*or It's Just a Damn Job
I recently suffered a short bout of ill health, a benign but strident virus that sent me to bed for a few days. It was the longest I’ve spent convalescing for a few years and whilst unpleasant and frustrating, it gave me the chance to reflect on how long my work-life balance had been out of whack. How long it had been since I hadn’t been tired.
I had been trying to shake off the same cold for a few months. It had
manifested as the bogus-sounding ‘leisure
sickness’ – a boomerang-like lurgy that seemed to stream only at weekends,
when I allowed myself to relax from work a little. In the process of flooring
me on a Saturday or Sunday, it stole me from much-needed time with the family,
before being suppressed come Monday morning when the academic hamster wheel cranked
up again.
A little research suggested what I suspected; leisure sickness is a
symptom of workaholism. In one of the only studies on the phenomenon, many of those affected were found to
share certain characteristics: a high workload, perfectionist tendencies, eagerness
to achieve, and an over-developed sense of responsibility to their work (van
Huijgevoort & Vingerhoets, 2001). Sounds boomingly familiar, even without
the structural issues in academia that necessitate a long-hours culture.
I hadn’t allowed myself enough rest time to recover from my crazy
weekly schedule for a long time. Weekends were a whirl of chores and obligations,
a period to get through before I could lozzack on the sofa for an hour before going
to bed (and lying awake, insomniac, but that’s another symptom).
On this occasion, the cold had taken hold and wasn’t taking shutup
for an answer. A colleague warned me to rest, mumbling something softly about
pre-ME symptoms and ‘long roads to recovery’. This spooked me. While I wanted to succeed in my job, I craved rest
and headspace, and did not want to be incapacitated.
So, at that point when being ill in bed tips from being boring to
secretly being a bit nice, I thought a
lot about how I can regain my balance. My list of wants is modest, but have a
common factor:
- More time to see / talk to friends and family;
- More time to allow me to run more regularly;
- More time to just be; to be with my husband and daughter, and sometimes just with me.
To get there I have a simple (though not necessarily easy) to-do list:
- I’ll use a basic app to accurately track and limit my working hours. Feeling like I’m always working has got to contribute to these feelings of exhaustion. Documenting the hours might reveal things aren’t quite as heavy as I feel they are, and when I hit my daily target; 40 hrs a week (give or take), I’ll stop. Limiting evening working will help my wellbeing hugely. I can still catch up on tasks left undone when I have to razz to the school run, but when the time’s up, I’ll stop and relax or do those things on my little wishlist.
- I’ll switch off email push notifications after my clock-off time each evening, and for the whole of the weekend.
- I’ll take my 25 days annual leave.
I’ve made these resolutions before, but this time feels different. This
semester is the first time I spoke out against a massive teaching load coming
my way, and this time, my managers (and some amazing colleagues) have diverted
it. As a result, I'm breathing easier, writing regularly
(thanks also to the writing group my School has implemented), and enjoying work more than I have in a while. This time I’ve been ill, not seriously, but
enough to kick me into action.
The Twittersphere has recently been ablaze after a tweet
asserting that you’re not a #RealAcademic unless work=life. It’s been a great conversation about our toxic
overworking culture, and has led me to revisit some wise blogposts such as
Meghan Duffy’s You do not need to work 80 hours a week to succeed in academia and Arjun Raj’s
timely How much do PIs work?
I turn 40 in a couple of months. As a measure of success, I heard
some people aim to have their pay packet match their age. For me, for now, it’s
not to let my weekly hours exceed my age.
