A book by young Dutch academics names what many early-career researchers live but rarely articulate: two promises keep academics saying yes long past the point of sustainability. Isabelle Kohler traces her own path from overcommitment to a more deliberate set of choices – and gives PhD students a way to recognize when a request is actually worth accepting.

For years, I said yes to many requests that came my way – on top of my research and teaching. Committee memberships, professional associations, organizing conferences, guest issue editorships, associate editorships – sometimes saying ‘yes’ even though I barely knew what was expected from me. Some of them I genuinely loved: helping shape an educational program, having a say in what students experienced, being part of organizing something that actually came to life. Those felt worth it. But others I accepted for a different reason: I thought that was simply what you had to do to stay in the academic game. That saying ‘no’ would mark me as someone not serious enough, not committed enough, not ambitious enough.

Then, I nearly burnt out. I switched jobs. And I got sick. Somewhere in that sequence, I started reflecting on the reasons why I was doing certain things – and why I kept saying yes to them, even though I had no motivation for them. My health forced me to choose. I kept the roles that gave me energy – the ones that match what I’m actually good at. The rest, I started saying no to, even when they look great on paper.

A book published earlier this year, Fixing Academia, puts a name to what I lived through. Evgenia Lysova, Associate Professor at VU Amsterdam, describes two mechanisms that lead academics, especially early-career researchers, to accept much more than is sustainable. She calls them the promise of meaningful work and the promise of future advancement.

The first operates like this: someone frames a request as important for the field, for students, for science. And because you genuinely care about those things, saying no feels like a betrayal of your own values. The second is more transactional but equally effective: ’this will be good for your career’; ‘it’ll strengthen your profile’; ’these things count when decisions get made.’ Neither promise is usually written down anywhere, and none of them comes with a guarantee.

This is not a minor or individual problem. In a report on psychological workload at Dutch universities published in 2024, 78% of respondents said they had to work very hard, and 74% experienced it as stress. The book links this directly to the accumulation of tasks that academics accept under exactly these two framings. The problem is not that you lack discipline or time management skills. The architecture of academic work is built around multiple stakeholders – students, supervisors, program directors, journal editors, conference organizers – each making demands with no visibility into what the others are already asking of you.

For PhD students and postdocs, this is particularly sharp. You are in a position where almost every request comes wrapped in one of the two promises. The conference symposium you’re asked to help organize because it will ‘give you visibility’. The committee seat your supervisor suggests you take because it will ‘broaden your network’. The peer review request that will ‘build your reputation as a researcher’. The extra teaching hour that is ‘great experience for your CV’. Each one sounds reasonable in isolation. Together, they fill a calendar that was already full.

What are you actually saying yes to, then? When you hear either of the two promises, pause before you respond. Ask what the request actually requires – in hours, over how many months. Ask specifically how it connects to your evaluation. The vague ‘it’ll be good for you’ is not enough. It also helps to keep a running list of everything you have already committed to – not as a productivity tool, but as something to put in front of you when the next request arrives. The two promises always arrive one at a time. Seeing everything written down at once makes it a lot harder to say yes again.

Saying yes to everything is not commitment – it’s the absence of a choice. The roles that now sustain me are the ones I chose because I wanted them, not because I was afraid of what would happen if I didn’t. The real question isn’t whether you’re dedicated enough, but it’s what you’re dedicated to.

Fixing Academia: Reflections from a New Generation of Scholars. Editors: Dion Kramer & Berend van der Kolk, VU University Press, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. ISBN: 978 90 8659 918 9. DOI: 10.66742/VPYP3467. Available on pdf format via https://fixingacademia.wordpress.com/read/ (accessed 12-06-2026).

Research Report on Psychosocial Workload at Dutch Universities, Nederlandse Arbeidsinspectie, published on 14-05-2024. https://www.nlarbeidsinspectie.nl/documenten/2024/05/14/arbo-in-bedrijf-special-psychosociale-arbeidsbelasting-universiteiten (accessed 12-06-2026).

—

NextMinds by Isabelle Kohler

If you are interested in learning more about how to navigate academia and own your professional choices, do not hesitate to join the NextMinds Community! For this, you have plenty of choices: visit NextMinds website to learn more about my work, sign up for the newsletter, and follow me and NextMinds on LinkedIn.