January is the month where we take pledges, the famous new year resolutions. This tradition recently expanded to an industrial scale in the UK. We have Veganuary (Go Vegan for 31 days), Dry January (31 days alcohol-free), No-Spend January (shopping abstinence), JanuRun (run 31 miles), Dark January (reduce wasted energy in commercial buildings) and so on and so forth. It’s all for the best. If you sign up, you’ll have a healthier lifestyle and you’ll help to preserve our planet for future generations.
Pledges can help us get motivated to make positive changes in our lives and try something new.
If the new year pledge-demic is too much for you, there is always the ‘anti-January fitness challenge’. You could sign-up and focus on doing less. As Natalie Morris of METRO put it, why not spend the month “listening to your body, and moving in a way [that] nourishes and protects both your muscles and your mind?”
And if you’re an academic, most sincere apologies, but you won’t have any time left for all this fun. January is Deadlanuary: the month of deadlines. It seems like everyone — funding agencies, search committees, panels, colleagues, graduate schools — likes to cram a deadline in the first month of the year.
Interlude: a World Cup analogy
The FIFA World Cup that took place in Qatar ended about a month ago with the crowning of Lionel Messi (also known as La Pluga or The Flea) and his Argentinian teammates. It was one one of most exciting sporting event in recent history. Now it’s back to league football and the exhausted players had to switch their focus and energy from national teams to clubs. You will note, however, that football clubs have given players weeks to holiday even when the league games have restarted. In fact, several players are still not back to regular play one month after the Cup. Think about it. These are extremely highly paid players and their employers are willing to let them take weeks off to celebrate (or commiserate in the case of the French players and other non-Argentinians) while league play has resumed.
Academia is no different. We can’t work nonstop without taking any significant breaks. If we don’t manage our efforts, we will risk burnout. Breaks and holidays are important for maintaining a healthy work-life balance; they help us refresh body and mind, distance from daily routine and gain a new perspective on old problems. Science being primarily a problem solving exercise, breaks are essential to create the mental distance that frees up our creative minds to come up with new ideas and solve old problems.
When Saskia and I moved to the UK in 2007, we decided to take an annual break every winter season during the Christmas and new year period. Two reasons.
First, here in the UK, our workplace basically shuts down at this time of year — Boxing Day, Christmas Day, Privilege Day and New Year’s Day add up to four bank holidays in just over a week.
Second, the weather. I don’t mind the cold that much anymore — for anyone who lived in the US Midwest, the cold here is nowhere as brutal. But the gray and damp English weather can get to you especially when it stays dark for 18 hours a day around late December. Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) is a real thing. If you’ve moved to Northern Europe, beware of how SAD can impact your mental health.
Our tradition is to have a winter break somewhere warm and sunny. This is also my time to switch off from the constant buzz of email and social media and declare email bankruptcy — nothing beats the satisfaction of staring at an empty inbox. This is my detox. My auto reply says it loud and clear:
“Thank you for your message. This is that time of year when I take a break from the e-world — email, twitter etc. I have also declared email bankruptcy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_bankruptcy
If you wish your message to be considered please contact me again after I return on January 4, 2023.
With my best wishes for the new year!
Sophien”
Those dreadful January deadlines
This year brough a stark reminder of why January is Deadlanuary. These are examples of what I consider inappropriate January deadline, building on the long academic tradition of expecting all of us to work on weekends and holidays.
Example 1. The original request dated back to November: “Please use the following procedure and provide the following by 1st January 2023 (the bullet point list had 6 items)”. This was followed by a reminder email on December 22nd generously offering a couple more days for the assignment since a key person was going to be away until the 3rd of January. Hurray!
Example 2. Another email came late on December 22nd — congratulations to my colleagues for wrapping up their to do lists just before Christmas — requiring a letter of reference by “Tuesday January 3, 2023 or sooner”. This was followed by a reminder on January 3rd: “The search committee has requested the letters to be sent by January 3, 2023.” Nice people, the search committee.
Example 3. BBSRC continues an old funding agency tradition of setting up grant deadlines early in January. Although this year’s deadline is a breezy January 11th, in practice this means a busy first week of January given that most institutions expect the paperwork to be wrapped up days before the deadline.
Example 4. Our Grad school has a January 15th deadline for student’s interim reports. This comes of course with an automated email sent to both students and supervisors on January 4th with this charming subject line to start the new year: “Interim Review is now due”. And thank you Microsoft Outlook for the automated email option. Incidentally, what the January 15th deadline means is a lot of panicked PhD students scrambling to organize a meeting with their committees in the first two weeks of January. Welcome to Deadlanuary Madness.
I could go on and on, but I think you’ve got the gist of it.
I mean, a deadline on January 1st? Seriously? Who picks up January 1st as a deadline? For one thing, given that January 2nd is a bank holiday, there is really no point in having the 1st as a deadline. Second, what message are you sending with these early January deadlines? Let me translate it for you: You’re an academic, we have no respect for your time. We don’t expect you to chill and relax during the Christmas break. We expect you to work during Christmas. And don’t even think about complaining because that’s just how it is.
The same institutions that set these January deadlines and send the emails regularly campaign about mental health issues in academia and wonder why young scientists are fleeing from academic careers. Go figure.
Your pledge for the new year: End inconvenient and disrespectful deadlines
Setting unrealistic deadlines and sending inconvenient requests should be viewed as poor form, if not disrespectful. Yet, the prevailing culture is that academics can be harassed any day of the week and anytime of the year. Nothing is off limits.
What can we do about it? How about an anti-Deadlanuary pledge:
· Do not send important emails that require short turn-over just before weekends and holidays.
· Do not set deadlines on inconvenient days, such as after weekends and holidays.
· Do not send incessant reminders, especially just after weekends and holidays.
Anything else would be disrespectful to your colleagues and community. If you don’t pledge to do this, then you’ll be contributing to fostering a negative academic culture and you will contribute to the decline in educational standards and the exodus from academia.
Finally, one last request. Please make sure to add a link to this post in your holiday auto reply emails.
Acknowledgements
I thank Saskia Hogenhout for sharing her thoughts on the topic. I also thank the authors of the 4 examples above for providing evidence for my rant. This article was written with assistance from ChatGPT and Quillbot.
This post is available on a CC-BY license via Zenodo. Cite as: Kamoun, S. (2023). Deadlanuary — why do we have so many deadlines in January? Zenodo https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7515217
