This article in the Chronicle of Higher Education resonated strongly with many of my own views on work-life balance but one section in particular stood out.

Don’t Do It All. Do Just Enough.

Challenge the idea that you must be some type of Superwoman: Be an X-Gal instead! Prioritize, and place realistic expectations on yourself and those around you, and then work hard to achieve the important things in your life. A female scientist in my building has the following mantra: “Near enough is good enough.”

We’re not advocating mediocrity here. We can achieve excellence by doing just enough to accomplish a particular goal, celebrating our achievement, and then moving on to the next goal.

Although the author is talking about her scientific goals, this could apply to anything that we do. You could always make your house a little bit cleaner, but is it clean enough? Do you need to make fabulous meals every day or can you cook something nutritious and tasty (meet your goals) that is also simple and quick? You can prepare learning materials for your students forever, but are they good enough?

On that last one, I recall that a former colleague of mine would stay up until the wee hours of the morning writing lectures and preparing for a class and then be terribly frustrated that her students didn’t get it. I refused to stay up late (as much out of laziness as anything), and did much less preparation for my class. I also wasn’t going to become an expert in every theorist on the course just to feel confident teaching that theorist, so I devised a method in which the students would know more than I did by the end of the semester. My students did amazingly well. My course design was praised by colleagues and the external examiner for bringing out excellent work in my students. Although my motivation was to limit the amount of time I spent in preparation, the result was a better pedagogy. Sometimes we can over prepare.

The culture of overwork is rife in North American society. In this context, it is easy for us to always feel like we aren’t doing enough; to focus on what could be better. But most of us are doing a lot of what we do well. If we focus on what we are doing right, we will feel better about ourselves and probably feel more motivated to do more things right. We should also stop thinking that we should spend more time improving the things that we don’t do well or do not enjoy doing. Maybe some of those things can either not be done, or be done by someone else who has those skills and enjoys those tasks.

We don’t have to do it all.

Some prioritization help

My planning classes are based around identifying priorities and setting boundaries so we can get the important stuff done well. They are included as part of Foundations of an Academic Writing Practice.

This post was edited Sept 14, 2015.