Time Management and Self-Organisation in Academia. Markus Riedenauer
Our goal is to encourage critical self-reflection and reorganisation, so that you achieve the highest possible level of self-reliance, success, and satisfaction with life.
All those working in academia can benefit from this book: the experienced professor who has just become dean, as well as the newly hired assistant with a temporary part-time contract. For example, those who still have limited experience and who struggle with a qualification requirement will benefit from the explanations on project management. The suggestions for the writers of a doctoral dissertation will also apply for people working on master’s theses.
Younger academics, however, have the advantage that their organisational practices are not yet strongly influenced by their institution’s common approach to work. This is because every organisational culture is inherently infectious and exerts pressure to adapt. If you use the relative freedom of the introductory phase to develop your own working style that fits your goals, values, personality, and living conditions, you will lay a very good foundation for your entire academic career. Especially in the empirical sciences and medicine, special situations may challenge you to customise the proposed instruments.
This book is about thoughtful and practical solutions, not about whining and complaining over suboptimal situations. On almost any issue, one could debate the policies in higher education. This debate should occur—but elsewhere. This book will help the scholar to cope and to succeed under the existing conditions.
The advice is backed by rich experience from many trainings, workshops, and individual coaching sessions at universities, especially in Austria, as well as insights from the specialised literature. Everyone can also benefit from personnel development services, at most universities, that offer training, coaching, and mentoring programmes.
Guide to this book
Key chapters are designed so that they can be read separately. Each case will refer to information from other sections that may be important for understanding or further work. Those who are primarily interested in methods can start with Chapter IV. If you are looking for support in mastering a particular scholarly challenge, you can start with the appropriate section in Chapter VI.
The first two chapters deal with the personal challenges facing scholars: first, the specific external conditions facing scholars in an academic institution (Chapter I), then the individual factors influencing you that must be considered so that you have criteria to select, adapt, and personalise methods for yourself. Reflecting on individual behavioural preferences (Subchapter II.1) and on the strengths and weaknesses of personal values and roles (Subchapter II.2) will reveal crucial internal determinants for a satisfied life. In addition, Subchapter II.3 identifies broader social and life circumstances that should be considered: current and hoped-for future career opportunities, income potential, as well as private plans and desires. A role analysis and longer-term planning of all areas of life make it possible to integrate professional time management into the horizon of the whole life. Self-organisation also includes careful and effective management of one’s own energies. Chapter III explains how to move from distress to eustress and flow.
The large Chapter IV expands the contents of the time-management toolbox, its subchapters build on each other. We recommend working through them in the given order and to read supplementary Chapter V for better self-organisation in terms of information management, work location, and order at the workplace.
Chapter VI applies the tools to the most important fields of scholarly activity and supplements them with specific methods, additional ideas, and references. For a deeper understanding, we recommend consulting Chapters I and II.
In the references, you will not only find further help, but also the exact bibliographical details of the citations and references, which are listed in footnotes with short titles only. However, texts mentioned only once are already cited in full in the respective note.
At the beginning of the chapters or subchapters, you will find a preview in italics of the topics that follow.
In these kinds of boxes, you will find many practical tips and hints.
•Questions set in blue font will help you select the methods that are appropriate for your situation. As you work through the questions, you will thereby individualise and adapt the tools. We highly recommend that you stop and write down your own insights, questions, and conclusions as you read. There are also a few blank pages at the end of the book for this purpose.
We are convinced that scholarly work is a beautiful, exciting, and fulfilling profession. We hope that this guidebook and workbook will also help you personally with its challenges. Good luck!
I.Specific Challenges in Academic Life—Institutional Factors
What it’s about:
Do external things distract you? Then make time for yourself to learn something worthwhile; stop letting yourself be pulled in all directions. But make sure you guard against the other kind of confusion. People who labour all their lives but have no purpose to direct every thought and impulse toward are wasting their time—even when hard at work.
Marcus Aurelius: Meditations II,7(transl. Gregory Hays, 2002)
Every profession brings with it typical challenges that must be recognised in order to adapt the overall methods of time management. Compared to other professions, scholarly work frequently offers greater freedom and opportunities, but these themselves result in new challenges. This chapter will help you understand the external factors that positively and negatively, challenge and foster your work. Finally, when considering how scholarship normally functions under typical institutional conditions, the chapter identifies some initial implications for time management.
Freedoms
Academic work usually allows above-average freedom and more personal creative space—both in terms of content and time management. This applies to research and to some extent still to teaching. For some, freedom was a motive to go into academia, and for some it is a motive to stay, despite opportunities to switch to a corporate or public service career (such as a government agency).
During their student days, many people became used to determining their daily routine largely by themselves, to being able to work mostly at home, to taking care of errands, doctor’s appointments or other things during the week in exchange for working in the evenings or on weekends, and to having few scheduled meetings during the lecture-free months. They may find it difficult to cope with core working hours from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., compulsory presence in the office, daily commutes at rush hours and keeping count of every free day.1 Since this freedom regarding time means that days, weeks, and months have little external structure, with little control and feedback on effective use of time, this flexibility often becomes a trap, especially for young scholars. We will soon discuss the very high requirements associated with effective self-organisation and personal responsibility.
In many cases, a great deal of freedom is still given when choosing a topic to research. For example, in some humanities or the arts, dissertation supervisors or similar advisors only offer minimal assistance in finding and formulating a feasible research topic. Despite the efforts of many universities to better structure doctoral studies and professionalise supervision, a lot of time is often already lost at this stage. In contrast, the natural science, economics, technical, and medical disciplines often specify possible and desired topics for qualification