ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

For real pandemic productivity, try stepping off the treadmill

<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="standfirst">Not all academics are in a position to churn out endless papers during lockdowns ¨C and not all should, argues Michael Marinetto
August 19, 2020
Hobbit feet standing on grass
Source: Getty

As Covid-19 cases continue to multiply around the world, the prudent academic should probably be preparing for the distinct possibility of another period in lockdown.

So what can we learn from the last one? My mind instantly thinks back not so much to the ¡°touch up my appearance¡± filter on Zoom as the popular ¡°productivity¡± music-streaming genre. If ever there was a time for academics to turn up, log on and grind out to the sounds of Kenny Loggins and Michael Bolton, an enforced lockdown sabbatical was it.

And patently some academics¡¯ crania did indeed reverberate to the sound of Footloose and How Am I Supposed to Live Without You.?The journal?, for instance, reported a 25 per cent increase in submissions during April, the first full month of lockdown in many Western countries.

On , Isaac Newton was the poster boy for what is possible, having single-handedly revolutionised modern science during the Great Plague of 1665. The moral? We should all have been using the unexpected time bonus for finishing and submitting all those papers, grant applications and book proposals we¡¯ve been putting off since our PhD.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

But it didn¡¯t escape academics¡¯ attention that Isaac Newton was male. Pandemic productivity was gendered, with showing that women submitted and published less than men. The Italian academic put it bluntly in Nature: ¡°Academic work ¨C in which career advancement is based on the number¡­of scientific publications ¨C is incompatible with tending to children.¡±

One antidote to such inequality might be ¡¯s recommendation that we all ignore?the coronavirus-inspired productivity pressure. Ahmad, the University of Toronto political scientist who has lived and worked through war, disease and food shortages, commented that ¡°while it may feel good in the moment, it is foolish to dive into a frenzy of activity or obsess about your scholarly productivity¡±, describing such an approach as ¡°denial and delusion¡±.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

The alternative to frenzied productivity need not be passive resignation. slow-research manifesto lights the way. They recommend, in effect, an academic ¡°de-growth¡± strategy: replacing the restricted economy of calculation with a new economy of waste ¨C which pretty much covers anything that the corporate university and instrumental careerism do not value.

One of the most underrated forms of productivity is what Bill Readings (author of The University in Ruins) calls the ¡°activity of thinking¡± ¨C not simply daydreaming but real thinking. The likes of Kant, Heidegger and Wittgenstein all dedicated serious amounts of time to this, which inevitably ate into their writing time. In fact, dedicated a whole decade to thinking rather than writing.

This might seem like an impossible luxury in the modern academy, but the academic historian Yuval Noah Harari ¨C the broadsheets¡¯ favourite public intellectual ¨C dedicates two hours a day to thinking and meditating, and attributes his success with books?such as?Sapiens and Homo Deus to his marathon Vipassan¨¡ meditation retreats. Without them, , ¡°I would still be researching medieval military history¡±.

Nor need productive thinking always be structured. In their recent book, Out of My Skull, cognitive neuroscientists James Danckert and John Eastwood claim that ¡°it is actually beneficial to have the capacity to be bored¡± and just think aimlessly; it is even ¡°a spur to creativity¡±. The philosopher John Perry, emeritus professor at Stanford University, has a theory of , according to which anyone can do any amount of work provided that it isn¡¯t the work they are supposed to be doing at that moment.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

One academic figure who carved an alternative career out of structured procrastination is J. R. R. Tolkien. Despite being a world-class philologist as Oxford¡¯s Merton Professor of English, Tolkien produced very little academic research throughout his career; his close friend C. S. Lewis? him as ¡°that great but dilatory and unmethodical man¡±.

On both counts, Lewis was right. Tolkien started numerous academic projects but rarely saw them through to completion. According to his biographer, , he dedicated much of his career to teaching, playing solitaire and creating Middle-earth. When The Lord of Rings was finally published, Tolkien reports that his colleagues responded: ¡°Now we know what you have been doing all these years!... You have had your fun and you must now do some work.¡± Fortunately, he just continued with the procrastination and worked on The Silmarillion instead.

Of course, it won¡¯t have escaped your attention that Tolkien is also a man, who doubtless contributed little to the day-to-day care of his four children. A different kind of Mordor may well have been suggested to him if the bulk of his day had been spent clearing up after his little elves, instead of smoking in the senior common room ¨C and one he would never have had time to immortalise in print.

But whatever your domestic situation, using any future lockdown to take a step back from the treadmill of neoliberal productivity to think or daydream a little (even while changing nappies) holds the promise of benefiting humanity in some small way or another. Even if it doesn¡¯t take us to Middle-earth, it may take us somewhere interesting or even unique.

ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ

ADVERTISEMENT

Michael Marinetto is a senior lecturer in management at Cardiff Business School. His?Structured Procrastination Pandemic Productivity Playlist can be accessed on .

<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> POSTSCRIPT:

Print headline:?Dream a little daydream to boost pandemic productivity

Register to continue

Why register?

  • Registration is free and only takes a moment
  • Once registered, you can read 3 articles a month
  • Sign up for our newsletter
Register
Please Login or Register to read this article.
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Related articles
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Related universities
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Reader's comments (3)
A very thoughtful piece but (at least in the UK) Alessandra Minello's statement must be modified to include the raising of research funds. I know plenty of professors with fewer publications, fewer citations and smaller h-indices than mine but I cannot even make a shortlist for such positions as I am not great at getting large grants. Chasing money is also severely impacted by family responsibilities but as someone on the road to retirement, I am glad that my children will be around long into the future when everyone will have forgotten that I ever worked as an academic.
Hello msl_csp - thanks for your comment. What you say is so true - I completely agree with your comment. Career advancement depends not only on publications but also research grants as you mention. The acceptance rate of research grant applications is probably a lot lower than esteemed journals and writing an application is just as time consuming. And the awarding of research grants follows the Matthew principle - those that have will be given more.And the professional treadmill of academic life - writing papers, grant applications, networking, attending conferences - is not that family friendly. All the best.
It's not just about children. It's "family" as a whole. Let's be honest... with some of the targets academics are given, the whole work/family balance is severely sckewed towards work. The whole sector is based on the assumption that acaemics will put up with ever increasing working hours because they have a passion for the subject or research area they work in. In other sectors this would not be pushed to the extreme like in academia and there would be greater chances for being remunerated for extra hours of work. The issue in academia is also that much of what we do cannot be quantified on a temporal scale. For example, you can put together a grant proposal in x amount of hours or need ten times more hours. There's not fixed rule... And that is abused by the sector. People end up working way more hours than it's bearable physically and mentally.
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Sponsored
<ÁñÁ«ÊÓƵ class="pane-title"> Featured jobs
ADVERTISEMENT