My last couple of posts have been about administrative responsibilities at N1 and how they leave me with mixed feelings. Although I may occasionally complain about how these responsibilities take away from my "real" jobs of teaching/research, the truth is that these activities give me a strong sense of belonging and contributing to N1. They make me feel that N1 is my own institute.
In other words, serving the institute is also a "real" job and an integral part of my professional life.
So, recently I did a careful and candid rethink about why I have been getting so stressed out about activities which I consider fun and important. I came up with the following reasons:
1) Lack of clear demarcation between admin work time and research time. In theory, I spend the mornings doing research work/teaching and take up administrative work after lunch. But, my habit of frequently checking emails as soon as I step into office distracts my focus because I feel the urge to reply to emails which can wait till afternoon. Some self discipline and prioritization is therefore required. I notice that on the days when my mornings are spent productively, I am also able to focus well during committee meetings and even enjoy them.
2) Although our administration is very supportive, certain matters do take time to be resolved, especially those related to the student complaints I routinely receive.
When a student brings up a problem and I am not able to resolve it immediately, I myself feel helpless and impatient. Perhaps, this is is the reason why I get more annoyed when students accost me repeatedly about that issue. This attitude is self-defeating. I believe that the right thing to do is to pro-actively forward the complaints to those who have the authority to address them and also to keep reminding them till they look into it, but to be inwardly detached, as it were!
3) There's too much on my plate. I certainly don't want to shy away from serving the institute in any way possible. But, while it's great to be enthusiastic about institute matters, it is equally important to understand one's abilities and limitations and take up only as much work as one can perform properly (of course, this capacity increases with time). It is also important to focus on one duty at a time.
The other day, I was in an important meeting, but had to keep coming out of the room to take phone calls about another administrative matter. Because of this, I missed some key points that were discussed in the meeting about which I had a lot to say.
I welcome feedback from readers about how they balance their time between research, teaching and admin work. If you faced issues similar to those above or other issues which might have affected your efficiency, especially at the early career stage, please share your stories and tell us how you resolved them.
Meanwhile, I would like to conclude this post by a very thoughtful comment that Vijay left on my previous post and which has lots of useful advice about one's involvement with administration:
I emphasize with your time management jugglery. It can be tough. There are many good ways to manage in a way that we still end up having time for science. Some shun all administration and isolate themselves. They need to be protected, not envied or deprecated by others who put in their effort in science administration (which is important if the place is to be ours). How do we, in the latter category deal with our day? My personal take ( and as I said, there are many ways to skin this fish) is that much of the stress we face at meetings is because we feel its something that detracts from our main interests... Being stressed about being in meetings makes us less efficient at meetings, resulting in more meetings and more stress. Going prepared with clear goals and getting out of a meeting and then switching off is much better: Easier said than done, and I wish I followed my advice. As with meetings, so with students and colleagues. If you are visible and accessible, assume you are fair game for being accosted for a discussion. When in such a discussion, its better to be involved than feel that your time is being taken. Much of our bonding and the culture of an institution come from such interactions. When you want to be left alone, hide. Others should sense when you have to be left alone, of course, but in general I prefer to be accessible in error rather than people keeping away in excessive caution.
In other words, serving the institute is also a "real" job and an integral part of my professional life.
So, recently I did a careful and candid rethink about why I have been getting so stressed out about activities which I consider fun and important. I came up with the following reasons:
1) Lack of clear demarcation between admin work time and research time. In theory, I spend the mornings doing research work/teaching and take up administrative work after lunch. But, my habit of frequently checking emails as soon as I step into office distracts my focus because I feel the urge to reply to emails which can wait till afternoon. Some self discipline and prioritization is therefore required. I notice that on the days when my mornings are spent productively, I am also able to focus well during committee meetings and even enjoy them.
2) Although our administration is very supportive, certain matters do take time to be resolved, especially those related to the student complaints I routinely receive.
When a student brings up a problem and I am not able to resolve it immediately, I myself feel helpless and impatient. Perhaps, this is is the reason why I get more annoyed when students accost me repeatedly about that issue. This attitude is self-defeating. I believe that the right thing to do is to pro-actively forward the complaints to those who have the authority to address them and also to keep reminding them till they look into it, but to be inwardly detached, as it were!
3) There's too much on my plate. I certainly don't want to shy away from serving the institute in any way possible. But, while it's great to be enthusiastic about institute matters, it is equally important to understand one's abilities and limitations and take up only as much work as one can perform properly (of course, this capacity increases with time). It is also important to focus on one duty at a time.
The other day, I was in an important meeting, but had to keep coming out of the room to take phone calls about another administrative matter. Because of this, I missed some key points that were discussed in the meeting about which I had a lot to say.
I welcome feedback from readers about how they balance their time between research, teaching and admin work. If you faced issues similar to those above or other issues which might have affected your efficiency, especially at the early career stage, please share your stories and tell us how you resolved them.
Meanwhile, I would like to conclude this post by a very thoughtful comment that Vijay left on my previous post and which has lots of useful advice about one's involvement with administration:
I emphasize with your time management jugglery. It can be tough. There are many good ways to manage in a way that we still end up having time for science. Some shun all administration and isolate themselves. They need to be protected, not envied or deprecated by others who put in their effort in science administration (which is important if the place is to be ours). How do we, in the latter category deal with our day? My personal take ( and as I said, there are many ways to skin this fish) is that much of the stress we face at meetings is because we feel its something that detracts from our main interests... Being stressed about being in meetings makes us less efficient at meetings, resulting in more meetings and more stress. Going prepared with clear goals and getting out of a meeting and then switching off is much better: Easier said than done, and I wish I followed my advice. As with meetings, so with students and colleagues. If you are visible and accessible, assume you are fair game for being accosted for a discussion. When in such a discussion, its better to be involved than feel that your time is being taken. Much of our bonding and the culture of an institution come from such interactions. When you want to be left alone, hide. Others should sense when you have to be left alone, of course, but in general I prefer to be accessible in error rather than people keeping away in excessive caution.
6 comments:
I hear you and I dread this part of becoming tenure-track (though not as much as I dread not becoming tenure track ;) )
Comrade Physio Prof posted some advice today on how to balance your own job requirements and the institute demands.
In classic CPP style, he isn't very polite, but is is spot on. Good luck and keep your chin up.
The other day, I was in an important meeting, but had to keep coming out of the room to take phone calls about another administrative matter. Because of this, I missed some key points that were discussed in the meeting about which I had a lot to say.
As I think you recognize, this is disastrous behavior. Above and beyond managing your time effectively, you absolutely do need to focus your full attention on whatever it is that you are engaging at any given moment in time. If something isn't worth devoting 100% attention to, then it isn't worth devoting *any* attention to and shouldn't be allocated time.
Hi New Prof,
Thanks for your post. It touches at the key issue of what our jobs are about. Research is a full-time job. Teaching is another full-time job. Administration need never be more than 20%-time job. Counseling students ditto. So, with time-management and prioritization the question is, how many jobs do we want to do: .2, .4, 1, 1.2, 1.4, 2, 2.2, 2.4 etc. The choice we make is substantially ours and also depends on the context.
Lets say you decide that you are passionate about research, committed to excellence in teaching and, at the same time, would like to help with committee work and student counseling. In other words you want to be a 2.4 job person. If each job takes 6 hours of work a day, we are talking about a 14 hour day and an amazing ability to partition one’s hard-drive. Not easy for the best of us. There are at least two ‘trivial’ solutions to the 14 h day problem. The first is to do all jobs badly in a 6 h day. The second is to drop research. The first trivial solution inevitably leads to the second as neglecting research is a downward spiral that makes your research eventually irrelevant. Its amazing though, that something that should take about 2.4 hours a day can lead to a crisis in one’s research and teaching. Why is this? In my view, still taking shape, the .4 job day that is taken up by counseling and committee work, particularly when done well, is an opiate that makes us feel useful. The rest of the 2 job day will be very well used even if we only used a third of that time thinking hard and working a bit (i.e. 4 hours a day). Thinking hard, consistently, is demanding on most of us ordinary folk. Rather than find ways to remedy this handicap, we do more of the opiate. Hence the downward spiral. Thus, most people don’t say no to committee work. We justify our involvement with a variety of real and virtual arguments, but we inevitably get drawn into it more than we need to, We next say that this is the cause of the demise of our research or teaching. While, it may be the other way around.
The new institutes, such as yours, have an opportunity to shake us oldies from this complacent luxury of buffaloes wallowing in our ponds and declaring that ours is the best way and but for admin work and bureaucracy we would in a better pond. The reason I say this is that there is a nontrivial, though unstable, solution to the 14 hour efficient work day. That is by keeping an institutional and individual focus on research and teaching as our primary goals with all other activities helping these. If we can manage this focus, the .4 job investment will make the 2 job goal attainable in less time. If we forget this mantra the .4 job becomes all encompassing.
Off to try and think a bit, now, after this shot of opiate :-))
Prof. Giridhar of IISc has written about this,
http://giridharmadras.blogspot.com/2011/01/year-end-roundup.html
Also, Prof. Balaram's article on being busy,
http://giridharmadras.blogspot.com/2010/12/being-busy.html
Your blog was brought to my notice only recently. I have read all of them. What I liked most are (a) your writing style, explaining events as happened without drawing any conclusions so that readers can interpret in their own way and provide various solutions/feedback, (b) your positive attitude towards various administrative activities/responsibilities, committees, meetings etc and (c) the interesting way of maintaining the anonymity. Anyone new Prof in any new-ones (N1s) can put their own name and experience the context and, hopefully, will feel that we are all on the same planet. I am sure, it would be comforting to all anxious new faculty all over India (most of them would have returned from 5-15 years of academic experience in west) that their experience is not woefully different.
One thing is sure, you are lucky that you are at least being consulted on various policy matters (be curriculum or administrative) through these committee meetings. Most places, the decisions are taken and pushed down by one or two senior and/or senior-most people. Involving young faculty has several advantages (even at the cost of some inconvenience to new people due
to lack of experience in time-management). One, decisions are broad-based, cover all aspects of their implementation and impact. Second, they would be better trained to become tomorrow's leaders. Third, any decision taken
collectively in a democratic way will have consent of all faculty and
everyone would be equally enthusiastic to implement the same. And many more.
The only problem in N1s may be absence of sufficient number of people with experience of working in India and knowledgeable about our administrative culture. Often, many things look too strange, irrational and illogical (and amusing too). It would help if there are few people around, who could explain the concepts and social/legal contexts of a process/procedure. Then we know which ones are necessary and which (could be most) are obsolete.
Look forward reading more blogs from you.
Hi Anon,
Glad to hear that my experiences would resonate with a lot of new profs.
I also agree with you that we are indeed very lucky to be consulted on important policy matters. Not everything we suggest is accepted by the top administration, but we are encouraged to speak up.
Regarding your wish for some experienced people who could explain procedural matters to us, well, a few days ago, some colleagues floated some ideas about assigning faculty mentors to new students to ease their adjustment into N1. The reaction of many of us was, "Yes, it is a great idea! I wish we could also have such a programme for new faculty members!!!"
I am really glad that some senior scientists like Professors Abi, Vijay, Dsanghi and Giridharmadras share a lot of useful information with us on their blogs or via comments on this and other blogs.
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