Overwhelmed? Do this.

Ok, maybe you don't have time to meditate for two hours a day.  But if you can take a micro-break and shut your mind down (as much as possible) for even a couple of minutes, you're less likely to burn out.

This web page, "Do Nothing For Two Minutes," has no explanation, and, as far as I can tell, no ulterior motive for its existence. I like it, and maybe you will, too.

Academic Exhaustion Syndrome: Four Recovery Strategies

The semester’s over.

If you’re anything like the academics I coach, you feel like death warmed over.  Those last stacks of grading got done on sheer will, determination and fumes. And this is before considering your writing deadlines, committee responsibilities, and other demands.  You are suffering from Academic Exhaustion Syndrome. 

Academic Exhaustion Syndrome (an advanced, more scholarly state of burn out) is a state of emotional, and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, ending with grading, over the course of the semester and academic year. As the stress continues, you begin to lose interest and motivation to work, you have fantasies of standing up and screaming in the middle of a meeting, and you wonder what temporary loss of reality testing made you decide to become an academic. 

This dreaded Syndrome can:

• Reduce your productivity and saps your energy
• Make you irritable and have thoughts of strangling an undergraduate
• Make you feel like you have nothing more to give.
• Create physical symptoms including fatigue, overwhelming exhaustion, weariness, tension, insomnia, physical illness, and low energy.
• Produce emotional/psychological symptoms such as feeling out of control or overwhelmed, resentful, moody, frustrated, angry, helpless, hopeless, drained, and powerless.

What can you do to recover from Academic Exhaustion Syndrome?

Here are four Academic Exhaustion Recovery Strategies:

Take some time off! 

Give yourself some downtime – whether that means getting out of town for a vacation or having several days at home taking it easy, and doing things you find relaxing and enjoyable. 

• Plan time off.
• Give yourself permission to rest and renew.  There is a pernicious aspect of  ­academic culture that makes you feel as if you don’t have the right to take a break; that if you’re not working to your fullest capacity, you should feel guilty or embarrassed for being slothful.   A true academic always suffers.
• Think about your time away from work as ‘sharpening your saw’ so that you can be more productive over the summer.   
• Once you’re feeling better, select a date on your calendar for when you want to start back on your research and writing, and schedule it.  
• For the first day or two back at work, think about some simple things you can do to “ease back in.”  Perhaps it’s re-reading what you last wrote, or pulling out an outline you’ve written and adding to it. 

Stephen Covey, wrote the following parable in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People:

Suppose you were to come upon someone in the woods working feverishly to saw down a tree.

"What are you doing?" you ask.

"Can't you see?" comes the impatient reply. "I'm sawing down this tree."

"You look exhausted!" you exclaim. "How long have you been at it?"

"Over five hours," he returns, "and I'm beat! This is hard work."

"Well why don't you take a break for a few minutes and sharpen that saw?" you inquire.  "I'm sure it would go a lot faster."

"I don't have time to sharpen the saw," the man says emphatically. "I'm too busy sawing!"

Reevaluate your goals and priorities. 

• Evaluate your priorities for the summer
• Make sure these are realistic and doable.  Be aware that if your goals for the summer are overly ambitious, you risk feeling like a failure for not completing them, or having summer burnout if you take on too much.  
• List the steps involved in each of your projects and estimate how long each step will take. 
• Place the steps in a calendar so that you can see if your plans are possible. 

Slow down. 

In order to recover from burnout, it is just as important to make time for relationships, relaxation and recreation, as it is to schedule time for your work. 

• Write Moderately and Consistently.  If you do this throughout the summer (say just two to three 45-minute sessions a day, 4 days a week for 12 weeks), you will have done about 90 hours of work.  Did you write that much last summer? 
• Productive writing habits will enable you to have those picnic lunches, go to the beach or the woods, get exercise, and lead a balanced home and personal life.
•  Don’t try to sit at your desk and work all day.  You will find that you are getting in about 2-3 hours of writing and 4-5 hours of staring at a blank screen.  Instead, plan your couple of hours of writing, do some reading, and then enjoy the rest of your day.
• Get adequate nutrition, sleep and exercise. 

Reflect and re-evaluate. 

Spend some time looking at your past semester and think about what brought you into this state of burnout.

• Are you trying to work past your human limits? 
• Are you trying to be too many things to too many people?  
• Did you do things you didn’t want to do because you had a hard time saying ‘no?’
• If you don’t have one already, create a ‘statement of availability’ which sets boundaries as to when you will/will not be available, when and how often you will be checking email, etc.  Setting up limits now will help you to keep them in effect come the Fall. 

This process of recuperation, self-care, moderate work, enjoying life, and planning ahead for the Summer and Fall, will ensure that you recover from Academic Exhaustion Syndrome and that it doesn’t turn into full fledged Academic Psychosis.

Relax your left brain and give your right brain a treat.

It's time to stop thinking.  At least, thinking in an academic way.  Use this video as a soothing rest for your weary left hemisphere.


The Mountain from Terje Sorgjerd on Vimeo.

You Are The Experiment; Your Behavior is the Data

 Last week I gave 5 talks in 4 days; two to faculty at UC Berkeley and two to graduate students at the same institution.  The fifth was a talk at Stanford to the engineering graduate students.  Although it sounds like a marathon, it turned out to be a perfectly delightful experience, because of the people in the audiences and their enthusiasm for what I had to say.  This is one of the phrases that I ended up saying to them repeatedly in response to certain questions:

“You are the experiment; your behavior is the data.”

Let me explain what I meant by that.  But first, for you non-science types, let me review with two sentences.  Every experiment involves a hypothesis.  You test the hypothesis by getting data.

For example, you wonder which food ants prefer; honey or sugar.  You may hypothesize that they prefer sugar, because ants don’t want to get stuck in the honey.  You put out the honey and sugar, and count the number of hungry ants that run to each food.  Their behavior is the data.  It’s not bad or good, it’s just a fact.  (I actually have no idea which one ants prefer.  If they’re on a diet, they eat Stevia.)

Most people see their own behavior as good or bad.  “I didn’t write, therefore I’m bad/lazy/unfocused/good-for-nothing.”  This is not good for you.  Instead of judging yourself, I’d like to help you see your behavior as data, just like the ants’ behavior was data.

Why does it matter how you see your behavior?  First of all, what you say to yourself about your actions influences how you feel.  If you say that you’re unfocused, write poorly, and should never have gone into academia; those thoughts produces anxiety and perhaps feelings of depression.  And those unpleasant feelings are not conducive to writing.  As a matter of fact, they are the kinds of feelings that lead to writer’s block.

Secondly, people are always asking me “How long is an optimal writing session?”  What I’ve been telling them is “It depends.”  People are so different from each other.  Some thrive on longer sessions (by a session, I mean a period of time spent writing without stopping to check references, read, find a citation, or read email).  A long session would be an hour and a half with no break. 

I usually recommend 45 minutes at the most, although I know of no research reason for recommending this exact length of time.  We know from Robert Boice’s research (Professors as Writers) that writing for several hours actually burns you out and causes you to write less in subsequent days, resulting in a lowering of productivity in the long run.  Stopping and taking breaks with shorter sessions works better, and limiting yourself to 3 or 4 of those sessions a day is usually the most anyone should do.

However, some people simply cannot write for 45 minutes straight. Some can only write for 15 minutes at a time, and some for even less.  After all, there are stressful periods of one’s life, there are parts of the writing that are particularly daunting, and there are people with shorter attention spans!  It doesn’t matter why they can’t write more.  What matters is that people attempt to write regularly in relatively short writing sessions.

The problem is that many of us say to ourselves, “I should write for 45 minutes a day,” or even “I must write for 45 minutes a day.”  But what if we just can’t?  Should we beat ourselves up and hate ourselves?

A much better way to look at it is: You are the experiment and your behavior is the data.  If planning a 45-minute session resulted in your not writing, then you were planning too long a session.  Back it up to 30 minutes.  If you don’t write the next day, back it up to 15. 

Sometimes a session must involve one small, but actually quite difficult task, such as:  Open the document.  Writing can cause such anxiety that this simple action is enough for one day.  That’s a fact; it doesn’t mean the person who feels this stuck is bad.  The next day she/he/you can read over what you wrote and make a few notes.  The next day you elaborate on those notes.  Each session lasts for only 5 minutes, once a day.  Then, over time, as it becomes easier, you can lengthen the amount of time.  So you go to 10, then 15-minute sessions.

In other words, you pay attention to your behavior as if you cared about yourself.  After all, if every time you ate a certain food it resulted in you becoming nauseated, you wouldn’t eat that food.  The same is true here.  You’ve done the experiment.  Write down the data and keep track.  If you’re writing successfully for the length of time that you like, then stick with it.  If your session time stops working, experiment with it, note what the data is, and change the variables.

But most of all, be kind to yourself.  It’s just data, not a court of judgment. 

Therapist for Blocked Screenwriters: newyorker.com

This article, Hollywood Shadows: A Cure for Blocked Screenwriters, is a hoot! Two Hollywood therapists use sometimes outlandish techniques, which are really exaggerations of the techniques that we are always telling you about at Academic Ladder, to get Hollywood writers past their blocks. Some of his techniques go waaay beyond what we do. Enjoy!

Being an academic can give you a longer life!

The secret to a long life isn't what you think - USATODAY.com

Stay out of the Comparison Gutter!

Staying out of the comparison gutter is much, much harder than it sounds.  Comparisons come and find you, even when you’re being strong and not seeking them. People, like your “nice” senior colleague, ask you such questions as, “How’s your book going?  Did you know that our other junior colleague just published an article and a book this month?”  Your neighbor or your aunt keeps saying, “My son finished his dissertation last year; aren’t you done yet?” These are the questions that drive academics crazy, and frankly, make them feel really anxious, depressed, or both.

By Rebecca Schwartz-Bishir, Ph.D.

It is a part of human nature to compare things. Comparisons are helpful: they allow us to take measurements, evaluate for truth, and create expectations. They can make us objective in our thinking, and that thinking can result in beauty and invention.

When used to measure our achievements against those of others, however, comparisons can be unhelpful.  They often tap into our insecurities and make us feel really, really bad.  They can even inspire self-loathing, inferiority complexes, and hopelessness.  Odious comparisons can drag us down into that low place where all our emotional and mental trash ends up, what I call the “comparison gutter.”  The gutter holds us back from seeing our achievements, making progress, and treating ourselves with fairness.

As we all know, academic thinking is built on comparison and measurement. So how can academics strike the right balance between using evaluation to their advantage and living a degraded existence?

The problem


Other comparisons are the latent ones we’re supposed to just “know” about but that are rarely spelled out or clarified.  It is a common complaint from graduate students that they feel their professors know what students should do, but won’t tell them. Professors suffer much the same fate: departments rarely give clear tenure requirements.  In all cases, people find that they’re being compared to an unknown standard, which makes them feel that it is impossible to succeed.

Perhaps the worst comparisons are the ones we make in our own minds.  “My office mate got a grant (or fellowship) for next year, but I didn’t, even though I applied for twice as many as she did.  I’m such a loser.  My work is stupid and worthless.  I’ll never get a job, and I’ll be on the street.” One of the unfortunate aspects of being an academic and having to write is that most of us don’t anticipate these comparisons, and when they fly at us, we bite at them like a fish after an attractive lure. After jumping at the bait, we quickly find ourselves in the comparison gutter; many of us get stuck there.

Once people are mired in comparisons they fixate on what they don’t have or haven’t done yet.  They start wasting their time, muddying their thinking with negative statements, and they feel so weighed down that they start to sink.

Action steps

So what’s an academic to do when he or she is heading for the comparison gutter or is already in it?  Here are some steps you can take to start making progress:

Become aware that you’re comparing yourself.   Sometimes this comparing goes on just beneath the surface of your mind.  You can’t fight it unless you’re aware of it.  You can even write down what you’re thinking.

Start asking questions. Trying to live up to an endlessly unknown quantity is demoralizing; find out all the facts you can. Ask your dissertation or department chair for more specific requirements about what you must do and how you must do it, and be in constant contact to find out as much information as you can. Talk to successful people (graduates, senior faculty) and ask them for examples of what they did to fulfill particular requirements or how they solved a similar problem.  Having a model allows you to see your own work and your life in perspective.

List your accomplishments to get perspective. It’s likely that you’ve done a lot in the past year and have much of which to be proud. You’ve probably made some progress on your writing, research, teaching, and your life.  Overlooking even the big things is easy when you’re in the gutter.  When you’re in the gutter, nothing is ever enough.  By listing your accomplishments, you can also consider what might be holding you back.  If you’ve been in a slump, what are the reasons for it? Did stressful events in your life affect your progress?  How did a comparison push you into the gutter?  Are you obsessing about something that really doesn’t matter that much but rumination has become a habit?  Don’t just let yourself wallow; get a handle on the situation.

Adjust your thinking style.  Is others’ work always good?  That’s a black and white way of thinking, and frankly it’s false.  No one always does good work, just as no one is always happy. Keep reminding yourself that there may be something fishy going on when you find yourself in the middle of a comparison, regardless of who started it.

Watch out for perfectionism.  Do you have a fear of mistakes?  That’s a sign that you are a perfectionist.  Do what you can to relinquish your desperate attempts to control every aspect of your work and what others think about it, and just do the best work you can do.

Stop beating yourself up. It is unlikely that you have a personal character flaw because you’re not measuring up to that which you’re comparing yourself. Find ways to measure your work and life that are real.

**Warning:  Shameless Plug Alert:
Join the Academic Writing Club.  It will end your isolation and help you become more productive in your writing.  In addition to a coach, who can help you develop a writing habit and a healthy approach to your work, you’ll also find other academics who suffer some of the same fears and woes that you do and who understand what it’s really like to be a graduate student or professor.  Joining the writing club will help you get real about your work and get on with it.

Get over it.  Is there always someone better than you are?  Stop tormenting yourself and obsessing about it; you’re not helping your ego one bit.  Take action steps to become the best scholar, writer, and person you can be.  Contact colleagues and friends to talk about your work and broaden your horizons.  Send out your writing to “safe” readers before it’s polished.  Take a dance class, meditate, or start yoga classes to bring some fun and relaxation to your life.  By living up to your potential, you’ll probably surprise yourself with the quality of your work, and you’ll be more content as you do it.

Making a conscious effort to stay out of the comparison gutter can put your feet firmly on the pavement.  I hope to see you on the path to success!