The “Accomplish Two Things Before Anything Else” approach: Dealing with academic life under pressure

As I’ve stated before, I’m a professor at a very small university with wonderful colleagues so I enjoy the privilege of having smaller class sizes and a lower teaching load. However, I feel the same pressures to publish, teach, do service as many others because the expectation in my institution is that we behave as though we are in an R1, which puts enormous levels of pressure on our performance.

I am currently chairing two searches for new tenure-track faculty and thus I can’t use my No Email Before Noon rule at least until the searches are completed, so I’ve been trying to find a way in which I can continue doing my research without letting down my institution and job candidates. To do this, I try to follow even more closely my “Accomplish Two Things Before Anything Else” approach. I usually do this on a regular basis, but now that I’m under more pressure to respond to emails in the morning and throughout the day, it’s become even more important that I do it.

The Accomplish Two Things Before Anything Else approach is quite simple. I set out to write SOMETHING and read SOMETHING every day. Even if it’s writing 25 words of a new memorandum, or just the first page or abstract of a new-to-me research article or book chapter, I try to write and read every day.

Every. Single. Day.

I don’t get out of the house nor do I open my email before I get *some* writing done and *some* reading done. That’s why I champion smaller goals. During crunch time, I can’t stay sitting at my computer until I crank 1,500 words. So, I set out to accomplish at least two little things. This approach liberates me from the guilt of “you’re not doing your research” and frees my mind to enable me to do the work that I need to do.

I tweeted about this approach so you can open my Twitter thread by clicking anywhere on the tweet below.

787 words. I felt stuck at about 87 and then BOOM, ideas started to flow. It’s like @explorstyle says.. We write … pic.twitter.com/xVByuc35p1

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) April 16, 2018

I have the same temptations that all y’all do: I wake up and want to check Twitter, and my email is there, tempting me. So, during crunch time (like now that I am chairing two searches for TT professors) when I can’t say “sorry, no email before 12 noon”, I stay with 2 goals.

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) April 16, 2018

I’m going to read ONE article (AIC+CSED) and then BOOM off I go to campus to deal with the barrage of stuff that accumulated while I was at #ISA2018 and #AAG2018 My strategy is to NEVER leave my house before accomplishing TWO things, small goals (25-75 words, 1 AIC/CSED).

— Dr Raul Pacheco-Vega (@raulpacheco) April 16, 2018

And while today I was lucky to write 787 words, other days I write 65 words and that should be enough. Today I’ll do an AIC-CSED combo, because I have enough time, but I could just as easily simply read an article’s abstract because I don’t have any more time. It’s kind of a simplified version of my Quick Wins approach. Two Quick Wins: write a few words, read ONE article. Hopefully this approach works for other people!

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