By Betsey Q. Cliff
The ASHEcon Newsletter continues our series on productivity, talking to health economists about how they define and maintain it. For this issue, we caught up with Amanda Starc, Professor of Strategy at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. Dr. Starc has done seminal work on health insurance pricing and quality, competition in health care markets, and the role of information in health care markets. She maintains a full teaching load and is on the editorial boards of several major economics journals. Below are her answers to how she does it all, lightly edited for clarity.
How is productivity judged in your job?
Mostly by research publications, especially earlier on in a career. But being a good teacher and a good citizen matters too, and those pieces become more important the older you get. By mid-career, you’re judged (or I feel like I’m being judged) on a broader portfolio of tasks.
How do you decide what to work on each day or week?
Most of the productivity advice I’ve found useful over the years comes from NCFDD (the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity). I can’t recommend their stuff enough — if you haven’t checked it out, go check it out.
My routine is pretty simple: at the start of each week, I sit down and jot down the key tasks I want to get done, sorted into Research, Other, and Personal. Then I map them onto my calendar. That’s it.
You have a workday with minimal meetings. How do you structure it?
Honestly, the wide-open days can be harder than the packed ones. Planning helps — if I’ve already decided on Monday what Tuesday’s blocks are for, I actually start working instead of spending the morning figuring out where to start.
Flip side — a really busy month with nonstop obligations. Are you still making time for research?
Yes! No matter how busy you are, you can pretty much always find a half hour for “writing” — broadly defined as anything that moves research forward. This reduces stress a lot, even post-tenure, because research is still the part of the job that brings me joy.
Do you have a favorite productivity tool?
A cheap spiral-bound notebook! Super low-tech but writing things down helps my brain process both logistics and substance!
How do you avoid burnout?
Two things. First, exercise (your mileage may vary). Second, I increasingly try to say yes to service that either complements my research or is my comparative advantage. For example, I find editing less taxing than committee work, in part because it is more flexible and that works better with my life right now.