Faculty workload often feels overwhelming. In this episode, Kristin Croyle joins us to discuss strategies that can help us manage time and keep our workload under control. Kristin is a psychologist and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering at SUNY Oswego.
Show Notes
- Ainslie, G., & Haslam, N. (1992). Hyperbolic discounting. Choice over time, 5, 57-92.
- Thaler, R. H. (2016). Behavioral economics: Past, present, and future. American economic review, 106(7), 1577-1600.
- Ainslie, G. (1975). Specious reward: a behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulse control. Psychological bulletin, 82(4), 463.
- Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the “planning fallacy”: Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366–381.
- Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & MacDonald, H. (1997). The role of motivated reasoning in optimistic time predictions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(3), 238–247.
- Roy, M. M., Christenfeld, N. J. S., & McKenzie, C. R. M. (2005). Underestimating the duration of future events: Memory incorrectly used or memory bias? Psychological Bulletin, 131(5), 738–756.
- Ansburg, P. I., Basham, M. E., & Gurung, R. A. (2021). Thriving in academia: Building a career at a teaching-focused institution. American Psychological Association.
- Milkman, K. L., Minson, J. A., & Volpp, K. G. (2014). Holding the hunger games hostage at the gym: An evaluation of temptation bundling. Management science, 60(2), 283-299.
- Kirgios, E. L., Mandel, G. H., Park, Y., Milkman, K. L., Gromet, D. M., Kay, J. S., & Duckworth, A. L. (2020). Teaching temptation bundling to boost exercise: A field experiment. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 161, 20-35.
- Duckworth, A. L., Milkman, K. L., & Laibson, D. (2018). Beyond willpower: Strategies for reducing failures of self-control. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 19(3), 102-129.
- Dean Karlan (2019). Commitment Devices. Tea for Teaching podcast. Episode 103. October 16.
Transcript
John: Faculty workload often feels overwhelming. In this episode, we discuss strategies that can help to manage time and keep workload under control.
[MUSIC]
John: Thanks for joining us for Tea for Teaching, an informal discussion of innovative and effective practices in teaching and learning.
Rebecca: This podcast series is hosted by John Kane, an economist…
John: …and Rebecca Mushtare, a graphic designer…
Rebecca: …and features guests doing important research and advocacy work to make higher education more inclusive and supportive of all learners.
[MUSIC]
Rebecca: Our guest today is Kristin Croyle. Kristin is a psychologist and the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Sciences and Engineering at SUNY Oswego. Welcome back, Kristin.
Kristin: Thank you so much for having me.
John: Thank you for joining us again. It’s been a while.
Kristin: Yes, it has, but it’s always one of my favorite places to be.
John: Today’s teas are… Kristin, are you drinking tea with us today?
Kristin: I am not, because I’ve already had four cups of tea today, and it’s time to stop for the moment.
John: We are recording in the late afternoon, so you’re excused. And Rebecca?
Rebecca: I’m celebrating the coming of spring with candy cane tea. [LAUGHTER] It’s a custom blend from a local tea shop.
John: …and I am just drinking a plain Lady Grey today.
Rebecca: So Kristin, we’ve invited you here today to help you figure out how to manage my time. [LAUGHTER] So why does it often feel like we don’t have enough time to do all the things we would like to be doing?
Kristin: Oh, what a good question. And I think we all have our own answers for that. I think there are a lot of contributors here. One is the role of faculty in general. So the role of a faculty member, and depending on the professional staff position, sometimes also the role of a staff member, is to just be awesome at many things. And that’s why we hire faculty and our professional staff, because they’re awesome at many things. And then we kind of say, well, we need you to do these six things, but go and be awesome. Do 100, that would be awesome. We would love it if you would do 100. We don’t know what those other 94 are, but we know you will figure it out. So in many ways, faculty are kind of working like small business owners, like the more you do, the better ideas you have, and the better the connections you make. And then you have a new project, and you see something that’s wrong, so you think, well, I need to change that too. So I’m going to start a committee or a task force to do this thing, and then that connects with something else. You have a great class that you want to add, and all and all of that contributed to a new research idea, in addition to all the other data that you’ve collected that you haven’t yet published. It is endemic to the role in many ways, and it doesn’t help that all of us are schooled to do this during our graduate training, and that at many universities, the Assistant Professor component of the career is also designed that way… not at all universities, but at many where the explicit task that is sometimes told to people is do as much as you can, as well as you can, and then we’ll see if that is high enough for tenure. I certainly hope that is not the feeling here. I hope that our expectations are more explicit, but basically we develop a culture in which our roles are ever expanding, and they’re ever expanding in ways that are often really exciting. So there are reasons to keep saying, “Oh, that’s a great idea. I want to do that,” and just keep adding on top, on top, on top. So it almost feels against our natures and against our institutional well being to try and pull that back, which leads to many of our most excellent faculty and staff being chronically, desperately overextended.
Rebecca: I think she’s been spying on us, John.
John: And while there may be things that we really enjoy doing and really love doing, we often will look at our calendars [LAUGHTER] and find that more things have been added to our calendars by people other than us on virtually every day, it seems. So what can we do to keep our schedules manageable, so we actually have time to do all those wonderful things that we’d like to be doing or that we’re being asked to do.
Kristin: Well, I’ll also add to that, that even when you have these wonderful, fabulous ideas, there is a bunch of stuff in the middle of that that is super boring and irritating to do to get you to the wonderful idea. Really meaningful service is a good example of that. If someone chooses to step up as department chair, they may have amazing ideas about how to move their department forward and support their faculty and students. And in the middle of it, you got to deal with all the student complaints which are important but a huge hassle. You got to turn in the schedule, which is important and a huge hassle. You got to deal with somebody angry because their office has flooding or collapsing or something, which is important, but a huge hassle. So not only is it other people, but it’s also the actual daily work, even when you’re getting to the awesome stuff, is a big hassle. So what can we do? What can we do to keep our schedules under better control? It’s a great question that all of us ask ourselves… sometimes, like many times a day, how can I get this under better control? One thing that I’ve certainly seen that is different in academia than in some workplaces is that faculty sometimes think of themselves in such strictly academic terms that they don’t recognize the amount of control they have over their time, and they don’t use specific strategies to try and control their time. So for example, it’s a common practice to use time blocking for many people, where you say, ”I’m going to need some focus time to work on this. I’m going to need focus time to work on that.” And I know that months in advance, so I’m going to, I’m going to time block in my schedule, hold these times as special to do this special work. That is very common in some settings and less common for some faculty to do. In our current environment where calendar sharing is much more common, it’s a much easier technological thing to do now. There are certainly a good number of faculty that I work with that I know don’t use their electronic calendars for anything except the occasional meeting invite, which makes it look like that they’re available to do all these other things any other time, and can lead to things like meeting invites appearing at times that are not convenient for them, where they have other commitments, where they might feel pressure to say yes, that if they had exercised some control at the beginning of the semester, those invites might not have appeared. So, some kind of techniques that are very commonly used in some settings or by some people that are really successful include things like identifying focused work time for projects that you need focused work on. So, for example, if you’re tenure track, particularly at the assistant professor level, and you know that it’s very important for your tenure standards that you get some stuff published, blocking off time on a weekly or even daily basis, specifically to work on your research, not to meet with students, not to do grading, not to do committee work, but specifically to work on your research, and keeping that time on your calendar blocked is a good strategy to use, and once you kind of get used to that, you can use it for the rest of your career. Another possibility is setting, for yourself ,strict guidelines about when you are willing to do certain things. Some of us know that we work best on certain types of projects at certain times of day or at certain times during the week. I know, for example, that I do better focused project work at the end of the week than I do at the beginning of the week, because at the beginning of the week, my head is all full of the other stuff that I haven’t done yet that kind of was building up over the weekend, and I was trying to ignore it, but it kind of all comes rushing out of me in the first few days of the week. So I am better at focused work at the end of the week, so I tend to block my time at the end of the week for focused work, but I include time at the beginning of the week for catch up, because those things are on my mind. Similarly, setting boundaries and these vary by the person for what is effective, like, I’m going to check my email twice a day. As dean. If I did that, bad things would happen. So I definitely don’t do that, but [LAUGHTER] it can certainly work in other settings: setting clear guidelines with your students that unless you are actually having an emergency and you need a response from me, I typically take about 24 hours to respond during the work days, and I don’t generally respond on the weekends. Setting up those boundaries can help you to maintain more sense of control over your schedule. And then another piece that I see some faculty using in a very sophisticated way, but others, not at all, is to time yourself for specific teaching tasks so that you have a clear and fairly accurate estimate about how long something is going to take you to do in your pedagogy, and then take that into account when you plan your syllabi. We have some English and Creative Writing faculty that know how long it takes them to grade and give feedback for different lengths of assignments. So if they say, “Well, I’ve got 60 students this semester, and if I’m going to give this assignment and this assignment and this assignment, it’s going to take me this long to grade, how am I going to work that into my schedule? Perhaps I should modify this other assignment so that there is time to get the students the feedback that they need.” I know, for example, that it takes me about three hours a day to keep up on my email, and if I don’t have three hours one day to do it, it’s going to take me six hours the next day. So I try and build in some time in the early morning or late, late afternoon, hopefully not in the evening, to do some of that catch up. But as a new assistant professor, I regularly planned things in my pedagogy that I didn’t realize were going to take me like 100 hours to do. You know, the first time you try a really great project, you’re like, “Oh my gosh, that took so long. Was the student learning worth it?” And planning that into your syllabus and saying, “You know what, that project is awesome, and it takes me a huge amount of time. This other project… also awesome, much more efficient for me, similar student learning. Perhaps I should go this direction instead.” So the theme in general is realizing that you have some control, and taking the control early, proactively, at the beginning of the semester, at the beginning of the year, instead of realizing that you’re completely drowning by week six in the semester, and seeing what you can do to exert control then. It’s never too late to try, but in advance, you end up with a much greater sense that you’re not drowning in work, because once you hit that stage, it’s difficult to get anything done sometimes. What do you two think? What has been helpful to you?
Rebecca: I’ve definitely used the strategies that you’re describing, and have taught students to use those as well. I think that as my role has changed over time, I’ve had to modify those strategies. So it was easier earlier on in my teaching career to be able to dedicate a day or a half a day to research or to not have meetings, but I find it a lot more difficult to block large blocks of time, and instead find it’s probably more strategic to block smaller amounts of time that are the length of a meeting. So then it just looks like you got meetings on your calendar at various times. But that can allow for some catch up, or to do some of the other things that we’re trying to do. So I’ve noticed I’ve had to change that a bit. I still have one day blocked as if I’m going to get projects done. But the reality is, it’s not realistic, and it needs to probably flex and change. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Yeah, my block, because I have other people that sometimes schedule meetings for me as well that can see what the block says. The block says, “try not to have meetings.” And there’s still meetings that appear, but less during that time than would have otherwise. What works for you, John?
John: Nothing this year, it seems.
Kristin: …nothing works. [LAUGHTER]
John: As an example, on Monday, I have four hours of classes, and I had four and a half hours of meetings scheduled, and then I did have some time blocked out, so I’d have a little bit of time to do some preparation that I wasn’t able to get done in the weekend, and that got filled by a commitment that I really needed to fulfill. So I’ve been struggling with that all year, and especially this semester. I’m not sure why this semester seems to be so much work. I generally don’t block out time on my calendar, but I probably need to do it more. But I did try it this week, and I still ended up with meetings scheduled in each of the time slots that I had blocked out as preparation time. And it was only two this week, but both of them ended up being taken up by other meetings.
Rebecca: One other strategy that I think can be useful, especially if you’re trying to schedule meetings between faculty and staff, is that we have different schedules. Staff and administrators tend to work on the hour and half hour, and faculty work on the teaching calendar when classes are offered, which are at odd times. So trying to schedule meetings that are during a distinct class period can be helpful because then it keeps everyone on the same schedule. It’s also a good strategy for blocking your calendar because it looks like you’re in class. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: That’s really good. Another piece that I think is important to mention, is setting the top priorities. So as I mentioned, for folks that are on the assistant professor tenure-track stream, it’s usually much easier to stay on top of the teaching because you got students expecting every day that you have something prepared and that you will get their graded work back to them and like they are knocking on the door if you are not prepared. So for assistant professors, we often recommend set your research as your top priority. It’s not necessarily because it’s the most important. It’s often because it is the most difficult to work in because there aren’t external contingencies pushing people to stay on top of it. So block time during that phase of your career to keep your research going. Even a common recommendation is to try and write for at least 30 minutes a day. Block those 30 minutes so that you get something written, not because it’s the most important, because it needs to be your top priority because of the other contingencies pushing on you. So at different phases in your career, it’s still important to look at what you’re spending your time on and say, “What is my top priority?” and block the time for that. So there’s some good research that suggests that if you spend a minimum of 20% of your time a week on the things that you find most rewarding in your job, it will reduce burnout. So at some phases in your career, you can look at what you’re doing and say, “You know, the most exciting thing for me right now is coming up with the big ideas and helping to push them forward, or it is engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning, or it is meeting directly with students and mentoring them,” but your top priority, your own career top priority, and block that time to make sure it happens, and then let everything else fill in around it. So yes, again, taking control, but taking control for the things that you know need to get done that as the semester goes on, if you don’t take that time to set those priorities and figure out how you’re going to make progress on them, all the other immediate contingencies around you will push and push and push and get you to do the urgent thing that is not as important because someone is asking you to do the urgent less important thing when you really need to do the more important thing.
Rebecca: It can be helpful to kind of evaluate those things on a weekly basis too, at the beginning of the week setting aside 10 or 15 minutes to just establish what the priorities for the week might be.
Kristin: Excellent. So do you have a weekly meeting with yourself?
Rebecca: I do.
Kristin: Excellent. It’s a great practice.
Rebecca: Otherwise, I don’t. I can’t remember what I’m supposed to do. It’s like a reminder. [LAUGHTER] I do it on Mondays like it’s a reminder of what I need to be doing for the week.
Kristin: Yes, doing a weekly meeting where you review your priorities for the week, what has been done, what hasn’t been done. It’s a great recommendation. It can help you really move faster on the projects that you care about. Now I’ve heard recommendations, which I don’t agree with, that you do this at the time that makes the most sense to you. So if you’re worrying about it on Sunday night, you do it on Sunday night. I just think that’s a terrible idea personally, [LAUGHTER] because then it just opens the door for it to infringe even more and more on your personal time. I think you should do your weekly meeting during work time, because it’s work, but to each their own.
Rebecca: Actually, I find Friday afternoons is optimal. I just happen to teach at that time, so I don’t always get it done, but I find if I do it at the end of the week, then I can set the priorities for the beginning of the week and just be able to focus from the start, rather than trying to scramble to figure out how the week should start. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: I like Friday afternoon also, and I’ll tell you why, specifically. If there is something on my list that I don’t know how to handle or what direction I want to take. I’ll make a special note of it, and then I will tell myself “I don’t know how to handle this,” and then I’ll just tuck it away. And there’s all kinds of lovely research in psychology about insight and the role of rest and rejuvenation in that. So I find if I tuck it away in the back of my mind, and I really try not to think about it. I may have an answer on Monday after I’ve had a couple nights sleep, and the path forward may appear after letting it sit for a bit.
John: For me, what tends to happen is I go to sleep worrying about those things, and I wake up three hours later, still worrying…
Kristin: …also worrying
John: …and I get up and [LAUGHTER] start working again because I’m not able to get back to sleep.
Kristin: Ok….
John: So I’m not very good at this.
Kristin: Do you know about writing a note to yourself?
John: I generally just go to a computer…
Kristin: oh John, well…. [LAUGHTER]
Rebecca: Don’t let the blue light hit you.
Kristin: So for folks who struggle with insomnia for reasons like that, and they really want to sleep more, a good technique is to keep something they can take a note on by the bed. So that could be, if you’re not with a partner who’s going to wake up, you could do like an audio note on your phone, or just write a note and say, “this is the thing,” because it will keep some people up, because they’re afraid if they go to sleep, they’ll forget how important it was. So if they write it down, they feel like, now I know I’m not going to forget that, and then they’re able to go back to sleep. But yeah, I wish you more sleep [LAUGHTER] in your future, John.
John: But going back to the issue of calendars, one thing that seems to have happened is that now that we use Zoom for more meetings, it seems to be a bit easier for people to schedule meetings, and they tend to do it on the hour or on the half hour, typically for an hour back to back…
Kristin: …to back to back to back….
John: …with other meetings with no breaks in between. At least when we used to meet in person, there had to be some time for walking across campus, and we’ve lost that.
Kristin: So one suggestion, but it would have to be something that we agree together, is that we’re going to hold those hour-long meetings, or those 30 minute meetings, to 50 minutes or 25 minutes. Say, if you got an hour long meeting on the schedule, you really mean it’s going to be 50 minutes and it only takes one person… It really only takes one person in the meeting to say, “you know, as a practice, let’s just start doing this, because we all need time to take care of our bodies and to stand up and walk around and maybe make it to the next meeting if it’s across campus or whatever.” It really only takes one person to get that started, and we can start moving it along. But it’s a common practice in some settings. You know, it’s been a common practice in medical settings for many, many years. The therapy hour, for example, is typically a 50 minute hour, although now that there’s more Zoom, it’s much more flexible in terms of shorter even, but yes, it’s a great point. Those of us who were working in higher ed during the pandemic who were in meeting heavy roles, some of us remember the nine hours of meetings days you’re hoping that if you just go off camera and mute yourself for a little time, you can run and grab some food and come back. Let’s not do that again. Let’s just not do that again. It’s not good for us.
Rebecca: Another strategy is to stick to the class schedule, because there’s built in breaks between classes. Voila, 15 minutes between classes. It’s already scheduled, at least that’s the time between ours right on our campus. It’s a common practice.
Kristin: That’s a great idea. Can we talk a little bit about how great faculty are at doing things with excellence and how that becomes a problem?
Rebecca: Yes.
Kristin: I know you folks are asking the questions, but I think this is also a theme that interferes with having control over your time, that we are socialized and we really individually value very strongly being really good at our jobs. We’re excellent at scholarship. We prioritize our students and our pedagogy. We try and make our universities and our professions and our communities stronger through service, and we want to do it all at the A plus level.
Rebecca: It doesn’t help that we’re all very curious too, which is why we probably ended up in academia in the first place, right?
Kristin: Yes. And it also doesn’t help that many of our faculty and staff are able to do all those things at the a plus level, if you take them individually, and I’m using the grade because we’re in a grading culture, and we were socialized in a grading culture. If I were to say to many, many of our faculty and staff, “Here’s this one issue at the university, make it amazing,” and we could release them from everything else. They could do it. They could absolutely do that. In fact, I think I could take 15 different things and give them to most of our faculty, in their research, in their teaching, or in their service, and say, “make this amazing,” and they could do it. And knowing you have the capacity is not the same as knowing that you have the time. And it’s a very difficult step for people to give up the idea that they’re going to be excellent at everything they do all the time, because that is just not realistic in academia. It’s not realistic in life. It’s not realistic in any setting, except maybe in graduate school, where that was your one job to be really good at everything they were asking you to do.
Rebecca: It’s hard to imagine someone saying, “Hey, I need this problem solved, but I just need it at a mediocre C level.
Kristin: We need a mediocre, barely adequate solution. Can you please take care of that?
Rebecca: Yeah, that’s hard to digest. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: It is.
Rebecca: I’m sorry I can’t do that. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: But, I think that that is something that our most excellent people come to realize ,that they can only do some things at excellence and the rest is going to be okay, and that that’s okay, because there isn’t enough time in the day to do everything at excellence, and if you continue to push yourself to do that, you’ll be sorely disappointed and feel completely out of control of your time, make yourself sick, and you still won’t be able to do everything excellent. So it’s more a matter of acceptance, like “I accept some of the stuff I’m going to do is going to be adequately mediocre, because that is all that I have time to do here, and that is really all the situation requires. And I’m going to do these other things really excellently.”
John: Which again, requires that sort of reflection that you were talking about earlier to determine what is important and what is worth the effort.
Kristin: Exactly. I know it’s still hard to like, let it go. It’s okay. Not everything has to be excellent all the time.
Rebecca: I think that’s interesting to put next to the idea, which we’ve talked about before, of saying no, and how saying no can be really difficult, especially if it’s something that you’re interested or excited about. What are some strategies we should use when we’re asked to take on more work than is feasible? I’m just asking for a friend. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Let’s see if we can come up with five real quick and on the fly, okay? Five things to do if somebody asks you to do something, in addition, recognizing that there is a huge caveat when there are some people that when they ask you to do something, it’s your job to say yes. So as Dean, if the President asked me to do something, it is actually my job to say, “Yes, I will do that thing” and figure out how to get it done. So not everybody can say no to everything. I may say, “You know that deadline is, oh, that’s a very tight deadline. I may have to put these other things off so I can hit that deadline.” So five things that you can do if somebody is asking you to pick up something new. One, you can give yourself 24 hours or longer. You can say, “Well, that sounds like an interesting opportunity. Let me think about it for…” and ask for at least 24 hours. Depending on what the commitment is, you could ask for longer, but at least 24 hours before you say yes, even if you want to say yes, just for your own to give yourself some time to reflect. So that’s one. A second one would be, ask somebody else for advice, go to a trusted mentor, a colleague, and say, “You kind of know the things I’m working on, I’m being asked to do this other thing. I’m not really sure how important it is. What’s your thought? Is this something I need to say yes to? Would it be politically important in this environment or would it be a really great opportunity I’m not seeing?” So go ask somebody else for advice, some kind of accountability buddy, for service, essentially. That’s two. A third one, if you’ve already given yourself 24 hours… done that first… if you want to say no, you can just say no. That actually is the strategy. You can say, “Well, thanks for that opportunity and for thinking about me…” like you can say it nicely… “but unfortunately, I don’t have time right now for that commitment.” I have people tell me no all the time as Dean, they say “I don’t have time for that,” like, “oh, okay,” and it’s my job to go find somebody else. A fourth one, let’s say that you don’t feel like you can just say no, but you want to say no, you’ve already thought about it. You talk to your accountability buddy, they’re like, “Don’t do that. You haven’t written anything this semester. Start writing something. Say no to this thing.” You could list out several of the commitments that you already have to remind the person who’s asking you, all the ways that you’re contributing, “because I’m spending my time on this and because of this, and we have talked before about how it’s important for me to prioritize this. Unfortunately, I’m not able to find the time.” So it’s not just a straight no. It’s more like, “I can’t say yes right now, because I am so awesome at these other things that I’m doing, so unfortunately… You could also, fifth one, suggest a couple other names. This is not passing the buck, by the way. This is recognizing that if you were the person that they thought of first, because you are awesome, you may know other awesome people that also should have opportunities. So it’s not about passing the buck. It’s about elevating people who may need to benefit from, have a great perspective, in order to contribute more to service or other projects. I’m sure you two both have other strategies. You want to give me another one?
Rebecca: John’s really good at saying yes.
John: Well,[LAUGHTER] I am good, though, at saying no if it’s something that needs to be done today or tomorrow. But what many people have learned to do is say, “Well, you can take two or three weeks to do this,” or “this is due sometime next month,” and when you’re given the chance to do something that you don’t have to do immediately, it’s easier to discount the future time [LAUGHTER] relative to the present time.
Kristin: What is that called?
John: In behavioral economics, it’s referred to as hyperbolic discounting, that we tend to put more pressure on immediate gratifications, and it’s always easier to postpone things into the future. And that tends to be something that I know, Rebecca and I have fallen into quite recently, [LAUGHTER] where we were asked back in December or January, if we’d give a keynote address for a group, and if it was something that was going to take place in January, I would have said no, because we do a whole bunch of workshops here, and Rebecca was working on some workshops on accessibility, but because it was in April, it seemed, well, we’ll certainly be able to find time between now and April, and April is …
Kristin: …but now, April is coming up.
John: …starting to approach, and at some point we actually have to do it. And so that’s the strategy, on the other side, of convincing people to do more than they really should be doing if they were weighing the costs and benefits more fully.
Rebecca: John successfully uses this strategy on me regularly. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: So how do you get around this? [LAUGHTER]
John: We don’t. [LAUGHTER]We do end up doing too much.
REBECCA; We just do it. [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: So having a good idea of how long things actually take, yes, and it actually is helpful to me to literally think about my future self. How is this going to impact my future self? If I do these things right now, how is it going to impact my future self? If I don’t do them right now, how is it going to impact my future self? For example, if there’s something I really don’t want to do and I am feeling that kind of negative emotional state of avoidance, sometimes it is helpful to me to think about being kind to my future self by doing it right now, so that my future self doesn’t have to deal with both doing the thing I don’t want to do and whatever consequences there were because I didn’t do it right away. Rebecca, do you have other ideas for saying no?
Rebecca: I’m not a great no sayer, but some of the strategies I use include asking questions about the thing that will take time to respond to [LAUGHTER] to buy time without directly asking for time. A passive aggressive strategy. And then another strategy I sometimes use is, if it’s like a supervisor asking for something, then I usually schedule time to say, “Hey, here’s some things like, what’s the priority?” It’s to kind of get the other stakeholders that might be involved in the things that I’m working on, to find some priorities, because there might be a way that I would prioritize it, but I usually try to make sure it’s in line with some of the other folks that might be impacted by those decisions.
Kristin: So I would disagree that your strategy of asking questions is passive aggressive, because oftentimes, if somebody is asking you to partner on something, they’re asking you because of your expertise. And so if you’re asking questions, it helps them to think through more the kinds of things that they’re asking you to contribute to. So it can help them understand whether or not you’re the right partner. It can help them understand what the real time commitment they’re asking for, and as a not sneaky strategy, but a self-management strategy, if it’s something that you’re thinking about right now, like they ask you in an email, for example, and you read it right then, and you have a response right then, but you kind of want to think about it and slow down the discourse, you can feel free to write that email right away, while it’s on your mind and it’s fresh, delay send it for 24 hours so it slows down the cycle a little bit. Allows everybody to think a little and, if it’s not an urgent thing, most people don’t respond to it within 24 hours anyways, but it’s perfectly fine to slow down the conversation just a little bit, to give people a little bit more time to think about it, and to give yourself a little more time to think about your response.
Rebecca: I always ask about timeline and time commitment. I think those are two important things that are never presented as part of the ask, and are important to know.
Kristin: Excellent, often because they haven’t been thoroughly thought through. So when you’re asking about timeline and time commitment, it helps the asker to think through those things.
John: There has been some research, though, about time and time estimates, suggesting that people who are most productive tend to systematically underestimate the amount of time that task will take. How can we overcome that…
Rebecca: John…
John:… without giving up a lot of sleep? [LAUGHTER]
Kristin: Yerah, and what I love is that we all know that occasionally we can actually do things that fast, which just reinforces this bias of underestimating how much time something is actually going to take. We all have very clear memories of like, you have to do the big thing, and then something happened. You only had a tiny amount of time to do it, and you did the big thing, and it was amazing. So clearly that’s how long it takes you to do the big thing, when that is an exception and not the rule. So, for things that are regular tasks, I really do recommend literally timing yourself so that you understand how long it takes. There’s a really wonderful faculty member here that I have had to ask to do many things, because they are really wonderful, and they say no better than anybody else that I interact with, and part of it is because they’re really good at documenting time estimates. So I say, “can we work on this thing together?” And they respond and say, “Well, this is what’s on my list, and this is how long it takes me.” And it’s so compelling. Like, first I’m like, “Wow, that’s really impressive that you know those things about yourself,” but also my opinion of this person, every time they say no, just goes up and up and up, because what they’re sending me is these amazing things that they’re doing that I’m not aware of. All of these things, but also, the way that they’re doing these time estimates helps to protect their time as well, which is fully committed, by the way. But I will keep asking. They will keep telling me no, and I will continue to think how amazing they are all in this process. But yes, it’s very difficult.
Rebecca: I think that’s important to underscore, is that a lot of times people assume that saying no is going to make someone think badly of them or poorly of them in some way, but that often is not the case.
Kristin: That’s exactly right. Now, of course, there are ways to say no where, it will certainly make you look bad.
Rebecca: Yes, [LAUGHTER] that’s why you consult your accountability buddy.
Kristin: Yes. And I certainly have occasionally had people read my emails before I send and say, “Does this hit the tone I’m trying to hit?” And I encourage other people to do that sometimes too, just to make sure that you’re hitting the correct tone for the audience that you are sending it to. You don’t want to sound like you’re combative and that you are never open to new ideas, because, who knows, the next thing they ask about might be really amazing, and you really want to say yes to that. There was a book that we used on campus several years ago, Thriving in Academia, that has a great flow chart in it for taking on new responsibilities, and it basically takes you through the decision-making process. Here’s this new opportunity and maybe a new service opportunity or something. Is this something that you should really say yes to or no to? And I do find myself taking a look at it every so often. I’ve shared it with multiple faculty, and usually, of course, I end up looking at it when there’s something I want to do, but I don’t think it’s really worth my time. I’ll go through the flow chart and it says, “Don’t do it” and I’m like, “Ah, I knew I shouldn’t do it,” but it’s good to have multiple resources.
John: And it has some very good reasons for not doing things…
Kristin: Yes, it does
John: …through that flow chart. So it is really productive. We will include a link to that in the show notes.
Rebecca: I know that I like to work on a lot of different projects, as I’m sure you’re aware, but there’s also those middle things that we’ve talked about that are like, not super fun. I like to design a thing, and then I’m not always interested or excited about the final implementation of a thing. That’s like, the part I find most exciting is the beginning and the planning stuff that other people might totally hate, but that’s the part that I like. So pairing up with someone else can be helpful who likes a different part of the process, but procrastination can come into play if it’s a part that we don’t like, maybe, or that we have too much to do. How do we handle procrastination?
Kristin: Well, that’s a tough one, and one thing to think about is that procrastination is really an umbrella term for a lot of different behaviors. So, for example, if you just have a million things to do and you don’t get them all done, it’s really not fair to think that you are procrastinating. You’re just over committed. So there’s really no way to get everything done. So, let go of the guilt that you are a quote procrastinator because you’re not able to do all the million things that are on your plate. That’s one piece. But what if there are some things that you can really see that you are actively avoiding, like you really need to do these things, and you’re not getting them done, you’re choosing to do other things instead that are of less importance intentionally. So there can be a lot of contributors here, but one thing that can be helpful… you know, I really hate this phrase, but there’s a book and a concept that has gotten very popular called eat the frog, based on a Mark Twain quote about, if you eat a frog first thing in the morning, it’ll be the worst thing that you have to do all day, or something along those lines. [LAUGHTER] But it does kind of speak to when our energy and willpower are at our highest to do the hard thing first, before the negative feelings accumulate during the day and your energy depletion accumulates during the day, becomes harder and harder to do the hard thing that you’re avoiding. So trying to do something that you’ve been avoiding first thing in the morning can be helpful. Some people find it helpful… this might sound funny, but to kind of sneak up on it… like, here’s this one thing you’ve been avoiding… don’t think about it for a little bit and then just do it real fast to sneak up on it, so that it can short circuit the negative emotions around the avoidance that you just jump on it and get it done. Another thing that can be helpful is to just tell yourself you’re going to do it for two minutes, literally two minutes, not like two hours for this big project, just two minutes. And you can even set a timer if you want, because oftentimes the thing that we’re procrastinating, if you’re avoiding it and having those negative feelings, once you get even a baby step into it, those negative feelings start to dissipate, and the avoidance can drop way down, and it makes it easier to get into the task again. What have you found to be helpful?
John: One strategy that’s been proposed by behavioral economists, and I know Katie Milkman has written about this quite a bit, is the concept of temptation bundling, that if there’s something you’re doing that you really don’t enjoy, in addition to providing small blocks of times, reward yourself periodically, so that once you accomplish a certain amount of it, you do something else that you enjoy. And that’s a way of combining the unpleasant task with something that’s more enjoyable as a reward, and that seems to be helpful in encouraging people to get past those things.
Rebecca: One strategy for getting something to sneak up on you is to actually just put it on your calendar, like a little bit away from now, and then it’s like, “Oh, I have a meeting. Oh, I have to do this thing.” And then it’s like, “Oh, I have time scheduled to do this. [LAUGHTER] I guess I should do it.”
Kristin: A lot of the things that I work on are with lots of other people, and for me, I tend to be more motivated by social connection. So if there’s something that I’m really avoiding, I will often schedule a meeting, a literal meeting, because for one thing, we’re all working on this thing together, and it will get me moving, if, like, “Okay, it’s time to sit down. We’re going to figure out where we are in our timeline and take our next steps.” And even knowing I have that responsibility to these other people coming up, it will get me to do the thing before we meet. Now, those are not fake meetings. They’re not wasted. They are real things that are needed to move the project forward, but it gives me the motivation that I need to overcome that kind of avoidance barrier. And one piece I would also add is when I said, let go of the guilt. I’m serious, because feeling guilty about the thing that you’re not doing is not particularly helpful for most people, since it makes you feel worse, it can increase your avoidance. So some people are like, “No, I have to feel guilty, because it tells me how bad it is.” Well, that’s not how it works for most people. For most people, feeling worse makes you more avoidant.
John: And this is a topic we’ve talked about on an earlier podcast with Dean Karlan on commitment devices. And one of the issues that economists tend to focus on, again, is incentives. And the idea basically is you alter the costs and the benefits in some way, and one way is through peer commitments. That you know the social pressure of letting your friends down by not meeting with them when you’re scheduled or something like that, can be really effective. And I think at the time when we recorded it, Rebecca was going with a group of friends to the gym, and one time she didn’t go, so they all posted pictures from the gym without her there [LAUGHTER] and asked, “Where are you?” just as a little bit of peer pressure.
Kristin: just sent with care, not with guilt, yeah, sent with care.
John: And it’s something I talk to students about in terms of forming study groups where they agree to meet a certain time, and it’s much more likely they’ll actually do it when they have that peer pressure.
Kristin: Exactly, balancing those plates.
Rebecca: So we always wrap up by asking, what’s next?
Kristin: What’s next? Well, that’s a good question. So I am regularly in a quest to take greater control over my time so that I am spending it in a way that I think most benefits the college, because that’s my job and the faculty and the staff and students in the college. So what’s next for me is to continue to try and find the balance again, keep up my weekly meetings so that I can set priorities for myself and make sure that my time is being spent in a way that I think allows me to use the skills that I have, and doesn’t allow my time to be completely sucked up by things that are not the best use of my time for the benefit of the college. That was a long answer to say, keeping on, keeping on, trying to do it a little better every day.
Rebecca: Well, thanks’ Kristin. It’s always a pleasure to talk to you.
John: Well, thank you, Kristin. We really appreciate you joining us today and taking some of your time to do this with us.
Kristin: Absolutely. Thank you both.
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John: If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast service. To continue the conversation, join us on our Tea for Teaching Facebook page.
Rebecca: You can find show notes, transcripts and other materials on teaforteaching.com. Music by Michael Gary Brewer.
John: Editing Assistance provided by Madison Lee.
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