Lessons learned from 30 Rock...

My wife and I love 30 Rock. If you haven't seen it, I recommend renting at least a season from Ragtag. It is a show designed to replicate the production of a show similar to Saturday Night Live. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), the main character, is in charge of production of the show, and must deal with the corporate issues from her boss, Jack (Alec Baldwin), and the drama between the cast and the writers.

In an episode I've seen several times, Liz Lemon tries to give up eating junk food. Her co-worker, though, Pete, actually encourages her to eat the junk food. He claims that junk food is her stress release, and without this stress release, Liz will go crazy. Why? Because she is overworked and overstressed, and must deal with constant negative criticism. Pete himself admits that his own stress release has been taken (drinking coffee alone in the morning and reading the newspaper) and it has had drastic effects - at one point, Pete is sticking thumbtacks in his skin and eventually joins a 'fight club'. He urges Liz not to give up her own stress relief, because he fears what she will do.

This is what came to mind when reading Boice this week. When he stresses letting others do some of the work, I began thinking of my own past experiences where I would take on more work than I could handle - in fact, one quarter I started out taking 28 credit hours, two of which were advanced econometrics, and one of which was a studio art photography course. Needless to say, I was overworked and grumpy until I ended up dropping a couple of courses to a manageable load.

As an instructor, I believe we need to pace ourselves, and, at times, ask others to do some of the work, so that we don't end up like Pete and poking ourselves with thumb tacks to relieve stress (or turn to other unhealthy stress releases). One time, my own mentor (who I think may even be a little too slow-paced, but he's older) asked me to go watch his car when he parked illegally while he spoke with a student. Forty-five minutes later he came down and was surprised that I was still there. He was in no hurry, and figured I would simply leave after too long. This is the opposite extreme, as I was way too nice, but nonetheless, this guy does know how to delegate.

Long story short, I think the Boice is on to something - rather than turn to unhealthy stress releases, I think we should learn both to say 'no' when we are overbooked and to delegate to people who are willing to help. I'm now simply reiterating Boice, but hopefully the pop-culture reference made this more fun to read.