productivity

On Academic Productivity

How are some people so very productive in academia? I guess most of us will have a pet theory or too. This post from orgtheory.net has a nice list of productive behavior. Lists like this are worth saving an revisiting so thats a good a reason as any to post it here:

  • Team work: Almost every star I’ve asked works in large groups. If you look at the CV’s, they have tons of co-authors.
  • Division of Labor: A lot of them have told me that they are very good at assigning tasks. One of them told me he *never* does fund raising. He works with another prof who in a medical school who has access to funds.
  • Shamelessness: Most academics sulk over rejections. These folks don’t. Soon as a paper gets rejected, they send it out ASAP.
  • Recognizing diminishing marginal returns: A paper will improve between first and second drafts. These folks understand that obsession over the 2oth and 21st version is pointless.
  • Attitude: Sounds corny, but every single one of these folks has an amazing forward looking attitude. They love what they do and they see the future as bright.
  • Minimizing junk work: Some probably shirk teaching or admin work, but what I have observed is that they are ruthlessly efficient. They reuse course materials, borrow syllabi, and use teaching to deepen their knowledge of a topic.
  • Recognizing the randomness of reviews: Most people complain about the randomness of reviewers. The star publishers draw the logical conclusion. If you can get random negatives, you get random positives.So just keep submitting until it you randomly pull positive reviews.

Bottom line: Sure, some people are geniuses, but a lot of productive people simply very good at time management and they don’t let the little things get to them.

The part about junk work is the part I take most issue with. I get that shirking teaching and admin free’s up more time for writing but it also does create a bad sense of faculty and collaboration. It also means that other faculty have to take up the slack. I don’t mean that admin should become or take over your life but that’s a far distance from shirking.

Posted on by Mathias Klang

Productivity & bachelorhood

Not being part of a relationship obviously frees up more time for work (actually the same applies to being in a bad relationship but lets not go there) and Christopher Orlet has written an interesting article on this topic:

“The bachelor’s very capacity to avoid marriage is no more than a proof of his relative freedom from the ordinary sentimentalism of his sex, in other words, of his greater approximation to the clearheadedness of the enemy sex. He is able to defeat the enterprise of women because he brings to the business an equipment almost comparable to their own.” Who can argue that a brief catalog of famous bachelors reads like a roll call of the architects of Western Civilization?:

Pierre Bayle, Robert Boyle, Johannes Brahms, Samuel Butler, Robert Burton, Ludwig van Beethoven, Johannes Brahms, Giacomo Casanova, Frederic Chopin, Nicolaus Copernicus, Eugène Delacroix, Rene Descartes, Gustave Flaubert, Galileo Galilei, Edward Gibbon, Vincent van Gogh, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Hobbes, Horace, David Hume, Washington Irving, Henry James, Franz Kafka, Immanuel Kant, Soren Kierkegaard, Charles Lamb, T. E. Lawrence, Meriwether Lewis, Philip Larkin, Gottfried Leibniz, John Locke, Michelangelo, Friedrich Nietzsche, Sir Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Alexander Pope, Marcel Proust, Maurice Ravel, George Santayana, Jean Paul Sartre, Franz Schubert, Benedict de Spinoza, Arthur Schopenhauer, Herbert Spencer, Adam Smith, Stendhal, Jonathon Swift, Nikola Tesla, Henry David Thoreau, Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec, Leonardo da Vinci, Voltaire, Ludwig Wittgenstein

Similarly the contributions of the many (ostensibly) celibate medieval monks and theologians (Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Desiderius Erasmus, Michael Servetus) were essential in dragging Europe out of the dark Age of Faith and paving the way for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment.

But bachelorhood is not enough – you have to be willing to sacrifice to time and energy. On my part I have decided not to sacrifice everything anymore. In the final period of writing my thesis I was prepared to do anything to finish. I remember thinking, after working ludicrously long hours, not sleeping, eating crappy food that everything was ok as long as I got my heart attack – after I graduated. Today I will not do this. I work but I also exercise and attempt to enjoy life outside work. So I read the list of bachelors with interest but still see them as a long list of failures… I hope they were happier than I think they were.

Posted on by mklang