Skip to content

A typology of academic (daily) work: “runway work”, “grunt work” and “writing/research” work

The other day, on Twitter I wrote a thread trying to think through my own ideas about a potential classification or typology of work. Like I normally do with anything that is scholarly, I write about it because I’m trying to clarify my thoughts in my own head. This typology of work should be generalizable enough to apply, obviously, to life before, during and AFTER the COVID-19 pandemic.

I think sometimes, in our institutionally-induced anxiety to “produce more, more, more” we devalue other kinds of work we do. In another thread, I distinguished 3 types of work:

  • “runway” work (hat tips to Dr. Meredith Clark who coined this “runway work” term) – this is work we need to get done even before we start “producing” (creating slides requires runway work that involves researching/reading).

Annotating reading Everything Notebook etc

  • “grunt” work – this is work that does not “appear” like it leads to getting the “most valued” work, “writing/teaching/researching”, but that we need to do. Transcribing interviews and field notes (though this could be considered “runway” work). Cleaning Mendeley/Zotero fields.

Dropping and cleaning references in Mendeley

  • “writing/researching work” – the one where we sit down and produce words on the page, edit them, produce/insert graphs, run models, etc.

#AcWriMo

As I said on Twitter, I’m trying to clarify this typology in my own head too. But basically, the point I’m trying to make is that there’s a lot of invisible work involved in getting even 10 minutes of writing done.

WE SHOULD VALUE IT ALL.

And don’t even get me started on care work. Writing while homeschooling 3 kids? Impossible or next to impossible (I salute you, academic parents).

In academia, contrary to this view from outside, we work A LOT and do a lot of stuff “behind the scenes”. Stuff that is not visible to a lot of people. Work that those who have systematically devalued higher education and academia are not seeing.

We should make this work visible.

Posted in academia, productivity, writing.

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 17, 2020

Time spent “on the runway” is time well spent

A week or so ago, I discussed how much time I spent every morning just “getting warmed up”. I love how Dr. Meredith Clark put it “3 hours of runway”.

There is A LOT of preparation work that goes into doing stuff. For example: earlier last week, I was part of a panel. We met at my 4:30am (11:30am Paris time), via Zoom, but I had to wake up at 3:30 am to shower, read again the questions we would be discussing, write up a few notes about what I wanted to say, etc.

I finished a paper last week, yes. BUT I spent hours creating the dataset. I also spent hours cleaning up the references of everything I downloaded and read. I uploaded hundreds of articles on to Mendeley and cleaned the fields so citations would turn out ok. I also invested a lot of time coding the articles I read. HOURS reading and re-reading.

Yes, I am a proponent of the “write every day” mantra. But if the “runway” time is way more than the time we actually have to write, then it’s obvious we’re not going to get any work done. I did not realize how much runway time *I* needed until I had to do dishes, cook, wash, much more regularly.

Posvar Hall (University of Pittsburgh) desks

Under normal circumstances (when I am able to pay a house cleaner, laundry, buy food, etc.) OBVIOUSLY I get more work done. Right now I spend a lot of time in the “runway”. I always knew I was privileged, but right now it’s sinking in even more.

As I have written before, sad as this sounds, we DO have to do The Grunt Work.

Posted in academia, productivity.

3 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 2, 2020

Writing to understand: A personal tale of my journey to become an academic writer and overcome impostor syndrome

I really love writing. I absolutely do. But hasn’t always been like this.

Writing on campus

As a child, I actually did not like writing very much. Two factors influenced my enjoyment for the actual process. First, my Dad used to have a column in the local newspaper. Because his child was a book worm, he thought to himself, “why not develop Raul’s writing abilities?”. So he asked me to write columns about stuff I was curious about, and he would ask the newspaper editor to publish my op-eds.

Ironically, I ALWAYS felt impostor syndrome.

My older brother (Juan) had a natural talent for writing, specifically for novels, short stories, and fiction. I was jealous of the fact that he had filled notebook after notebook with his amazing short stories. He was, and remains, an excellent fiction writer.

At the time, at about the tender age of 10 years old, I felt like an impostor. As absurd as this may sound. I never saw myself as a writer despite having published many newspaper op-eds, whereas I felt that Juan was an accomplished one because he wrote fascinating, captivating, riveting stories.

Writing laptop at home

Until I realized I had a talent not for writing fiction and stories, but for reading, analyzing, and understanding. What I wrote was different from what my brother wrote. I was, and remain interested in writing TO UNDERSTAND and make sense of the world.

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

To this day, that’s why I write. And now I actually enjoy the process of researching, analyzing data, synthesizing the literature and writing up what I find. I love writing, AND I love MY writing.

This “enjoying academia and writing” facet of mine is most prevalent when I’m writing about something I deeply care about. Obviously, I also feel…

That’s why you see me writing bits and pieces every day, and then three weeks in a row, WHAM BAM THANK YOU SIR and there you go, three journal articles out for review and a book chapter back to the editor.

Anyway, I think that the best piece of advice I can give my students and anybody who follows me on Twitter, or reads my blog, is to just relax. The big break, the “a-ha” moment, the “eureka” instant will come.

In the mean time, we need to keep the gears grinding. And under these circumstances, with great care, compassion and without stressing out. Work is and will always be there. Let’s just survive.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 2, 2020

On why I love libraries so much (an ode to librarians, libraries, and library science)

I love books, I love reading, and I absolutely, completely, entirely adore libraries. I would have become a librarian had this been much more of an option for me at the time I was choosing careers.

CIDE's library building

One of the libraries I love the most in the entire world: CIDE Region Centro’s in the city of Aguascalientes. I was the library representative for 7 years and I still miss working with librarians to develop collections.

There are few things that lift my spirits as much as seeing photographs of libraries across the globe. Probably just as much as actually being in one, or reading a book. Over on the Twitterz, I requested that my followers send me photos of libraries they might possibly have in their archives.

I am a polymath because my parents always instilled in my a love for reading and knowledge. We always said that the family’s guild was going to be “education”.

And it definitely is.

My late auntie was a teacher. My Dad is a lawyer who taught in law school. My brothers and I all tutored learners since we were very young. I was 11 when I started teaching literacy programs in gang-riddled territories. How my parents gave me permission is beyond me.

My parents and auntie were always avid readers so their personal libraries have always been huge. When I was 12 I learned Dewey and Library of Congress classification schemes. I know how to calculate Cutter numbers. I’ve had a library card since I was 6 years old.

I classified my parents library and set up a home loan system. At 13. I have always loved reading and learning. Anybody who has been to my house and/or my CIDE office knows how much I love books (and reading them). I dreamed of becoming a librarian, studying library science.

Koerner Library at UBC

The University of British Columbia’s Koerner Library in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I owe them a big “thank you” for helping me track down sources, articles, etc. for my PhD dissertation.

I quite clearly remember my parents’ face when I said I wanted to be a librarian:

“Will there be enough jobs in the world of libraries and will there be enough libraries to give you a job?”

I became a chemical engineer instead. But my love of libraries has never even remotely faded. Because I’m a professor now (and I’m single and childless with no pets) I can now buy books with abandon. Sometimes book publishers send me free books. I give them away to libraries. Many books of mine have ended in the CIDE library collection. I also support public libraries and regularly donate books to the several ones I frequent here in Mexico.

Because I study comparative public policy using ethnographic methods (and I get invited to give talks and workshops across the globe), I get to visit hundreds of libraries.

Fish Creek Library (Calgary)

The Reader’s Nook at Fish Creek Library in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.

Being inside a library is a huge balm for my soul. I love teaching, I love educating, I love learning. And I love books and libraries. Because we are all house-bound, I needed an emotional pick me up by looking at libraries across the globe (many of which I’ve visited already). Thanks to my Twitter followers for feeding my soul.

May I be able (when this is all over) to come back to my hometown (Vancouver) and give away physical copies of my books as a token of gratitude for all your help. Thanks, librarians across the globe. I’m sure you miss your collections & your readers too. Sending love.

Posted in academia.

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – May 1, 2020

Writing by memorandums

Thanks to a relatively extended bout of health, I have been writing a lot. Even more exciting than that, I’ve been FINISHING UP a lot of papers. This afternoon, I managed to finish a journal article that I had long overdue. I consider this achievement a major victory. Most of the stuff I’ve been writing and finishing up is part of a package of papers, books and articles I had to put in the back burner because of my poor health.

AcWri at my Mom's home office

Yes, I have submitted one revise-and-resubmit back to the editor, two journal article manuscripts for peer review, one book chapter. I have completed all of these under the current trying circumstances of a global pandemic of a coronavirus and shelter-at-home orders. Admittedly, I’ve been productive, and my feeling healthy is probably the major factor, plus the fact that I am not teaching this semester, and because of the pandemic, I am also not travelling at all.

But people still seem to think that I write extraordinarily fast. The truth is that whenever people think I am a super fast writer, they’re probably thinking I literally *just* started a paper 24 hours before submitting it.

Reading highlighting scribbling and Everything Notebook

This process doesn’t work well for me.

The truth is, whenever you see me finishing something up, I probably already had a huge chunk of the manuscript pre-written in small bits and pieces.

I write by memorandums.

I learned to write memoranda (memorandums?) in graduate school, and like many of the things I do now as a professor, I still write memos.

As you can see from my Twitter thread, my process is very similar to the one championed by David Sternberg and Joli Jensen: having a Project Box. The only difference is that my Project Box is digital: I open a folder in Dropbox for each paper and a sub-folder for the PDFs associated with that particular manuscript.

What I find is that memorandums can be part of a global strategy that is much chiller and less stressful than trying to remain focused on the big picture. Memos can be simply quick “notes-to-self” written in adhesive Post-It notes, or scribbles on the margins of a paper.

What I did this morning was to assemble all the memos I had already written for this particular paper. To note: I did not have written 10,000 words in memos. I probably did have about 7,000 which means that yes, I did write 3,000 words in one day. But that’s because I had he mental space, the physical space, the time (and an impending deadline that I cannot avoid because it means letting someone down that has been incredibly kind to me).

Now, all I have to do is edit, cut words/add words, move stuff around, re-read and format the paper. But again, I insist: YOU DO NOT HAVE TO WRITE 3,000 WORDS PER DAY.

AcWri

Whatever you can add to a memorandum is good enough (yes, 15 words IS good enough).

Whatever time you can devote to your work is good (yes, 10 minutes is enough).

We’re in a pandemic. BEING WELL (YOU AND YOUR LOVED ONES) IS THE PRIORITY.

There’s enough pressure on us to take what I just wrote as 1 more reason to feel pressure. On the contrary. If I share my process (and my life) is to remind you that less than 6 months ago, I almost died of chronic pain and chronic fatigue.

I am writing now because I’m healthy.

DO WHAT *YOU* NEED TO DO.

Don’t listen to your inner demons or the external pressures. Right now the goal is to survive this !@#% pandemic. If my process helps you in any way, take it (or adopt parts of it). Don’t feel pressured by it. Or by academia, writ large.

Posted in academia, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , , , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 29, 2020

Toilet paper hoarding, reverse quarantining and individual responses to governmental inaction

This morning I wrote a Twitter thread about how my research on the politics of bottled water can help us understand why individuals hoard toilet paper, N95 masks, gloves and other protective equipment. I think I can get something more scholarly out of this, but at least, I wanted to get some thoughts down on paper.

Some people (particularly those fond of specific governments and parties) seem to be upset and/or surprised about the fact that certain populations have taken steps to protect themselves from the COVID-19 pandemic well before governments started visibily proactive measures.

Hoarding toilet paper, face masks, and important protective products for health care workers is rightfully seen as “doing something wrong” (it IS wrong considering that so many health care workers, immunocompromised individuals and vulnerable communities are unable to access protective equipment right now). Using my research on the politics of bottled water, let me explain to you why people are doing this, and why they were anticipating that their governments would not be able to provide protection for them so they had to take it upon themselves to protect their loved ones and their own well-being.

Swedish bottled waterMexico is the world’s top per capita consumer of bottled water. One of the key factors that drove this phenomenon is the government’s absolute dereliction of duty. After the 1985 Mexico City earth quake which left much of the city’s water delivery infrastructure network destroyed, the National Water Commission started PROMOTING bottled water consumption as a strategy for self-protection. or the Mexican government (and for many others across the globe) it’s much easier to transfer the responsibility of self-protection to the individual citizen. This is what I call an abdication of duty.

Individuals do this based on what Andrew Szasz calls “inverse quarantine” (or reverse quarantine). Szasz notes a peculiar phenomenon in the consumption of bottled water, organic food, and individual oxygen tanks.

These are self-protective strategies where citizens realize that government is not going to protect them, so they need to protect themselves.

You (broadly construed you) may be able to protect yourself by buying bottled water (or organic food, or individual oxygen tanks, or your own N95 masks, gloves, etc.) But inequality means that not everyone can do what you can, i.e. protect themselves. So that’s where government needs to step in. If we stop demanding public services from government, those who are most vulnerable won’t be able to access those services. It doesn’t matter if we don’t use them (i.e. if you go to a private hospital).

We still need a functioning health system. Same with my other two loves and research interests, water and waste. We need a functioning government that is able to adapt fast to the rapidly changing needs of a heterogeneous set of populations with diverging and wildly varying needs. Reverse quarantine only gets us so far.

This reverse quarantine lens can also be transferred to understanding why sub-national units have gone against the federal government in their policy responses: They’re reverse quarantining their populations. If the federal government won’t provide for their citizens, then heir subnational counterparts (states, cities, municipalities, provinces, autonomous communities) will do it instead of the federal government.

And that’s just one aspect where studying the politics of bottled water can give us great insight into how policy responses to a pandemic can emerge from civil society groups or subnational units.

Posted in academia, research.

Tagged with , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 18, 2020

On the value of annotated bibliographies as scholarly outputs

Recientemente I wrote a Twitter thread on the value of annotated bibliographies, which I wanted to turn into a blog post because I wanted to really strengthen my argument. As most of you who read my blog post know, I HAVE written about annotated bibliographies, literature reviews, systematic reviews, etc.

In my view, an annotated bibliography, a literature review and a systematic review are three important exercises in systematizing all the material we read. In my view, ABs, LRs and SRs have increasing degrees of complexity, as I show below.

Annotated Bibliography Lit Review Systematic Review

Source: My own construction.

This thread started at the request of one of my students, as the tweets below show.

For me, producing an annotated bibliography and/or gnerating a bank (or set) of rhetorical precis (or a bank of article and book chapter summaries written in index cards) is the prerequisite step BEFORE writing the literature review.Often times, my students simply prefer to show me their Excel Dump.

CSED and reviewing the literature

Personally, I very strongly believe that Annotated Bibliographies are legitimate scholarly outputs. For one of my projects on water conflicts, I asked one of my research assistants to produce an annotated bibliography on the sociological concept of “framing” and “Frame Analysis”

Anybody who reads my AB on Comparative Ethnography can say “oh wow, there’s X author and Y author, and Z book and W chapter, and those are probably the first ones I should read”. It saves time for other scholars (including my own students).

The intermediate step between writing an annotated bibliography (or building a deck of index cards on a topic, or a bank of rhetorical precis, or a set of Synthetic Notes) and producing the Literature Review is the DIGESTION, ANALYSIS AND SYNTHESIS of everything they’ve read.

Overall, I strongly believe in the value of teaching our students to do Annotated Bibliographies, THEN Literature Reviews, THEN Systematic Reviews. My website has resources on each one of these, and the links above in the tweets shown should also work. Hopefully this post will be of use to instructors and students alike!

Posted in academia, research, research methods, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 17, 2020

What are the differences between a Research Trajectory, a Research Programme and a Research Pipeline?

A few days ago, I saw a post in a discussion forum on how to write a Research Trajectory document. The conversation that ensued prompted me to consider how *I* viewed the different documents that we produce not only for job-seeking purposes (the Research Programme) but also for advancement reasons (the Research Trajectory), and for our daily, weekly, monthly and yearly planning (the Research Pipeline).

#AcWri at the hotel in Copenhagen

Other people may see these documents differently, but this is how I have conceptualized the differences, however subtle. The table below gives an idea of how I conceptualize them.

Research Workflow

Source: My own creation.

A Research Trajectory, in my view, is the conceptual part, where you draw connections between what you started researching, and how your thinking has evolved throughout the years.

To me, a Research Pipeline is the sequence of publications and projects you have planned, and what you’ve already gotten out, and it has a sequential feel to it, much like a Gantt Chart. In my conceptual model, the Research Pipeline is fed by the Research Trajectory, which is more “macro”, large scale.

For example, let’s look at my own Research Trajectory. I started doing research on how we could apply Integrated Assessment (a tool normally used to understand climate change) to questions of industrial restructuring of inter-linked industries in geographically-close locations under multiple stressors. That was my PhD dissertation.

I have always been driven by questions of collaboration. What makes agents collaborate to properly manage resources? So my next research project after the PhD was focused on how to collaboratively govern wastewater (remember my conversation with the Ostroms?).

Once I got a better understanding of how wastewater was governed, I moved towards a different medium (solid waste). And then I moved to bottled water, its governance and politics. To me, you can understand a researcher’s maturation/evolutionary process by looking at their research trajectory.

I’m going to give another example. Say that for your PhD thesis you worked on the history of water in Aguascalientes. And your first book project, based on the dissertation, will be on the history of water in Aguascalientes over the first period (1880-1920). You could very well design a research trajectory that moves you to say, the history of waste governance in Aguascalientes, same period.

That’s probably going to take you at least 3 years to learn the literature, do the archival research necessary, etc. So your Research Pipeline may have a couple of articles from where you can then spin off your second book, the first one coming out on year 4 and the second one coming out on year 5, and then you can have the full manuscript, say by year 6 or 7. In my view, you’re moving historiographically from studying the history of resource governance across media, though you could also switch time periods, or cities, or do comparisons across time periods AND cities AND countries.

And then there’s the Research Program, which I see as a much shorter frame document where you say, “ok, to move into the politics of hazardous waste, I need to start doing fieldwork in a different city/country” and you establish the steps (per year/bi-annually) to get there.

So, my Research Program for the next 24 months involves
– Getting my book out on the politics of sanitation
– Writing up all the fieldwork from my waste pickers project
– Getting some more work done on the politics of bottled water.
(obviously surviving COVID-19, because yes that is also in my plans!)

To recap. In MY view (hopefully other people will agree)

  • Research Trajectory: big picture, topics, evolution of thinking, which new questions I want to investigate.
  • Research Pipeline: the timed, scheduled, planned outline of which articles, books, book chapters, papers you’re going to get done by when to achieve the goals you set in your Research Trajectory.
  • Research Program: shorter term plan of work to get done within a specific time-frame.

In sum: You feed your Research Program (Programme for us Canadians) off your Research Pipeline, which you create based on your Research Trajectory.

Hopefully this conceptualization will help fellow scholars develop their own documents!

Posted in academia, planning, productivity, research.

Tagged with , , .

1 comment

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 17, 2020

Staying in touch with your writing: Opening the document on a regular basis

My oldest brother is a tenured, full professor at California State University Los Angeles, in Los Angeles, California (USA). As a result, we frequently talk about the challenges and joys of our lives as professors. This past week, we were chatting about all the stuff we need to submit for publication, and how difficult it is to get stuff out when you’ve been out of touch with your research for a while, particularly with a specific piece of research. I told my brother about Joli Jensen’s “Write No Matter What” and how I, personally, implement Jensen’s approach to “writing, no matter what”.

What I think becomes super stressful right now, and difficult, is to stay in touh with our writing. Normally, we’re always under stress. But with the current global pandemic of COVID-19, it is even harder as we implement “shelter-at-home” practices and (particularly those who do care work and have children) deal with the home components of working from home all the damn time.

AcWri setup

I told my brother that one way in which I, personally, have stayed in touch with my writing, is SIMPLY OPENING THE DOCUMENT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE WORKING ON. This sounds ridiculously easy enough and yet, I know from MY own experience that more often than not, we forget to open the document we must be working on, thinking “I will open it when I have the time”. Well, the reality has set in: we’re never really going to have the time, per se.

Workflow: Finishing a paper

We’re living in unprecedented times, and one chill, no-pressure way in which we can stay in touch with our writing, even if for only 5 to 15 minutes, is to open the document. Reading what we’ve written, checking what we could write, maybe spend those 15 minutes writing even if it’s only one sentence, this process keeps us in touch with our writing and our research. Even if we’re just at the data analysis stage, opening up Stata, or R, or looking at the dataset in Excel, or the qualitative data corpus in N*Vivo or MAXQDA, or the map in ArcGIS or QGIS, we can still stay in touch with our research.

Simply by opening the damn document.

I know for a fact, this is hard to do for me, more often than not. But over the past few weeks, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Instead of stressing out over what I have not finished, I simply try to stay in touch with my writing by opening the document on a regular (usually daily) basis.

Important to remember: we are living under a lot of stress. The purpose of this strategy is to relieve us from additional pressure. I think we’re going to have to find ways to write, but these need to be tamed and mediated by how much stuff we need to do at home, ON TOP OF OUR SCHOLARLY COMMITMENTS. As I told my brother: it’s not “write 1,000 words per day”. It’s not “finish this paper this weekend”. It’s “let’s open the document, check where we are, and how we can move it forward slowly, no pressure, no stress”.

I have always promoted a chill, no-stress approach to writing (see my post on how we can develop a writing practice by focusing for 15 minutes, writing 125-250 words). I think this strategy is going to have to be the way forward within these circumstances of extreme uncertainty.

Posted in academia, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

5 comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 17, 2020

Writing and revising I: Write to withstand scrutiny from an audience that cares

I find working at home every single day, all day, staying with my Mom, in my childhood room’s home office, and not teaching this semester, extraordinarily weird. COVID-19 (“the coronavirus”) is keeping me and millions of other people in Mexico and around the world locked inside our houses to avoid contagion and break the chain of viral transmission. In my case, after months of battling psoriasis-dermatitis-eczema, this also means that I have had the mindset, time, books, articles, notes, and computer equipment to write.

FINALLY.

Library Cubicles at El Colegio de Mexico

I feel like I have been having writing breakthroughs and I feel incredibly happy.

I also have this feeling that I have been gaining new insights into academic writing. One of the most valuable, I think and that I would like to share with my readers and Twitter/Facebook followers is to find our own voicet we should be ready and looking to write for an audience that cares, and write with enough confidence, evidence, and argumentation, that our writing can withstand scrutiny. But not only critical examination from Reviewer 2, but also, from audiences that are friendly and care about us and our development.

Writing while in Berlin

On a regular basis, I ask fellow scholars to scrutinize my work, and provide me with feedback.

I VERY, VERY, VERY carefully choose the people I ask for advice. If I wanted to be emotionally obliterated by Reviewer 2 on a regular basis, I would. I don’t. I like receiving eedback from people who are super smart, but also who will be kind and generous and take care of not trying to make me feel like I’m stupid. I have many people in that particular posse, and I ask them depending on the topic. For example, on global environmental politics…

I mentioned above the Twitter IDs of a few scholars (of the many I that I am lucky to be able to ask!) that I have requested feedback from. Here, I included some in the water and waste fields. Again, these are scholars whose research I love and admire, and who respect my work and care about me enough to provide gentle, caring and meaningful yet critical feedback:

I find this to be both the best component of academia (having someone who will read your work with a critical eye and genuine care) and at the same time, the hardest. For newcomers into academia, students, early career scholars, it is hard to build a network. It has taken decades for me to build mine.

My #AcWri process integrating reading CSED

Finding a trible, a posse, is the challenge of modern academia, I believe. Encountering and engaging THOSE PEOPLE. Those individuals who will generously provide you with rigorous, challenging but nurturing feedback. Ideally, you should be surrounded by dozens of them, but I know this is just in an ideal world.

I am grateful that I do have my people. I can basically ask many scholars for advice, knowing that they will read my work carefully, offer constructive advice, call my bullshit if they see it, and challenge my evidence, assumptions and argument. Obviously I am more than happy to do this for them as well.

Folks are willing to engage with your work generously (generally speaking).

This is very important if we are to transform academia from within.

Let’s do this.

Posted in academia, research, writing.

Tagged with , , , .

No comments

By Raul Pacheco-Vega – April 12, 2020