Making time to communicate research

Thoughts and approaches to productivity for academics — that could also work for the rest of us!

You’re busy. We’re busy. Everyone is busy and getting busier all the time. That’s a given in today’s professional world — and it’s a reality that needs to be accepted in order to be properly addressed.

But if you are serious about building an exceptional research career, at some point you need to find a way of carving out some time to dedicate to communication, alongside journal publishing and research itself.

It takes time and energy to create good communication material. It involves thinking and writing about your work from a different point of view, with your ideal research target audience in mind, and this takes some context switching from your everyday work.

In this post we take a look at some of the ways you could make some time in your week that can be set aside to work on communicating your research.

Let’s dive in!

Accepting your dance card is full

Firstly let’s assume that you can’t actually add more hours to your workday — you already get just enough sleep and won’t do well with any less; you can’t get to work any earlier or leave any later due to personal and family commitments, or travel limitations; and you can’t add any extra time for work at home, including at weekends.

If you can make any sustainable changes in any of those areas without burning out or sacrificing commitments and hobbies that you are not willing to affect, then please consider doing so — though it is unlikely for most people.

So for the purposes of this article we’ll assume that you are at capacity in terms of time available, the only logical solution is to evaluate what you are doing with your work hours and start spending less time on certain activities.

Let’s also agree that the major responsibilities in your daily work are set in stone — the commitments you have made for research projects, teaching, organisational duties, internal training, open office hours and so on are all confirmed and not subject to change.