New Faculty Teaching Newsletter # 22 (March 9, 2007)

Balancing personal and professional life

Neanderthals probably spent time worrying about balancing hunting/gathering and quality time in the cave—and certainly we know that in business, whenever something goes wrong in a big way, the boss always resigns to "spend more time with my family"—but it's a special concern in academia where time clocks are not punched, where work and personal life often overlap.

Last fall Professor Vince Resh of ESPM surveyed 72 colleagues from around the world on how they balance their personal and professional lives. As you will see from the results of his survey, there are no right answers for everyone; indeed, often the suggestions are contradictory. Nonetheless, the responses Vince gathered provide a lot of good insight into this issue.

(The categories were created by Vince after looking a the responses, and the numbers in parentheses indicate multiple similar answers.)

Define Yourself by Something Other than Work:

• Have hobbies or do volunteering (10 mentioned this), but to some science is our hobby (8 others) and to others hobbies take away time from the rest of the family
• Create a circle of non-work friends (3)
• Most scientists do define themselves by their work and cannot separate themselves (and don't want to) (3)
• Stop and Smell the Roses
• Always take one day off a week (2)
• Take annual vacations (4)
• At meetings always include non-work activities
• Be gone (from Berkeley) as often as possible
• Celebrate completing a project or teaching-leave campus and take in a matinee, museum, ball game, go to racetrack

Be Realistic:

• Expect to have periods when you are not productive-you need down time. You CAN take an break and leave the office/lab
• Avoid trying to meet unrealistic deadlines that will be delayed even if you are on time (e.g. book chapters); prioritize meeting deadlines that matter (e.g. grants) and try to work on them early
• Don't expect compliments or use them as a measure of how you are doing; you need to be "inner directed"

Family:

• Placing family first is a common response (9), some indicated they didn't do this and have regrets
• Involve family in work (travel together, attend lectures, meetings, etc.)
• Merge students and family in social activities
• Collaborate with colleagues that spouse likes to make long-lasting friendships
• Discuss every day what happened to each family member
• Have hobbies you do with family (solo hobbies can take away time from family)
• Have a set time of going to and leaving work every day
• Work is over-rated and that most of us will not be remembered for accomplishments in our field (e.g. after we die but we will live on in the memory of friends, colleagues, students, and of course family). Do things to ensure this.
• Push career first, family later

Professional Lives:

• Give up idea of being rich or famous (5)
• Copy what others do to work efficiently
• Delegate whenever possible. Hire a work-study student to do as many time-consuming tasks as possible
• Let things slide that don't really matter (almost all committee assignments); don't be a perfectionist about your own work or that of your students (2)
• Learn to say no (less time is spent on guilt than on doing the project if you said yes) (5)
• Learn to say no to requests like this (but didn't)
• Organize what you do at work/ don't organize what you do at home/organize what you do at each place
• Avoid all administrative positions (4)

Personal lives:

• Don't marry
• Marry someone who works as much as you do
• Marry someone who runs your personal life
• Marry someone with different interests (2)
• Marry someone with a science background (7)
• Do as much work at home as possible (1)
• Don't ever work at home (2)

But—Blend Professional and Personal Lives Together:

• Don't worry about balance, as a scientist you can't do it-it's your whole life and affects all you do
• Science is our hobby (8)
• Involve family in scientific activities (vacations become collecting trips, attending meetings)

Poignant Responses:

• You don't miss personal life or think of balance until you lose it
• Science is my way of making a living, without it I can have no personal life (2)
• Having a child forces you to prioritize the two issues
• Get a grandchild

Best Advice:

• Do science at home, live the social life at the workplace. Get fun out of public performing—like artists do on the stage. Feel that new knowledge is the real hobby—push away or skip peer reviewing, administration, grants, bosses, merits, prizes.
• Personal life is the energy supply for professional life; about three times every day I need to sit back and really appreciate something in my life.
• I can tell when I spend too much time at work because I get "cranky"; I can tell when I spend too little time working because I get "itchy"
• Balance is overrated; appreciate the high and low points of both aspects of life and expect them to vary in proportion over time.
  

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Campus Tour of the week

Two buildings named Hearst. The Hearst Mining Building was reopened in 2002 after a massive renovation, The lobby is one of the most spectacular spaces in California. (Fun fact: "The retrofit involved base isolation technology, pioneered by Berkeley engineers 20 years ago, replacing the building's brittle foundation with a shock-absorbent system of 134 composite steel and rubber bearings that allow the building to roll horizontally 28 inches in any direction." ). Next, find the pool at Hearst Gym. The gym was designed by Julia Morgan, and the black and white marble pool, surrounded by elaborate ornamental urns, is a smaller version of the pool she designed for "Hearst Castle," San Simeon. It's very cool.