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“What Do You Want?” One Mathematician’s Attempt to Find Balance
I was chatting with a colleague recently and told her I was writing a piece on mental well-being and work-life balance. I shared some of what I was planning to say, and she asked, “Are you going to tell them it’s a myth?” I was a little astounded by her response and asked her to elaborate. She explained that she had been working as a professor for over 40 years and still was nowhere near a healthy work-life balance. As I pondered her statement, I thought about how much time we spend talking about work-life balance compared to how many of my colleagues feel similarly to my friend, myself included at times. Part of the problem is the high demands of our jobs. Because of the current economic state of our country, budgets are tight and fewer faculty are being hired, which means existing faculty have more demands on them. Another complicating factor is that we are all unique individuals with extremely specific needs. It’s no wonder our employers have a difficult time enacting policies that we all benefit from. By necessity then, we are each responsible for setting our own boundaries so we can achieve a reasonable balance in our lives. And, in my opinion, the populations affected most by this complicated problem are those new to our profession and/or those in positions with variable job security, in other words, those least likely to feel comfortable setting boundaries with their employers. The question then is, what advice can I possibly offer?
As a disclaimer, I am no expert in mental health, though I have been actively sharing my story through the Living Proof Blog (first hosted by the AMS and now by the MAA). I am a human who has collected experiences, both good and bad, and who tries daily to work toward balancing the demands on my time with my own mental and physical well-being. And while I don’t always succeed, I have learned a tremendous amount about myself through my efforts. To be frank, my fear in writing this piece is that I will unintentionally cause harm because so much of this work is deeply personal, and I know that our experiences might not align. Below, I will share what has helped me, and I hope that you can work toward solutions that work for you.
After the first year in my tenure track position, I was fortunate enough to be selected to Project NExT (New Experiences in Teaching), the Mathematical Association of America’s professional development program for new PhDs.Footnote1 In one session, a small group of us were discussing our first year of teaching and I had asked for advice on balancing everything that was expected of me. I was prepared to teach and do research, but the other commitments that came with the position were overwhelming me. Yes, some of them were challenging and enjoyable, and some were not, but sustaining the pace felt impossible. One of the program leaders, T. Christine Stevens, was present and she asked, “What do you want?” I had never been asked that before. Honestly, I didn’t think what I wanted mattered. What mattered was that I did my job well and did everything asked of me. I responded with, “I don’t understand. What do you mean?” Chris has a way of asking a question that gets to the point precisely, while also letting you know that she genuinely wants to know what’s on your mind. So, she repeated, “What do you want? What balance would work for you?”
Project NExT accepts applications every April. The program targets mathematicians in their first few years of postgraduate study and provides workshops and mentoring that touch on all aspects of an academic career.
It’s been fifteen years since that conversation, and I still reflect on it regularly. The good news is that I do know what I want. I want to do good work. I want to teach well. I want to be an advocate for students, faculty, and staff who need someone to speak up for them. I want to be recognized for my work. I want to be paid a fair wage for my work. I want to have time to travel and not feel guilty about not working. I want to enjoy my life without always worrying about work. But putting all of that into a formula that will yield a work-life balance that I’m happy with does not always seem possible. However I have developed practices I regularly engage in that help me to be more intentional with my commitments. Below I share what currently works for me. My best advice is to look for what works for you.
- 1.
Fairness in allocation: Before each semester, I make a schedule for how long I intend to be on campus working during the week. I usually aim for 40 hours a week, and I do my best to stick to it (that doesn’t mean I’m only working 40 hours a week). I have an hour commute each way and staying at work longer than 8 hours a day eats into time that I need to be spending on other tasks in my life. There might be days I have to stay later, and I try to be as flexible as I can, but I also monitor myself closely. If my mental stamina is low, or I feel like my emotional balance is off, then I borrow time for myself as I need it.
I think many of us work at odd hours. For me Friday and Saturday nights usually involve what some would call work. I might be doing research, but I don’t consider this work because I think of my research as my own. Of course, it is expected that I do research, but, more importantly, it brings me joy and it stimulates my own development as a mathematician and a human being. And that works for me because I get to decide what goes in the work bucket and what goes in my bucket. Yes, there will be some overlap, but sometimes I think we forget that we can hold things for ourselves.
The last thing I want to share here is a tough one, especially if you are pretenure or contingent faculty, and is even more complicated for those of us from marginalized demographics. But we all have the right to not allow anyone to impose unfair pressures on us. It’s easier said than done, I know, but please be mindful of yourself. Getting a job, getting research done, and publishing, all while learning how to teach and mentor, and balancing service on top of it all is overwhelming. If the demands of your job do not align with your personal need for balance, then consider a change. That is hard advice. The market is not great and job searches are a lot of work, but there is a job out there that will value what you offer. It might take time to find a fit that works for you.
- 2.
Mindfulness practice: I was diagnosed with depression as a graduate student, and that adds a complicating factor to my life. Over the past 20 years, I’ve worked to cultivate a mindfulness practice that helps me manage my depression. Part of this practice is a focus on gratitude. Over the years I have conditioned myself to be aware of things I can appreciate about my day, and this focus provides a way to dispel negative thoughts that creep in. For me, gratitude is like endorphins released after a good workout. Another part of my practice is regular exercise; I lift weights, I do yoga, and I bike. Basically, I try to move my body daily. In working through my depression in therapy, I learned that accomplishing something, anything, or a moment of gratitude can get my mind moving in a functional direction. It’s not about forcing myself to be positive or avoiding the problem. My depression presents as feelings of worthlessness and an inability to function. My therapist helped me develop counter habits that build an outlook on life that helps me see reality from a grateful point of view (even when things are hard). And yes, there are days where it is difficult to function and that is OK. Self-care must include self-compassion.
Mathematics itself helps me in this work. I wrote the following for a blog post about my depression:
I’ve also realized that mathematics is actually a great tool for someone like me. Instead of obsessing over proving the theorem, I now end a day of research looking back on what I have learned. It’s about finding the positive. Ok, so I didn’t prove the theorem, but I learned why my method is insufficient. Or, I learned about a new result that may prove useful in my research. Or, I went back to the basics and dug into the foundational aspects of the problem, solidifying my overall understanding. Hell, somedays I just work some fun calculus problems. Learning is one of the strongest tools I have. The fact that I live and work in a discipline that has an endless supply of things to learn is a huge blessing. I know that there is more pressure on graduate students and pretenured faculty to “prove that theorem,” but this perspective can still be useful. You are not defined by your mathematics. It’s a cliché, but I wish that we were more acculturated to focus on the journey rather than the destination.
Once I understood more holistically the value that my mathematical journey adds to my life, it completely changed my relationship with mathematics. It also almost entirely erased impostor syndrome from the equation.
A question I get asked a lot concerns balancing my mindfulness practice with the unexpected. The answer I have come to is that yes, there will always be situations that I cannot control. What I can control are my emotions. We all get to choose how we respond to the things life throws at us. It takes hard work to manage one’s emotions well, and I’m still on my journey, but over the last few years I have learned a lot in this regard, and I recommend Brené Brown’s books and various lectures (available through TED talks, Netflix, and HBO Max) as a resource.
One other habit I have developed here is taking time to sit with my emotions. This is usually Friday and Saturday evening work too, but it gives me a chance to be quiet and look at my reactions/responses to situations that arose during the week. Sometimes I’m proud of how I handled a situation. Sometimes I learn that I over- or under-reacted. Sometimes I’m still feeling anger or frustration and then I have the chance to dig in and figure out what is at the core of those emotions. It’s not easy work but it has helped me learn so much about myself. As a department chair, I have been upfront with my department colleagues that I am engaging in this work, so they know when I come to them with a question or sometimes an apology, that I am dedicated to managing our department well.
- 3.
Develop personal mechanisms for measuring success: For much of my career, my measures of success were distinctly tied to my job performance, and that affected how I valued myself. If a class didn’t go well, I felt terrible. If a paper got rejected, I felt defeated. If I couldn’t solve a problem, I felt incapable as a mathematician. A shift happened a few years ago when I consciously developed new ways to measure my success. I came to realize that my performance in the classroom didn’t always directly correlate to my students’ performance. Yes, I assess my lessons, activities, assessments, and delivery, but I don’t let student outcomes conflict with how I feel about my performance, though I do adapt my approach or clarify expectations as necessary.
In my research, I performed a similar mental shift. This was much more complicated. Here is an excerpt from another blog post I wrote about this process:
After finishing my dissertation, I began a tenure-track position, and my relationship with research continued in the same wayFootnote2 for many years. However, around my seventh year I noticed that I didn’t get stuck as often when reading new articles. This revelation helped me immensely. Yes, I surely knew more than I had as a graduate student, but my research capability seemed vastly different, and I couldn’t pin down exactly how or when the change had happened because I still felt inferior. So, I decided to analyze the situation, interrogating my doubts and fears. This led me to reshape my thoughts about mathematics research and exploration. I posed a number of questions to myself.
2✖This is explained in the blog post in more detail and refers to an unhealthy relationship with mathematics.
“Why do you feel like a failure when you can’t prove your latest conjecture?”
“Why do you feel like a failure when you get stuck with an idea?”
“Why do you feel embarrassed to reach out to a colleague to discuss ideas?”
What I realized was that getting stuck is part of the process. It is a frustrating part of the process sometimes, but I can’t control that. The actual “truth” about the process is that we are human, and it is natural to attach our emotions to our work. What we can control are our thoughts and emotional reactions to the process, and I had to develop a way to combat the negative thoughts.
Here’s how I currently handle unkind thoughts I have towards myself regarding mathematics. When I feel like an impostor or inferior because I’m not making progress on my latest project, I read my old work. I remind myself that I am capable and that it isn’t some miraculous feat that I proved results in the past. I take pride in what I’ve accomplished. When I’m feeling isolated, I look for gratitude. Sometimes, this is as simple as being grateful that I had the chance to think about my work. I also take time to be grateful for the colleagues I have who love talking about math. When I feel stuck—really stuck—with a set of ideas, I return to basics. I make sure my foundation is firm or explore a new perspective on ideas I’m familiar with. Basically, I try to learn something. This is the key for me. I can’t prove a new theorem every time I sit down to do research because it takes time for ideas to come together. But I can learn something every time I come to my research, and that is how I measure my progress—by what I learned during the session—not by my productivity. Progress is often slow, and that is OK, but I can learn every day.
This one is tricky because we are still held accountable by the expectations of our positions regardless of our personal measures of success. However, since I have adopted a new attitude toward mathematics and measures of success that are fair to me as a human being, I have become more productive with my output. It has also increased the joy I feel in the doing and teaching of mathematics.
- 4.
Meet people: I have been lucky enough to find delightful colleagues both near and far. But don’t let luck be a factor. Go meet people. Talk to people in your department and across your campus. Talk to others at conferences. Talk to publishers in the exhibit halls. Email an author when you enjoy their work. Find good mentors who can help you grow. Your walk along the mathematical journey will be all the more enriched by your connections. The self-work I’ve done to this point has not been an individual endeavor, and I don’t want to think about what my life would be like without the folks I’ve met along the way.
As mentioned earlier, in order to avoid causing unintentional harm, I have tried to avoid offering blanket advice. But, if you will indulge me, I want to offer a few general recommendations. First, think about what you want frequently and work toward a work-life balance that helps you achieve those goals. Second, be kind to yourself. This will likely translate into kindness for others. Third, don’t compare yourself to others. Finally, invest your time in things which optimize your strengths.
Returning to the original question, do I think work-life balance is a myth? No, I don’t. But, for those of us who want to be excellent at our jobs and live rich lives, I think it requires us to evaluate our commitments frequently and make changes that move us toward balance. The more we talk to each other about our strategies, the less lonely the journey will feel.
Matthew A. Pons is a professor of mathematics and Marie & Bernice Gantzert Professor in the Liberal Arts & Sciences at North Central College. His email address is mapons@noctrl.edu.
Article DOI: 10.1090/noti2971
Credits
Photo of Matthew A. Pons is courtesy of North Central College.