Sphinx

According to my wife, my falling over and breaking my foot was my body, or perhaps the universe, telling me that I need to slow down and look after myself. I’m not sure how far this is a genuine philosophical position and how far she is grasping at any available argument to try to get me to slow down – she said similar things about the Long COVID that’s drained my energy and intellectual capacity over the last few years – but that could likewise be interpreted either way…

The obvious retort is that, if so, either my body or the universe have got this completely wrong; the last thing that’s going to temper my tendency to overwork is making it harder and slower for me to get done the things that have to be done, even with a strict definition of what those are. If teaching and student consultations take a whole day where once I would have had hours in between to get on with emails and teaching prep, not because I have more commitments but because it takes me longer to get between places and I’m tired out afterwards, then the emails and teaching prep just get bumped to the next day. If it takes me all week to prepare teaching and deal with admin, with no time for anything research-related (reviewing article submissions, for example), then either I do no research or ‘service’ (bad) or I have to find time somewhere else. Making me feel constantly overwhelmed and behind with everything is not the way to make me relax and take things a bit easier; both my body and universe should know that by now.

I would readily concede that I do in fact have a problem, if not multiple problems; the incentive system of academia plus my ingrained work ethic and obsessive tendencies are not a healthy combination. At the end of my life, am I going to regret not publishing an extra article or two rather than spending more time with family and friends? Well, kinda, yeah. Am I willing to be a bit more selfish, and limit my covering for colleagues, supporting students, reviewing articles and the like in order to create more time for writing within a more normal working week? No. I am well aware that something has to give a bit of ground here, either my drive to be an exemplary colleague and dedicated teacher or my intellectual ambitions, but can never decide; in practice, it’s the research and writing, because that is never as urgent, but that is more frustrating in the longer term. We do it to ourselves, we do…

The point of this blog post is not in fact just the usual self-pitying solipsism. It was prompted by an interesting piece on Crooked Timber by Ingrid Robeyns, How To Restore Work-Life Balance in Academia. She makes a series of good points about the importance of work-life balance, the ways in which a culture of overwork has become embedded in universities (in part as a means of making up shortfalls in funding, but also because of skewed incentives), the problem of using competition as a way of allocating resources and so forth. I was particularly struck by one of her early comments, explaining why this matters, between (1) life is more than work and (3) this creates systematic bias against those who cannot overwork, especially those with caring responsibilities:

Second, even if a particular individual would prefer to work more, this should not become the norm. And that is the problem: structural overwork has become totally normalised in academia. It is endemic. That means that it is very difficult to refuse to go along with doing structural overwork, as the typical amount of work expected from an academic can’t be done in 40 hours. If in the current system one sticks to 40 hours, one is very likely to either let down one’s students, or the junior scholars whom one mentors and the service one provides to the field, or else to give up (most of) one’s research time.

Put another way: people like me are part of the problem. It’s not that I want to work more, but I do want to do things that require more time than I’m paid for, and so have always put in the extra hours; until recently, I’ve managed to produce the publications and be a good colleague and try to do my bit for the discipline and make attempts at being a public scholar of some sort. And that has perhaps contributed to a wider normalisation of this level of activity, setting unattainable or at least unhealthy standards for others – and, even though perhaps my body is now having to pay out on a load of cheques that were written years ago, the person most convinced that this level of activity is normal is me. And I should be stopped.

Robeyns includes a range of suggestions for tackling the situation, including the knotty problem that so much of this is about the mostly free choices made by academics, even if those are constrained by norms and expectations. I am struck, however, by how individualised the suggested remedies on this latter issue are – how far they assume that academics, if they can just be persuaded to reflect, will then change their habits. The free rider problem – the people who minimise their non-research commitments, never step forward to help out in an emergency, submit lots of articles but shirk reviewing etc. – is to be solved through general agreement that we all ought to do our fair share and adopt a principle of ‘reciprocity + 1’ (if you submit an article and get two reviews on it, you should do three reviews that year). I can’t help feeling that unless something more is done – maybe not just listing reviewing activities as well as publications on a cv or annual review form, but adding an expectation that serious imbalances will be queried by appointment committees or line managers – then this will have only a marginal effect, probably allowing the worst offenders to do even less as the average well-meaning academic will do slightly more. (The ‘reciprocity+ 1’ principle creates slack in the system to compensate for junior colleagues not being invited to do reviews – but there’s nothing to stop the slack being abused by others).

As for the ‘habitual overworker’ problem – we do need a better name – the only suggestion is for such people to take a long walk, or multiple walks, and reflect on their priorities, to consider whether they should make changes to their ambitions and commitments, for their own sakes. Well, I’m not currently capable of taking any long walks… “Just ask yourself this question: assume you continue as you do until you retire, and on the day you retire, you die. Would you be satisifed? Or would you have regrets? If so, it’s time to reconsider your priorities.” But what if I would have deep regrets at not having managed to write all the books I want to write?

What this discussion brought to mind – which is why I’m bothering to write this post – is the Rule of St Benedict. I’ve loved this work ever since I encountered it as a teenager who’d developed a fascination with English monasticism; any inclination to follow such a path in life has been rare and brief, as in lots of ways I am entirely unsuited to it – but it now occurs to me that it might be worth considering that unsuitability further. One way of understanding the Rule is that it is less about how one dedicates one’s life to God, and much more about how one attempts to manage a community of dedicated people – any community and dedicated to any object. It’s not about the problems of the religious life; it’s about the fact that people are people, and getting them to live together harmoniously is hard.

Benedict’s rule, while establishing high standards for behaviour, is constantly temperered by awareness of human weakness and individual needs, and seeks to anticipate the problems these might cause. “Although man’s nature is of itself drawn to feel pity for these two ages, that is, for the old and for children, yet it is fitting that the authority of the Rule should provide for them. Let their weakness therefore be always taken into account, and the rigour of the Rule with regard to food, be by no means kept with them. Let a kind consideration be had for them, and let leave be granted them, to eat before the regular hours” (37). “We think it sufficient for daily refection, both at the sixth and ninth hour, that there be at all seasons two dishes, because of the infirmities of different people; so that he who cannot eat of one, may make his meal of the other” (39). “And although we read ‘that wine is not at all the drink of Monks’, yet, because in these our times, they will not be so persuaded, let us at least agree to this, not to drink to satiety, but sparingly” (40).

On the one hand, Benedict is all too aware of the free rider problem. “And when they rise to the work of God, let them gently encourage one another, because of the excuses of those who are sluggish” (22). “The Brethren are so to serve each other, that no one be excused from the office of the kitchen” (35) – granted, with an exception for those whose work is “of greater profit”, which might look like a get-out clause for the workshy or those who consider service beneath them, but that’s only if the community is big enough to cope, and “profit” is defined by the needs of the community as a whole. “Let them bear patiently with each other’s infirmities, whether of body or of mind. Let them contend with one another in the virtue of obedience. Let no one follow what he thinketh profitable to himself, but rather that which is profitable to another” (72).

The answer is not that everyone needs to be forced to work equally hard, as failure to meet the expected standard may have different causes. “If any one shall be so negligent and slothful as to be either unwilling or unable to meditate or read, let him have some work imposed upon him which he can do, and thus not be idle. To the Brethren who are of weak constitution or in delicate health, such work or art shall be given as shall keep them from idleness, and yet not oppress them with so much labour as to drive them away. Their weakness must be taken into consideration by the Abbot” (48). Still more, “If any hard or impossible commands be enjoined a Brother, let him receive the injunctions of him who biddeth him with all mildness and obedience. But if he shall see that the burthen altogether exceedeth the measure of his strength, let him patiently and in due season state the cause of this inability unto his Superior, without manifesting any pride, resistance, or contradiction” (68).

Pride is a crucial term here – and it relates not only to those who consider themselves to be above certain tasks, but also to those who have contempt for their weaker brethren – on agricultural work, essence of monkhood being to live by labour of one’s own hands: “Yet let all things be done with moderation for the sake of the fainthearted” (48) – and above all those who seek to go beyond everyone else. This is the counterpart to the free rider problem: the vainglory issue.

Monks are people who renounce worldly things in the service of God; there will always be those who seek to be renouncier than thou. As Benedict notes on the subject of Lenten observance: “In these days, therefore, let us add something over and above to our wonted task, such as private prayers, and abstinence from meat and drink… Nevertheless, let each one acquaint the Abbot with what he offers, and do it at his desire and with his consent; because whatever is done without the permission of the spiritual Father, shall be imputed to presumption and vain glory, and merit no reward” (49). The willingness of some to martyr themselves beyond the norm, to work harder and give up more, is not a sign of virtue but of the opposite, both because of the underlying motives and because of the impact on everyone else.

Now there are obvious problems in transferring the monastic rule to academia: the absolute authority of the Abbot, the strictures against laughter, the emphasis on humility as the core principle of the monk’s behaviour. The idea that you can’t have your own books, or your own special pen. But there is surely enough of a connection, not least because of ideas that academia is mythologised as the collegial life of seekers after knowledge, even if in practice it’s been thoroughly Taylorised and subjected to market forces. Benedict’s Rule shows that competition was never absent from the old way – but whereas today it is elevated as a core principle, then it was seen as a threat to the collective well-being, whether it encourages unhealthy emulation or creates despair and doubt among the others.

In brief, if you want to do the academic equivalent of whipping yourself with scorpions or sitting on top of a pillar for thirty years, you can go and do that – but you forfeit your membership of the community, because such behaviour is corrosive of collective existence. When I complain to my ‘academic lead’ that I’m not managing to get everything done that I want to, the correct answer is less reassurance that I’ll get my mojo back eventually, and more a stern injunction that I should stop being prideful and vainglorious.

I am actually capable of accepting such injunctions, now and again. Or at least once. I’ve always been frustrated with fixed rules about how much time one should make available to undergraduate dissertation students and/or how much of their work we should read. Surely I can sort this out with individual students, given that most don’t actually take advantage of even the regular amount of support to which they’re entitled? But not every colleague can be firm in the face of unreasonable demands, and maybe some of them are more approachable or less off-putting – and so I have come to accept that we need rules that set an upper limit, that ensure the workload is manageable for everyone, however much I might wish to go further. And if I ignore the rules, that puts pressure on others and sets a terrible example. Benedict would not approve.