The pile will always be there (and that’s the point)

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Every academic I coach has a version of The Pile.

The unread emails.

The admin tasks you meant to “just quickly” do.

The forms. The approvals. The Moodle updates.

The inbox that’s basically a hydra: cut off one head, three more sprout overnight.

And because the pile feels heavy, the solution you reach for is always the same:

Squeeze more in.

Answer emails on the bus.

Do an extra hour after kids bedtime.

Chip away every evening “just this week.”

Try to power through the backlog so you can finally catch a breath.

But the cold hard truth is this:

You think you’re getting rid of the pile.

But in many ways you’re actually fuelling it.

Every rapid reply makes your email more active.

Every out-of-hours response trains people to expect quicker turnaround.

Every time you stretch yourself to “catch up,” you widen the gap between what’s actually possible and what everyone thinks you can deliver.

The pile is not a glitch.

The pile is structural.

And until you accept that, you’ll always be behind.

The real solution is emotional, not logistical

The pile will always exist.

Your job is to stop pretending you can outrun it.

Because what actually needs to happen is this:

You get comfortable with the pile growing.

You get comfortable disappointing someone.

You get comfortable not meeting every expectation.

That’s the only way your workload ever becomes sane.

Otherwise the admin expands, the email expands, your availability expands… and suddenly your entire job is answering other people's questions.

But what if the backlog really IS big?

Then you face the dragon.

A one-off, clearly defined Facing the Dragon Protocol, which looks like:

• Choose a specific afternoon or a full day.

• Decide ahead of time what you want to clear

• Put up an out-of-office that says you’re not on email today.

• Sit down and clear the nagging backlog

• Finish the day on top of things again.

Crucially:

This is not “I’ll do an hour every night this week.”

That is the exact problem you’re trying to stop.

Facing the dragon happens once.

Then we reset the system.

What happens after the dragon?

This is where 95% of academics go wrong.

You face the backlog… and then fall straight back into the same habits that created it.

Here’s the real work:

1. Why did the pile get this big?

Did you let email/admin accumulate because you hate it?

Did you simply not allocate enough time for it?

Have you been over-focused on teaching prep at the expense of everything else?

2. Are you allocating adequate time for each part of your job?

If research time is suffering, your admin time must go down.

If admin is out of control, something else gives — and it shouldn’t be your evenings.

3. What are you willing to be strategically imperfect at?

Where can “good enough” actually be good enough?

Which tasks have you unconsciously perfectionised?

4. Are you saying yes to too many things?

It’s impossible to fix workload problems without looking at your yeses.

5. Is the institution literally asking too much?

If so, be very clear:

Every extra expectation means you either work for free or you don’t.

My recommendation is that you don’t.

Email and admin are never where you spend unpaid overtime. Ever.

This isn’t a personal failure — it’s the business model

This is not your fault by the way

I don’t think anyone designed it like this on purpose, I don’t have any conspiracy theory hear.  But the modern university feeds off this energy and working pattern.

The modern university relies on academics and professional services doing unpaid overtime.

The whole system is built on the assumption that you will:

• stretch to meet every expectation

• answer emails faster than is reasonable

• work on a sick day

• absorb admin that used to be done by professional services

• sacrifice research time (or do it in the evening) to “keep things moving”

• fill the gaps that institutional under-resourcing creates.

When you work evenings to clear your admin pile, the institution benefits.

When you answer emails on the bus instead of listening to a podcast you like or staring out the window, the institution benefits.

When you step in to solve problems that should never land on your desk, the institution benefits.

The system thrives on your guilt, your conscientiousness, your desire to be helpful, your fear of being “behind.”

So when you step back from the pile…

You’re not being inefficient. You’re refusing to subsidise the institution with your unpaid labour.

Your boundaries are not just personal — they are political

When you choose:

• not to reply out of hours

• not to take on unnecessary admin

• not to let the pile dictate your evenings

• not to be constantly available

…you are not only protecting your time — you are refusing to uphold a system that depends on you working for free.

Every academic who sets boundaries makes it slightly harder for the system to rely on invisible labour.

That’s how collective change begins:  with enough people withdrawing the “excess” effort the system has taken for granted.

No one’s asking you to chain yourself to the VC’s frosted-glass office partition door. Just log off Teams before your tea goes cold.

We can stop propping up the system with our evenings.

A collective call to action

Here’s what I want for all of us:

• Less academics carrying the emotional and administrative load (yes, I’m an English Language expert and I said less with a count noun, what you gonna do about it?  I’m teaching your kids and we’re the 3rd best department in the world appaz)

• More academics naming the structural problem instead of internalising it.

• More departments agreeing on sane expectations around email response times

• More conversations about not overworking

• More people paying for institutional dysfunction with their own withering stamina.

• More awareness that when one person over-functions, everyone else’s workload gets heavier.

Do we want to fix this broken system by working harder inside it?  No, and it won’t work anyway.  What we need to do is refuse to feed it.

Start with your own pile — not because it’s your fault, but because it’s your leverage.

When you set boundaries, you make things better for the next person in line.