We’ve been sold a false choice as academics.

It’s not that we need to publish or risk perishing. In fact, this may set many academics up for failure because they’re simply not in a position to publish with any regularity. Which means that anyone not publishing must be perishing. Which seems…unfair.

In addition, the publish or perish mindset seems to be moving us towards poorer quality scholarship (Kiai, 2019) with increased pressure leading to questionable practices. And institutional writing workshops encourage you to play the ‘publish or perish’ game more effectively. An alternative might be to recognise that any paradigm asking you to choose between perishing and writing is probably flawed. Why should that be our choice?

Read: Hard work isn’t the problem.

Oliver Burkeman (2022) reminds us that hard work isn’t incompatible with a sense of joy:

The point here isn’t that it’s somehow inherently wrong to be interested in getting things done, accomplishing major projects, or achieving ambitious goals. What’s wrong is the idea so many of us seem to have absorbed that doing these activities is incompatible with enjoying yourself in the present. That there’s something intrinsically virtuous about putting fun on hold until later, and something intrinsically irresponsible about permitting yourself to relax here and now.

Burkeman, O. (2022). Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.

Instead of asking whether you should publish or perish, what other career objectives do you value? Maybe we can use these to come up with our own mantras around publishing.

For example, what about:

• Publish and prosper.
• Persist and publish.
• Post and propagate.

I think we can work hard and enjoy our lives. The solution may not be easy but it is simple and within our reach.