective and efficient. Strategize on how to communicate knowledge to new audiences to increase research impact. 

All of these activities require time to think. 

No one will create time in your schedule for you to think. No one is going to look at your schedule and say “oh my goodness, you ARE overbooked, let me help take some things off your plate.” The scheduling fairy godmother does not exist. The time management cavalry is not coming. Help is not on its way.

The only way to get time to think is to be bold and claim it. Regularly.

And claiming that thinking time is what today’s small thing to try immediately is about.

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Claim a Weekly Thinking Time

It is time (Ha! See what I did there? Sorry.) to claim your time to think. Here is how.

1. Prioritize thinking time. If you don’t value taking time to think over the myriad other things competing for and consuming your time, thinking time will never happen. So get clear with yourself about why you want uninterrupted thinking time in your life. Do you believe that you could have more innovative ideas if you had that time to think? That you could find creative new solutions to problems you are encountering in your research? That you could find efficiencies in your grading processes, or identify unique ways to support your project team or your students, or figure out your career priorities, or assess how much time you have available to take on new things before mindlessly saying yes and adding to the busyness spiral? Identifying why you value thinking time in your life is critical fuel to fire you up to take the next two steps.

So take a minute and write down your reasons. You can do it right now. I will wait.

2. Add thinking time to your calendar. Literally build it into your schedule, complete with a calendar alert if you use an electronic calendar. Some tips:

• If you can, plan for two hours each week. For some, this will seem impossible. That’s fine. Start with what you can right now and add more time each week.

• If you can, schedule your thinking time for the start of the week, when your energy is highest, and during the hours of the day in which you are typically most creative and productive. (For me, this is in the morning, after my kids have left for school.) Use your ‘prime time’ for thinking.

Again, you can take this step right now.

3. Protect your thinking time. Your thinking time is the most vulnerable time in your schedule - more vulnerable than writing time, even. You need to protect it from three known threats:

Other people. As soon as you add thinking time to your calendar, you will get requests for that time. I pretty much guarantee it.

So plan ahead. Forewarn people. (E.g., “Hi team - Just a head’s up that I have a standing commitment on Mondays from 9-11 am, so I will be declining all invitations during that time.”) If you have a calendar that others can view, list your thinking time under a code name that others will be reluctant to ask about. (Let others wonder why you are having a weekly “colonoscopy”. It will give you an air of mystery!) Decline all invitations that you have the agency to decline except the truly-urgent and the truly-necessary.

Yourself. I have written before about resistance thoughts (“the call from inside the house”) that prevent us from doing things (like writing or, in this case, thinking) that we actually want to do. Brains can be assholes at times.

So plan ahead. Anticipate resistance thoughts (“I don’t have time for thinking right now”) and plan your counter-resistance thoughts (“I am going to complete my scheduled thinking time anyways”). And then show up for your thinking time when it arrives in your schedule. This is when you will encounter the third known threat…

Interruptions and distractions. This is a combination of other people and yourself, plus pets, snacks, laundry, and social media. When your thinking time arrives, there will be incoming emails, Slack messages, texts, and social media notifications. Your stomach will growl to be fed, your dog will demand to be played with, your eyes will land on the unfolded laundry, and some asshat will tweet something that really requires a response right now. Also, your resistance thoughts will come in fast and furious. (“I should be grading! I should be writing! I should be preparing classes! I should be responding to email! I should be doing anything other than this!”)

It will be a full-on interruption-distraction assault, and there is only one appropriate response: HIDE. Close your computer, silence your devices, and work with pen and paper. Distract your dog with a new rawhide bone. Move to another room away from the unfolded laundry. Block the Twitter asshat. If you need to, go to the public library or a coffee shop and do your thinking time there.

But do have the snack. You need to keep your energy up.

Claiming time in your work schedule to think will change your life. If you don’t believe me, take this challenge: try it for a month and then assess for yourself. If it doesn’t work for you, you can always go back to acting and reacting, just like everyone else.

Do you claim time in your schedule to think? Please take a minute to comment and let me know!

Chipping Away: What I Have Been Up To

A quick update on some of my own activities since my last newsletter, since I have your attention:

• Writing: In my January University Affairs Skills Agenda column, I argue “instructors are overloaded…if universities want instructors to embrace new teaching ideas and approaches, universities need to take the lead to find ways to make this as easy as possible.” I then discuss an initiative at York University that does just that. If you like teaching and learning ideas, please check it out - and then share it with your university’s teaching and learning centre.

• Reading: I am currently reading Rise: 3 Practical Steps for Advancing Your Career, Standing Out as a Leader, and Liking Your Life by Patty Azzarello. She argues that career success depends on focusing work strategically (“do better”), ensuring that your work results are not hidden (“look better”), and developing a support network (“connect better”). I am only a third of the way through the book but I have already identified a number of ideas that I found valuable. (Affiliate links: Amazon, Chapters-Indigo. Better still, check out your local booksellers or public library.)

• Relaxing: I am a huge fan of board and card games, and for Dry January I have replaced my end-of-day glass of wine with an end-of-day game of Quirkle Cubes. (Affiliate link: Amazon. Better: check out your local games store.) I also continue to be a fairweather runner: if it is above -10C and not icy, I aim to get outside. I hope you are also able to enjoy some fresh air and sunshine!

  

Until next time…

We are already at the end of January. Life moves pretty fast indeed. Like Ferris Bueller, I encourage you to stop and look around once in a while. You deserve joy, rest, and connection in your life. Claim time for that.

If something in today’s newsletter resonated with you, or even just made you smile, please pay it forward and share it with a friend, colleague, or your social media network. I always appreciate your help in expanding the Academia Made Easier audience.

Stay well, my colleagues. 

P.S. Astute readers will notice that the Prioritize-Add-Protect strategy creates the acronym PAP. This is not an accident. A friend once told me that whenever anyone asked why she had declined a meeting request, she would tell them she had a pap smear scheduled. This conversation-ending response continues to amuse me years later and today’s acronym is inspired by her.

Want to help support my chocolate habit? You are very sweet. Buy me a coffee is a site that allows readers to show their appreciation for the unpaid labour of writers, artists, and other creatives. Check it out!

Interested in having me lead faculty success and/or graduate student success workshops at your campus? Please ask your university to contact me!

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Loleen Berdahl, Ph.D.: I am a twin mother, wife, runner, cat lover, and chocolate enthusiast. I spend far too much time on Twitter and binge-watching television, and my house could be a lot cleaner. During the work hours, I am the Executive Director of the  Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy. I am the author of the University Affairs Skills Agenda column and my most recent books are  Work Your Career: Get What You Want from Your Social Sciences or Humanities PhD and Explorations: Conducting Empirical Research in Canadian Political Science. 

Full disclosure: some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links, which means that if you use the link and then make a purchase, I may make a small commission that I will use to support my chocolate and book-buying habits. The cost is to the corporation and not to you, but you don’t want to use the link, no problem: just search up the item again without using the link provided. Better still: support a local business and source the item(s) that way!