Title: Who Does the "Work Efficiency"?
Author: Associate Professor Keiji Nakajima, Department of Plant Developmental Biology, Division of Biological Science
As is common for researchers, I married late, so the time for raising children coincided with the time for increased work. When I was single, most of the 24 hours in a day were my own, so I did not have to think about "work efficiency," and most of my work was supervising students' experiments and doing my own research, so I was immersed in laboratory work until late at night. However, my life changed drastically when I had a child. I would take my child to daycare in the morning and pick him up in the evening. Once the child is asleep, I stay home and work until midnight, but I still only have about 10 hours a day to work. This makes me think about "work efficiency" in many ways.
The "work" of a university faculty member includes "teaching," such as teaching students and giving lectures, "administrative work" for the university and the lab, "outside requests," such as reviewing papers, and "my own research," including budget requests and writing papers. I have to do all this in parallel, but I have to meet certain deadlines for all but "my own research", so as not to interfere with the others. As I work on these projects in order of priority, my own research takes a back seat. There is no strict "deadline" for research, so even if you want to do something about it, you can't realistically do it.
The incorporation of national universities and the introduction of a competitive environment have dramatically increased the amount of "teaching" and "administrative work" that university faculty members have to do. And I believe this trend will only increase in the future. In order to accomplish these tasks in a limited amount of time, I feel that we are approaching the day when we will have to "sacrifice research" or "sacrifice family life," both of which are forbidden. Even if we try to make each of our jobs more efficient, in reality there is only so much that can be done by individual effort, and in the first place, in "education" and "research," the level of efficiency itself is meaningless. I feel that it is time for the entire organization to seriously consider how to maintain both "high research capability" and "work-life balance" for our university's researchers.
