Emergent scholarship

Course Lessons

Describe your paradigm

8 min read

Lesson overview

Objective: Examine how work paradigms shape your practice

Summary: Every academic inherits assumptions about work from their previous professional experiences. These paradigms - deeply held beliefs about productivity, success, and the nature of work itself - can either enable or constrain us in academia’s uniquely autonomous environment. This lesson helps you examine your current working paradigm and develop more intentional approaches that align with both academic reality and your personal goals.

Key habits:

  • Strategic pausing: Build in brief moments throughout your day to consciously assess whether your current activity aligns with your intended paradigm
  • Daily reflection: Set aside 5 minutes at the end of each working day to note where your work patterns aligned with or diverged from your intentions
  • Active experimentation: Test small changes to your routine for 1-2 weeks before either adopting or discarding them
  • Regular review: Schedule monthly check-ins to evaluate whether your work patterns serve your current priorities and career stage

Introduction

Paradigms are the deep-seated beliefs and assumptions that shape how we work. They influence which tasks we prioritise, how we structure our time, what we consider “productive,” and how we measure success. Often, these beliefs operate invisibly - we simply think of them as “the way things are done.”

For academics, understanding our work paradigms is crucial because academia operates differently from most other professional contexts. The high degree of autonomy in academic work means that our unconscious beliefs about productivity, time management, and success can either enable or constrain us.

These paradigms come from many sources - our previous careers, our PhD supervisors, our colleagues, or the broader academic culture. But they may not serve us well if they don’t align with the reality of academic work and our current context. Understanding how your beliefs and values influence your practice is the first step towards making more intentional choices about career progression, rather than simply waiting for it to unfold.

If professional practices were stable, repetitive and predictable, never requiring adaptation, improvement or change, we would only ever need to follow rules.

Trede & McEwen

Assumptions about academia

Most of us enter academia carrying deeply ingrained beliefs about work from our previous professional lives. These inherited patterns shape everything from how we measure productivity to what we consider “urgent.” While these beliefs served us well in more structured environments, they can become constraints in academia’s uniquely autonomous setting. The most telling example? How uncomfortable many of us feel when the answer to professional questions is “it depends” - a common response in academia that would be questionable in many other contexts.

Common assumptions about academia include:

  • There must be a “right way” to organise academic work
  • Working longer hours leads to better outcomes
  • Being constantly available shows dedication
  • Every task and request deserves immediate attention
  • Success comes primarily through individual effort
  • Professional progress follows a clear, linear path

Understanding these assumptions is the first step toward more intentional academic practice. Rather than letting inherited beliefs unconsciously drive our choices, we can begin to examine which approaches actually serve our current context and goals.

Exploring your current paradigm

Understanding your current work patterns - and where they come from - is essential for developing a more intentional academic practice. Many of our daily habits and routines are unconscious and may be creating friction with academia’s unique demands and opportunities. By examining your current patterns and their origins, you can start identifying which serve your academic work and which need to change.

Look at your typical working day. Do you find yourself:

  • Responding to emails as they arrive? (From institutional urgency culture)
  • Working set hours regardless of your energy levels? (From traditional employment)
  • Saying yes to every opportunity? (From early career conditioning)
  • Prioritising visible tasks over deep work? (From previous management structures)
  • Measuring progress by hours worked? (From traditional productivity metrics)
  • Seeking permission before making decisions? (From hierarchical work environments)

To evaluate whether these practices serve your academic work, consider:

  • Which activities energise you and which drain you?
  • Where do you experience the most friction in your day?
  • What tasks consistently get postponed?
  • When do you feel most productive and focused?
  • Which commitments align with your career goals?
  • What opportunities are you missing because of current habits?

The purpose of these reflective questions isn’t to reinvent your working life - many practices from other professional contexts remain valuable in academia. Instead, aim to consciously choose which patterns to keep, which to modify, and which to replace. This thoughtful evaluation creates space for new approaches that better align with both academic reality and your personal goals.

Building a new paradigm

Academia offers rare flexibility in structuring your work life, but this freedom is best approached thoughtfully rather than reactively. Your goal isn’t to eliminate administrative tasks or create a perfectly distraction-free environment - these are unrealistic aspirations that often lead to frustration. Instead, focus on developing a sustainable paradigm that acknowledges both the demands and opportunities of academic life.

Consider these key elements when building your approach:

  • Start your day with meaningful work, not urgent tasks
  • Block time for deep thinking when your energy is highest
  • Treat administrative work as part of scholarship, not an interruption
  • Build in regular reflection periods to assess and adjust
  • Create boundaries that protect both work and personal time
  • Schedule focused and administrative work in complementary patterns
  • Allow for spontaneity within structured routines
  • Recognise that different career stages require different approaches

Every academic has unique constraints and opportunities - young children at home, heavy teaching loads, research deadlines, or leadership responsibilities. Your paradigm should work with these realities, not against them. The most sustainable practices aren’t the most ambitious ones, but those that you can maintain consistently while making progress on what matters most.

Pause and reflect

Describing an unrealistic paradigm may be more problematic than having an unsatisfactory one. If you’re starting out in your career, it’s unlikely that you’ll be running a high-profile research centre in the near future. You will first need to establish a track record of postgraduate throughput, successful funding bids, and demonstrate good management and leadership skills.

Avoid aiming for a Utopian ideal that will never exist; there will always be email, meetings, and reports, so build these into your working paradigm. You can think either think of them as the price you pay for the flexibility and autonomy that comes with being an academic, or as important inputs into your work. Believe it or not, email, meetings, and reports, with the right framing, can be sources of inspiration and productive work.

Activity

Key takeaways

  • Academia’s unique autonomy: The flexibility of academic work can feel destabilising, especially when transitioning from more structured environments. While this freedom can initially feel overwhelming, it offers an opportunity to design work patterns that align with your natural rhythms and priorities.

  • Career stages require different approaches: Early career academics should explore possibilities and build foundational practices. Mid-career academics benefit from becoming more selective and focusing on high-impact work. Later career academics can balance established commitments with mentoring others.

  • Realistic over idealistic: An effective academic paradigm should be realistic rather than idealistic. Instead of trying to eliminate administrative tasks or create a perfectly distraction-free environment, build sustainable practices that integrate both deep work and essential administrative responsibilities. The goal is progress, not perfection.

Resources

  • 80 000 hours (n.d.). Annual career review tool. 80,000 Hours.
  • Ferriss, T. (2009). The 4-hour workweek: Escape 9-5, live anywhere, and join the new rich. Harmony.
  • Kuhn, T. (1996). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press.
  • Todd, B. (2021). What does a fulfilling, high-impact career look like for you? 80,000 Hours.
  • Trede, F., & McEwen, C. (Eds.). (2016). Educating the deliberate professional: Preparing for future practices. Springer International Publishing.

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