Tag: sustainable productivity
Balancing institutional demands with sustainable practice
Discover how embracing academic productivity through quality over quantity can transform your work life. Instead of constantly expanding workloads, learn to focus on meaningful impact, sustainable practices, and deeper connections. Doing less, but doing it better, can lead to more valuable academic outcomes.
Schedule personal time first, work second
Most academics make the mistake of scheduling work first and trying to fit life around it. Discover why reversing this approach is key to achieving better academic work life balance. Learn how prioritising personal commitments in your schedule can lead to more focused and productive work hours.
Building and sustaining momentum
Sustainable productivity comes from finding your natural rhythm, not from being busy all the time.
Treat perfection like a process
“Treat perfection like a process, not an achievable state. Perfectionism is crippling to productivity. I’ve known academics that can’t even start projects because of perfectionism.” – Matt Might
Rethinking your week: The case for a scholarship day
Dedicating one day a week to scholarship can transform your academic productivity. Drawing inspiration from Iceland’s successful shorter work week experiment and Google’s 20% time policy, explore how protected time for deep scholarly work can help you produce better outputs without working longer hours.
Something sustainable and humane
“I want to rescue knowledge work from its increasingly untenable freneticism and rebuild it into something more sustainable and humane, enabling you to create things you’re proud of without requiring you to grind yourself down along the way.” – Cal Newport
Strategic scholarly retreats
Strategic scholarly retreats offer academics a chance to step back from daily pressures and focus on career planning. These retreats, whether a full day or a few hours, provide time for reflection on research goals, teaching methods, and professional development. Regular retreats can lead to more impactful research, effective teaching, and a fulfilling academic career.
Always busy but no progress
In academia, it’s common to feel perpetually busy while at the same time, not making any meaningful progress. True productivity comes from establishing a steady rhythm of shipping important work, not just completing a high volume of tasks. Building and maintaining positive momentum is key to sustained progress.
Leverage your peak productivity hours
You only have 3-4 hours of peak cognitive productivity per day. Identify when you feel most focused and protect that time for demanding tasks. Batch easier activities during lower energy periods. Tracking energy levels, prioritising tasks, creating routines, taking breaks, and guarding peak times can help maximise your limited productive hours.
Overcome information overload with fewer inboxes
Struggling with too many information channels? Overcome information overload by consolidating your inboxes and creating sustainable systems. Discover practical steps to streamline your workflow, reduce cognitive overhead, and create more space for meaningful academic work – all without losing track of important information.
Just say ‘No’ to new projects
Avoid the temptation to accept every invitation to work on something interesting. Just say no (or, at least, not yet). Academia thrives on a spirit of collaboration and contribution. We’re constantly invited to participate in presentations, grant proposals, committees, service activities, and so on. While saying yes fosters connection and advancement, the incessant pressure to contribute…