How to Look Productive

Need a good chuckle? Then check out Grad Hacker, a blog about how to act productive, because “simply being productive is not enough” (especially these days when so many people are being laid off). “What good is your inner, clandestine productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are?,” writes GH, an anonymous graduate student. Be sure to read his/her latest tip: “Set Your Chat Status to Busy but Don’t Sign Off.”

Meanwhile, over at Feminist Law Professors, Bridget Crawford offers a “version for law profs.” Here’s a sample:

• Tip #1:  Walk fast when on campus and explain to colleagues that you cannot go out to lunch because you are busy responding to law review editors’ comments on your manuscript.
• Tip #2:  Remind your colleagues how many students you teach, how many exams you have to grade, how frightfully many hours it will take you to grade them, and how grading exams really cuts down the time you can be available for scholarship, service activities, friends or family.
• Tip #3:  Send an e-mail informing your dean or colleagues that you have been invited to speak at the local Rotary Club or the neighboring town’s PTA meeting.
• Tip #4:  Bring massive amounts of work to talks by outsiders and student events, and make sure to visibly mark on documents — as if editing your own paper or making comments on student work — in full sight of everyone else in the room.
• Tip #5: Get ticked off and behave badly at faculty meetings.
• Tip #6: Do not timely answer e-mails from anyone who may be relying on you to show up to an event, help review applications or schedule a meeting, then get huffy when the meeting takes place before you respond to the e-mail.

What other tips would you add?