Engagement in resilience in research
168 hours in a week – how do I spend mine?
“There literally aren’t enough hours in a day” can be a popular refrain from researchers at all stages of their career.
The many demands of research, writing, grant proposals, helping other colleagues, teaching, collaboration, administration, going to conferences, presenting work, supervision and meetings not to mention email and social media can all make our days packed and that’s before we attempt to do things beyond work. We can often feel we are working 60-80 plus hours a week just to stand still.
Can you to track your time for a week to help you see where your time actually goes and how many hours you are spending on different activities? It will confirm the amount of time you are working and will also illustrate how much additional time you spend doing things for yourself, sleeping and spending time with those around you who matter to you.
Overcoming procrastination
Procrastinating important and sometimes urgent tasks can erode our resilience by creating the opportunity for something to always be nagging away at the back of our mind as undone or unfinished. Those of us with the tendency to procrastinate are also aware of the relief, joy and delight of getting something finished. We need to work out how to harness the good feelings of completion compared to the nagging irritations of the voice in our heads that shouts
“YOU SHOULD BE DOING SOMETHING ELSE!”
Is there a particular work-related task that you find difficult? It is very rare that we procrastinate EVERYTHING and sometimes we find that we procrastinate one form of work, replacing it with another form of less important/less urgent work instead. Getting to the bottom of what we are procrastinating about, and why, can help us pick it apart and find and build habits to tackle it.
Often we are not consciously procrastinating anything at all. Sometimes we are distracted by the needs of others; by a seemingly simple task taking longer than anticipated; by a quick email; or an internet search.
Read this Zen Habits blog which regularly covers this topic through tips, examples and sharing of experience.
Taking an hour a day away from tech – how would this benefit me?
This topic goes hand in hand with managing distractions and the effect they have on our resilience. Technology has brought us so much. The constant connectedness puts us in a position of being ‘always on’ because there is always something in our inbox, message feed or timeline to look at – always something that needs responding to. For those of us who feel that we have to respond to every obligation (and do it quickly!) it can mean a feeling of being overwhelmed with no headspace to get on with things that we need to process, think about or connect with.
- What do you use your tech for?
- Is it your constant companion?
- Would you break away from a face to face conversation to look at a message on your phone or to check social media mid-conversation?
- Do you look at your phone whilst walking along the street or crossing the road?
It might be useful to examine the role that being constantly connected plays in your life and how you might create some useful resilience-building space from it.
Find out more from the Whole Life Challenge about taking a week with no tech for 1 hour per day.
Getting more, better quality sleep
Sleep and its link to our performance are very topical. Arianna Huffington talked about it extensively in her book Thrive and has recently published a book called The Sleep Manifesto. There have been a number of Smartphone apps and devices developed in the last few years that help us to track how much sleep we get and the quality of sleep we experience.
This is one of those topics where the link between sleep and performance feels obvious yet we may find it difficult to do anything about. It can feel easier to forgo sleep to get our work done or to have any sort of free time to watch TV, read or spend time with family and friends in person or online. Prioritising sleep might feel like a difficult thing to do when we have so many other things competing for our attention. However with repeated practice, prioritising good quality sleep, might give us the energy and focus needed to be more effective every day.
Read these articles about the benefits of sleep on our wellbeing.
Planning and taking days off, holidays and vacations
Taking breaks helps in the process of getting things done and helps us to feel more resilient. This feels counterintuitive – if only we can spend more time at our work we can get more done!
Actually, no. Whether these breaks are short, for example an hour away from work to exercise; or of longer duration, say for a holiday – they make a difference. Taking regular breaks gives us the opportunity to take time away from work and pursue other interests beyond work. We will be more likely to return to work with a renewed focus.
At the beginning of the calendar year/academic year it is useful to think about breaks and time off, for that twelve month period. So many people in an academic environment take next to no time off between September and Christmas and between New Year and Easter – is there a way you could pace your holiday days throughout the whole year?
Oliver Burkeman’s column gives a slightly different perspective on taking a break.
How do boundaries help or hinder me?
In academia, opportunities to pursue work that interests you can overlap strongly with the requirements of your day-to-day work. Does the blurring of boundaries help or hinder your resilience?
- Having boundaries set by others can create a helpful obligation for delivery of work
- Having flexible boundaries can sometimes lead to too much procrastination
- Creating accountability between the work you want to do, the work you have to do and the work you are able to do can help define what you do every day
- Being able to work on something that deeply interests you can really help your resilience.
Building your resilience may require more structure imposed by others to help you get things done or you may need more flexibility to help you explore your subject further or take new opportunities that may develop things for the future.
Michael Bungay Stanier covers the topic of setting boundaries in his book Do More Great Work.