Gulak's Studio-Time Analogy

As academics we're faced with tough choices about how we manage our time. We often face many invitations to events or situations that consumer our time and energy, and so we might ask, in choosing from among such opportunities, which ones to accept, versus when to say "no".

I will now describe Glenn Gulak's "Art Studio-Time Analogy", which is the best answer I have so-far come across for addressing this issue.

The problem statement:

As thinkers and researchers, we're often in demand, for more than we can supply.

By that, I mean that there's more requests placed upon us than our limited time and energy can fulfill. For example, we might be asked to do a guest lecture in somebody's class, or we might be asked to speak somewhere, or we might be asked for advice on something.

Obviously if it's a student in a course we teach, our job is to be available. But if it's some professor at another university who's found out about our work, at what point does it become "worthwhile" (for whatever "metric" of "worthwhile" you can think of) to go and speak in their class.

Obviously if it's somebody who's cited our work extensively, and built upon the work, then it may be worthwhile for a collaborative point of view. But what if, for example, somebody wants you to speak to their group, and just read about us in the newspaper but didn't actually build upon our scientific achievements?

Obviously they want us, so what should we be asking for in return.

One approach is straight cash deal, e.g. speaking fee. But this tends to scare off a lot of the requests, except for the corporate ones, so it leads to giving mostly corporate talks.

But at least simply charging a reasonable speaking fee does reduce the number of requests down to a manageable level. In this way, adjusting the "price" upwards (from zero to some relatively high value) moves the supply and demand into equilibrium. It also makes it alot easier to decide which talks to accept versus reject, and to compare the value of these opportunities against the day-to-day demands upon our time.

But what about prestigous academic talks like Keynote Addresses at conferences and symposia, where they can only afford to pay expenses plus a very small "honorarium"?

Should these be curtailed, or should they be chosen in lieu of true "paid gigs"?

To make such a time-management decision, it would help if we could convert them both into the same "units" (say, for example, "United States dollars"), so that, although a conference Keynote doesn't pay that much, maybe you can put a dollar figure on what it's worth. The commercial terminology for this is "reputation capital".

For example, giving lots of conference keynotes might increase one's chances of passing a tenure review (which might mean one gets to keep one's job, which can be converted to, among other things, a "dollars" equivalent).

I know it's hard to put a price on things like that --- maybe it's a bit like asking someone how much they'd be paid to cut off their right arm --- something insurance companies are forced to do --- and because the "units" of measure are so incompatible, I know it's a difficult problem.

But I was just looking for some ideas, from somone who's been through alot of academic hurdles, on how to measure the relative value of accepting speaking invitations, popular press interviews, versus publishing more papers, versus having more free time to think of new ideas.

The proposed solution:

Consider the need for an artist to spend time in the studio:
I like the analogy that we are artists and we need studio time to make significant "out of the box" contributions. I am of the opinion that most of us don't set aside enough studio time for the creative work that we are demanding of ourselves -- and when man's knowledge is doubling every 18 months or so -- the studio time is even more critical than someone crafting a piano concerto for example. This analogy cuts to the chase more so than the financial analogy I believe. Glenn.

--Glenn Gulak Consider, therefore, a unit of human endeavour, accomplishment, or satisfaction, equal to one hour of your time spent in your studio. I call this unit the "Gastu" (Gulak Artist's Studio-Time Unit).

Therefore, when considering accepting an invitation to some conference, event, television interview, or the like, we know roughly how long this will take. For example, a conference keynote (by the time you take into account travel, waiting at the airport, stress-related tiredness, etc.) might take 10 or 20 hours out of our life.

We might ask ourselves, is it worth 10 or 20 Gastu, e.g. compare it with the benefits of this many hours of studio-time spent with students working on a project.


--mann@eecg, Mon Jan 12 20:23:02 EST 2004

link to actual email correspondence (used with permission of Glenn Gulak).