You know how I made a remark last week about the fact that, now that I’m no longer in academia, I carve out boundaries with my time? And how commenter Steve had said:
When we’re in academia, we’re sorta like 7-Eleven. We’re not always doing business, but we’re always open.
(And he then offered a cookie to the first person who could name the movie reference. He’s still waiting, people! Free cookie to be had!)
The near-unwavering practice I have of restricting the number of hours I work each week is probably a rebound reaction from my days in grad school. Back then, I felt like I was always on the clock, always under pressure to be producing, no matter the time of day or year.
Well, it turns out that I was actually producing quite a lot, as evidenced by a weird discovery I made a few weeks ago. While dissertating, I used a free, web-based time-tracking tool over at myHours.com. I found it was a really helpful way of having an accurate sense of how much work I was getting done. It helped me to stay on top of my work, but more importantly, it helped combat the feeling that I wasn’t doing enough or getting enough done. You know how it is: when you’ve got all that open, unstructured time, if you take five minutes to make a sandwich, you think, “I’m wasting time!”
Well, I was poking around my myHours.com account, thinking about using it again, and I made a shocking discovery: when I was in grad school, I worked like a dog. This is what the 10 days before I got married looked like, when I was madly finishing the final draft of my dissertation:
Date Activity Task Start End Total
12/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 10:00 16:00 6:00
13/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 10:00 16:00 6:00
14/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 09:30 16:23 6:53
15/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 08:40 16:00 7:20
16/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 10:30 19:30 9:00
17/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 05:54 09:26 3:32
18/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 07:44 11:50 4:06
19/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 08:00 17:00 9:00
20/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 10:00 16:00 6:00
21/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 06:30 16:30 10:00
22/12/2005 Dissertation Writing/editing 05:35 08:11 2:36
Now, for those of you who haven’t left academia, you might not be particularly surprised by this. Working for 6- 7 hours a day on your dissertation, with a few 9 or 10 hour days, sprinkled with a few 2 or 3 hour days, might actually be pretty representative of grad student hours. But for me, I saw this and thought:
a) why did I have the constant feeling that I was frittering away my time when I wasn’t?
b) what the hell was I doing working on the weekends?
Moreover, this was clearly one of those periods in my life where I actually made my lunch the night before so that I could sit and eat it at my desk (yes, in my home office), uninterrupted. I know this because when I kept tabs on my writing time like this, I was writing. I wasn’t futzing, I wasn’t emailing, I wasn’t noodling around on Facebook (well, there was no Facebook back then). So those were solid hours of cranking out the diss. And because there was nothing I hated more than being on a hot writing streak and having to cave and give in to the demands of my stomach by taking the time to prepare lunch, I’d prepare it the night before.
The constant feeling that I should be working was something that I disliked most about grad school. Fast-forward to 2009: I really treasure having my time contained and clearly labelled with the words, “Work,” “Family” and “Personal.” When I made the decision to go into business for myself, I also made the decision that I would only do it if those boundaries around my time remained.
The beauty of this decision means that, when I’m hanging out with friends, my husband, my kid or myself, I do it with a clear conscience. I know the work will still be there when the time for work comes. And when Monday morning at 8:00 a.m. rolls around, I am excited and ready to start the week.
How about you? What would your dream hours be? What kind of lifestyle do you see yourself having at your postacademic dream job?
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Last weekend was Easter weekend. For many people, it was a 3-day long weekend, and for some lucky folks, it was a 4-day weekend. If you’re an academic, though, chances are you didn’t have much of a weekend at all. Sure, you might have gone back to your parents’ place for dinner or an over-nighter. You might have put your feet up and finally had a chance to watch that Slumdog Millionaire DVD you picked up. But you might have just used your weekend in the way that academics often do: to work or to worry.
