Directive 5
Work:
I’ve written about work vs. leisure/non-work before in my EDLM entries. As I’ve noted, for the most part, I sort my daily activities into two categories: stuff I have to do and stuff I want to do and enjoy doing. In terms of my daily life, significant household chores such as cleaning, laundry, or minor repairs fall into the same mental category as things I get paid to do by my employer. One partial exception is yardwork and gardening, because they are outside activities and usually physically active in contrast to my indoor, deskbound paid job. That’s also why I would never classify a “workout” as work. Exercise is the break from sitting and thinking, which is the largest part of my regular paid work.
I’m probably overstating this division. Household chores are a little more voluntary and easy to put off, so they don’t weigh on me to the same degree as paid work. But as a way to organize my day, the must-do vs. like-to-do division is helpful for getting things done and feeling productive.
Workday:
I’m usually up around 7-7:30. I like to caffeinate, read, maybe watch a little TV news (depending on my mood) and do light prep for work (email, reading, etc.). That all runs for about an hour, depending on when I got up. Then shower and into work.
In my ideal day, which is not necessarily common, I spend the morning writing and reading on whatever project is my main focus. That’s dependent on having uninterrupted time, which is not always in my control. Then, around noon, I work out (run or lift, depending on the day), shower again, and have a quick bite at my desk. I try to keep my lunch hours free for this and mostly succeed. I spend the rest of the day dealing with administrative duties, meetings, etc. I usually work until 5:30-6 then head home. The reality is that my morning gets chewed up by things I don’t plan myself, e.g. meetings, teaching schedule (during the academic year I often teach 2-3 mornings a week), and stuff that just comes up. My adherence to this schedule also depends on how disciplined I am about using open time to be productive.
After work I try to relax by going for a short walk (15 minutes or so), reading newspapers or online magazines, or grabbing a beer, or any combination of these. This lasts about an hour, then I participate in dinner prep or cleanup—I usually split these work-ish duties with B, one way or the other. (I’m not someone who finds cooking to be a pleasant diversion.) After dinner it’s reading or TV, usually some of each. The reading is mainly fiction because it’s diverting, which I usually crave late in the day. If I get caught up in working it makes me sleep poorly. I don’t work in the evenings unless something urgent is on hand—prep for an early meeting or class, or a deadline looming. I used to work a regularly at night but now I want to relax and get a good sleep so I don’t.
Weekends involve work too, mostly around the house and yard. “Work” includes grocery shopping, lawn mowing, housecleaning, bill paying, and other duties as assigned by me or B. If I have some especially interesting paid work, or something job-related that’s urgent, I will work on the weekend, but as with nights, I try not to do much of that. This too is a departure from my habits in the past, when I’d go into the office on a Saturday or Sunday for a few hours. I try not to do that now—life is too short.
Feelings:
The description above is how I aim to structure my work life now. I used to work more and (probably) more intensively. I’m now much closer to the end of my paid work life than the beginning, so my sense of urgency around work has diminished. I don’t worry about advancement—I’ve advanced as far as I wanted to or am likely to get. I work to pay the bills and get into a financial position that will ensure a comfortable retirement. I do like the main parts of my work—research and teaching—and find them rewarding, but my ambition now is more personal than institutional or societal. I want to do a good job because I think they are worthy enterprises. I don’t care as much about what my employer thinks about what I’m doing (within reason, of course).
As B has pointed out, I might as well keep working for pay for while longer, since my plan for retirement is to read and write. Some kind of part-time or semi-retirement arrangement would be ideal. Maybe that option will materialize.
I recognize that my perspective is a luxury. I enjoy most parts of my job, don’t live paycheck to paycheck, and have a fair amount of security. I’ve been in roughly the same job for a long time so I think I know how to do it well and fairly efficiently, without too much daily stress. This recognition does feed a low-level background hum of guilt—I should be working harder and longer, I sometimes tell myself as I head to the gym or pop on the TV at night—but I fight that line of thought. I guess I could launch into a long discussion of capitalism and internalized pressures to be constantly productive here. There’s probably a bit of that going on. But I think some of it’s just about me, some inborn conscientiousness. Hard to say. That I feel underpaid may also factor into my thinking. I make more than enough to live, but less than I should compared to many of my peers in the field. That situation lessens the urgency of my paid work.
Social Media:
What role does social media play in my life?
My social media activity is limited. I’m on Twitter, as a reader, not so much as a Tweeter. Twitter is a mess just now so we will see how long or in what form it lasts. I tend to dip into Twitter when I’m taking a break and try to use it mainly for finding things to read, largely about politics, sports, work-related topics, or fiction I might find interesting. This morning a quick surf of Twitter gave me three things to read over breakfast, one on problems facing guidance counselors in Indiana, one on Trump’s plans to consolidate power if and when he returns to the Presidency, and one on the relatively better economic performance on the U.S. compared to Europe. I love that about Twitter—it can be like a newspaper curated to my interests. As long as I don’t dig into the comments, and as long as I can tailor who’s thoughts I encounter in my feed to people with interesting and useful (or entertaining) things to say, it’s great. I do try to avoid creating an ideological silo by following people whom I respect but whose political perspective I don’t share.
I don’t really Tweet except to promote work-related things on a vary sporadic basis. I realized a while ago that to be truly effective on Twitter, or any social media, you have to devote a fair amount of time to it to build up a following. That’s how you become an “influencer,” perhaps the most inane byproduct of the rise of social media. That’s not something I’ve had the time or inclination to do.
I’m also not very social on social media. I’ve probably sent fewer than 10 DMs in my time on Twitter. I don’t post pictures of my dinner, or my cat (I don’t have one, anyway), or share my neuroses. I don’t mind others doing that—it’s their account, so they are welcome to make public any part of their lives if they so wish. I do sometimes get the sense that people don’t fully understand that social media is public. It’s not just your friends on the other end of it and whatever you put up there is not going away. Pretty much anyone can read or see what you post, perhaps forever. I’m not comfortable doing that. Perhaps I am a curmudgeon.
The only other social media-ish platform I spend any time on is YouTube, mostly to find and hear music. Before bed, I often spin through YouTube, finding music and letting the algorithm select songs for me. The algorithm tends to be repetitive, but if you dig you can find new stuff, which is fun. I’m not a fan of Meta’s privacy policies, so I don’t use Facebook (or now Threads). I do have a mostly dormant Facebook account that is for work, but it’s not at all a venue for personal activities. I’m not on Instagram, or Tiktok, or Snapchat, or Reddit, any other social media platform at the moment. Tiktok mania is stunning to me: why would anyone voluntarily open up their lives to a company with close links to the Chinese government? More curmudgeonly thoughts?
How do I use Twitter?
I use Twitter for work a little. I started a Twitter account to promote work activities, but as noted, I do that only occasionally and not consistently. Otherwise I’ve handed off social media duties to my research assistant.
I mainly use Twitter to seek information, and a bit for entertainment. Some of that is for work—I follow accounts of fellow researchers in my areas of interest. A number of them have dropped off of Twitter because of the way Elon Musk has been managing it, so that function is less useful than it was. I also use it to follow news—sports, politics mainly, but also some cultural stuff (a few favorite writers). I try to avoid the shrill and frantic parts of Twitter, although it seems impossible to escape all of that.
How do I feel about online time?
Not great. It’s easy to get sucked in and feel like you’ve wasted time. These platforms are designed to grab and keep your attention, and to make you excited. Even when you get some value from it, such as my morning reading list, you’re also prone to getting sucked into stupid and unhelpful debates about the latest outrage. That’s by design, which makes the experience all the more annoying—you know you’re being manipulated. When those dissatisfactions outweigh the benefits, I guess I’ll drop social media. Unless I’m too addicted.