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The get-more-done, put-off-leisure mindset that is common to American work culture can easily be found in the library professional as well.

Hi, my name is John, and I’m a workaholic. 

I love what I do and get immeasurable fulfillment from my work as an academic librarian, but I also realize the need to step outside Libraryland to recharge.

Liz Danzico has good advice for people like me. From “Banking time“:

“While we’re taught the value of saving money, we’re never really taught the value of saving time. Not saving time so we are more efficient elsewhere, but actually banking time. Saving it for later.”

Danzico briefly offers five recommendations:

Max out your vacation days: I’ve already put in a request for a day off in Febrary “just because” and I’m planning a family road trip for the summer.

Keep 10-20% of your day, every day, free: This is more difficult. I have a rule that nothing goes on my calendar unless it must be accomplished at a specific time. Blocking off free time works against that philosophy, but I could do a better job of saying no to meetings that phone calls could easily replace.

Schedule make-up events on a monthly basis: If it’s an important event/meeting, I should do this. I may start making this part of my weekly review on Sundays.

Pay attention to recurring meetings: I have 24 hours of recurring  meetings each month. It’s hard to figure out what I could ignore. I could certainly reduce some of those down to 30 minutes, especially if I did a better job of planning what I want to accomplish ahead of time.

Promote your time of: Last year, I detailed my work week. I’m planning to do that again in my new position but I also want to do a librarian anti-day in the life during which I record everything I do during the week that isn’t work related. It’s not much, but it’s worth celebrating.

When it comes to my relationship with the profession, “work-life balance” is not an ideal to which I aspire. Instead, I try to focus on the creative benefits that time off, reflection, and distance can bring to my work. I also try to remind myself that stress in any portion of my life can negatively affect my productivity, my relationships with others, and my health. There are some portions of my life, mostly family related, that I keep separate from my work, but for the most part I am an academic librarian through and through.

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The ACRL Board wants to make it clear that the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education is “a formal ACRL document” and that a decision on what to do with the previous standards will be discussed at the 2016 Annual ALA Conference.

I am admittedly a fan of the new framework: not so much of its content but its form. However, I’m still not sure what we mean when we say that it will be “a living document.” Will the threshold concepts be expanded as libraries research and publish new information about their use? Will we add additional concepts to the original list? I understand the need for standards, especially in our current assessment-driven higher ed environment, but I don’t believe we should let another decade go by before we revisit how we as a profession define info lit.

Still, I am happy to know that many, many people far more experienced and intelligent than me are working on and thinking about these issues.

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radiolab logoFor 2016, I pledged to give to something I like every month. This month, I am making a donation to my long-time favorite radio program, Radiolab.

Radiolab was the first podcast I subscribed to after purchasing an mp3 player in 2005. It has been a staple of my morning commute ever since. Of the 20 programs currently in my podcast queue, it is the only one that I have prioritized to always play first once a new episode is available. Radiolab has been a constant source of joy in my private life. I hope that my gift will help develop and sustain future programming so others can share in that same joy.

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In “Attending To the Whole Student: Higher Ed’s 2016 Trend,” Steven Bell writes:

“As collaborators, academic librarians already work with residential life, student services, career centers, and other academic and social support staff to contribute to any effort to meet students where and when the need for help arises. […] Academic librarians are proving themselves more perceptive than other learning and support units at getting in tune with students who demand their institutions pay attention to social justice, equality, and diversity issues. Alone, academic librarians won’t meet all student needs, but they certainly demonstrate the ability to connect with students in ways that contribute to a whole health approach.”

Part of my job is to think about (and execute) ways to engage students with the library in ways that reach beyond the reference desk, the classroom, and the stacks. To that end, much of my week is spent meeting with potential collaborators. This constant back and forth between the library and other campus offices has begun to change my perspective on how the library can contribute to the education of “the whole student.” I feel more in tune with the mission of the university. If this is the direction that academic libraries sail in 2016, you can bet I’ll be on board.

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Early in my career, my colleagues would frequently refer to me as “the guy who wears the bow tie.” It infuriated me. “Seriously,” I would say to myself, “is that the only thing you can say about me? What about all this great librarian work I’m doing?” This of course led me to question my own abilities: “Damn, maybe my work isn’t that great after all?” There was a long spell of a few years when I refused to wear a bow tie except when a tie was required, which in Southern California is a rare event. I even tried to give it up altogether in my last position, but by that point the badge was so integrated into my professional identity that not wearing a bow tie always elicited awkward comments and questions.

This is why Dani B. Cook’s latest post at the Rule Number One blog speaks to me:

“Baking is just one example, but what other parts of ourselves do we have to deny in order to be taken seriously in the workplace? Is it worth it? What does it mean to elide parts of yourself so that you aren’t just described as “the girl who bakes”? At what point does my work speak for itself and I don’t have to worry about this anymore?”

I don’t want to suggest that my experience as a cis-gendered male equates with the gendering that often occurs to women in the library work space. However, I can relate to the frustration of loving something and feeling that that love needs to be suppressed for the purpose of advancing my career. Thankfully, I am in a place now where I feel both my professional capabilities and my personal passions can merge seamlessly into a unified identify. Bring on the bow ties!

bowties

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From BLDGblog, Ghost Streets of Los Angeles:

“That is, someone’s living room is actually shaped the way it is not because of something peculiar to architectural history, but because of a ghost street, or the wall of perhaps your very own bedroom takes its angle from a right of way that, for whatever reason, long ago disappeared.”

I’ll never be able to look at Google Maps the same way again.

 

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Moving into my new office
Moving into my new office

In 2015, I pledged to simplify and to do better. Despite a series of increasingly troubling health issues that consistently limited my professional output, I’m happy to say that I am in a better place now than where I was this time last year. Moreover, I am looking forward to 2016 as possibly being one of the most productive years of my career as a librarian so far.

Professional goals

My professional goals for this year are quite simple:

  • finish my IRDL research project (finally)
  • apply for one grant
  • submit one proposal to a conference
  • create one new sustainable program at MPOW
  • strategically develop better relationships

The last one of these is the most nebulous, but essentially I want to spend more time reflecting upon my professional relationships/networks and how they can be mutually beneficial to all the parties involved.

Personal goals

My personal goals are also simple and focus on ways to increase my creative output both at work and at home as well as contribute to self-fulfillment:

read my own tomes

My partner and I are currently using the Konmari method to organize our home and despite our deep love of books we recognize the need to slim down our collection. In doing so, I’ve realized just how many books I own but have never read. Inspired by a LibraryThing group of similar name, I’ll be focusing on reading books that have sat long neglected on my shelves.

give to things I like

Each month, I plan to give a donation of money or time to something that I love. It could be a non-profit, podcast creator, software program designer, or a local group. It is a simple step toward being more appreciative of the things that enrich my life (and hopefully the lives of others).

track my health

I’m not pledging to exercise more or eat more vegetables, but I will commit to tracking my food, sleep, and exercise habits using my recently purchased Fitbit. Tracking this information in and of itself will improve my health and after a few months of data collection I’ll be in a better position to make concrete health goals.

commit to one 30-day challenge each month

Rather than set a year-long goal that in all likelihood would fail, I will commit to doing one 30-day challenge each month. The focus for each challenge will be improving either my health, creativity, or kindness.

review my mantra daily

I’ve been constantly tweaking a “mantras.txt” file over the past year and slowly making it a weekly, if not daily, habit. I’m ready to make this my daily mantra:

Be grateful. Be present. Smile. Breath. Listen. Make eye contact. I acknowledge that there will always be more things to do, more projects to start, more progress that could be made. I acknowledge that I cannot do everything, but I can choose what I focus on in a given space of time. There is rarely a “best” choice, and the fear-of-missing-out is a distraction.

That is the plan for 2016. As always, writing more is a perennial goal and which for better or worse will happen in this space. Happy New Year!