Season 7 Kickoff: Fresh Starts and Being Intentional (CAL128 S7E1)

Geri: 00:00:10

Welcome to Changing Academic Life. I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick, and this is a podcast series where academics and others share their stories, provide ideas, and provoke discussions about what we can do individually and collectively to change academic life for the better. Welcome to this new season of changing academic life. It'll be called season seven. For some reason, I haven't been very good at numbering my seasons because it is actually the 10th year that I will have had the privilege of hosting this podcast series and sharing some stories and insights from amazing people who are making all sorts of interesting different choices about how to navigate academia and academic life, as well as discussions about how we can create a better kinder, more collaborative, more collegial, academic culture together, where we really recognize wellbeing as a foundation for being able to do great work. For this new season coming up I've already got a couple of great episodes recorded, and you'll hear about them in due course as they get released. In this first welcome episode of the season, though, I thought it could be useful to briefly touch on the theme of being intentional, starting with intention. And that's because many of us in the Northern hemisphere, autumn is the start of our new academic year. And even for those of us who are what I call un salaried, there's something still about the same rhythm in terms of work. These sorts of beginnings can be really useful points of reflection about how we want to be more intentional and in terms of what we want this new year to be. And reflecting on what's within our control towards making this happen. Katy Milkman and colleagues from the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania talk about this as the fresh start effect where we can make use of these sorts of temporal landmarks to quote from their 2014 management science paper "to demarcate the passage of time, creating many new mental accounting periods each year. Which relegate past imperfections to a previous period and induce people to take a bigger picture view of their lives and thus motivate aspirational behaviors." End of quote. And I'll put a link to this paper on the episode webpage. And a fresh start will be different for each of us, an intentional fresh start Certainly. One of the themes that I think comes across in all of the conversations that I have is that everyone is different. Everyone has different priorities. Are happier with different sorts of trade offs when they make decisions and so on. And I had the opportunity to chat recently with the wonderful Anna Cox, and while I had her on the line about something else, altogether different, I used the opportunity to ask her what's she doing about being intentional for the start of her new academic year. And she very kindly let me recorded it and what you'll hear is what she came up with on the fly. And Anna is a great person to speak to because this isn't just something that's part of her deeply reflective practice for her own work, but it's also her area of research at UCL where they look at the role of digital technology and workplace effectiveness and focusing particularly on issues like productivity and work life balance and wellbeing. Anna has a great definition of work life balance that's worth reading out here, she defines work life balance as quote, "feeling in control of how you balance the various demands of all aspects of one's life to support and enable wellbeing. In this context, wellbeing is about more than just trying to avoid being ill. It also encompasses feelings of happiness, fulfillment, and job satisfaction to achieve complete physical, mental and social wellbeing." You can find this definition along with lots of their other research around work on eworkresearch.org. That's e work research all one word. Again, I'll include a link to this on the episode webpage. So over to Anna and her reflections on how she's starting this new academic year with more intention.

Anna: 00:05:28

We're at the end of the academic year and I've spent this last academic year on sabbatical and it's been it's been interesting in lots of ways, but one of the things that I did was clear the decks to take my sabbatical, and now I'm scared of putting anything back on the decks. It's had an interesting effect on me, I think. I wonder how I did all the things I did before and I'm much more, I keep seeing opportunities before where my initial reaction is still, oh, I could apply for that.

Geri: 00:06:11

Yeah. Like the shiny object syndrome.

Anna: 00:06:14

Yeah. And then now I think, oh, but do I actually want to do that? Then I take time thinking about would I actually want to do that? And I'm certainly not cured. I applied for something just this year, which I didn't get, but I, I went all the way through the recruitment process. And, and on reflection. It was to do something that is not something I particularly enjoy. I don't even know why I applied for it other than it was a shiny thing I could just apply for.

Geri: 00:06:50

That's interesting. So when you are talking about clearing the decks and scared about putting anything back on your plate, does that mean there are some things that are on your plate to start with and you don't want to add things to it? Or have you got a totally empty plate?

Anna: 00:07:06

Well, it's not totally empty, so when I, you know, restart for the new academic year, I know what my teaching will be next year and I have my objectives for the year, which have come from my appraisal process. Mm-hmm. And I put quite a lot of effort into that this year in terms of thinking about what were the things that I really wanted to be on there and making sure it's a really small list. Mm-hmm. Um, I think one of the things that I have been thinking about is that the word priority. Like means one thing is more important than everything else. So you can't really have many priorities. Because then they're not priorities.

Geri: 00:07:59

Ooh, good point.

Anna: 00:08:01

So, so I try to have one thing that is important. So for my, for the coming year. Have three main objectives. And so how do I make those such that each can have its time when it is the priority? I basically split them up over the year. So that means that the first four months of the year I work on where one is the main thing, the next four months is when the other thing. And it doesn't necessarily mean that the first one has to be done at the end of the four months, but just that you turn up the dial on that, I guess. So that becomes the main thing. But with three things to deliver that I think are all fairly big, chunky things, if then something else comes my way. I'm not really sure how I'm going to fit it in. So the other thing that I have already done is this exercise, which is called time available to Promise, where you, you kind of, you make a list of all the things you're already committed to and you work out roughly how much of your time that will take. And you also work out how much of your time will be taken, you know, how much of your time do you want to work and you take one number away from the other and you see what's left. And when there is no time left, which is the situation I'm in, so that means if I take something else on, something else has got to give. And that's either my personal time or it's something on the list of work that's gonna have to come off, or be reduced. And how my. You know, so it makes you think about these things.

Geri: 00:09:54

Oh, lovely. Because every Yes entails a no to something else.

Anna: 00:09:59

Yeah. Yeah. And so I think it's useful thinking about what that might be. What is the thing that you're gonna say no to? And sometimes it's really easy. There's something you've done for a long time and you're like, I don't need to do that anymore. I can say no to that. Or something you're not enjoying. But sometimes it's really hard deciding.

Geri: 00:10:22

Yeah. I often think that it's harder to say no to the things that you want to do, that you'd like to do. Yeah. I mean, it part, some of it's shiny objects, some of it's fear that it won't come again.

Anna: 00:10:35

Yeah.

Geri: 00:10:36

And yeah, that thing of what you said before about pausing to think about stuff is important because if you can recognize that first instinct to wanna go, oh yeah, that's exciting. Without having in the cold light of day thought through, what's your time available?

Anna: 00:10:56

Yeah. And, and I think remembering, I mean, at least for me, remembering that I need to pause and think is hard. Yeah. So I have a recurring item in my calendar to write down what I have done against my objectives. So to track progress. So one place where I just track everything once a month, but that kind of helps me keep in touch with the things I've promised to do.

Geri: 00:11:35

Like your commitment to yourself as the first priority.

Anna: 00:11:39

Yeah. In a way, because otherwise it will, you know, I'll start imagining that, oh, next term, I've got loads of time to do things. Yeah. 'cause I've forgotten the things I've already, or they're just not completely forgotten. But something comes along that you think, oh, I'd like to do that. But. And that in the moment is just more salient than the things you haven't started that you really also wanna do.

Geri: 00:12:10

Well they're great pointers just to set us off thinking with, so thank you very much, Anna.

Anna: 00:12:18

You are welcome.

Geri: 00:12:21

Well, that was great, wasn't it? So much food for thought and such important questions to ask ourselves. I'd like to repeat them here and reframe them as prompts for us all to think with. So what do you want for yourself for this year? And start off thinking about what is important to you to have in your life, in your non-work life. This is your number one priority, and what do you need to do to protect time to make that happen? Can you put it in the calendar? Is it signing up for events or meetings or courses or clubs? What do you need to do to protect that time for you, for your friends, for your family, for rest, for doing nothing. Important time. And then the question Anna asked. How much time do you want to work and being intentional about setting that. Because that puts a limit to the amount of available time you have. And given that time, think about Anna's plate. What do you really want to be on your plate? And I loved her point about everything cannot be a priority, otherwise nothing's a priority. So what is your small list of the really top priorities that you want to focus on for this coming year? And again, how do you make this as a promise to yourself and how do you practically create the quality blocks of time and space to work on those things that are on your priority list. And then what is the time left that you have available to promise? And I'll put a link on the webpage to the article by Loleen Berdahl that unpacks questions much more deeply to help you think about what time you have available to promise. And this article is beautifully titled, how to Quit Promising Time and Energy that You Don't Have Because Time is a finite resource and as Anna said. What are, you know, being clear about what are you going to say no to? Because you can't say yes to everything and every yes you say will necessarily entail a no to something else. There are always trade offs. So how do you prevent trading off against things that are important to you, whether that's the things that are important to you for your own time, health, family wellbeing. Or the things that are important to you for work where other people's priorities take precedence. So being realistic about this. And finally, Anna's challenge around how to create the pauses to stop and reflect and to stick to the promise to yourself to focus on what's important and to manage that. So how do you build in those pauses? So. All the very best starting off this new academic year for those for whom it is a new start. And for those in the southern hemisphere or on other work rhythms, find other temporal landmarks that you can use as your own fresh start. Just to reset, reframe, reconnect to priorities. A limited number of priorities. The things that'll really make a difference to you. The things that will contribute to that bigger picture view. And that contribute to what Anna includes in that definition of wellbeing. Which is around happiness and fulfillment and satisfaction and achieving complete physical, mental, and social wellbeing. And these are just foundational for being able to do great work, which is why we are here, despite all of the constraints that the current context entails. And I do appreciate that for many people there are significant changes happening at the moment, and challenges as with restructurings and budget challenges and increasing demands, but still taking that time to reflect on what is it that you can control towards at least shifting the dial a little bit towards more of what you want to do and what you love to do, and where you can have your best impact. And if you want to hear more from Anna, you can go back and listen to a full conversation that I had with her. And that episode was from March, 2017 where she was also talking about a lot of her strategies around trying to reflect on her own work practices and what she was doing then. I also did a short solo episode called Stop the Purposeful Pause. And I could point you to various other episodes where people have shared strategies about approaching their work with more intention using our language from today. In particular. I can point ,you to Marta Cecchinato, who also worked with Anna previously, and, Marta talked about digital wellbeing and micro boundary strategies. Johanna Stadlbauer about boundaries as well. Carmen Neustaedter talked about tracking his work and being surprised about what came out of that data. Amy Ko also talks about very deliberate practices for tracking and structuring work. Katherine Isbister talked about being productive within eight to five. Vicki Wright had also talked about role-based time blocking as a strategy. There are many, many episodes that connect on these and similar themes that might give inspiration. So I look forward to sharing this new season with you and bringing many more conversations. That can become part of our ongoing collective conversation about how we individually and collectively can change academic life for the better. You can find the summary notes, a transcript and related links for this podcast on www.changingacademiclife.com. You can also subscribe to Changing Academic Life on iTunes, Spotify, and I'm really hoping that we can widen the conversation about how we can do academia differently. And you can contribute to this by rating the podcast and also giving feedback. And if something connected with you, please consider sharing this podcast with your colleagues. Together we can make change happen.