Happy new year: let's make it the year of interconnection

 In the last few days I have been reflecting on the past year. I don't really like to list my achievements of the past year because I think it encourages an unhealthy comparison mindset. In today's society it's so hard to not forget that the most important is not what you do, but how you are. In the past few days, I co-led an online winter retreat, and in my part I taught analytical meditation. During these sessions we explored the idea of interdependence. I think today's world is more interdependent than ever (a beautiful quote by His Holiness the Dalai Lama about that: "In today’s highly interdependent world, individuals and nations can no longer resolve many of the problems by themselves. We need one another. We must therefore develop a sense of universal responsibility to protect and nurture the global family, to support its weaker members, and to preserve and tend to the environment in which we all live." (from the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Chapter 3).

interestingly, many people say they feel disconnected, while objectively speaking we are more connected than ever through the media, and through the evermore complex production chains of goods and services. So why do people feel disconnected? I think it is because we don't spend enough time being and reflecting on our situation. Another answer, offered by Dutch comedian Micha Wertheim last night was that we all consume (social) media that are so hyperpersonalized that we don't have too many common experiences anymore. And we are no longer so used to seeing things that we don't like.

Picture from Morlaix ballet camp by Michel Le Photography

Whatever may be the cause, my hope for the next year is that I will get to experience the deep interconnection of ourselves and others more in the coming year. Because I found that when I manage to experience the interconnection of myself with others, nothing can be an enemy anymore, and this reduces my stress so much. When things are overwhelming, it helps me a lot to focus on how they are all part of a web of contingent relationships that allows everything to appear and disappear. Moreover, when i experience the deep interconnection of myself and others, the competitiveness no longer exists either. The challenge is just not forgetting this...

Like with everything, not forgetting means to again and again try to remember, while the rest of life is trying to distract you. First you will forget most of the time, but the more often you remember, the more easily it comes. The trick is also to find "hooks", small reminders. I found a wonderful one recently in ballet class with Broche ballet, where Julie, the teacher said: imagine that you are massaging the floor as you are doing tendus. Thinking in this way frames ballet not as an activity that I do by myself, but rather as a cooperation with the floor, and of course the rest of the world outside it as well.

Every moment of remembering is a moment of mindfulness, and every moment of remembering also makes that moment sacred. Thich Nhat Hanh talks about the notion of interbeing, where we see that the cow that brings the milk that produces the yoghurt that we eat produces the lesson we teach, and therefore the cow is in the lesson. In this way, everything is a seed for everything else. Every breath we take, we breathe in the oxygen produced by the plants, which connect us to the cosmos and to all other beings. If only I would not forget that, and if only more of us would realize that..

My productivity routine

 As I always find I have too little time, I am also continually experimenting with my productivity routine. In case it is useful for others, let me share what I have currently converged on. The main trick with productivity is that you need to keep an overview of tasks on different time scales--years/months, weeks and days. For each of these time scales, I tend to use a different tool. Before diving into that, let me also mention that sometimes I cringe a bit by the term "productivity" because it has this strong capitalist focus that everything has to be completely efficient, forgetting the human dimension of things. Nevertheless, if you want to do good, productivity is important as well, because it helps you accomplish the goals you have and make the most use of your talents for the benefit of all. So productivity is also quite compatible with altruistic values.

The obligatory ballet picture ;-)

My weekly overview of tasks

Until this year, I felt quite happy with my data-to-day management, but I felt like I was losing an overview of the biggest tasks, so this is why I started creating a gantt chart (see picture) to keep track of large projects and events across the whole year. This also allows me to keep track of conference and grant deadlines. Then every week, I am using this "Eenvoudig leven agenda" (Simple Living Calendar) that I mentioned before. At the beginning of the week I check my gantt chart for the big picture tasks, and copy those in my weekly tasks section. I have subdivided those into 5 sections: organization, grants, supervision, teaching and papers, in line with the main requirements of my job. I enter tasks according to these subdivisions (see picture). For example, for organization I have every week "make planning". For teaching, it may include "prepare lecture" or "grade assignment 2". At the beginning of the week, I then try to plan those tasks in my calendar at times that I don't have other responsibilities. This allows me to have a reasonable idea of what I can accomplish. I also try to ensure that I have some "free time" every day in which email can be dealt with and unexpected tasks. One trick I really like is to reduce the volume of such unexpected tasks by asking students ahead of time when they expect to complete things, which would require my feedback. In then book slots in my calendar to give them feedback at those times. This benefits the student, because they have a more strict deadline, and it benefits me, because I won't be able to book that slot in my calendar with more meetings (and in my career stage, meetings are the things that tend to completely overcrowd my calendar--sometimes I feel like I am in a continuous fight against meetings, even though I also enjoy talking to my lovely students and colleagues. It's just that this makes it hard to get anything done). Then finally, at the beginning of every day I check what's in my calendar, what things did not get done previously, and I make a todo list for that day. The most satisfactory bit is crossing off things of my todo list!

Extract from my gantt chart, which is still work in progress. Different colors reflect different kinds of things: teaching courses, grants, PhD students. Every column in this Excel document is a week of the year. I so far have only done it for this year, but when I find some time I want to add more years so I can already write in commitments for upcoming years.

People who know me may wonder where ballet fits in all of this. So far I talked about work. This is very simple: ballet classes have been booked already in my calendar with the "repeat weekly" feature, so they are automatically scheduled as appointments with myself, which I pretty much never skip.

A related tip on time management is that I really like touse the toggl app. This is an app that runs on your desktop, and which you can use to track how much time you spend on tasks. This is very insightful to get an idea of how much time you spend on tasks (right now I am using it as well to see how long the blog writing takes). This allows me to improve the realism of my time estimates for tasks over time. I also use that at the beginning of every week to review the preceding week, together with the review pages of the calendar (see picture). In the review pages you write down how much you achieved your goals, what challenges you faced, and how that relates to your habitual tendencies, as well as how you feel about the preceding week. Last but not least, it reminds you every week to "take a moment to love yourself. So important!" This is especially important as it remains a continuous struggle to avoid overloading myself because I am just too interested in things, and also really enjoy being helpful. So it is important to keep a sense of humor and not give up.

The weekly review section in which you can reflect on the past week. Initially I would never do that because I felt I did not have time, but actually  it can be done in a few minutes. And taking a moment to reflect is really helpful so you can learn from your mistakes  but also appreciate what you managed to do.

Some tricks for managing strong emotions

 I think the next Lojong slogan, number 58, is the reason that the stereotype of a Buddhist is a very peaceful person. This slogan namely says "don't be temperamental." An important Buddhist value is being relatively equanimous, which means you don't easily get angry or display other strong emotions. Just like the previous slogan, I think it is important to avoid suppressing emotions, because in the long run, that is not going to fly. Nevertheless, it is beneficial to try to avoid getting too much caught up in the emotions.

The dancers of Morlaix Ballet Camp putting on 
a chuckle at the end of the first act of Napoli
Picture by Michel Le

In my previous blog I mentioned how Khandro Rinpoche talked about keeping it short when emotional reactions come up. For me there are two strategies I use to shorten when emotions come up. First of all, I literally dance with it, if I am in a place where that's possible. Secondly, I will use the Buddhist teachings on emptiness: examining the nature of circumstances you see how these emotions are just ever-changing manifestations in a continuous dance of things rising and ceasing. Whatever evokes the emotion is usually conveniently put in our mind as the only cause of our anger, but if you think about it, they are also at the mercy of all these circumstances, so it is actually quite unfair to point at them for being the only cause for these emotions. Probably somewhere in there we too are to blame as well. Somehow changing perspective this way really helps me create some mental space, and frequently a chuckle as well.

It is worthwhile to think about how to manage your strong emotions, because they can create a lot of trouble. For example, for me, when people get angry I get quite stressed, and cannot think so well anymore. There is interestingly also some research on this, showing for example how more angry managers in companies were associated with reduced ability to learn from failure. This is quite consistent with my experience, where an environment where a teacher explicitly says it is OK to fail helps a lot (thanks Julie Gill for mentioning it is OK, and even good to wobble and fall over in balancing class because this is how our body learns). In short, managing strong emotions takes quite some effort, but in the end it makes our life a lot easier.

From the dancer's face to the sticky mind

One of the interesting terms I learnt this Fall was "dancer's face" from a video by Allie Christensen. She referred to the idea that dancers have learnt to not show on their face how difficult the dancing really is. I very much recognize that. One funny sight at the ZhemFit classes (fitness classes with a bit of a ballet background) that I like to take is that you can easily tell the ballet dancers from the non-dancers in that they do not wince, no matter how hard the exercise, unlike basically all the other participants in the class. 

A clear case of dancer's face at Morlaix Ballet Camp
Picture by Michel Le

This makes me think of Lojong slogan 57, which is "do not be reactive" or "do not be irritable" or "do not be jealous". In all its incarnations, the slogan reminds us to not react too strongly to what happens. Of course it is also important to not suppress emotions. So the amazing Buddhist teacher Khandro Rinpoche uses a phrase that I really like "keep it short." You can feel whatever you feel, but don't waste too much energy in it. Try to drop the emotion whenever you can. This is of course easier said than done. 

In my lab, we are very interested in studying this kind of mental reactivity, which I like to call "stickiness"--not letting go of thoughts of often emotional reactions. In fact, the most reliable way to induce such sticky thinking is to evoke people's hopes and fears, for example in a social stress test, which we have used here. We find that after a social stress intervention people have more trouble concentrating on a task than after a therapy intervention, and that they also tend to be more stuck thinking about the past. In another study we have been developing machine learning tools to help classify when a person is stuck in their thoughts. Interestingly, we found that on a person-level, classifying whether people are prone to this kind of sticky thinking can be done more productively on the basis of just 5 minutes of so-called resting state EEG (where people are just sitting there without a task) than on the basis of a specific task we have to measure mind-wandering. Hopefully this research will help us understand how our mind becomes reactive and sticky, so that we can find ways to reduce this tendency.

Reminder to self: don't duck away!

If you are anything like me, you like to engage yourself mostly with things you like, and avoid those things you do not like. This is a bit of a problem because first of all, there is no way you can avoid what life throws at you, and secondly, it is often from the challenges that you learn most. This is what slogan 49 from Lojong is about: "Always meditate on whatever is most challenging." In our Buddhist study group we are now looking at turning suffering and happiness into enlightenment. It is a beautiful teaching showing that whatever we experience can be used on the path to enlightenment, and even on a more mundane level, everything is workable.

Picture by Michel Le from Morlaix Ballet Camp.
Clearly a bit of a challenge here!

Meditating on what is challenging can come in different versions. For me, one of the easier versions is in my learning of ballet, where it is always challenging to see the parts of my technique that are not pretty. Yet, it is exactly working on the non-pretty parts and the scary steps where you progress. And nothing beats the feeling of doing that. This is why during the pandemic I started videoing myself and posting (admittedly the prettiest) parts of it on instagram. In my work I have been focusing this past year on building the habit of regularly reflecting on what I am doing with my time. For some reason I find it always really difficult to make the time to review at the end of the day and the end of the week. This past year I managed to get into the habit of weekly reviews with my "Eenvoudig Leven agenda" (Simple Living agenda) which has weekly worksheets for reviewing the past week (and always reminds you to love yourself). That helps a lot, and for the coming year I am working on developing more detailed long-term goals with a gantt chart. Progress happens slowly but surely! The most challenging difficult thing is to face negative emotions of myself and others--for example being afraid for when they get angry. This is one I am still working on. This slogan is a good reminder to stop fearing the moment of facing the difficulties. Because as I tell my students: it is worse to let those things stay in the dark and know that they are there than to actually face them. So, remembering this slogan is definitely on my list of good intentions for the new year, so I am less tempted to duck away for difficult things, and instead just face the
m.

Using Buddhist slogans to inspire a conducive mindset for a ballet performance

Picture by SBS foto marketing.

 In the last few days, I had the good fortune to participate in ballet performances. Finally the pandemic is allowing us to experience those again! As it turns out, the mental side of it was a pretty experiencing journey, which is also relevant to the next #lojongchallenge slogan (slogan 42) which is: whichever of the two arises, be patient. The idea of this slogan is that we constantly tend to want certain things and avoid certain other things--trying to get things we want and avoid things we do not want. I can tell you that definitely happens during a ballet performance, where there is the fear of making mistakes, or even worse, falling and injuring yourself, and the hope of shining and having a good time. Thankfully in the ballet school where I dance in Groningen, we have three shows, so when on Friday I felt quite engrossed in these thoughts about being afraid of failure and not so much able to enjoy the moment, I could play around with my mindset for the next two shows.

I realized that for me it was important to return back to my body, because our body is an anchor to experience, rather than the thinking-about-experience. What really helped me was to take time before the performance to really connect to my body by putting on my noise-cancelling headphones and doing an online class by Broche ballet. The teacher has a very calming and non-judgmental quality, really inviting dancers to inquire into their sensations and movements, rather than focusing on a correct or incorrect end-product. I also found that the beautiful music of the barre helped me to get into my happy space as well. 

View from the dressing room where I was warming up in my happy space (picture by Kelly Jennefer)

Then during the performance, I consciously practised appreciation. Rather than thinking about who was good or not good, I focused on the beauty of everyone at their own level, and consciously opening up myself to the connection with everyone who was putting together the show--in Buddhist terms: the interdependent circumstances that come together to create the performance, where everyone has their role to play (see also this quote for a beautiful description of that idea). It was amazing how much this changed my mind, because suddenly I shifted from a focus on myself to a focus on the system as a whole.

And when I was no longer overly focused on myself, I also was not drawn so much into judgments and thoughts. Because those judgments were exactly what was causing my frustration, because I started to make mistakes that I wouldn't make in class. Then the most interesting experience happened at the beginning of the last show, during a very happy tarantella dance. Somehow I sumbled over something and fell, right in the middle of the dance. Thankfully it was not a bad fall and I got up immediately and continued dancing straight away. But because now I had literally gotten back on earth, my body took over without too much jugdments and thoughts, and I enjoyed it like never before, I guess it also cannot really go down much from there! The show ended up the best one I did, simply because my mind was no longer seeking out any particular experience and rejecting others, but simply tuning in with whatever was there. In the end, I think my mindset work was almost the most fascinating part of the whole experience! 

Picture by SBS fotomarketing

In the dance where I fell flat on my face

Why is it so difficult to turn off? Investigating competitiveness

Logan slogan 35 is "don't be so competitive" (the next iteration in the #lojongchallenge). There is hardly a slogan that is more apt in today's competitive world. In the academic world I am part of, competition is part and parcel, because we constantly have to compete with colleagues to win grants and get our research published in the top journals. Of course there is also a lot of collaboration within science, especially in my department, in the end the evaluation and reward system is highly skewed towards recognising only individuals. A particularly powerful example of this are the Nobel prizes, which were awarded last week. These almost assume that science is done by individuals, rather than by a team, as it is in reality. Pretty much all universities require you to be in the top-whatever to survive as an academic (which obviously is impossible, because by definition not everyone can be the top). This is slightly problematic because science really thrives when you combine many different viewpoints and ideas.

Somehow I internalized the competition to such an extent that I find it difficult to turn off: there is always something more to do, and I find it very hard to give myself permission to rest. Of course it's easy to blame that only on the external world. Probably I myself am at fault at least just as much. But nevertheless, the external world really facilitates that. I think taking the time to be still and rest is almost a revolutionary act.

For me, working against this innate and external competitiveness is a constant struggle that requires a lot of vigilance to recognize these patterns creeping up, and to drop them. I found two things really helpful here: first, practising joy when someone else gets ahead or does something good. When you look at it, seeing someone else succeed and seeing them happy is actually really nice and pleasant, and it improves your relationship with them as well. In one of the ballet schools I take class at the students tend to applaud for each other when they do something well. A very nice gesture, I think. I also try to remember to tell other people what I like about them, and especially to appreciate my students. A little positivity goes a long way!

The other trick I use is to investigate again and again the effects of suspending competitiveness for a moment and just letting be. When I take a few minutes to just rest, I find that actually my performance improves, because I often recognize things that I had overlooked until that moment, and thereby make fewer mistakes. Moreover, it also really feels good. But somehow it's still so hard to do--to overcome the ingrained 'doing' habit. With this blog, I try to commit again to taking more moments of silence and being. Just another reminder...

How are you doing? Do you notice these kinds of tendencies as well? How do you work with competitiveness?

It's so easy to blame others, especially in the time of COVID-19...

Picture from an epic bicycle ride from Delhi to Taj Mahal with Delhi by Cycle (picture Himanshu Shekhar https://www.instagram.com/hr.the.traveler/ )

The current slogan in the #lojongchallenge is number 34: "don't transfer an ox's load to the cow." Obviously this refers to not pushing our own problems onto others. Blaming others is such an easy and automatic thing to do. But as Elizabeth Mattis-Namgyel also points out in her recent talks on agency, this really also is a way to disempower yourself. Of course other people and influences are part of the cause of your problems, but you yourself typically also have a part to play. A traditional example that is given is when someone hits you, they can only hurt you when you are in the way of the hitting. But of course that's a bit of a lame example in some ways and clearly shouldn't be used to justify hitting someone.

But on a more minor level, I think one case where a lot of blaming is going on these days is in COVID-19, where people blame each other for either being "corona-nazis" or for being too lax in following the rules. Last week I found myself to be also guilty of that when I was complaining about the students not taking the rules seriously. She retorted that complaining about the students only makes youangry and is not going to change anything. So true! Complaining usually doesn't make you feel better. It's better to focus on your own contribution to the problem and situation.

A village in the area of Vrindavan, India, with cows

One of those classic Indian cow pictures where cow sits in the middle of an intersection, here in Allahabad/Prayagraj

A very liberating example of a more healthy way to go about things is given by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in his book "The intelligent heart" in which he writes "The Japanese culture is very strong in this way. Even the emperors take pride in apologizing when they are at fault. They bow down low and say "I'm very sorry. It was my mistake." Having this quality gives people tremendous freedom and dignity." An example to aspire to.

Having said that, I do also find in myself a pitfall with this slogan--which encourages us to not shift responsibilities onto others. What is a tricky pitfall is the tendency to take all the work upon myself, sort of being overly optimistic of the work I can accomplish. This is obviously a recipe for exhaustion and eventually burnout. So while it is important to not overly burden others, it is also important to reflect on your own boundaries and stick to those. Because in the end, if you get a burnout, you are shifting even more responsibilities on others...

Broadening our perspective on success and other thoughts about leadership

A few weeks ago I attended the Pump Your Career meeting--a day of workshops organized for female academics to give them a platform to meet and work on professionalization. While the title of the event is a bit stereotypical, the content is usually very good.

The event started by a keynote by Pravini Baboeram which drew everyone's attention to the theme of diversity. While it is known that diversity tends to increase quality of work output, still there is a challenge in making workplaces friendly to a diverse audience. The speaker encouraged us to move from being colour-blind to being colour-brave. One important thing to keep in mind is that equal opportunity does not just involve providing the same opportunities for everyone, but more to provide circumstances such that everyone can make use of these opportunities. For example, having a network is great, but if someone does not know how to network, the network is of no use. In a sense, we need to think from not just our own perspective but from the other person's perspective.

Pravini Baboeram

Rana Dajani

This time I attended a workshop by Roel Breuls from the Centre for Academic Leadership which I enjoyed a lot. The workshop talked about the complicated feelings involved in taking a position of a leader, which I recognized quite well. For example: a leader cannot satisfy all. A very painful conclusion, but very recognizable. An inspiring quote that was shared was by Philip Massinger (1623): "Those who govern others first should be masters of themselves." Consequently, Roel introduced the concept of Personal Leadership, which means that to effectively lead others, you first need to be able to govern yourself, and realize your strengths and weaknesses. For example, if you are strong on vision, you may be weaker on implementing practical details, and if you have a tendency to control others, you find it difficult to go with the flow. Yet leadership tends to require us to go beyond the strong preferences and tendencies we have to endure the discomfort of working with our dominant tendencies such that they are reduced and balanced out by their opposites. It is quite helpful to reflect on your dominant tendencies and to think about which ones need work. Leadership is also a lonely position, because you have to do this work mostly by yourself: your team is not going to do it. However, friends and colleagues can help you power through this.

the leaky pipeline

We also talked about the complicated meaning of a team in academia. Usually a team is a group with a common goal, a common leader, and interdepency. While the common leader and interdependency are satisfied. the common goal is more rare with many different projects happening at any point in time. An insight from this discussion was that the tasks of a leader are to set boundaries and to protect her people. When there is too little nurturing or too little boundaries, disturbances can arise in teams. Leaders should strive to still create some coherence, such as creating a culture for working together. I realized I should probably create such a vision statement for my lab as well, following some wonderful examples from Candice Morey and Maryam Aly.

Other interesting factoids were that females tend to deal with uncertainty in different ways than men (in general, of course). While males tend to resort to hierarchy and competition in the face of uncertainty, females tend to resort to a lack of hierarchy. And guess what the academic world looks like? Pretty male in my book!

Finally, I also found the overview of leadership tasks very helpful. A leader is to endure loneliness, otherwise you cannot set boundaries. Moreover, they have to use power, using language such as "I want you to...", "I don't want you to...". I notice how I find that quite challenging. Also, the leader should leave the fate of the employee with the employee, and not do their work for them. Finally, the leader should be an example of success, which includes the ability to take criticism, which can inspire others to also dare more. While this is challenging, a good message was that "there is nothing great about making yourself too small." Good point.

Presentation of the LNVH monitor on females in senior academic
positions and salary gaps

The day ended with a keynote by a very inspiring woman: Rana Dajani, who presented herself as someone wearing five scarves, after a book she wrote. The five scarves represent her roles as mother, academic, advocate, and more. She mentioned that interestingly, in the middle east and India, there are more women than men in STEM. Why is this? Why is there na absence of leading females in STEM in the Western world? She proposed that this could be because success is defined mostly in male terms: fame and money. What if we redefine the criteria pf success? Maybe we can then have a much more creative and diverse workforce. I resonate quite a bit with those ideas. She encouraged us to persist, because the world needs us, and we can be role models for others. Yet, we also need support, and recommended mentoring. I highly agree--mentoring is incrdibly helpful. She also mentioned a website with resources of mentoring support: the three circles of Alemat. In short, a very inspiring day in which I learnt a lot!

"Don't run too fast"--self-compassion in the rat race that can be work

Another Lojong slogan is "Begin the sequence of sending and taking with yourself." This slogan reminds me of what we often tend to overlook: caring for ourselves. While caring for others can create a "broad mind" as I suggested in my previous blog, this does not mean you should completely neglect yourself. I think that many of us in the West do not have a sense that we are basically good, and as a result, we are continually trying to prove ourselves and try to get "better." Tsoknyi Rinpoche is one of the Tibetan lamas who has very good teachings on this topic. interestingly, when we try to benefit others and only focus on others to be a "good human" but we don't feel fundamentally good ourselves, then the whole thing becomes quite neurotic.

So what should we do? We can apply all the compassion practices to ourselves! And we should. If you find yourself thinking "I don't need this", "I don't want to waste time on this", this probably means that you really need it! So, instead of taking others suffering and giving away your happiness, as is suggested in the practice of tonglen, you can take away the suffering of your future self, and give happiness to your future self. Or, as is suggested in the Tibetan book of living and dying Chapter 12, you can take on the suffering of the part of you that was hurt, and give it your happiness. In this way you can heal yourself, so that you are in fact ready to give. These ideas are backed up by a lot of research suggesting that self-compassion is crucial for human well-being and can help people deal much better with a lot of stress and emotional turmoil.

Picture by Floris van Vugt

This week, I tried to practise self-compassion when I went back into the thick of work: the academic year is starting. One mantra that I learnt during the retreat is "you don't have to run so fast." My main habit is that I tend to want to do too many things and go too fast when I am insecure. During my runs during the retreat, I would time and time again repeat to myself "you don't have to run so fast." During running, this is important to ensure that you reach the end of the run. But during work, it is important to ensure that you don't overlook things or make (too many) errors. So for me, self-compassion involves mostly giving myself space and permission to not run too fast (both literally and metaphorically).

Remembering to remember this trick to make your mind bigger

Next installment in the #lojongchallenge. The next slogan is more general: "in all activities, train with the slogans." I think this refers to how in general, it is important to not just think about the slogans in your meditation, but try to remember to apply them in your daily life. Of course that is nothing new for us on this blog, because that is what the blog is all about. The general idea of Lojong is to train an attitude in which we give all gain to others, and take all loss upon ourselves, as the sage Geshe Chekawa said. This is about the most counterintuitive that you can think of, so it is crucial to try to remember again and again. Writing this blog is one way in which I remind myself. Other people have cards with the different slogans in a visible place, or they put some of the slogans on their fridge.

So how have I been working with these slogans? Currently I am on retreat in the beautiful dharma centre of Lerab Ling in southern France, which obviously makes it easier to remember these slogans. In the previous blog I write about how I used the Lojong teachings to generate compassion for the pain of others while running. Another example is that when some judgment about people arises, you can immediately use that as a source of compassion. Instead of judging them, you can see people's suffering, and you can pray or aspire that it may be relieved.

I also had some spectacular failure of applying these teachings. Today right after finishing my retreat rota of cleaning toilets and showers, I was sitting at lunch and noticed I had lost my water bottle. That really sucks when on retreat! So I set out to look for it, first in the temple, and then back at the place where I clean the washrooms. Now it turns out that the person who had locked the cleaningroom after we were done had misplaced the key, so I could not look for my water bottle there. I spent my whole lunch break looking for this person frantically, and not a single moment did any thought of compassion for others arise. In fact, my mind was dramatically narrowed to just looking for this one self-related thing. It was not a very pleasant feeling. Thankfully, I found the person at the end of the lunch break, and he had in fact misplaced the key and I found my water bottle back. What a different space did I feel in my mind. Next time I should remember the Lojong teachings. It would have probably made my lunch break quite a bit more enjoyable.

Finally, to further inspire serious engagement with Lojong, I recently read an article that hypothesized that the Tibetans' resilience in the face of the torture, being forced to flee their country, poverty, and so on, comes from an ingrained mentality of Lojong. They themselves called it "broad thinking" in which you take off the focus from yourself and expand it to all the others that are suffering. Definitely worth a read, and worth doing more research into!

Working with (against?) work pressure in academia

Today I followed a workshop given by Jeanine de Bruin and Brigitte Hertz on work pressure in academia. This workshop followed at the end of a monthlong writing challenge for academics, in which the goal was to write for two hours every day. I really enjoyed the challenge of consciously shifiting priorities towards generating content and away from responding to things, because even if producing is harder, in the end it is more rewarding (see also my earlier blog post here.

The first insight from the workshop was that the main tool for dealing with work pressure is trying to make the right decisions. It is very easy to get swept away by the onslaught of things to do, and the implicit attitude of "I am busy, so I am working hard and doing it right" instead of thinking about WHAT you are doing.

In managing your work you can think about three levels. The first level is working on a day level. You can start the day with the things that are important to you (e.g., writing this grant application). Moreover, do not have the illusion that you can multitask, because you can really not, and not only the quality of your work suffers, but you also feel much more stressed (at least I do). In addition, I find it very helpful to focus the energy in my day by looking at the goals I defined by means of emacs orgmode; a plain text system in which I stick on my projects with todo items and due dates. This system ensures that no projects are forgotten. I also really like to use it to keep track of each student I am supervising (each student has their own file in which I write a few notes after every meeting with what they have done and what they will do for the next meeting). You can also think about time management at the project level, in which you want to make sure you pick the right projects, and are not afraid to drop projects if they are not leading to something fruitful. Two things I learnt there are first, to take regular space for reflection on how it is going with a project and what is next and so on. This is difficult because the busy woodpecker in me would like to continue doing something "productive", but reflection can really save a lot of time and increase quality in the end. One particular thing to think about are potential roadblocks or plans B: what could go wrong, and what should we do then. I think too little about this, and maybe this wastes a lot of time. On the really long-term level time management is also thinking about what is important for the long-term. What is my passion, where do I want to be 5-10 years from now. I usually only think about this when writing my tenure dossier or a job application, but it is important in deciding what projects to pursue and even what to do in a single day as well. One skilful way of forcing yourself to reflect on this is chatting about it with a mentor over lunch. I highly recommend that. It also made me realize I should review my toggl time log a few times a year to check what my time is being used for, and whether that is what I want. Right now I only review my toggl logs every week when the system mails me the hours tracked.

We then talked about the famous Eisenhower quadrants with urgent-not urgent and import-not important. I have thought about this a lot, and I think that most stuff I do is in the "important" section of the matrix. One thing that I never grasped until this workshop was the distinction between "being important for me" and "being important to do". For example, helping a colleague is a good thing to do, but won't generally help my career ahead. So maybe in the matrix it falls in the category of "not important" in that sense. I realized that I spend too much time following news (partly news, partly news related to science and academic how-to). I made the resolution to limit my news intake to 15 minutes a day, so I won't waste too much time on it. In the end, that won't really get myself too much ahead, apart from staying up to date with the world and getting ideas for lectures, student assignments and grants. Another skilful means for reducing the "not important stuff that needs to be done" is to wonder whether not someone else can do it. I put this into action by requesting a student assistant for the next course I am teaching. While initially this is more work in instructing the person and making all procedures more explicit (grading sheets!), in the end it will save me time. And of course, it is always helpful to remember that saying yes to something means saying no to something else (also described in the book Busy by Tony Crabbe). A final insight from the Eisenhower quadrants was that focusing on the things that are important and not yet urgent will help to increase quality (because you can let the projects rest and then realize you have made some mistakes), and improve your health.

We also discussed what our university can do to reduce work pressure. One important thing I think is that I waste a lot of time searching for information on how to do things, reinventing the wheel, not being aware of procedures. Sharing knowledge more efficiently would really help. We also need to work on more delegation and most importantly better delegation: the insight here was that delegation is not just dropping the task onto someone but also training them how to do it. On the short term training takes time, but on the longer term it reduces errors and therefore headache. It would also be cool if promotion weren't so focused on grant acquisition, because grant acquisition is such a highly risky process that is a lot of work with very uncertain outcomes. I learnt that Utrecht University also has a career path focused on teaching, which sounds really cool. Finally, it would be nice to build more of a collaboration culture at university, rather than the current competition culture.

The last part of the meeting focused on recognizing stress in your work. I think I am blessed in this department because while I feel sometimes exhausted, I never have trouble sleeping and I feel generally happy. I credit the ballet dancing that is a fixture in my schedule, together with the meditation practice that I do every morning and every evening. I think it is really important to stick to those things as priorities in addition to work priorities, because otherwise you waste a whole life working and being unhappy.

In the end, reducing work pressure relies on the confluence of both individual action (trying to work on what is important and inspiring and taking good care of yourself) with institutional action; the universities will have to change because in the long run the current work culture in which many academics put in way too many hours compared to their contracts, and especially in which evaluation is biased towards metrics of grant acquisition that you have little control over is not sustainable. It is helpful to reflect on this both at the individual level and to think together with colleagues and decision makers on how to improve the work culture.