Being in reactive mode is exhausting
Photo by Patrick Hendry on Unsplash
I recently had conversations with two different colleagues who had each exclaimed that they were so tired because they felt like they were always reacting to their work demands. They weren’t really setting their own schedules, and were instead responding to every work request that others needed from them. They didn’t have time to think deeply, and didn’t feel like they were necessarily getting to work on the kinds of activities that they really wanted to. One of my colleagues even felt like taking lunch was a luxury that they couldn’t afford, leaving them hangry by the end of each day.
It can be easy in academia—or in any career, really—to charge headlong through the weeks, racing from one deadline to the next, without any real plan for the future. A grant application here, publication revisions there, followed by a million reference letters for your trainees, and then crafting final exams for your classes, etc. You’re doing all of the things, but, you never feel accomplished; instead you feel drained. You tell yourself ‘next week will be better, and then I can breathe and see where I’m at’, but something else pops up. It feels like playing whack-a-mole at the carnival. There’s a mountain of work, and because everything is marked urgent, you start to lose sight of where you’ve been, what you’ve accomplished, and if you’re headed in the right direction. Instead of being proactive about where you want to go in your career, you are simply existing in a reactive mode.
Being in reactive mode is exhausting, and eventually, it will burn you out. But it’s so hard to get out of it.
One reason it’s tricky to get out of reactive mode is because we can’t always prioritize our own time. We don’t want to be the bottleneck for others, and we don’t want to be perceived as an unreliable colleague or supervisor, so we will often put the needs of others ahead of ourselves. And while certainly, there may be times of year where that will be necessary (hello, grant review season), if we always put others’ needs ahead of our own, then we start to forget what our needs were in the first place. We can start to forget about the things that we are interested in, what it is that makes us excited, and brings meaning to our lives.
There is a way to counteract this: mindfully schedule, in advance, time for yourself each day, or every week, to do whatever it is that you want to do. Whether that’s to read a book, or to make some headway on that writing project that’s been tugging at the back of your mind, or just to take a lunch and go for a walk. Of course, for many of us, even finding an hour or two for ourselves in a week is easier said than done. But sometimes we have to take a hard look at the reasons why we don’t feel like we can do this. What are the real obstacles in our way?
Often, we don’t prioritize time for ourselves because we don’t embrace our worth. If we don’t believe, at our core, that our careers are worth as much—or even more—than someone else’s, then we will always set aside our time in support of theirs. We need to believe that we are worthy of success, growth (and even a lunch and a walk!), in order for those penciled-in meetings with ourselves to become immovable, non-negotiable standing events on our calendars. And then we need to set boundaries with others. Those boundaries may look like saying ‘no’ to accommodating a meeting on someone else’s schedule that now interferes with yours. It may look like telling your trainees that you have a non-negotiable policy that requests for letters of reference need to come in at least one week in advance of their institutional deadlines or you won’t do them. It may look like recruiting the undergraduate student whose schedule best aligns with your own, and who can run participants for your thesis project when you need them to. Your time is worth protecting.
Now, this isn’t an easy mindset shift. It may require discussions with a qualified therapist to figure out the root causes of why you may not always feel worthy of protecting your time. But, in the meantime, can you start with small habits that slowly build over time? For instance, can you schedule in 30 minutes for lunch for yourself one day? An hour a week to work on that paper that you’re actually excited about? Then with each passing week in which you see that your life hasn’t completely imploded because you took that 30 minutes or 1 hour for yourself, you can build in a bit more time for yourself the following week. If this feels challenging, ask yourself whether there are things in your calendar that you already consider immovable; maybe it’s dinner with your parents, bringing your kids to their sports practice, or attending a weekly talk series. Why are those activities immovable? Why couldn’t your activities be immovable as well?
Your time is worthy of the same protection you give to everyone else’s. Reclaiming even 30 minutes a week can be the beginning of a completely different academic life; a life in which you lead your schedule instead of being led by it. If you’re ready to make that shift but aren’t sure where to start, reach out. I can help you build a structure—and a mindset—that supports the career you want.
Next week: Do an inventory check
