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Editorial: Time to Think…

There are many shortages in academic life but, in my opinion, perhaps one of the most serious is the shortage of time, specifically, time to think. Really to think. Time to ponder, chew things over; to be able to recognize you haven’t got that argument right yet. To be not happy yet with your conclusions, and for that not to produce a flash of panic. To have the time, and maybe the confidence, to worry away at something. To read things, the works of others, not simply to find out what they say but as moments in a longer, slower process of musing something over. To re-read things. To go back to old material maybe; to rework it. Of course, we do do all of these things. And yet it seems to me that the dominant structures, strictures and disciplinings through which we currently produce ourselves as ‘academics’ leaves far too little opportunity for serious thought. Indeed, I think I could make a case that thinking is perhaps our most undervalued activity. The issue of having time to think is more than one of whether we can preserve a free afternoon here and there. It is more about the overall pace and atmosphere of things; it is about what is valued. About there being time to ponder, to question, to re-work. It is about the deeper organization of our lives as academics. Sometimes it may mean just having ample time to talk to colleagues, and not just in formal structures such as seminars. Sometimes it may mean being able to read and think beyond the confines of your specialism and with no immediately specifiable goal, or output. Sometimes it may enable that sense of such engagement with an issue that you are drawn right into it; it’s constantly in your mind as you go through more mechanical tasks. A new angle dawns as you do something completely different (riding on top of a bus, watching a film, doing the washing up). For this sense of engagement and immersion to happen, wider conditions have to be met. Life has to be liveable in a way that nurtures it. It is a kind of richness and depth of intellectual texture. And there are many ways in which it is coming under pressure. There is, for instance, what I characterize as ‘the tyranny of the immediate’. Short-term deadlines, activities, responses, con-