"In March 2020, as the national lockdown began, my husband (also an academic) and I suddenly needed to do our full-time jobs from home. We were teaching and grading, and carrying out significant service obligations [...]while parenting three children (then 14, 4, and 1).

As a household of obsessive Type A people, we coped by creating a rigid daily schedule. As part of it, and for the first time in my career, I built something new into my workday: an hour of uninterrupted quiet time, just for writing.

The result was a glimpse of joy and sanity each day. It allowed me to enjoy my family and work much more than before, and certainly more than I would have otherwise, under pandemic conditions. [...]

All of this is well-known advice. So why is it so difficult for many academics to establish such a daily habit and stick to it? Indeed, why didn’t I do this earlier?

For me, the answer has to do with the service trap into which I and so many female academics fall without ever intending to — the “good girl” syndrome, as some have dubbed it, or the “academic housework” trap, as it is known in Britain. I appreciate the latter term, as it is a reminder of the general replication of gender roles from the home into the workplace.