How to determine the amount of load you want to carry

Plus another shoutout to Up in the Air. I need to see more movies, clearly.

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

Two backpack stories, followed by a point.

Backpack story number 1. Months ago, I met a friend at her house to go for a walk. As we were about to leave, she said, “Just a minute.” She then proceeded to grab her backpack and put a 25 lb weight plate into it. She shrugged the backpack over her shoulders and said, “Okay, ready!”

What. The. Fuck?

It turns out she was “rucking”, which is using a weighted rucksack to increase the challenge of walking. Evidently, it is a good way to increase cardiovascular fitness. While it didn’t look terribly fun to me, she seemed pleased with the approach, and to each their own.

Backpack story number 2. In the movie Up in the Air, which I mentioned in my last newsletter, the protagonist Ryan Bingham has a side hustle as a motivational speaker. His talk, titled “What’s in Your Backpack?”, uses a backpack and its contents as an analogy for the responsibilities people are carrying around. Ryan asks his audience, “How much does your life weigh?” He tells them, “This is what we do to ourselves on a daily basis. We weigh ourselves down until we can’t even move.” Ryan’s solution? Get rid of all of the stuff, commitments, and relationships in your life. “You don’t need to carry all that weight,” he tells them. “Why don’t you set that bag down?”

That sounds even less joyful than the rucking option to me, but again: to each their own.

My point, since I promised one: we all differ in the loads we want to carry. Some people are seeking to add load and increase challenge. Some people are seeking the opposite. How much we want to carry reflects our current abilities and capacities, our current goals and aspirations, and/or our current values and priorities.

Moreover, the amount of load we want to carry changes over time. My friend did not always put weight plates in her backpack, and by the end of the movie, Ryan is seeking out relationships and commitments. Our abilities, capacities, goals, aspirations, values and priorities evolve, and this can affect our desired loads.

This means that it is useful to check in occasionally to see if the loads we are carrying still meet our needs, and then make adjustments as necessary. That’s the topic of today's small thing to try immediately. So let’s do this!

Image source: Pixabay

One Small Thing to Try Immediately: Decide the load level that best fits you right now

If you were reading Academia Made Easier last October, you are already familiar with the idea of loads. As I wrote back then: “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.” I shared a definition of ‘life load’, which “includes your nonwork responsibilities, supports, and context” and the associated mental load of your life activities, and a definition of ‘work load’ (the space between the two words is intentional), which includes “both your work responsibilities and your work realities — this is, your supports, context, systems, and the associated mental load of these.” Your life load plus your work load combine to create your total load.

The trick with load is to find the right amount. To use a strength training analogy, without sufficient load there is no growth and development, with too much load there can be injury, and with the right amount of load there is muscle growth. (Digression: if you are an aging human, which includes everyone, go lift some heavy-to-you shit. Your future self will thank you.)

So how do you determine if you have not enough challenge, the right amount of challenge, or a damaging amount of challenge right now? Here are some tools to help.

1. Take inventory of your current life and work loads. People who know me know that I love worksheets, and last October that was on full display! I created a Life Load Calculator worksheet and a Work Load Calculator worksheet. Use these tools to assess your life and work loads individually, and then consider your total load. Does it feel too heavy? Too light? About right?

2. Check in with your emotions. A friend recently said to me, “I am both very busy and very bored.” Boredom is a great emotion to notice. Activities that bore us, that we find little meaning in or satisfaction from, can be a heavy weight to carry. Other emotions to watch for: overwhelm, loneliness, disconnection, resentment, and burnout.

Note that emotions are separate from the realities of your schedule. Five hours spent on activities you consider meaningless or working in a context where you feel isolated, unappreciated and/or exploited can be a heavier load than twenty hours spent on activities you consider meaningful and that you complete in a context where you feel connected, appreciated, and fairly compensated. “Busy” can be a good thing! If you are very busy and also very satisfied with that load, consider yourself to be like my friend who adds weight plates to her walks. She really did seem to enjoy it!

3. When needed, find your areas of agency to adjust your load. The worksheets include reflection questions to help you identify where you have agency to adjust your life and work loads. For some people, there is a desire to decrease load, either by winding up commitments, lowering expectations, or getting others to help carry the weight. For others, there is space and opportunity to increase load by adding more challenge. Others still may wish to decrease load in one realm and increase load in another. Consider if you can give yourself permission to say that you don’t want to do another term as undergraduate chair and instead choose to pursue your dream of completing a triathlon or learning another language. (On this front, see “How to harness your ambition to improve your work-life balance”).

4. Continue reassessing and adjusting your load as your reality changes. Let’s return to Up in the Air one last time. In his motivational talk, Ryan says, “Feel the weight of that bag…. Do you feel the straps cutting into your shoulders?” Good question. Have the straps started cutting into your shoulders? Have the straps stopped cutting into your shoulders? Does the backpack feel limp and useless on your body?

As your responsibilities change, check in and reconsider your total load. A just-right load can become an unbearable load (e.g., you move into an administrative role and your research program becomes difficult to maintain). An unbearable load can become a just-right load (e.g., your kid quits hockey and you no longer need to devote every spare moment to driving to and sitting around ice rinks). A just-right load can become a too-light load (e.g., the research area that once lit you up now bores you).

Keep adjusting the load so you can move forward comfortably.

Until next time…

It has been a minute since my last newsletter. Much of my time was taken up with non-writing matters, including media and public commentary around Canada’s federal election (for example, check out this webinar on Canada’s national unity). However, I was able to find time to write up my thoughts on the connection between writing and thinking and why it is critical to teaching. Please check it out and share it with your networks. And now that my calendar is opening up a bit, I am very excited to be back in your email inbox. I have missed writing this newsletter, and I have a lot to say in the months ahead. Watch this space!

Stay well, my colleagues.

P.S. Canadian social science and humanities colleagues: if you are attending Congress next week, watch for me and please say hello. (I am the one in the audience rolling her eyes at every comment masquerading as a question, but if you want a more concrete visual of who to look for, see the webinar I mentioned earlier). And for everyone attending conferences in the months ahead, please check out my past conference-relevant newsletters: “How to network at academic conferences”, “How to deal with bully-discussants”, “How to make work travel a bit easier", and “How to maintain your well-being while traveling”.

Do you find Academia Made Easier useful? If yes, please support my chocolate habit through my Buy me a coffee page. 🍫🧁🙏

Have you got your copy of my new book, For the Public Good: Reimagining Arts Graduate Programs in Canadian Universities? If not, please order it now – or better still, ask your university and public libraries to get copies!