Where does the time really go? I love time diary projects, so the guest for this week’s episode of Best of Both Worlds was a real treat.
Christine Tulley, a professor of English at Findley University, studies academic time use. She recently did a project looking at how female academics with children spend their time. She studied how people who were successfully navigating the tenure track and parenthood allocated their time — and what they did differently from others. Protecting time for writing (including back-up slots for when life happens) is a big part of it. This isn’t always easy, but making time for big projects consistently is how they happen.
In the Q&A we talk about how to know how far ahead to cancel plans when a kid gets sick.
Please give the episode a listen. As always, we welcome ratings and reviews. You might also consider joining our Patreon community (Best of Both Worlds pod over at Patreon). We run multiple discussion threads a week, and our next monthly meet-up is April 20th at 1 p.m. eastern, where we’ll talk summer planning. Membership is $9/month.
Yep! When I consistently worked on vacations and weekends, I definitely got a lot more writing done. Now that I no longer do it, I am much less productive. There’s only so much unpaid labor I’m willing to do with vague promises of possible rewards many years into the future. I will never feel this good again in my life — why waste it working all the time for nothing.