Tag: balancing work and family life

Being the boss of your own time

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I have recently changed jobs, in that I have resigned from my job and taken up a postdoctoral fellowship at the university where I recently completed my PhD. This was a big leap for me because it meant quitting my first academic job that came with a pension, a proper income, and an access card that kept working year after year because I was not on contracts that kept ending. It also meant leaving colleagues and work that meant a great deal to me, and it meant a change in my own sense of identity as an academic because I gave up work that gave me a particular academic identity and sense of self.

I’m kind of like a student again, with a more student-y kind of income now (sadly), and a more student-y schedule. This latter bit is kind of brilliant. I don’t have to be at work by 9am, and I don’t have to set an example for the colleagues I used to manage by sitting at my desk all day, being busy and focused, and I don’t have to attend any more meetings unless I really want to. I don’t even have to wear shoes if I don’t want to. I fetch my kids from school, and I help them with their homework. I am really enjoying cooking again because I’m not exhausted at the end of every day having rushed around doing far too many things, and commuting a long way to work and back. It’s pretty cool, I have to say.

But, it’s also a challenge, being the boss of all of my own time like this. I am on my own most days. I have no one leaning over me, making deadlines and calling meetings that I have to attend. Only my husband and kids would know if I stayed in my pyjamas all day. It would be easy to watch decor shows all morning, or make ice-cream, or tidy all the drawers in the house rather than write the papers I am supposed to be writing, and transcribe all the data still sitting waiting for me, and the send in the abstract I am still trying to think up. It would be very easy to just let these sunny days at home drift past me while doing very little of any postdoctoral substance.

This week I am working quite hard. But I have some work I am being paid for that has to be finished, and I have big deadlines that have to met and other people to account to with those, so it’s actually quite easy to leave the TV off, ignore the messy drawers and just focus on this work. But what happens when this work is finished, and I’ve been flat out every day for a couple of weeks and I am a bit meh, tired, overdue for a morning of Downton Abbey in my pyjamas? I am not sure I can give myself that morning without it turning into a few mornings, and then a slippery slope of letting days pass by while being less than productive. I know myself too well, unfortunately, to fool myself into believing that I am good at managing my own time all by myself without deadlines and people to account to.

I think this is probably an issue for anyone who is in the position of being mainly accountable to themselves for how they spend their time, and only a little accountable to others. Unless you have a super-duper work ethic that flies in the face of a whole series of your favourite show on a USB stick waiting to be watched, or inventing a new ice-cream flavour, you may have to have some strategies in place to help you manage all this time effectively. This is especially important if you have other responsibilities that claim some of that time, like fetching kids from school, or caring for someone who needs you to be there for them in some concrete way. Making sure that your work time is protected and managed well so that you get the most of out it, and can then give your attention and time elsewhere without feeling stretched too thin, or worried about all the work you still have to do, is really important.

One of the reasons I took up the postdoc was so that I could spread myself a little less thinly; so that I could work on my research and be academically engaged and productive, but also be here for my kids and focus on myself a little more too. But I am aware that all these other things that are not research and work can become so lovely and enjoyable that they could encroach on the work time, making that smaller and smaller, and making it harder for me to feel less panicked about how much I am not accomplishing, and how much I am not writing. I need a few strategies to help me stay on track too – like a work plan I can adapt and adjust as I go, and that accounts for both work and personal demands on my time; people to be accountable to, like seeking out people to write with so that I am not always writing alone, or speaking more often to my postdoc supervisor so that even if she decides not to bug me, I will at least have a sense that someone is keeping an eye on me. I need to surround myself, even virtually, with critical friends and co-travellers, much as I did during my PhD, so that I don’t feel quite so alone and isolated, and so that I can be pushed a little to do some writing that I can share and ask for feedback on (and so I can stop writing out loud to interrupt all the silence!).

Perhaps, if you are also finding yourself the boss of all of your own time, whether for a few months or a year or more, some of these strategies will help you. Perhaps you have some you can share too? I’d love to hear what they are. Right now, I’m going to try to keep going on as I have begun, making my lists and hiding the TV remote from myself. And I’m going to enjoy this sabbatical from conventional 9-5 working life for as long as I possibly can.

Resolutions and reality: starting up again

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Hello, and welcome to 2015! I hope it has started off well for all of you. 

My year has started with a bang, or a couple of them. We have just moved house, I have started my postdoc, and because of moving house, I am cut off from the internet (while our truly awful national telecoms provider is not answering repeated calls for assistance). I have had to battle slow 3G and find cafes that offer free wifi with the cost of a flat white and a scone (or two). So I am having a hard time getting my work year up and going. If I was one for making new year’s resolutions about productivity in writing, quitting sugar and being more patient on the roads, I’d be in big trouble!

I closed up shop just before Christmas in order to have a proper break from email and work-related worries. I started reading my email again, and thinking about this blog again, about 2 weeks ago, but I have done very little about either. Lots of ‘mark as unread’ so I can come back to it. Lots of doodling about blog posts, but no actual writing. Lots of meh, really. I just can’t seem to make myself get back to work in earnest. All I really have is excuses, feeling panicked about falling behind, and too much chocolate consumption.

I remember this sluggishness and ensuing panic from each year of my PhD, especially moving from year one into year two, and year two into year three. I took proper (ish) breaks each December, desperate for rest and time with my kids. But when January started up again, I battled to get back into my reading, data, research. It took me ages and some sort of crisis, like a deadline for writing or a seminar I had to present, in order for me to actually begin being productive again. There were always too many other things that needed to be done. Now, I do not have the same old excuses – an office to open up, new tutors to settle in, workshops to run for other departments, and so on. I no longer have a ‘dayjob’ as I have started my postdoctoral fellowship, and my diary is pretty empty of training, workshops and meetings for the first time in several years. And yet, and yet… I am stuck, struggling to find my work mojo after having turned it off, even if only for a few weeks. I think this may be a familiar state of affairs for many PhD scholars who have to start work and settle kids into new school years and get the rest of the lives going again in January, as well as their PhDs.

I have, in keeping with my theme from AcWriMo about trying to learn my own writing lessons, made a plan I think I can stick to. I am starting small, psyching myself into it. I am writing this post, which will get this blog, which is dear and very important to me, up and running again. I went to a lovely café yesterday and made use of their free internet to send a slew of emails that really did need to be sent. I made a few lists, and will return to said café tomorrow to keep going. By next week, when crisis point one, a conference abstract deadline arrives, I should hopefully be in a more productive space, and be getting into my groove again.

Finding your work/research/PhD mojo again after a break can take time. If you’re in this stuck place, struggling to get going again, I empathise. Perhaps, rather than making terrifying lists of all the big things you need to accomplish this whole year (I did that last year and it completely paralysed me for a good week or so), you could psych yourself into it all again slowly. Make a small list – most urgent things first. Use your coloured markers or pens to make this list:

  • What can you ask for help with? (Orange)
  • What can actually be put off or done by someone else? (Red or orange)
  • What can you indeed say ‘no’ to? (Red)
  • Now, what is yours to do, and when does it need to be done? (Green)

 

Carve out time now for your PhD/research. Put it into your diary as a meeting with yourself or your PhD and try to hold it as firmly as you would that staff meeting or meeting with your supervisor/HOD/line manager etc. Start as you mean to go on: be gentle as you get going again, but be firm with yourself and others. Your work for yourself – and a PhD often feels like this, a bit on the indulgent and personal side, especially if you are also a parent and working and have so many other things to do for others – is valuable and important. It deserves to be marked out and held sacred. You deserve to have that time, and have others respect that.

It is one thing to tell yourself this and to make this starter list, and another to hold yourself and the people around you to these ‘resolutions’. Life has a way of getting in the way. But, I think, if I start gently but purposefully, and I check in regularly, and I keep myself accountable to my plan, as realistically as I can, I will be okay. I hope more than okay, but I will settle for that for now. I hope 2015 will be everything we hope for, for us all. See you next week!

 

 

The ups and downs of study leave

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At the beginning of this year I spent a frantic week applying for a doctoral sabbatical grant from the National Research Foundation here in South Africa. These grants are designed to buy you out of your teaching/academic work for a period of time so that you can focus on and finish your PhD. I heard nothing for months, but I pinned a lot of my hopes and plans on the answer being ‘yes’. Finally, at the end of May the answer came and it was, thank ye gods, a ‘yes’. I started my long-awaited break from work in June, and had 3 months to savour and use wisely. For the first week I just revelled in not having to put ‘work’ clothes on, and the pleasure of ‘commuting’ around the corner and through the kitchen to my desk instead of halfway across Cape Town. It was, in a word, bliss to work at home in slippers and tracksuit pants and be able to get up to make tea in my own kitchen. To have silence all around me all day. To be able to think, and write and do so at a less frantic pace, not having to snatch bits and pieces of time where I could. But, while it started off well, sadly it did not continue in this vein. And it was largely my fault.

Three weeks into my leave my boys went on mid-year school holidays for 3 weeks. I worked, but at half-pace and my quiet was gone. It was frustrating and difficult. Grannies came to visit, which was lovely as they live far away and the timing of visits has to be carefully orchestrated. I kept working, but still only at half-pace, getting increasingly more worried about how little progress I was making in relation to my work-plan. Eventually the kids went back to school and the grannies went home and quiet reigned again and I picked up the pace. But then, for another set of reasons I won’t go into here, the bathroom needed to be renovated, having been left for far too long and gotten into a state it could not remain in. So four weeks of polite but noisy and messy building work ensued, as renovations almost never go according to plan and ours were no exception. The renovations ended a week before my study leave ended. Just like that, 3 months had passed and I was a month behind my schedule for finishing the first full draft. I had a few undignified tantrums, and whined, I am sorry to say, like a small thwarted child. I didn’t want to come back to work. I wanted to rewind and do it all again. I wanted to make different choices about how I let other people use my precious time, about how I used it. I cannot blame my kids or husband or leaky shower or the grannies for my lack of progress. I let all the interruptions happen. I told everyone I was fine, I was coping, not to worry, it’ll all get done. I took on big and small tasks I could probably have let someone else do, or just left for later. I didn’t protect my time. I didn’t feel like I had the right to do that.

In truth I felt guilty about my leave. Colleagues who have been in a similar position to me – working, parents, struggling to keep all the balls in the air – did not get time off to work on their theses. I was not even eligible for this leave because of the way my role is structured and I only got it because I had the funding to pay for a replacement. I felt like I was getting something I did not deserve, or at least I felt guilty that I got it when deserving others had not. So, there was that. I also truly believed that I could be and do everything and still get the work done – I didn’t protect my time because most of it never really feels like mine and because I often do cope, sometimes just barely, but still. I just feel like I have to get on and do the best I can, you know? I wonder how many women in particular struggle with part-time PhD studies because of precisely this: they don’t protect their time and ask for time off – demand time off – from other things because they don’t feel like they can or should or could. Perhaps I didn’t even want to. There is something quite seductive about being a superwoman type who does it all, but maybe that’s another post…

The thing is, though, that this ‘doing it all’ is an illusion, and you can only do bits of it well. Other things have to and will slide. And that’s okay. There are things that can wait. You do deserve time to think and work and write, and you can and should protect that time, even from kids and partners. It really is okay to have this one thing in your life (at least) be about putting you and your work first. If you are fortunate enough to get your own slice of blissful leave, do not do what I did. Make a plan, tell all the people who need you about the plan and ask them to support you. Tell your mum you love her and ask if she can visit later in the year, and say NO to the builders. The shower leaking is the worst of your worries, as is the washing up.

Why, again, am I doing a PhD?

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Sometimes doing a PhD can feel like a form of madness when you are working and mothering small needy people full time, not to mention trying to be happily married the the small people’s father.  Why on earth would you take on such a huge time and soul and brain consuming project when you already have quite a few demands on your time, soul and brain already?

Well, in my case two major reasons: the first is that I need one so that I can progress in my academic career and be taken seriously by colleagues, and not just seen as ‘that young woman who thinks she knows what she’s talking about’ (a colleague told me a while back that someone did actually say this about me, and not in any kind of nice way).  I need to prove myself to be capable and worthy, and while it grates me that I should have to get another degree to do that when the years of work and time I have put in already and experience I have gained could speak for me, I accept that this is the way it is in academia, and that this is the field I have chosen to work in. The second is personal. I want one. I want to prove to myself that I am capable of a project of this magnitude, and I want to push myself to grow as a researcher in my field. I have questions I want the answers to, and I want to know how to find them. I want to take myself more seriously.

So this is why I am doing this huge project now, when my job is getting bigger and more demanding every year, and when my children are still young enough to need me to be very present a lot of the time. They were 3 and 7 when I started, and they are 7 and 11 now so it is tough a lot of the time. Now, when I am nearing the end and have been writing almost every day and am very obsessed (there is no more accurate word) with my work, I feel I am not present enough mentally and emotionally for anyone. I am short on time and temper and sleep, and I don’t feel like I am being a very good mom or colleague. I am not really very present at work, because my mind is almost always on my PhD and what I have written and need to write and also on what comes next – papers and conferences and publication. But if I ignore my work and focus all of myself on being very present at home and at work, my PhD will slide, and I won’t get finished on time. And I need to finish now. The normal working mom juggling act is hard enough for me without all the added pressure of this PhD.

I have to say, though, that it is not all tough, and not all the time. Bits of it I like a lot – I like the way my mind is being stretched. I am becoming a better writer, a more critical thinker, a more capable reader. I am learning about the PhD process in ways that will help me, hopefully, to be a good supervisor myself one day. I have found new colleagues and made some wonderful new friends through the PhD programme I am part of. I am becoming more connected to other researchers in my field and I am really enjoying finding a place within this research community.  I am making a contribution to knowledge and that feels good, worthwhile, exciting. But when I am busy, and my kids are sick and work deadlines are looming and there are just not enough hours in the day I do wonder why I am doing this PhD, and whether there is a way for me to just pause it all so that I can catch up. I feel often that I have bitten off more than I can chew and have no choice but to swallow and finish this meal as politely and graciously as I can. I know I am not alone in feeling like this. But I also know that the struggles and the tough times are making me stronger in all sorts of ways. This journey, for all its ups and downs, is one I chose, for good reasons, and I just need to remind myself of these and keep going. As politely and graciously as I can.