Just erase the board
Photo by Sichen Xiang on Unsplash
Last week’s blog post focused on rest: why it’s important and why you shouldn’t feel guilty about taking it. But, what was left unsaid was all of the various reasons why you might need rest in the first place. You’re working too many hours. You’re being pulled in too many different directions. You’re spending all of your energy working on things you feel obligated to work on instead of working on things that energize you. Following your moment of rest, when you feel like your brain might be firing on all cylinders again, it might be helpful to consider whether there are things in your work (or in your life) that could be put to the side for the moment, or even abandoned all together.
Many years ago, sitting in a colleague’s office, I commented on the long list of projects they had scribbled on their whiteboard. They remarked that they weren’t really sure how some of those projects were ever going to get done. Some projects had stalled because the lead students had left, some data were confusing or just not that compelling, and there were other projects that my colleague just wasn’t interested in anymore. What was worse was that they felt like the whiteboard was shaming them in a way; it was a list they hated to look at. Offhandedly, I suggested, you can just erase the board. My colleague looked at me stunned. I can just erase the board, they repeated, nodding their head. A new possibility unlocked for them.
A similar situation happened more recently. I was chatting with a postdoctoral fellow who was on the job market, struggling to make their research statement sound cohesive and inspiring. The problem? They were no longer interested in the line of research they had done as a doctoral student, and instead wanted to extend their postdoctoral work in new and interesting ways. But, they felt that the search committee would expect them to continue with a line of research that followed from their doctoral studies. I told them to just delete the part about the extension of the doctoral work, and focus on the research they wanted to do. Just erase the board. Focus on research that energizes you today. We talked through ways in which they could instead simply highlight the conceptual and methodological skills they had learned during their doctoral work that had helped them succeed in their postdoctoral work, and then launch into their vision for their independent research career. The end result was a much more compelling research statement, a job offer they could accept with enthusiasm, and an exciting research future ahead.
The point of both of these examples is that there may come a moment when the work you have been doing begins to drain you, either because it no longer interests you, or because it no longer serves you in the same way. The cost of continuing this work then becomes too high. Continuing work that is no longer for you—whether that’s a line of research, a service obligation, or a class that you’ve always taught—keeps you from doing work that could bring you joy, setting you up for success in a new direction. Just erase the board. It’s ok to start over, to abandon something where it is, so that you can direct your energies toward something even better.
Now, obviously, you have to be mindful of whether there are obligations that do need to be met, whether that’s a student who needs to graduate, a funder that expects to see some kind of deliverable, or a teaching schedule that is already set for the semester. But that doesn’t mean you have to be locked in forever. You can start planning and prioritizing an exit strategy so that you have a firm timeline of when you will actually be able to erase the board and do the new work that excites you.
It’s ok to give yourself permission to do new things or to branch out in new areas. You don’t have to pigeon-hole yourself just because you’re known for a certain research line, or because you’ve always done a certain kind of service or teaching work. If you find yourself at a transition point, and you want help erasing the board to launch a new phase in your career, reach out here. I’d be happy to help.
Next week: Are you ready for the academic job market?
