Most of our clientele are academics, who face unique challenges with self-care. While we all need more self-care, typical advice around it doesn’t quite fit the academic context. So, let’s explore how to make it work!
(To be clear, we don’t think academics are the most in need of self-care. That probably goes to shift workers who don’t have as much representation in online discourse. Here we’re sticking with what we know.)
Structural Issues
Academics are embedded in social and institutional structures that devalue self-care. We are under ceaseless pressure to produce from a variety of sources and in a variety of contexts: publications, teaching, talks, experiments, and more. What makes achieving these many goals hard is that academic deadlines operate on multiple time-scales and often come unpredictably. This makes steady, constant work and the sense of self-efficacy it brings almost impossible to sustain. And so, academics are almost always behind on a variety of projects and have to pull them together with never quite enough time.
In psychology, this situation is known as a variable schedule of reinforcement, and it is the most efficient way to sculpt behaviour into locked-in, unbalanced patterns. (Think of a casino slot machine: it gives rewards in unpredictable bursts, and that’s what hacks the brain’s rewards systems to keep people gambling.) Academics are not usually tuned into rewards, but are avoiding possible punishments in the form of failure. So, in academia, almost all goals are pursued within a variable structure of crunch-times.
This variable schedule explains why it’s so hard to take time for self-care. Even when actively trying to unwind, academics have had their brains hacked by deadline anxiety. There’s also a layer of guilt over this anxiety since most academics got into the field because they love what they do, at least in a general sense. This situation is similar with teachers and social workers. Sadly, it’s a recipe for self-exploitation and burnout.
Navigating the Structure
The problems with academia can be addressed! Some people manage to thrive under this kind of system. Some solutions will have to be structural. But while we wait for those solutions, we can also do what we have to do to persist. The key, we think, is that successful academics have developed the capacity for gracefully overwhelmed work. We have to accept the situation to work within it.
There is no one-size-fits all way to find that gracefulness. Our academic coaching involves working with clients to break up and manage what can feel like all-consuming overwhelm. While each client has had unique issues, there are many universal themes in this work. There is often great empowerment in articulating those themes because they make intelligible a structure you live within. We did this and it saved our sanity. You can find more information about our academic coaching work here. The first meeting is free!
We also want to share what we have learned in our academic coaching journey. Stay tuned as we explore the multitude of ways in which we can improve the academic’s lot and leave enough room for self-care! We will explore self-efficacy, self-care, goal-setting, and compassion for yourself and others.