Productivity seasons

On waxing and waning productivity efforts

Recently spring has sprung: it seems warmer, sunnier, friendlier outside, and my kids are playing at parks more often. It’s also the end of the academic spring semester (for those of us on the American semester calendar), and I’m busy wrapping up my teaching while looking ahead to summer.

The shift academics experience from the semester to the summer is a big one. For many of us, it’s a shift from intense days of meetings and teaching multiple classes to days that are structured only by whatever care work obligations we may be trying to do at the same time, such as caring for kids who are out of school for the summer. While some academics teach in the summer, the rest of us often try to protect at least half days for our research. There are variations, sure, but whatever your job entails in the summer, the summer months are often more relaxed and more focused, with fewer distracting meetings as interruptions.

It would be strange for an academic who operates on this seasonal calendar to think that their experience of productivity is the same during the height of the busy semester as during the long, concentrated blocks of time during the summer. After all, these different periods of time feel very different in our bodies. Speaking for myself, during a busy time of the semester when I have classes to prepare, assignments to grade, and various service meetings to attend, I can get stressed and frazzled, putting off domestic obligations like laundry and taking almost no time for myself. I might be underslept and focused only on getting from one deadline to another.

Seasons like academic semesters affect us and our productivity because they affect our bodies. Other things, I think, do too. Kate Northrup, in Do Less: A Revolutionary Approach to Time and Energy Management for Ambitious Women (2019), writes about aligning your productivity with your menstrual cycle. I wouldn’t go quite that far, as I’ve never felt a strong resonance between my cycle and anything else in my life, but if it suits you, go for it. The larger point is, I think, an instructive one: our fickle, changing bodies bear on our productivity.

At different times—of the year, of the week, of the day, even—we feel different, we have different energy and different capacities for getting things done. After my baby started daycare at six months, I abruptly (and unconsciously) shifted from intensely working during baby naps to spending a significant portion of the day napping myself (making up for all of those brutal sleepless baby nights!), a phase that lasted about three weeks. More generally, I go through periods of exercising and periods of not exercising. I go through periods of reading mystery novels before bed and periods of not reading anything before bed. There are plenty of things that I do day in and day out, by contrast—namely care work tasks for caring for my three kids—but some things are more seasonal. Some things depend on the state of my body and mind at the time. And my body and mind seem to go through phases—one month or two reserving energy and one month or two expending energy in all directions.

All this means that you may feel differently on one day than on another. You may be able to get more done on one day than on another. You may even go through entire periods of weeks or months when you get more done or less done. All of this, I think, is normal. We are not robots. Our energy and our capacity ebb and flow.

If you’re in a low period—maybe this is speaking directly to those academics who are at the end of the semester and are barely hanging on—know that the high periods will come. Take care of yourself. Rest. Gather your energy for a more productive period, rather than beating yourself up for what you’re not getting done now.

One of the worst things we can do for our productivity is to add in negative self-talk. I am strongly pro- self-forgiveness and self-kindness when it comes to productivity. Accepting that our productivity comes and goes in seasons is integral to appreciating the natural ebbs and flows of our bodies and minds. This is why we need an approach to productivity—like tending, which involves accepting your body for what it is—that takes into account the fact that we may currently be in a less productive phase.

The optimistic note to conclude on here is that productivity will come. I firmly believe it. We may have difficult seasons when we’re doing the bare minimum and making little progress on the big projects that matter the most, but seasons of energy and focus are on the horizon. I believe this because I experience it, continually. The real question is how to make best use of our time and energy when we have it. For that I suggest tending.