NOTE: I realize there's great privilege in even being able to say/feel like one can say no. But, still, many of us need to. And, those of us who are able to must create and protect space for people who can't as readily (due to career stage, identity, socioeconomic and caregiving constraints, etc.). At the same time, those of us who can should also hold accountable the people who have said no for too long and who owe a debt of collective effort and service to our professional and personal spheres.
There's a lot of advice about reclaiming and guarding your time. There are also mountains of seemingly contradictory advice about how to be productive. But, little of that advice deals with the crux of the issue: how you decide how you spend your time.
If you're anything like me and most of the women I work with or mentor, you want to (a) spend your time on work that matters to you and (b) actually make a difference in your field, in your relationships, in the world. For example, nearly everyone I look up to in academia is running one or more programs that actively strive to change the academy for the better, to make it more inclusive, more responsive, more humane.
But, academia is like most of our systems: it was designed for and by a specific subset of humanity, and there's spectacular inertia and a boggling array of distractions built into the ordinary workings of a university.
It can be hard to discern what you should say yes or no to.
Is serving on faculty senate an opportunity to expand your network and weigh in on important policies? Or is it a black hole eating your time and your enthusiasm for the project of higher ed?
Probably, you should sympathize with grad students in other labs who are overworked, underpaid, neglected, held hostage. But, can you (even surreptitiously) actually mentor them out of the hole? Should you (and can you) intervene more overtly?
Maybe you should apply for a president's office fellowship - you'd be on a first-name basis with upper admin and get some (limited) funding for your pet project to improve the university. Or, will you get sucked into endless advisory meetings where no one will listen to your expertise?
Oh! You can apply for/become the next assistant dean of whatnot, so you have a real influence over how things are run, build connections to upper admin, and finally feel like you're making having an impact. But, you might get subsumed by emails, petty office politics, and just grind raw against the admin machinery.
You can just launch something you think is needed, then ask for forgiveness later. You'll probably get to do that important work for years before anyone asks questions. But, how long can you sustain it (and your collaborators' interest in it) without a budget? Without staff? When will you start to resent and avoid it, even though you don't want to shut it down?
Let's put it another way. For most of my career, I said yes to all the things, risks and time sinks be damned. [1] In the process, thanks to the diverse and (very) meandering career I've had, I encountered a lot of workplaces, types of work, and people I needed to or got to work with. As I've surfaced from my always say yes phase, these past experiences led me to something I call my to-don't list. When these types of requests and opportunities arrive in my inbox (or the hallway at work), I have habituated myself to firm "no, no, nopes" for everything on this list.
You'll have to do some serious reflection to build out your own, assuming mine doesn't suit you perfectly. At a minimum, you'll need to remember situations where you experienced:
Obvious exploitation;
That sinking feeling when you realized you should've said no and don't know how to back out;
Work you are good at but intensely dislike doing;
Work that pretty much anyone could do, but they keep coming to you;
and/or intensive time demands that would not likely be expected of someone else.
Here's my current to-don't list. What should be on yours?
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No more logos - not designing them, not playing along with needing one
No short-turn-around grants or other applications (e.g., internal awards, etc.)
No consulting for free, not even internally (i.e., no additional, intensive service that an external consultant would get paid bank to do)
No sharing job postings that don't clearly list salary details
No more time for things, places, institutions that don't value my work (or, once it's clear they don't, get out. Excludes day job to a point, but includes numerous, miscellaneous things within it.)
No if I cannot uniquely do it (e.g., search committees) [2]
No if they wouldn't ask someone "higher ranking" for the same kind of help/work. This often includes 1:1 advice/mentoring that is intensive and perpetuates exclusive access to my expertise. [3]
No to activities that perform being a tenure-track professor (which I'm not) - no to these because I don't get that same level of support (e.g., lower salary, didn't get any start-up, don't have my own research space, etc.). These include (for the foreseeable future) advising grad students directly, giving guest talks/lectures and workshops for free, etc.
No to being on grad thesis/dissertation committees unless the student actually does a chapter relevant to my expertise
No to punitive/surveillance pedagogy that demeans students' humanity and makes extra work for them and me
No false equivalencies or politesse that covers up inequity (including harmful neutrality, refusal to do equitable amounts of service, etc.)
No committees, service, or admin work that does not directly lead to action toward positive change
No to open-ended requests (especially those sent blanket/broadcast-style to multiple people) that the sender thinks are too insignificant to justify offering collaboration/intellectual credit for, but would require inordinate time and intellectual investment from me to fully coach them on necessary context, methodology, etc., if I were to actually address their off-the-cuff request. (Nos to this type of request are easiest to deal with when sent to multiple people because then I can just ignore/delete.)
No to invitations/requests that calculate out to working for free or donating, let alone actively spending my own funds (e.g., requiring me to pay a conference registration fee to run a low-paying workshop; not covering travel, lodging, per diem and day rate, etc.)
No to most solo projects these days. They aren't as stimulating or impactful as the work I do with collaborators. (And, realistically, this means they're liable to languish, making me feel bad about my own expectations.)
There is, of course, another way to look at all this. That is, to clarify your "automatic yes" situations. Get your heck-no list together and you might find the counterpoints are easier to articulate.
Parting thoughts
You might wonder why I'm rehashing the same advice so many other people have covered thoroughly and insightfully. [4]
For me, right now, it's because my extensive to-don't list has protected my time enough that I was able to pitch and write a book (almost finished!) for University of Chicago Press. If I had said yes to everything I said no to in my no-tebook (see last week's post), there is no cat's chance in a dog run that I would have had the mental energy or the actual time to conceptualize that project, recruit a great co-author, and see this project through to completion. This book is both a passion project for me (7 years in the making!) and a book that I genuinely believe will make learning and writing about science feel better for students and my colleagues/their instructors. (Get updates about this book here, along with access to exclusive resources, etc.)
I've also guarded my time such that after 20 years (thought it was 10, did the math, and 😱), I'm back in the pottery studio and finally just competent enough at throwing pots to love doing it. And, I was able to manage my time enough to travel to tend family in several moments of need. These three dimensions of my life in the last year have been spectacularly fulfilling. They make my work matter, because I'm deciding what matters. [5]
Finally, I realize the great privilege there is in having a job where I can set priorities this way, where I can have flexibility for some travel. I did not used to be in these circumstances; indeed, it's only with in the last few years that this has become possible. And, few people in my massive, extended family have any access to these kinds of options, either.
That's why your to-don't list is a crucial part of your overall strategy. If you're in an academic job (or any other) where you call most of the shots about how you spend your time, then, the to-don't list can help you do that sustainably, in ways that matter to and fulfill you without wiping you out. And if you do that, then you have a chance of actually prioritizing things that can make the world a better place. When we have the access and privilege to do this, guarding our capacity to do it is vital.
The "No for it" series
My “No for it” collection of resources and blog posts emphasizes the importance of recognizing your priorities and making professional (and personal) decisions based on them. You'll find takes on my to-don't list, and the necessary, urgent even, it has become for me to prioritize saying no. You'll also find resources such as 10 ways I've been able to say no (loose scripts you're welcome to borrow) and both productivity and boundary-setting tools.
Notes
1 As a freelancer and consultant, I pretty much had to say yes to everything that paid. And, I felt like I needed to say yes to most volunteer things, too, in case they parlayed into paying opportunities or connections. (It was not a good feeling, it was not sustainable -- I can no longer drink caffiene because of the combo-stress of it all.)
2 Dr. Beronda Montgomery has written a lot of essential reading on working from self-determined affirmation, not for external affirmation, as an academic, in order to effect positive change. Here she specifies one of the ways that she maintains focus: "I prioritize work that I can uniquely do."
3 See my collaborator Dr. Virginia Schutte for lots of great thinking and alternative examples on this one.
4 See the extensive notes in last week's post for a lot of great references and resources.
5 As always, I refer you to the essential advice on this from Dr. Beronda Montgomery.
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