Category Archives: Productivity

Posted on

We must stop glorifying busyness

Chances are if you run into someone on campus then the conversation will go something like this. “Hi, how’s it going?”  “I’m so busy!” “Yep, me too!  It must be that time of the semester.” It doesn’t matter when this conversation occurs because it is always that time of the semester. A study by John Ziker from Boise State University even provides data on how busy we are in higher education. In a blog post, Ziker found that professors at Boise work 61 hours per work and spend 17% of their time in meetings. The curse of knowledge work (which most of us in higher education are engaged in) is that it can largely be done anytime and anywhere. For too many of us that turns into all the time and everywhere.

Photo credit: Peter Kuo
Posted on

How to keep email from running your life

The reality of email:  can’t live with it, can’t live without it. Of all the technologies that have made their way into our personal and professional lives, I believe email can be one of the most distracting and time intensive. While email provides enormous benefits for communicating quickly and cheaply, the amount of time required to manage and process email can be profoundly damaging. No one is getting tenure, promoted to a new position, or gets a raise because they are good with email. However, the reverse can absolutely be true. In today’s post, I want to share five strategies that can keep email from running your life.

Photo credit: mattwi1s0n

Before discussing these strategies in detail, I want to address the elephant in the room.

Whenever I discuss ways to curb email, many people just immediately assume this isn’t possible.

To be sure, there are some positions that by the nature of the job requires constant email work. However, I suspect that the vast majority of you reading this will not fall into this category.

I want to argue that if you have an email problem that it is time to look in the mirror.

Posted on

What Google’s team research can teach higher ed

The importance of teamwork is increasingly understood as important across many work contexts. In higher education, we talk a great deal about the need for teamwork to support innovation, creativity, and productivity. There’s been a fascination for years about the potential of interdisciplinary activities to break down silos and build connections across campus. Whether we are talking about faculty or administrative offices, higher education leaders desire to promote teamwork, but how do we do this in the construct of the university. In today’s post, I want to share what Google’s team research can teach higher ed about teamwork.

Photo credit: Google

A research group inside of Google’s human resources unit (what they call People Operations) sought to understand what makes a Google team effective. 

Posted on

The role and purpose of a research agenda

A research agenda plays a valuable role in helping design scholarly activities for graduate students and faculty. Simply put, a research agenda means identifying the areas you will research and the methodologies you will use to answer questions. You probably have heard from professors in graduate school and beyond that you can’t research everything so you need to pick what you can feasibly study. Moreover, a scattershot approach can keep you from focusing on important questions and pull you in a number of different directions. In today’s post, I will describe research agenda and why they can be of benefit for researchers.

Photo credit: Paul Albertella
Posted on

How productive are you?

As longtime readers know, I strongly believe in the power of productivity to improve our work and impact in higher education. Both faculty and administrators can strive to improve their productivity to not only get more done, but to focus on what really matters. New York Times best-selling author and productivity expert Michael Hyatt has developed a wonderful tool that can help you assess where you currently stand and how to think about improving your productivity.