The Hidden Curriculum Transcript

SEBASTIAN TELLO-TRILLO: Hello. I am Sebastian Tello-Trillo.

ALEX HOLLINGSSWORTH: I'm Alex HOLLINGSSWORTH. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Welcome to the Hidden Curriculum 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: The podcast where we talk about all the stuff you didn't know to graduate.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Hey everyone, hope you had a great week so far. We're excited to bring you this episode today. And before we begin, I want to know from Sebastian, what's your favorite TV show. Right now. Not of all time.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay, good 'cause I don't I don't like goat questions. I don't know. The current TV show that I'm enjoying right now. It's Schitts creek. It's great. Beep creek 'cause we have to mute it.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Wait isn't it S SCH or something. 

TELLO-TRILLO: You're Yeah. Well, 'cause when they say it in the National TV, they have to show the thing in order not to get beeped. So I don't.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: You can tell I don't watch the show I didn't know that.

TELLO-TRILLO: Schitt's Creek. It's been really awesome to watch it. It's really funny. I love it. I'm sad 'cause I'm season six. I'm about to finish it. And I'm a very slow watcher, so I've been watching this for a couple of months now.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: What's slow watcher mean? Does that mean, like 

TELLO-TRILLO: It took me about six,  Oh, no. It took me six years to finish Parks and Rec. Yeah.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: That's a great show. If you want to learn about Indiana where I live, that's basically documentary about Indiana.

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah. Yeah.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Alright, David, what's your favorite show right now?

DAVID SLUSKY: So I'm finally watching Man in the High Castle. Mm. I know this like came out a while ago, but I'm like in the middle of season three, and I'm finally watching it. I also watched, you know, Star Trek Discovery, which just ended. Which was lots of fun as well.

TELLO-TRILLO: Did you like it? The High Castle one?

SLUSKY: Yeah. I do like it.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay.

SLUSKY: It's interesting. I I think it's actually getting better. I think seeing what happens as they learn to explore what's going on in the universe of it, I think is actually cool.

TELLO-TRILLO: Got you. Alex, what about you.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So I've been watching a lot of top chef during the pandemic because I've been taking care of my daughter or, like, doing work during the days, and I just need my brain to be off at night. And I, finally understand why my parents when I was a kid watched terrible TV shows like NCIS or something. It's not about the entertainment. It's about not. It's about like looking at a wall, basically.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right. So right.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I like Top Chef.

TELLO-TRILLO: That's so funny because I feel like Top Chef is, seems kind of like edited to be stressful. Whereas, like, I think of Friends, it's like relaxing, you know, 'cause it's, like, funny, silly jokes, you know.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Maybe it's edited a bit. I don't know. I'm not too invested in any of them, so I'm just like, Oh, you got cut. Like, you know, It's alright.

Alright, so our special guest today is David Slusky, and much like the television show he's watching right now that focuses on counterfactuals. He is an applied microeconomist. His research is on health economics, labor economics, and public policy. He's a professor of economics at the University of Kansas, a research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a research fellow at IZA. David, how are you doing today?

SLUSKY: Doing okay. Thank you. It's really, really nice to be here. Very much appreciate you having me on the show. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Well, thank you for being here, and we always like to ask our guests for a fun fact about themselves. So what fun fact do you have?

SLUSKY: So, my fun fact is that I don't answer e mail or interact with any electronic device for a straight 24 hours every week. And I think, especially during the pandemic, when I'm in front of a screen, literally the rest of my waking hours. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: This has been a really crucial practice for me.

TELLO-TRILLO: Do you time it or how do you calculate the 24 hours?

SLUSKY: So, it's Friday night to Saturday night, every week. Same 24 hours every week.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Do you feel like you guys do like board games or what do you feel like I mean, that's just I'm so jealous of that.

SLUSKY: I read. I take walks. I do board games. I sit at lunch for hours.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: You're a human, basically. That sounds awesome.

TELLO-TRILLO: Can you answer the phone if, like, you know, let's say a grocery store?

SLUSKY: No? No. You want to find me. You have to actually come to my house. During the pandemic, you should stay outside, but we can talk to the door, if we have to.

TELLO-TRILLO: That's really good. I think that's a healthy practice. Definitely have not adopted it, but maybe I'll try it out.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Sebastian and I both like this book uh Deep Work, or at least I like it, and I think Sebastian likes it. So I don't know if you've read it, David, but one of the practices that I'm pretty sure it's in deep work. It could have been some other Kal Newport stuff that he talks about in there is like making yourself really hard to find, so people have to come to you. Not haing your e mail address online, like having people have to come to your office, and like not that this is that, but the mental space that that creates, I was very jealous of when I was reading the book, and I'm jealous of this, idea here as well.

SLUSKY: Yeah, I think I overcompensate that I'm super easy to find 24/6, like, impossible to find the other 24 hours of the week.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: It's good. It's all about smoothing, right? Alright, so before we dive into today's topic, we also want to hear about your work. Is there a paper or something that you'd like to promote?

SLUSKY: Yeah, so I'm a new co editor at JPAN, the Journal of Policy Analysis. 

Thank you.

Specifically focusing on health economics, labor economics, which are my areas of research. And so my plug here is, please send us your manuscripts. We have an impact factor five, which puts us with other top general interest journals. Econ style manuscripts with policy implications, really would fit great. And even more cool is that your work will likely reach a broader audience than just economists, because the public management community will read it as well in this journal.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: We are very grateful for the service that you're doing. And in particular, we had another editor at JPAM on recently, and we learned a lot about how difficult and how time consuming it is to be a co editor there. So thank you very much.

TELLO-TRILLO: For sure. And can I ask you when around was this started of your co editing?

SLUSKY: I started early December. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay, so you've been doing it for a little bit now. How do you like it so far?

SLUSKY: I like it a lot. I think people do different things in the process. So I think some editors handle stuff earlier, and some editors handle stuff later. I think I am in more of the earlier part of the production function. And I actually like that and think that works with my hare as opposed to tortoise style of work. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Gotcha.

TELLO-TRILLO: Kind of a good segue into that is to learn a little bit about your workflow. And so full disclosure. I know I know David for a little bit. David is the kind of person who, if you look at his CV is doing a lot. So, I'm very interested in understanding his work flow. Especially if he's taking two days a week to rest. What is this madness? So, Share a little bit your day to day and your wisdom. What do you do?

SLUSKY: So, only one day a week. Definitely getting stuff done on Sunday. Only one day a week. Okay. So a couple of things. One of them is, I'm a firm believer in kind of a single stream inbox to do list, combined personal and professional. So, and I'm also a firm believer in getting that to zero every day. Now, that's with an asterisk because one of the ways to get it to zero is with snoozing. 

TELLO-TRILLO: And what I mean by a little bit, what this?

SLUSKY: So the idea is, let's say something an e-mail from Sebastian comes in, and Sebastian needs something done in the next two weeks. And I agree with that needs to be done in the next two weeks. And I have a block of time to do it in 12 days. So I'm going to snooze that for 12 days because I don't need to every day between now and then, reaffirm my decision to not do this until two days before it's due.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay.

SLUSKY: I will snooze it. If Sebastian follows up with me, then I will obviously be back in my inbox. If I have to find it, I can search for it. But otherwise, I will not spend time re deciding to not do this. And then my to do list, I just e mail myself. It's all one list. And so then what I do is, I tend to work reasonably normal hours, you know, eight to six, Monday to Friday, something like that. You know, Zoom school for my daughter permitting. And so then the first thing I do in the morning is I look at what showed up that day, and I snooze anything that I'm definitely not doing that day. Sometimes the next day, sometimes the next week, sometimes the next month, whatever the right interval is for that thing.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So is each e-mail like a to do item, or is there like a to do list e-mail?

SLUSKY: No. Each Each item is an e-mail, exactly. Single stream. You know, The quantum here is either an e mail chain or a to do list item, which I might reply to it in my own little chain to myself as I update the item, or I do half of it, but not the other half. Then I'm going to snooze intraday. So stuff that I need for a meeting in the afternoon or stuff that I'm not going to do until the afternoon or even not do until the evening get snoozed later in the day, right? Then I'm left with a bunch of stuff. And then anything that I can do quickly, I just get it done. Like, if it takes longer to write it down to do later and think about it later than to do it now, just get it done.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm. What do you define quickly?

SLUSKY: Less than a few minutes.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay.

TELLO-TRILLO: So it's responding to an e mail. You know, most e mails, not the most thoughtful or long response. Most e mails, just write back. If you need to read something and you can read it quickly, if you need to approve something, just get it done as quickly as possible. And then anything that I  end that I want a response to, I will then snooze that thread to whatever the appropriate interval to follow up is, which could be three days, could be a week could be two weeks, could be a month, depending my relationship to the person and the timeliness of the task and what's  appropriate here.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: And then I really kind of get to work on longer things. And with longer things, right, you want to kind of you know, we're economists on this podcast, and many of our listeners are economists, right?

You want to, like, do things that are the closest to being done. So, like, do your second RNRs before your first RNRs, do your first RNRs before, you know, things that haven't been submitted. Submit things before you start new things. And within that, I try to never be the bottleneck. Like, if I'm sitting with something and I can spend an hour, and then I can get it off my desk to somebody else who can work on it, just do it and get it off your desk.

And, if I'm not going to get to it, And I think somebody else can then write to that person and say, I'm not going to get to this in the near future, Can you do your part and then get it back to me?

TELLO-TRILLO: Right. 

SLUSKY: And then I'll do my part.

TELLO-TRILLO: This is very interesting. I have one kind of question which is, Okay, let's say something I get to it, and I'm going to do it in 12 days. And day 12 comes in, and then there is a bunch of things that I snooze for that day. So how do I manage?

SLUSKY: So you get better at this. I think, I think you try to avoid that as much as possible. I think, you might look at that day's pile, and not everything in that day's pile has to be done two days. Two days. Let's get back to the first point I mentioned of, when you look at that day's pile, if that thing that has to be done then weren't there, you might snooze fewer things, then if that thing that has to get done is there, then more things get snoozed after that date.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mmm.

SLUSKY: And if you looked at, like, I'm sure you could download the data on my snoozing and do some it what you would find is like sometimes there's a big deadline, a big talk, right? A big submission. And there's, like, a huge amount of stuff that is snoozed after that, because it was relatively easy for me earlier on to say, this is definitely not happening until I do that big thing.

Normally, my snoozing is much smoother than that. Because there isn't that big thing that definitely has to happen by that day that takes up a lot of time.

TELLO-TRILLO: Let's say, for example, that you have, you know, a big proposal that you need to do, and that you obviously are not something that you have to work on it every day. So you just like snooze it every day, right? Is that how you approach that?

SLUSKY: Yeah. Yes. So I'm on my university promotion and tenure committee this year. And so that means I have to read 80 some files. And so every day I read three files, and I snooze the e mail to the next day to then read three more files the next day. 

TELLO-TRILLO: And then for research, like, is it the e-mails are kind of clear about what is a specific next text to do?

SLUSKY: Yeah, so research. It's not all in that one stream. There are notes files and notes in my code and things like that of what to do next. Generally, with research, you know, I don't need a kick to do research. I will say, great, let's get back to research, and I know what the next thing to do on research is. Like, I don't need to do list to keep on top of my own research the same way because, you know, I'm a researcher. That's kind of I think it's probably true for all of you as well, to some extent. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Yeah, that's interesting.

TELLO-TRILLO: And I think that also makes much more sense why you don't look at your phone or, you know, interact because then that's your to do list, right? You're like, It's not only just your e mail, right? That makes a lot of sense. Why that makes it so much more pivotal.

Today, we wanted to talk about service. What is it? What is it good for? Like that song? And how to manage it. And we believe our guest has had extensive experience with service, and we can learn something about it.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Sebastian, was that an implicit, like, Service. What is it good for? And then you wanted someone to yell absolutely nothing. Was that some type of implicit bias coming through?

TELLO-TRILLO: No.

SLUSKY: Not this guest.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Because I don't think that's going to fly today.

TELLO-TRILLO: As I was reading it out. I was like, Oh, this is like that song. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: You forgot about the next line of the song, though.

TELLO-TRILLO: I totally did. I totally did. Yeah, you know, Well, we'll see. We're about to find out, you know? So let's start with an easy question. What is service and why should we do?

SLUSKY: So I think the easiest way to define service is service is everything a professor does that is not research or teaching. In your capacity as a professor, meaning, you know, I think, you're doing expert witnessing, that's not service because that's a separate consulting contract that your university had to improve. And basically, anything that you would think is work, that is not research or teaching, I think counts as service. It's probably the easiest way to define it.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay. And then why should we do it, in general, I guess.

SLUSKY: So I think you should do service for the same reason you do anything in life, which is you enjoy it, meaning it has short term benefits. You're good at it, and therefore have some kind of comparative advantage and that it has long term benefits. I don't think service is any different from any other decision you make in terms of time allocation, in your life.

TELLO-TRILLO: So one thing I mean, that we always hear, or at least I've been told to is, like, you know, minimize your service, your junior person, you know, try to do the least service possible, et cetera, et cetera. Is that some sort of vision that yes, that makes sense as a general advice, but there's some caveats, or there should be a different general advice that we should give it to our junior people.

SLUSKY: Let's go back to the three questions I asked. Right? If you don't enjoy it, that's a reason to not do it. If other colleagues of yours are better at it than you are, that's a reason to not do it. And if it doesn't have long term benefit, as in is not valued in your promotion and tenure review or is not valued more than research or teaching, those are all reasons to not do service. But on the flip of it, if you like the particular service task and find it personally rewarding, if you are good at it and have some kind of comparative advantage at it. And if you need it long term, both for professional goals that you have about the university or the profession or your department, or if you need it to get tenure, right? Those are good long term goals.

TELLO-TRILLO: I think that's important to understand those three distinctions. Like when I think about, for example, doing this podcast, a lot of people react to, like, Oh, thank you for doing this service. And to honestly I never conceptualize it that. I do because I like doing it, and I don't think I'm good at it, but at least I enjoy doing it, right? But that goes to that category of like, why am I doing this? And that some people consider that a service.

SLUSKY: I think that's the point. The point of everything I'm going to say is to get to the kinds of service that you don't realize as a service. And if that sounds strange to you, remember, you already got there for probably for research and for teaching. Right? You already figured out how to do research that didn't feel like work to you, felt like what you would want to spend your day on anyway. And the goal is actually to find the service that meets that same threshold.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So David sent us this awesome sort of, I don't know if like, matrix is the right way to define it. But basically this idea of, like, if you could break up as much as possible, right? There's probably always something that won't fit into one of these categories, service into ten categories. What are these ten types of service that there could be? And I actually found it really illuminating. So I don't know if you got this from somewhere or if you came up with this idea, but could you walk through to the listeners know what this is.

SLUSKY: I completely created this. This is 100% my creation, but I'm happy to put a PDF of it on your website. So And I was a management consultant before I went to graduate school, and we did a lot of these kind of two by twos and felt that like if you can reduce any concept down to two dimensions and then put sub elements of it in those boxes. It's just much easier to talk about.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I love this. And nothing has reminded me more of grad school than Silicon Valley, the show. But it also reminds me of, like, Jared's character on there and he did this, like, swath board or something where he put made his decisions in there. I love this so much. I'm like, nerding out right now.

TELLO-TRILLO: Oh, interesting like that.

SLUSKY: Let me talk you through this. So the two different dimensions in service. And again, this is all first order approximation. Like you're going to be able to quibble with everything I say, and I'm going to say, I think you've missed the point. So one dimension is solitary versus interactive. There are some kinds of service that it's probably going to be you alone in your office. You might be e-mailing and such, but it's pretty much you in your office or your house at this point, but you're not in a room with other people or a Zoom with other people.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: The other kind of service is interactive, where you're really working with other people. So that's one dimension. The other dimension I'm going to call decisive versus generative. Decisive is like you are making decisions, there is the decision that needs to be made, and you have to decide A or B. The other one is generative, where you are creating something that does not exist before. And that's what you're doing. Okay, so let's start. Yeah.

TELLO-TRILLO: And just so audio listeners, we're going to put this in the show notes, but just to visualize it, think of like a two by two matrix where on the y axis, you have solitary and interactive. And on the x axis, you have decisive and generative as a way of thinking of four different squares. So there is going to be a square that is solitary and decisive, and so on. I'll let David that. I just wanted to put the visual in our people's heads.

SLUSKY: Great. And so what I'm going to do is I have ten kinds of service that I've put each one of them into one of those four corners. And I'm going to walk you through those. And then the point of this exercise is not so you can make a matrix of what you're doing already or what you could do, but so that you can actually think about which of these corners do I want to be in?

Like, which quadrant is the kind of service that I want to do? Because the ultimate point of this is to say, you're gonna have to do service to get promoted. And so rather than waiting for service that is not your preference to find you, you should find the service that is what you want to do. So that then when the service you don't want to do comes, you can say, I really think Sebastian is much better suited for that. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: And mean it. Not just say that as a way to pass.

TELLO-TRILLO: We can actually enjoy the process of service, right?

SLUSKY: I actually mean like I know Sebastian, and here's why I legitimately think Sebastian is better for that job than I am for. Yeah.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Okay. And say just from looking at this, I know exactly where I fit in, and I'd never thought about this before. And This has been pretty illuminating. I'm not sure if we want to put this in, but we know exactly what row I'm in now.

SLUSKY: I'll tell you where I fit and Sebastian you tell me fit, but don't tell me. Let's go through it. Maybe try to guess it would be more fun.

TELLO-TRILLO: Before we get into that, the other thing I wanted to say too is, I don't think I've ever been given the advice of, like, you know, go tell your dean or whatever associate dean, like, you want to do this kinds of service. But that seems like now so obvious because it's like, they're going to assign you to something, right?

So I'm sure that person would rather you come to be like, Hey, I would really like in this kinds of committees. And then that person will probably be really excited because in theory, no one wants to do service. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So that already seems like I received that advice before starting, my first job as an assistant professor. Basically, someone was like,  you would be really good at managing a speaker series like talking with people and that would be really good for you developing relationships. Try to do that as soon as possible. It was great advice, but also I love doing it. It was a little annoying to send e-mails stuff, but not that it got me out of other things, but I think it definitely like, Oh, he's already doing this. I'm sure it did get me out of stuff I don't know about.

SLUSKY: And I would add to that. I mean, I was only able to make this thing because I've actually done all ten of these things. But what's better is, especially for more junior folks, don't do them all to figure out what one you like. Figure it out beforehand. And then if you know what opportunities there are in your area, that's when a local mentor in your department, the right person would be like, I want to do this kind of service. Tell me how do I get there and what is available here.

Okay. So in decisive and solitary, there are two categories. On category is administrative. This is like, I'm the director of undergraduate studies in my department. Somebody went to London and took a course, and the course has never been taken before by a student from our school, and somebody has to decide what course this course fits in as. That's kind of administrative work. Somebody has to do it. I do it alone in my office, but that's decisive solitary service. Another one that's probably more familiar to more junior faculty is referring a paper. Right? You get a paper or being a discussant and making discussant slides, or writing a letter of recommendation or writing a tenure letter, right? You get something and you have to evaluate it. But you're evaluating it in an absolute manner. You're not evaluating it relative to another option. You are deciding, you know, should this paper be accepted, or what does this paper need? Or what is this student good at? And how do I get that across? That's decisive and solitary work.

Okay. Now moving down to the bottom left to decisive interactive. Think here much more about like relative evaluation. So search committees, admissions committees, awards committees, grant committees, sabbatical committees, you know, things where you are, you can only admit one of these students. You can only interview some of these people. You can only give the award to one of these people. Right? That's relative evaluation, not evaluation in absolute sense. Another one and this is more kind of management kinds of things where you know, you're the associate chair and a faculty member is supposed to teach on Zoom and is teaching by e-mail and not showing up. Like, what do you do about this?

And you have to talk to your chair, I have to talk to the associate dean and talk to the professor. Like, there you're ultimately deciding what to do. You're not creating a new thing that didn't exist before. But it's interactive and you've got other people you have to be on the phone with trying to figure out.

Right.

Okay, Let me switch to the.

TELLO-TRILLO: So far, none, none, of those things are my things, but let's talk ahead.

SLUSKY: Okay, so the other side is generative. So let's talk about solitary generative things. So imagine writing an article for the ASHEcon newsletter that I might have asked one of you to do at some point or think about, you know, writing a script for a podcast like this.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm. 

SLUSKY: That's kind of content creation. Also kind of certain kinds of bureaucracy. You know, getting a proposal through multi layered University bureaucracy and tweaking it every step of the way. In some sense, kind of what we do is researchers is actually closer to this kind of generative solitary work. And that actually overlaps a lot there.

TELLO-TRILLO: Interesting.

SLUSKY: Think about kind of logistical work. You know, so the visiting speaker schedule parts where it's like, Okay, we got to figure out who goes into this blocks when you're making a schedule or you're organizing a conference, and you know how long is dinner going to be and such. And that's kind of you know you're generating a new thing, but you're mostly doing it alone. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: Now, to move to the bottom right of this is interactive and generative. So here you might think about like advising students. Right? Student comes, meets with you, wants to talk about courses, wants to talk about grad school. You know, formal capacity, people who've been kind of graduate PhD program placement directors.

TELLO-TRILLO:Mm hm.

SLUSKY: There again, you're generating something new. You're not deciding for this student anything. You're not deciding anything about the student, but you're interacting with the student. Another area might be curriculum. So you're designing a new program. And you have to think no, And that's not solitary because you don't get to decide the program alone. If you did, your colleagues might not vote for it. Or you have to actually sit down with each one of them and say, what do you think about this proposal? What would you want to tweak? What would you want to add? How are we go to get this through the department?

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hmm.

And then finally, you know, connecting with others. So this is kind of the other part of being some of our committee chair, where you are reaching out to people and saying, well, you come and picking them up at the airport and taking them out to meals. You know, think about alumni engagement, fund raising, you know, the parts of the ASHEcon newsletter editor job where it actually I had to find somebody to write something and Somebody sends me an idea. We have to talk about what this might look like. So that's the broad framework. I guess Sebastian, Alex, do you want to guess where I am on this?

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah, I'll stick it I guess. I'm going to guess how I feel It's so funny 'cause, like, you truly, I can see you in all these different roles. I mean, I think you're more generative than decisive if you had a preference. And I'm guessing interactive and generative, if you had to pick one. That would be. 

SLUSKY: I think that's right.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: And that's totally would have picked all three of us for that category to be honest. Okay. I mean,

SLUSKY: Which economists would rather record a podcast than do our research? That's a pretty 

TELLO-TRILLO: Selection bias is happening.

SLUSKY: Let me ask a different question. Which of these things do you think I actually find the hardest? Man, I'm not the thing we're about to say, many of you listening might have asked me to do, and I thank you for the opportunity. I'm very glad to have done it. But the question here is not, could you do it? It's like, did you gain energy from doing this, or did this take energy out of you? Right? Like, did this make you have less reserve for the rest of the day, or did this actually fill you up with more energy for the rest of the day?

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah, I'm going to guess. I have just a guess that the bureaucracy category and the like, kind of, like, solitary stuff maybe would be things that took energy. Maybe. I don't know. I guess.

SLUSKY: That's actually not the case. The one to me that is the hardest is actually relative evaluation. And I think this comes from, I think I'm very, very agreeable. I want to say yes, I want to find a way to make the other person happy. And like, fundamentally in a relative evaluation, you are making somebody unhappy. Right? And you are denying somebody something that they want. And that for me actually takes the most energy. And so I find you know, as I'm moving on in my kind of, you know, my career, my service directory, like, I am not seeking out, again I will obviously serve if asked and these kinds of things. But I am not seeking out to be on search committees, to be on graduate admissions, to be on awards committees. I'm not seeking out those kinds of things because I find them so draining. 

TELLO-TRILLO: It's so funny that you say that because I would have thought that you would have put the category of co-editor of journal in that.

SLUSKY: Ah. 

TELLO-TRILLO: But but it's interesting because I think I'm guessing your understanding as editing a journalist like, I'm gonna pick a decision for each paper, but there is no constraint. 

SLUSKY: That's right. I mean, I think that not yet. I mean, you know, it's like, you know, if your chair Dean hasn't talked to you, you can't be doing it that bad of a job. Right, I think I think perhaps at the edit and Chief level, it's different. But I think at most other editorial responsibilities, it is much more absolute evaluations, much more about this paper, not about this paper or that paper.

TELLO-TRILLO:So Alex where are you at?

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I'm definitely I'm like, so again, the Y axis is solitary versus interactive, and the X is decisive versus generative, I am like, the interactive stuff I like and the solitary stuff I don't like. And I think it's two part. Number one, I just like being around other people. But then number two is, I like struggle when I have unstructured time, and I can do whatever I want. And it's just me running the ship. Whereas when there's like another person that I'm going to let down, if I don't do something.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I won't necessarily get it done, but I'll be much more likely to get it done. And so all the interactive things have, like, built in accountability in them. So it makes it less stressful, I'll actually do the thing rather than leave it to, like...

SLUSKY: And I would actually that I, despite obviously being a very extroverted person, especially for academics, don't mind the solitary things if I have sufficient ownership. That like, when I went from kind of consulting into grad school was really worried about, like, having a hard time being alone in my office. And I actually found that as long as I had sufficient ownership, that I could drive the thing the way that I thought it would really make the most difference, I really didn't actually have so much trouble with it. And because if I didn't have enough to do, I could just create another thing for myself to do that I thought was meaningful and that I thought I could see through. 

TELLO-TRILLO: I find the generative part a lot more interesting, like, whether that's writing an article, creating this podcast or like mentoring or advising the students, like all that is like generative. It sounds like really appealing to me. Whether that solitary interactive.  And that's really interesting because I think I would have gravitated to, like, I'm an extrovert. So interaction with a Solitary. That's important margin. But in reality is like I really like the generative process.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I think what's interesting about this four way sort of matrix that David made that we'll put online is that His little examples of each one. So like, I might have been like, Oh, like is Sebastians interactive. But as soon as I'm reading, like, the little examples and generative, and of course, like, some stuff bleeds across two lines. Like, of course, Sebastians in the generative side, right? Like, you like cooking and photography, and like, lots of these things that,

TELLO-TRILLO: I'm a content creator.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: You like Content.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay, so we have this framework and you can use. What's your advice of how to use this framework for one person that maybe starting in their service career?

SLUSKY: Yeah, so I would first, you know, sit solitary, which if even that's hard for you, that tells you something already. And look through each example and have a moment with yourself where you say, would I enjoy this or would I find this draining and having a high opportunity cost?

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hm.

SLUSKY: Just and be honest, if you hate all of these things, then even then you should decide which thing you hate the least, right? But like this is, put them in order. And try to and then when you put them in order. And if the examples are what you do the examples, then then try to look at where the categories fall. And then try to see kind of, where are you in this?

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hm.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So let's say you've done that exercise, and you're like, you know, I really like solitary, decisive things, like, you know, maybe you're a person, you just love doing referee reports, or these other things because you can really take the time to sort of perfect it or for whatever reason. So what do you do, particularly if you're like a new assistant professor, someone coming in. And particular, I'm going to ask this I've heard this phrase a lot that service is often institution specific capital. And coupled with this idea that, you know, the first institution you're at may not be likely to be the institution you're at for the long run, like, it's dating not marriage, right?

So how do you, if you're a person that, you know, doesn't want to be totally self interested, has realized what kind of service you like to do, but also recognizes that, publications are the coin of the realm, like, what's the right way to sort of proceed to be true, Like I don't know. Like, put yourself first, but also like not be a jerk.

SLUSKY: So I think for that person, I think refereeing is actually a really good thing to do, because that actually is both values. Like, referee has value for your own research because you read more and you read critically, right? It has value for you in the profession, because editors then know you and know you as a knowledgeable, thoughtful, responsible person. But also, I mean, I'm reading all these promotion and tenure files now, and every single one of the service sections will list how many articles the person refereed. And what quality journals the person referee for. And so I think most research universities actually care about how many papers their faculty are refereeing and for where.

TELLO-TRILLO: What about I mean, most of the way I think service is assigned in a university is assigned. So is there a recommendation from your point of view of, like, actually, you know, go through this exercise, and maybe first year as you walk in, you're like, Hey, if you're gonna put them in service, put them in this like, you know, how did you approach that? Is that something that people are going to react fine to it or react oddly to it?

SLUSKY: I would not show this two by two to your chair. Okay, I'm I would be flattered, but I would not recommend that. I think, let's go back to the referee example. So your chair who might not even be in your field might not be so helpful. But your mentor where you are or your graduate advisor, right? If you want to write back to the person and say, you know, I really thought about this, and I think referee is something I really want to do more of, can you write a note to the editors or co editors in the journals in my field to to ask me to referee papers, something like that.

I mean, at some point, you could write to those editors yourself, or you could measure to them at a conference when we go back to normal. But at a junior level, you might not have that kind of relationship capital and you might want to rely on your department chair or your advisor, the department chair being useful if you're in the same field. To get you there.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So I actually really like that idea of thinking about the type of service you're good at and then seeking out those opportunities. Are there things that people should be careful about?  Because it's also a reason, Sebastian sort of alluded to this earlier, but I think a reason why, you know, junior time is often protected from things other than research, say, particularly at universities where research is the primary component that you're evaluated for tenure and promotion on. How can you be smart to make sure that you're not like doing too much service that you're focusing on the right things as a junior person?

SLUSKY: So, I mean, I do think, you know, how far down you work down your list of the things you want to do, where you stop is probably a conversation you should have with your mentor and your department and with your chair.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hm.

SLUSKY: Because they're going to know how much you need to get excellent on your service rating when you come up for tenure and promotion. And you probably shouldn't do things beyond what you would take for you to get excellent? 

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: Because then you probably are short changing your research or your teaching, which are going to matter enormously as well.

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah. Do you also recommend would you recommend to people who are starting to this to, like, how open should we be to maybe take some services that we think we wouldn't like? And let me put an example. So for example, I was assigned to do a search committee for the Dean. And I think it was my third year. And part of me was, like, I've never been in the search committee ever before.

I was like, Okay, this can be cool, like, you know, a lot of people and actually, I asked a lot of people about this because it seems like it's going to take a lot of time. And this was coming from the Vice Provost. Like, it wasn't coming from associate dean. And most of the people were like, you know, this is going to take a lot of time, but it's actually really important work. So they always emphasized the value of the work because of the importance. And essentially, I was like, Alright, cool. I'll try it. So is there, I guess, a decision matrix point of also, like, the importance of the work and how much we value it, and also about this testing out other things?

SLUSKY: Yeah, I mean, to go back to the beginning of what I said, right? The long term benefit. If your colleagues are telling you that this is important work, that suggests that it will reflect favorably on you in your promotion and tenure review. And so that is they are giving you a signal about the long term benefit of this work just for you and your own promotion, which would certainly factor into your decision. But I think the other piece of this is that you don't know how many conversations of 'we need somebody to do X' are going on with your chair and associate chair. I'm an associate chair. Now I know these things. And how often somebody says, that person is really already doing too much, or that person is a junior person, already doing too much. And no one says, Ever, did that person seek out the things that are making them do too much or did we assign them to that person.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: We never go to that level of forensics. So I think that's the idea of seeking out the things you want to do will protect you later from being assigned something you might not want to do.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So, a thing that I hear quite a bit from senior people, but as a new or junior person was, like, I found personally impossible to implement was saying no to stuff, and maybe saying no strategically, but like being comfortable turning down requests. And I think that this happens a lot with, like advising of students, and there's lots of ways that there's, like, creep of these service requirements. So what advice would you have, and I guess this goes just like broadly for either one of you, like, if you think you're doing enough service, if you think like, you know, you've written it down, and you don't want to do something that someone's asked. Does sort of having this priority, having already volunteered for something like enable you to say no, like, I guess, in general, what are some strategies to say no to things that will avoid upsetting people? And when should you not say no?

SLUSKY: Yeah. So I think the hope is that they won't even ask you. The idea is that you are doing enough services that you sought out, and so as the service you wanted to do, that they won't ask you to do some other kind of service because they look at your CV and say, or look at your annual document, say, Oh, we can't ask this person. Let's ask somebody else who didn't listen to this podcast and hasn't sought out the service. That's I think the ideal. Now, okay, let's say that fails, and they come to you anyway. It's possible you're actually the best person for that. And the next best person is way worse. You might be stuck there. Okay. But also, you know, if you don't want to say no, I think this is the case where, you know, I would hope that if my chair asked one of my junior colleagues to do something that that person didn't want to do, that person could reach out to me and say, listen, I can't say no, I need you to get me out of this. And I go back to the chair and say, you know, I thought about this a bunch more, and I really think that person is probably not the right fit for this, can we go with that person?

Right? I didn't disclose the junior person talk to me. I didn't I mean, I'm not going to lie if asked did you talk to the person? Of course, I'll answer the question. But I think that's ways to say no without actually saying no yourself, which is something I struggle with, as you can tell by the mat of service I do. I certainly struggle with that also. 

TELLO-TRILLO: One question, David, that I have now in your position, do you have, like, things tips or things that you want to other associate chairs to have in mind when they're assigning service. So obviously, there's a lot of quote unquote junior peoples that listen to our podcast there are some non junior people, senior people. And, you know, any piece of wisdom that you can give them to them? 

SLUSKY: You know, some chairs meet with their faculty, you know, meet with every faculty member every fall. And you could imagine in those conversations, I mean, not giving them this matrix to fill out, but saying, like, what do you want to do?

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah.

SLUSKY: You know, there was when I was a management consultant, we were talking to one of the junior partners. And it was kind of like if I'm sitting in the office and nobody's watching me, like, can I be on cnn.com on my computer? Right? And what he said is like, the goal here is not to do is the minimum so that you don't get fired. This is actually your career.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hm.

SLUSKY: And so you should take some ownership in your own career. And I think it applies here as well.

TELLO-TRILLO: Mm hm.

SLUSKY: You know, you should figure out the things that you actually want to do, and then you should try to do those things. And as a chair, you know, I would imagine in a conversation with faculty members on teaching on other things, and research, you know, to say, what are your goals? What do you want to accomplish and letting that guide assignments. Because, you know, what you don't want as a chair, someone getting a service assignment that was not wanted and then doing a poor job.

TELLO-TRILLO: Right.

SLUSKY: That's a bad outcome for everyone. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Okay, thank you so much for that awesome discussion today. So just as, like, a very brief summary and then a few things that I just want to highlight. So I really liked the definition of service as everything we do that is not research or teaching, 'cause it was like a daunting thing when I first went to fill out my faculty annual report. Like, what do I put in service? And that is the type of stuff that I put in there. So I think that's like a helpful clarifying point.

And then just that idea of, like, who should do service, and when should you do service? I like what you ended with there talking about it as a career and thinking about what you might enjoy and what you want to get out of it and letting that guide you as well. And then using this awesome sort of two by two matrix just to help frame your thoughts about what type of service you might enjoy. So, just again, as a reminder there, it's solitary versus interactive on one axis, and then the other is decisive versus generative. And just by looking at this, I helped realize, you know, a few of the things that I did like and maybe some other types of service that I hadn't gotten involved with that might be similar because they're sort of similar spaces in the matrix.

TELLO-TRILLO: Every week, we like to ask our guests for a recommendation over the week. This could be anything. A podcast, a command, an app, a song, a quote a book, a kitchen recipe, anything that improves your life in a small way. David, what is your recommendation for the week?

SLUSKY: I'm going to give two. One, so my parents, hi mom, Hi Dad. Really enjoyed the Bosch show on Amazon. 

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Yeah that show rocks.

SLUSKY: So I wanted to watch it, But decided maybe I should read the books first.

TELLO-TRILLO: Okay. 

SLUSKY: And so I've read 31 Michael Connelly novels in paperback during the pandemic. And I've immensely enjoyed them. And I've really never read this much fiction before. I have found this to be, like, a really great way to relax.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So what's your favorite Harry Bosch book? Or, can you even remember the titles? It's so many.

TELLO-TRILLO: Is it a comedy, or what is kind of. 

SLUSKY: No. They're they're all so good. I mean, you get other characters. You get Mickey Haller, who's the Lincoln lawyer. They're ones when they work together. 'cause all the Michael Connelly novels exist in the same universe. And so that when different characters come together and characters that you really like, there's, you know, Rachel, the FBI agent, bringing them together, I think is a really fun way to see it.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: So in grad school, one of my friends, Patrick Sizeck, would always talk about characters like Harry Bosch as being the damn it, your tactics are unorthodox, but you get results. And like, that's like all of these characters are kind of like that in some type of crime. It's not like a procedural, like, law and order, but, like, like, an extended kind of.

SLUSKY: Right. I mean, it made me realize how much there's a little bit of Harry Bosch in Jack Bauer.

TELLO-TRILLO: Yeah. Mmm.

SLUSKY: Just like how much 24 was pulling on that trope, you know, ten years after Harry Bosch novel started. That's one.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Okay.

SLUSKY: The other is my family started playing Mage Knight. It's a board game. It's like a Dungeons and Dragon style board game, and it takes hours and hours. And it can be competitive. It can be cooperative, like, for a long weekend afternoon, especially with kind of, you know, late elementary, middle school age kids, especially when it's cold. This has been an enormous amount of fun.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I just googled it. This looks fantastic.

TELLO-TRILLO: I've only played one type of game called Gloomhaven, where it takes a lot of time to play. And the first few times, I was like, Oh, my gosh, this is a lot. But then you get really into it. Like, I learned to enjoy those kinds of games. So that was.

SLUSKY: Like with service, if you think the game is too long, this is probably not the right game for you. 

TELLO-TRILLO: Right. That's right. Alex, what is your recommendation.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I'm going to bring out the big guns. I hope that this is a recommendation for people because I recently had to get a new computer, and I realized that I must have tweaked some setting on Zoom that made my life much better, and it took me a while to figure out how to get the setting back. So If you select Zoom, even if you don't have two screens to be optimized for two screens, you can separate out the gallery view window of everyone and the share screen window.

TELLO-TRILLO: What?

HOLLINGSSWORTH: I didn't realize that this wasn't a thing. I must have...

TELLO-TRILLO: Mind blown.

HOLLINGSSWORTH: Why does my Zoom suck all of a sudden? When I had to get a new computer, and it's so much better.

TELLO-TRILLO: I have to try it out, too. Awesome. My recommendation of the week is to check to check the AA research highlight podcasts. I did not know this until, like, very recently, as I was looking for some kind of way of like, consuming papers that is not read your paper. It turns out, its like a nice, enjoyable, like, not super technical podcast. The hosts change. To be honest, it's funny to me that, like, I did not know this obviously I like podcast, but I'm guessing some of our listeners don't. It's a nice way to consume papers if you feel like it. So go check out the AA research highlights podcast. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here with us today. If people want to find more about you and your work, where should they go?

SLUSKY: So you can find me on Twitter at David Slusky, or you can go to my website at slusky dot KU dot EDU.

TELLO-TRILLO: That's all we have for you folks today. Make sure you subscribe and leave us in your review. Thank for tuning in. Have a good week.