20: How Are You at Managing Deadlines in Higher Ed?

How do you respond to your various deadlines and projects in higher education? In my case, I wasn’t very skilled at managing my deadlines at the beginning of my academic career. Over the years, I’ve had to learn how to cultivate time management skills, prioritize, and create systems to support my various projects. 

Most importantly, I’ve become more aware of how I personally approach and handle deadlines that involve research and writing.

In this 20th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I want to talk about deadlines in higher ed. Because this is something that all academics have to deal with on a regular basis. And I’d like to offer you some insights on how to manage your deadlines with more ease and even grace. 

Find the full transcript for this episode, as well as links to additional resources that I will include at the end of the transcript at RisewithClarity.com/20.

Dr. Katherine Lee is a Higher Ed Coach and Career Strategist and a former tenured professor at an R1 university. She helps women of color faculty to manage the tenure track, navigate politics, and take the next steps to advance their careers. To find more resources or to work with Katherine, check out her website at: Rise with Clarity.

Transcript

In the first semester of my PhD program, I really struggled with keeping up with all of the reading and with meeting writing deadlines. I pulled all-nighters to finish seminar assignments and at times I had to ask for 1 or 2 day extensions. 

One person in my cohort called me on this, saying: “You never turn in your papers in on time.” 

I will always remember that comment and the judgment that accompanied it. I internalized that as shame, and from that moment on, I became very sensitive to any deadlines that involved writing, even if it meant I was pulling all-nighters on a regular basis.

No wonder I felt like dropping out that first semester! I was so sleep-deprived, miserable, and I also felt like I did not belong.

The truth was, was that I was dealing with acute perfectionism and imposter syndrome—a double whammy—when I first started at Harvard. As a perfectionist, I felt like nothing was ever good enough to put on the page. I would write something and then hit the backspace button immediately. Or I would think of an idea and then come up with every possible way to refute it ... editing in my mind.

I would keep circling back to the feeling that I’d need to do just a little more research before I could commit something to the page. So I would see just a few sentences on an otherwise blank document after spending hours of staring at the computer. Meanwhile, the due date for the assignment would be looming over my head.

Does this sound familiar to you? How do you respond to your various deadlines and projects in higher education? In my case, I wasn’t very skilled at managing my deadlines at the beginning of my academic career. Over the years, I’ve had to learn how to cultivate time management skills, prioritize, and create systems to support my various projects. 

And most importantly, I’ve become more aware of how I personally approach and handle deadlines that involve research and writing.

In this 20th episode of the Rise with Clarity Podcast, I want to talk about deadlines in higher ed. Because this is something that all academics have to deal with on a regular basis. And I’d like to offer you some insights on how to manage your deadlines with more ease and even grace.

Find the full transcript for this episode, as well as links to additional resources that I will include at the end of the transcript at RisewithClarity.com/20.

How Many Deadlines Do You Have This Summer Break?

Now that many of you have wrapped up your spring semesters (or are just about to), I imagine that you are looking forward to your summer breaks. And what a year to wrap up!

After taking some real time off to catch your breath and to decompress, many of you will begin to think about and plan your summer break in terms of the work that you will need to accomplish before the academic year starts up again.

How many deadlines do you have to contend with this summer? Some of these will be externally set. And others will be more internal. Then, there are those projects that are longer-term and higher stakes, and that require a combination of both external and internal deadlines.

Here are just some of the things that could be on your plate this summer:

· a 10,000 word article revision that you’ll need to submit by the end of next month

· polishing a book chapter and drafting a new one

· writing a new 20-minute conference paper that you will be delivering in mid-summer

· prepping for a big grant application that you plan to submit in early fall

· reading through and offering feedback on your advisee’s dissertation-in-progress

· taking a short trip to conduct archival research for your second book project

· writing a short essay for an online publication that you agreed to do

And don’t forget, come August, there’s syllabus planning!

Now who says that professors don’t do anything over the summer?!

Although you may not have to teach or perform service during your summer break, there is still a lot to accomplish in just a few months! And I’m not even taking into consideration any  parenting or caregiving duties that you may have on top of that. All of this requires managing your time and deadlines both practically and efficiently.

So how do you do this?

Thinking about The Four Tendencies in Relation to Your Deadlines

One of the things that I’ve realized as an academic is that we all have our own ways of managing and handling these deadlines, time constraints, pressures, and external expectations that are par for the course in higher education. And this awareness of how we individually engage with deadlines I think is useful.

I personally know a handful of scholars who are extremely prolific, who have consistent workflow and are able to sit down at the computer, write without distractions and produce very fine prose. They meet their deadlines on time and they are also able to run marathons on the weekends. 

Yep, I am not one of those people. Those folks are what Gretchen Rubin would refer to as “Upholders”—individuals who readily meet both outer and inner expectations. An Upholder would submit their chapter for an edited volume two months ahead of schedule and would easily meet all of their own internal deadlines for articles and book chapters.

If you’re not familiar with Gretchen Rubin’s The Four Tendencies, I encourage you to check out her book, her podcast, or any of her videos that you can find on YouTube. There’s even a quiz that you can take to determine what tendency you may be. I’ll put those links on my transcript at RisewithClarity.com/20.

Now, Rubin believes that there are four basic categories that humans fall into when faced with the question of: 

How do you respond to expectations?

So, in addition to the Upholders, there are the Obligers: people who respond readily to outer expectations but struggle to meet inner expectations.

Then the third one is the Questioner. Questioners are people who question all expectations. They meet an external expectation only if they believe it makes sense and it’s justified. They have to be convinced as to why an expectation makes sense before they comply. So in other words, they respond more to internal expectations over external ones.

And the Rebels? They resist all expectations, both outer and inner. 

Most of my clients tend to be Obligers—meaning that they will show up for others, but have a harder time showing up for themselves. Now when thinking about deadlines in higher ed—Obligers will often turn in their portion of work in a group setting (like committee work) on time or they’ll adhere to the submission date for a student letter of recommendation. 

But they will struggle with meeting an internal deadline for a book chapter that they need to write. This can pose a problem when they need to work on their first book manuscript, which is a long, drawn-out process with high stakes.

In her book, Rubin has great suggestions for what each of the tendencies need in terms of support. Obligers, for instance, benefit from writing accountability groups or even with working with a coach, who can help to provide a sense of external accountability. 

Knowing how you respond to expectations and what you may need in terms of support can be really insightful as you learn to navigate all of the different deadlines and deliverables in higher education. 

So, let’s get back to that example of the article revision that you may need to submit by next month.

How Would Each of the 4 Tendencies Handle a Revise-and-Resubmit?

An Upholder might best benefit from having a clear deadline for submission given by the publisher. And carving out an hour a day of writing or editing during the first two weeks of June might be all that they need in order to accomplish this goal.

An Obliger might best benefit from finding a writing accountability partner during the month of June. Checking in with their accountability partner each week or even submitting revised pages to them could help with moving forward on the article revision by the end of that month.

A Questioner might be best served by realizing that the reviewer’s reports in the revise and resubmit were valid and help to strengthen the article’s argument. The requested revisions do not require major structural changes, but are relatively straightforward suggestions that can be addressed quickly. A Questioner then might set their own internal deadline for June 15, because they know what else is in the pipeline for the rest of the summer.

A Rebel might best work by setting their own terms for the article revision. They strongly disagree with Reviewer 2’s comments and they want to push back. They want to put forth their ideas into the world and they want to see this publication through. They’ll choose when to work on the revision on days when they feel like it next month. Once they find that they’re in the right mind space and groove, it’s easy for them.

I didn’t learn until a few years ago that I’m a Questioner. And questioners—because we’re constantly asking questions—often suffer from analysis paralysis. This is great for me as a researcher, but not so great when I was faced with the blank page and I needed to start writing. 

Over the years, I’ve gotten better at managing deadlines by being more attuned to how I work—and setting limits on research and analysis. And I’ve learned to give myself some grace.

Although I’m no longer a professor, I continue to have some research projects on my plate. Since these projects are aligned with my interests and core values, they make sense to me and I’m motivated to work on them. And now, deadlines give me that extra push to get things done. 

But I try to be honest with what I’m capable of handling in a given month. And at my age, I really don’t want to have to stay up all night again to submit an article!

In closing, I just want to acknowledge that we all have very different strategies for navigating and managing deadlines in higher education. I also don’t think that every one of you will resonate with the Four Tendencies or fit so neatly into Rubin’s typology—which, by the way, is a classic Questioner move to question why there must only be 4 categories. 

So, my advice to you is to figure out what’s going to work best for you this summer. And plan accordingly.

And lastly, give yourself some grace and flexibility with some of the deadlines this summer. You have an awful lot going on, after a very challenging and draining academic year!