WORK IS WHAT WE DO BETWEEN MEETINGS.

The dean at Anonymous Community catches on.  Contrary to what dispiritingly many administrators and far too many unthinking critics of higher education believe, the work does not stop simply because classes are not currently in session.

Moments like these strike me as both necessary and difficult to encourage.  They happen when people have time, but are still physically around.  They require a level of personal comfort, and a willingness to put in a chunk of time without any specific agenda or hope of payoff.  They require enough slack in the system for people to be human.

As budgets tighten and accountability measures proliferate, I hope we’re able to keep enough  slack in the system to allow smart people to have actual conversations without “action items” or “strategic goals” or “measurable outcomes.”  Sometimes, the most productive moments happen in the gaps, by accident, precisely because nobody’s trying.

It's those off-hand conversations, when there's no task force or committee meeting or troublesome student determining the direction, that often serves to turn an idea from "minimal publishable unit" to something more like a genuine contribution.  A commenter gets it.

Most higher ed work (particularly more theoretical research) is "thought work", meaning that the work one does is literally thinking about things. Yes, grants have to be proposed, presentations organized and what-not, but sometimes the work is just sitting in an office and thinking (possibly including scribbling on whiteboards or paper). Simply thinking can be important work sometimes.

Indeed, and sometimes four or five hours of uninterrupted thinking time, preferably not when the thinker is overstressed and overtired, is the most important input. Assessment weenies and publication-counting promotion boards are both complicit in destroying that environment.