RW9 Progress and praise

This short related-work podcast replays part of a previous podcast conversation with Katherine Isbister about working 8-5, reflecting on productivity and praising yourself. I set this up against some discussions in a meeting this week about the struggles seeing progress, our negativity bias, and recent research on stress in academia. Following the replay, I also relate Katherine’s approach to research around self-compassion and savoring. Full transcript below. Related work links Katherine Isbister – previous podcast: On finding your fit, being productive 8-5 an praising yourself Negativity bias Müller-Pinzler, L., Czekalla, N., Mayer, A.V. et al. Negativity-bias in forming beliefs about own abilities. Sci Rep 9, 14416 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-50821-w Uni stress Dougall, I., Weick, M., & Vasiljevic, M. (2021, June 22). Inside UK Universities: Staff mental health and wellbeing during the coronavirus pandemic. Retrieved from psyarxiv.com/23axu Lee, M. et al. (2021) Our uni teachers were already among the world’s most stressed. COVID and student feedback have just made things worse. The Conversation. Green Carmichael, S. (2015) The Research Is Clear: Long Hours Backfire for People and for Companies. Harvard Business Review. Savoring Kennelly, Stacey. (2012) 10 steps to Savoring the Good Things in Life. Greater Good Magazine, Greater Good Science Centre at the University of California, Berkeley Bryant, F. B., & Veroff, J. (2007). Savoring: A new model of positive experience. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers. Self compassion Kristin Neff https://self-compassion.org/the-three-elements-of-self-compassion-2/ Chris Germer https://chrisgermer.com/about/ Transcript Geri (00:05): Welcome to changing academic life I'm Geraldine Fitzpatrick. And this is a bite-size related work podcast where we pick up on a single idea from literature and experience that may provide some insights or tips that will help us change academic life for the better (00:27): In managing your own academic working life, how do you go about recognizing and rewarding yourself or judging the, how productive you are in your work and seeing progress? The focus of this short podcast is mainly to replay a snippet from a conversation that I had, a podcast conversation I had quite a while ago with Katherine Isbister who talks really well about the way in which she's managing her work life so that she can work eight to five, Monday to Friday, and in particular, reflecting on her own productivity and praising herself. And I chose this snippet to replay on the basis of two particular encounters this week. (01:17): One was a meeting where one of the people in the meeting was talking about really struggling with some writing they were doing there. They were struggling to find the story across a number of studies that they had done to pull and how to pull it together. And in that struggle, they were also struggling to see any reward or great progress as they talked about it. They also felt that others were judging them as not being very good because they were having this struggle and those others being people who might've given them some constructive feedback on the writing is important. And so they thought they weren't very good, but I, you know, I can assure you that this is not the case. In fact, this person is really amazing as a researcher, but nonetheless, what we can see here, some of the sort of feelings of being an impostor not progressing. And we also recognize a negativity bias, which psychology literature talk will talk to us about being an, a natural tendency that we have that does have some protective properties and, and has an evolutionary basis. I want to draw particular attention to a 2019 Nature paper by Mueller-Pinzler et al called 'Negativity bias in forming beliefs about own abilities'. And they talk about negativity bias specific for learning. Can you know about our own compared to others performances and that being modulating by prior beliefs about ourself, and that there's a stronger negativity bias in people with who are lower in self-esteem and that social anxiety affect self related negativity bias when individuals are exposed to a judging audience and in academia, we definitely have a judging audience don't we in reviewers and supervisors and so on, or so it might feel. (03:16): And so this triggered a conversation in the meeting with, with the others who were present about what were people's strategies for trying to, what did progress mean and how did they recognize progress and how did they handle the ups and downs of writing? And there was one other person in the meeting in particular who really impressed me in how they talked about having also struggled with these issues, but realizing that they needed to do something different and, and taking on a very deliberate strategy of trying to spend time focusing on what they had done, what they had achieved, and also just how lucky they were or how lucky they felt that they were able to do research on a topic that they were really passionate about. And to have this time to struggle with writing, even though it was a struggle and they were having, you know, having to do multiple iterations to develop the research story across their data as well. (04:18): And the second encounter this week was just coming across a couple of particular research studies. One was of UK university staff that was reported in, that I saw in Times Higher Education, but reflecting a preprint article by Dougall et al from 2021 about mental health and wellbeing and people having high levels of anxiety one and a half times the national average, especially during this pandemic there was an, also a Conversations article about Australian and New Zealand academics that also similarly reported them being very stressed. And I also happened to come across Harvard Business Review article that talked about 'The research is clear: long hours backfire for people and for companies'. So it's not particularly about academia, but it does show clear research about long working long hours being counterproductive. And, and we're not as creative and we're not our outputs aren't as good. And also just the whole health and wellbeing impacts. And we know that we see similar articles reported on academic context. And I think a lot of what the, you know, that person reported in the meeting and, you know, it was leading to stress and that stress was related to performance pressures and the general stress of academe. (05:45): So I thought it was really timely to revisit this podcast chat with Katherine. And I want to replay from about 34 minutes, 55 seconds into the original conversation with her. And I would encourage you to listen to the rest as well, if you haven't already, as, as there's really great stuff there that she shares. And I think Katherine's chat connects to both these themes. She very deliberately manages productive, working life, very productive working life. And she does it between the hours of eight to five and Monday to Friday because of what she said is as important to her. And that's time with family and friends outside of work as well. She also talks about some of the strategies that she's put in place towards this about taking time to stop and recognize what she has achieved, like reflecting on your own productivity and surprising yourself. So have a listen here. <REPLAY of podcast extract from Katherine Isbister> Katherine (06:46): Well, I mean, one thing is I, I don't work weekends and I try not to work late nights. I mean, I said pretty strict boundaries on family time and also in the summer. Geri (07:01): So practically, what does that mean setting strict boundaries? Katherine (07:05): Well it means that I, I learned once <name> was born, I learned to work within sort of like eight to five weekdays boundary. I mean, the downside of that as I don't do a lot of water cooler chat, so I think it can affect your networking within your institution, but I was sort of willing to...