Not surprisingly, advice and quick tips are what many faculty members ask for during our initial coaching sessions. Some assume poor time management is the root of their problem, and want suggestions on how to deal with it. In my sessions, I have encountered all of the following:

• Faculty members complaining of burnout, lethargy, disorientation, or malaise. They assume the solution is a matter of more discipline, a different writing schedule, or a set of productivity hacks such as Pomodoro timers and various accountability apps (such as Forest).
• Academics who’ve gone to all the productivity workshops, tried everything, and still feel a lot of shame over how they “should” be working. They’ve tried all the hacks but haven’t been able to make any of them work.
• Faculty members confronting deep identity issues. It becomes obvious, once we get past the first or second coaching session, that some faculty members are skirting uncomfortable questions about their professional purpose or identity. They might keep redirecting the conversation to the safer, more familiar territory of work habits and proclivities.

[In this article] I offer the following examples from my meetings with faculty members (shared with their permission). All of these cases center around a classic time-management issue: the ability (or lack thereof) to say No to things.