Chronic lack of time in academia

Yes, I know, everybody runs out of time. All employees in the world have too much work…

But academia is kind of special because you have one of the most complex job description you can imagine. You are a teacher, a researcher, sometimes an engineer, sometimes a manager, sometimes a public speaker, sometimes a consultant and many other things yet, all wrapped in one job. And you are supposed to be very good at all those jobs. You do spend your typical day wearing many hats. I don’t think there are many jobs where you are expected to wear so many hats.

So, what happens? You run out of time. Which means you don’t do certain things. At some point, you learn to say “No”. Everybody has to say no, but I think that professors have to say no far more often than others. I think. But I’m currently wearing my blogger hat, and I have to quickly go back to my must-work-on-funding-application hat so don’t mind me.