Downtime is Productive

by Robyn Byrd

As winter break approaches, folks will ask writers and researchers, "so you plan to get a lot done over vacation?" First of all, winter break is not a vacation. Second... NO.

As behind as one might be on writing a thesis or dissertation (or on any other big project), it is important to take your downtime where you can get it. Even if it means filling your schedule with other things, like a day job. Some of my colleagues spent the break doing nothing. If you can afford it, downtime doing nothing can be just what you need. But if you can't, or if you're restless, then setting aside knowledge work for a time and working on "regular people" stuff instead can be a much needed respite. In the 21st century, we now know that sometimes a break from work is the only thing that can really increase work productivity. 

It is important to affirm this to yourself, just as it important to renounce the lie that downtime is lazy. Americans, even those of us who have opted out of the rat race, are obsessed with being productive, with working ourselves every hour that's available. It doesn't actually help us get much done, and it wrecks our relationship with the intellectual work we love.

I spent my winter "break" doing seasonal work and teaching intensive ESL courses for international students. I worked seven days a week. I don't recommend it. But what didn't I do? I purposely didn't work on my dissertation. Sometimes this stressed me out, but other times it was freeing. I had license not to do schoolwork. It was winter break. Besides, I had not a single hour left in the day to do anything but "real" work. I paid off the bills, almost as if I wasn't a poverty-wages grad student. I gave my kids a middle-class Christmas. And somehow, as exhausted as I was by all this... I'm ready to start my dissertation work again.

It's okay to bench yourself.

Pushing through a winter break, or even too much of summer, by working on a thesis or dissertation is a bad idea. Think of any other craft that involves such specialized, Herculean effort. Athletes, for instance, don't train like crazy for their sport in year-round. Not until it's time. If they trained every day, they would wear themselves out, open themselves up to injury, and probably become bored. And if they're smart they don't train right up until the night before the big meet. They stop to eat, and take much needed downtime to heal. Knowledge workers, mental athletes, need to allow ourselves the room to heal, to prepare, and to let downtime make us yearn for our work.

This analogy applies to musicians as well. My partner's band goes on hiatus every winter after a December Christmas show. They play hard through the summer and into the holiday season, so they know they'll burn out if they play through the year's end. In spring, someone will get a gig again. They make a plan to have one by March. And then they rest. It is then that new ideas for songs come, tunes heard on the radio remind them of what they love about music, and soon enough they are back at it, ready to rock.

It's important to note that even though I worked my butt off at not writing this winter, I didn't do it without a plan to come back. The semester system gives an unstructured person like me just the calendar I need to plan my work. Next week the university starts up again. Winter break officially ends. I will officially quit my seasonal job, and I will set to work on my dissertation, yet once more. You see, while downtime is very important, you have to set a limit on it. A couple of months was just right for me. Just enough to get lost in this different life of being a working person. After my time away, physically and mentally, I'm ready to strain my brain instead of my back.

Co-Working for Knowledge Workers

by Robyn Byrd

I'm firmly lodged in my third "stall" phase of writing the dissertation. First I stalled on the proposal; then I passed the defense after 6 months of rescheduling. Next I stalled on Chapter 2; but I pushed through that (plus an introduction) this summer by going on a distant, week-long retreat. With four chapters and all revisions remaining after a full year of being ABD...I need a plan. One that doesn't involved driving 900 miles away from everything.

How can I recreate that distraction free, work-friendly environment I found so far away? I didn't hide in the woods to work like Thoreau or Nietzsche, even though I was bunking at a house in the idyllic Catskills. Every day I drove to the nearest tiny town to work at a bookstore with a coffee shop, where many locals sat at large tables with reading lamps, and worked on writing, telecommuting, or whatever they needed to do. It was THE THING to get me working. I am hoping I can recreate this atmosphere through local co-working.

There are a few options for co-working, depending on where you live and how much cash you can spare.

Co-Work Office Spaces:

It sounds funny to pay to work, but you can and should do just that if you can afford it. Co-working office spaces provide everything you need: wi-fi, coffee, water, desk space, printers, pens, and so on. All you need to bring is a laptop! Some of these spaces are more collegiate than others. People arrive at set times and keep each other accountable, and even have the water cooler banter you'd expect in the corporate world. Other spaces are more quiet and people keep to themselves.

25N Coworking in Geneva, IL
photo courtesy 25N Coworking

Personally I would like to find a collegiate space where I can report on my days off as if it's a second job. Because technically, it is my second job, and I'm slacking pretty hard at it.

Visit co-work spaces near you to check out the culture and environment before signing up. (I'm doing that this month.) This can start as low as about $100 per month, which is a pittance if it means your dissertation is getting written. (Note the passive voice there after my months of stalling... what I mean to say is you are writing your dissertation.) Many co-working spaces also offer higher cost plans that include perqs like assigned desks and lockers for your books.

The only caveat I anticipate about these spaces is that I might not fit in. Dissertation writing is a weird thing!

Public Library Work Spaces:

"Public" is the key word here. The public library is an excellent place to work that offers many of the conveniences and tools of the university library -- but it gets you away from the university! Working in THAT building, the school's library, can be just as distracting and psychologically disadvantageous as working from home. Changing it up by using a space that is still conducive to knowledge work, yet is less familiar and full of people doing different sorts of things, can help you work.

Treat it like an appointment! Some libraries have dedicated study rooms that you can reserve for a couple of hours at no cost. Make a date of reserving one on your thesis work days. You'll have access to everything you need, and you can even search for a library with a coffee shop attached or nearby. The only cost associated with this is the commute, and you'll have to bring everything with you every time.

I have used public libraries this way ever since I started grad school, because the university library had lost its draw for me by then. They are very comfortable and welcoming.

A public library's shared work space, Naperville, IL

Monthly Meet-Ups:

Meeting once a month may not sound like much, but scheduling and hosting a meet-up of busy people probably can't happen more often than that. Though, if you think about it -- meeting once a month for a few dedicated hours means tens of hours of writing over a year! You could use these to get through a chapter's worth of work, if not more.

Several of my colleagues host informal meet-ups in their homes or in seminar rooms on campus. They keep each other accountable and share an enormous task that they all understand (the latter, you can't get from a co-work space).

If you are a student or a local to NIU, this office hosts a monthly meet-up in the Founders Memorial Library called Write Place, Write Time, on the second Thursday of every month from 6-9pm. This group is ONLY for thesis and dissertation writers (or those writing proposals for such), so again, you are in good company if you attend. Having others working alongside you on the same kinds of tasks keeps you focused and activates that inner spectator who will tell you to "get back to work!"

The Magical Coffee Shop:

The indispensable coffee bar at Inquiring Minds Bookstore
(The bookstore that saved me! In Saugerties, NY)

It's a long-shot, but if you can find a coffee shop that tolerates working loiterers, isn't too loud, and has enough work space for you, you've found magic! Coffee shops were the first modern co-work spaces in the early 2000s when the dot-com bubble created thousands of telecommuters and office-less entrepreneurs. While that bubble has burst, many coffee shop owners still expect to see a good amount of labor happening at their tables. By my calculations though, I think it might be the same cost (and a surer thing) to rent a space at a co-working office. Those lattes are expensive, and loud people can ruin all your plans.

Good Luck!

If you are a person who has an awesome home-office situation that works for you, that is great. Or if you can work anywhere without feeling distracted, that's cool too! But for many of us, we need to remove ourselves from the dirty floors, dirty dishes, and hungry kids, or from the over-familiarity of the university office and library, in order to focus. I wish I could have brought that perfect bookstore home from the Catskills with me, but I couldn't. So I need to recreate a work space that uses the power of other people's work and the effects of a consistent but impersonal environment. I don't know how else to get things done. I hope you can find what works for your work too!

The Graduate Degree: A Prelude to Knowledge Work

Investigating, analyzing, evaluating, creating, contextualizing, self-directing: skills like these are integral to the writing of a thesis or dissertation but also characteristic of the broad occupational domain called knowledge work.  To thesis and dissertation writers at any stage of their projects, below we offer thoughts on how you’re already developing—and can continue to develop—skills that are crucial for success in knowledge-oriented fields.

Tallies and Time Clocks?

Knowledge work is generally hard to quantify or measure.  Ironically, though, those who engage in such work across fields of academia tend to be fairly obsessed with counting and measuring.  Most carefully keep or monitor totals of papers presented, articles published, grants awarded, committees served on, and classes taught per year.  When you arrange your CV and the several accompanying documents needed for an academic job search, your field’s particular obsessions with such performance-related numbers boldly reassert themselves.  Other academic endeavors are sometimes summed up in terms of hours spent per week in classrooms, offices, labs, meetings, field investigations, grading sessions, or writing stints.

Yet the efforts that go into various kinds of academic production are not always easy to break down into regular time chunks.  Realistically, much academic work can keep the worker occupied from early morning to late at night, during parts of weekends, and during stretches of semester breaks.  (Let me briefly add that plenty in and outside academia do seem interested in figuring out the number of hours per week academics actually work—or in debating how many hours per week they should work.  A couple of recent reports (see here and here) suggest that such investigations and debates are complex and sometimes testy.  We avoid these issues in this post.)

Your Project: Training in Key Knowledge-Work Skills

A lot of what you do while completing your thesis or dissertation is obviously solid preparation for a future career in knowledge-centered domains.  As outlined and nicely detailed by the Careers & Employment Division at the University of Manchester, those aiming for a career in academia need to develop at least five skills for success.  Good news: as soon as you embark on your project, you’re immersed in an experience that can help you hone each of them.

Networking: As you develop relationships with members of your committee, each member can introduce you to others to help build your professional network.  In addition, while researching and writing, you can further extend your network by attending and/or presenting parts of your project at conferences.  Last year around this time, I traveled to a national conference to present a paper based on research for one of my dissertation chapters and attended multiple panels in areas central and peripheral to my academic interests.  The experience led to new contacts and eventually a request to submit a piece to a scholarly society’s publication.  Next month, I’ll travel to a regional conference to deliver a presentation with an NIU colleague and attend several discussion sessions.  You’re likely taking advantage of similar networking opportunities.  If not, seek them out.

Time Management: You’re already a knowledge worker and thus already weighing priorities and setting many deadlines of your own.  In previous posts on this blog, we’ve covered approaches to managing time during writing sessions, balancing your project with family matters, and maintaining your focus and enthusiasm by mixing work with recreational activities.  Consider such scheduling practices as sound preparation for the self-directed knowledge work of your post-degree career.

Resilience: While writing a thesis or dissertation, setbacks inevitably occur.  Data may need to be reanalyzed.  Ideas and approaches may need revamping.  Feedback on your progress from committee members—or from attendees at academic conferences—can be encouraging but also humbling.  As you get closer to the project’s completion, you’ll likely start looking for your postgraduate job.  Academic job hunting is especially fraught with pressures, rejections, and disappointments.  But lows like these that you experience throughout your project build your patience and resilience for similar wrinkles you’ll face down the road.

Presentation Skills: As a knowledge worker, you need to be able to present ideas clearly, in a variety of settings, among colleagues but also among people unfamiliar with intricacies of your work.  Each time you revise a section of your long document, you add useful material to your expanding pool of well-articulated expressions of your findings.  And you shouldn’t just aim to present them at your defense—another reason to plan to present at conferences while completing your project.  If you’re teaching, consider ways to integrate insights from your developing work in the classroom.

Project Management: At the NIU Thesis Office, we stress the value of being proactive in managing your thesis or dissertation project.  In a previous post, we featured a review of a useful book that describes the project-management approach to the dissertation.  Ultimately, you’re the manager of your project—under supervision of your director, of course.  The management experiences you gain now will certainly inform many aspects of your future knowledge-oriented employment.

Final Thoughts

Happy investigating, analyzing, evaluating, self-directing, and writing to all.  And good luck to those of you defending over the next few weeks!