Adapting to Changed Circumstances

🍕 Free leftover food in the kitchen – first come, first served!

As a PhD student, those emails were great - I’d drop everything and sprint to the tea room. Free food - what's not to love!

Two decades later, I still have that instinctive reaction - despite the circumstances (and need for) free food being very different.

It’s a somewhat frivolous example, but it captures something that happens a lot in academia: we don't always consciously change our behaviour, activities and priorities when our circumstances change.

In this Hacking Academia episode, I look at what happens when we forget to adapt – after a big win or during a tough stretch.

Say you’ve just landed a major fellowship, a big promotion, or secured a long runway of funding. It’s easy to celebrate 🎉 (as you should), thank 🙏 your supporters and collaborators... but then often 𝐠𝐨 𝐛𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐛𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐚𝐬 𝐮𝐬𝐮𝐚𝐥. 

But that 𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭, which is often your best shot to step back, reassess, and ask:

💡 What *can* I do now that wasn’t possible before?

💡 What should I be having a crack at that I didn't have the time, the resources or the career breathing space to do before? What risks should I be deliberately taking?

💡 What should I be changing about my priorities and behaviour now, so when I look back at the end of this opportunity, I'm unlikely to 𝐫𝐞𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐭 that 𝐈 𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐧'𝐭 𝐭𝐚𝐤𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐈 𝐚𝐦 𝐝𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠?

The same goes in reverse.

When life gets difficult – illness, caregiving, personal upheaval – many people don't think to not keep going at full pace, not realising that hitting pause or slowing down on the non-critical work is okay. In fact, it’s often necessary.

This is very understandable of course: sometimes there's legitimately a lot of pressure. But much of the time it's an unnecessarily-self-imposed pressure (high achievers being over-represented in certain careers...) that doesn't actually need to be there. Sometimes a gentle nudge from a colleague, supervisor or mentor - "hey you can drop that for a while" - is all that's needed. 

This video shares a few types of situations where this arises from my own career and from colleagues around the world. 

👉 Watch the full video on YouTube: https://lnkd.in/dwateatr

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