As we work to make higher education equitable and inclusive, we face a fundamental challenge: scaling our offerings to a larger student body without scaling the faculty in the same proportion. A key aspect of access is cost, and bringing additional faculty into the mix is a burden that could drive tuition into unattainable levels for many of the students we hope to reach.
What’s a prof to do as their list of responsibilities grows? The weeks don’t get longer just because our todo lists do. Unfortunately, the path to professorship involves many late nights and long work weeks. We teach ourselves in grad school to work – do the work until it’s done.
Why do we do this to ourselves? Simple: the academy attracts true believers – folks who are so passionate that the many challenges and hurdles we face on our path to success seem more like speed bumps than walls.
Fortunately, the solution is simple. Faculty must develop the willingness to forgo “good opportunities” while they wait to commit to “great opportunities.”
I once read that Warren Buffet credits his success to fewer than ten deals over his five decade career.
It’s natural early in our careers to try to impress by saying “yes.” The truth is that early on, our priorities must be simple and short. Teach our courses with excellence. Pursue research that aligns with our long term vision. Recruit graduate students who show true promise without needing micromanagement. Publish our efforts in appropriate venues.
That’s it. Everything else is a hard “no” until we’re up and running. Sure, committee work can be rewarding. So can advising students orgs, giving guest lectures, developing new courses, branching out into entrepreneurial ventures, serving professional orgs, and so on. But if you’re new, then the answer is “not yet.”
The truth is that early career faculty aren’t judged on too many axes. You need to teach well, research well, and write well. Everything else is a distraction. Don’t do it yet. Give yourself permission to be excellent at a few key areas, rather than decent at many.
A million steps up in a million directions will average out to leave you right where you started. A million steps in a few targeted directions leads to tremendous distance in the direction of success.
Go get it! But give yourself permission to say “no” to good so you can say “yes” to great. The reward will be entering that amazing space we dream of – a flow state that actually frees us to do the hard work of intellectuals: deeply thinking about key ideas, and growing into the thought leaders we’re meant to be.
Need a little help?
Here’s a slide deck I created to show you how I use Time Budgeting to spend my precious time on the most important things each week.
