Susan Tusa for The Chronicle

Andrew Mozina, of Kalamazoo College, uses a stopwatch to reserve time for crucial tasks, which include writing for three hours a day.

By Robin Wilson

When you ask professors how they focus on the work that matters most, many of them sound very, very busy. Too busy, in fact, to talk to a reporter about how they tune out distractions and concentrate.

“It is with a little irony that I have to reply that I don’t have time at the moment to deal with the complicated questions you raise,” Harvey J. Graff, a professor of English and history at Ohio State University, wrote in response to an e-mail request for an interview.

Siu-Lan Tan, an associate professor of psychology at Kalamazoo College, said she could respond to questions, but only by e-mail and mostly in lowercase letters because that allowed her to type faster. “coincidentally, I am actually trying to ‘focus’ on getting something done right now,” she wrote. “I have a 190,000-word book due in August for Oxford University Press this summer! while doing this, I am also mentoring two summer theses students and reviewing a stack of manuscripts for journals.”

At first, Scott D. Hess, an associate professor of English at Earlham College, acknowledged that he’d rather not take time out to talk with The Chronicle. But then he agreed to spend 15 minutes. “That’s how I keep my focus—by not taking on things that don’t immediately apply to me.”

Productive professors use a variety of techniques to focus on what matters most. For many, blocking out large chunks of time for research, writing, and grant applications is key. That’s the work they value most. But it can get crowded out as they advise students, talk with colleagues, serve on committees, and check e-mail. For others—including those at liberal-arts colleges—teaching and finding ways to include students in their research are the top priority, at least during the academic year.

Dennis Hong, an associate professor of mechanical engineering who runs the internationally recognized Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech, recently spent several weeks traveling, including stops in Paris, New York City, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and Seoul, South Korea. He sleeps just four hours a night and takes a 15-minute nap each day.

He also delegates many small tasks, using a team of about 20 graduate students to help run his lab. “I give them all a title,” he says. “I have a lab-tour coordinator, who deals with people who want to visit our lab. I have a machine-shop manager, a purchase-order specialist, an inventory guy, a librarian, and an editor, so when students write papers the editor reviews all the grammar.”

Those arrangements have allowed Mr. Hong to spend the summer traveling and attending conferences. “I am getting so many opportunities, and some lead to multimillion-dollar grants,” he says. “I need to chase these opportunities.”

Andrew Mozina, an associate professor of English at Kalamazoo, uses a stopwatch to reserve time for crucial tasks. “I will say: OK, for the next hour, you will not check your e-mail, you will just grade papers.” This summer he’s working on writing a collection of short stories and a novel about a harpist preparing for a symphony audition. He sets the stopwatch for three hours each day so he can write.

“It is my life preserver,” he says, “sort of like a mechanical friend to keep me on task.” Otherwise he’d be reading e-mail, checking online financial news, or following the Green Bay Packers or the Milwaukee Brewers.

Ms. Tan, also at Kalamazoo, uses an even less subtle technique to stay away from the Internet. She writes tasks she needs to complete on colored Post-it notes and sticks them onto the center of her computer screen, obscuring her view. “So it could be: Read two chapters of something I need for my research, or call my colleague to ask a statistics question on my data analysis, or proofread one section of my manuscript.”

“Until I do those things, I can’t really see enough to do anything on my computer,” she says.

Others simply cut out any work they consider nonessential. Marybeth Gasman, a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education, says colleagues and friends tell her she is one of the busiest people they know. This year she has published four books and two peer-reviewed articles, and blogged for The Chronicle and The Huffington Post. And she manages two large grants—including a $1.5-million private grant to study models of success that help students finish their degrees at minority-serving institutions. Her time is directed only toward tasks connected to her work on minority institutions.

“I only do something if it fits with my agenda,” she says. “Universities try to get you involved with everything. If somebody says: We want you to talk about international education, I’ve already decided: No, I’m not going to that meeting.” She also avoids distractions at the office. “People will say, ‘There are cookies on the first floor, come on, let’s go,’ and I say: Nope.”

Ms. Gasman tries to set aside six hours a day for writing, an enormous chunk by most academic standards. “I put my writing time on my calendar in these huge block letters,” she says. “And if people ask me for an appointment, I say: ‘I’m busy, I have meetings all day today.’ And it’s with me.”

Mr. Hess, of Earlham, says academics must discern the difference between opportunities that sound exciting and those that will truly advance their research. That kind of thinking forced him to turn down a three-week faculty-development trip to China, and instead spend hours cross-indexing his research notes for a book he published in April on William Wordsworth.

Gretchen Rumohr-Voskuil runs the composition program at Aquinas College, in Michigan, and teaches three courses per semester. She also has four young children, including 18-month-old twins. But rather than set hard boundaries between her work and home life, she’d rather multitask.

For example, while she is breastfeeding her twins, she uses her iPad to edit students’ research essays. Or she uses her cellphone from home to text answers to students’ questions. Technology, the very thing many other academics consider a distraction, allows her to focus on her work when she can’t be on the campus. (She spends three days there each week.)

“I never turn things off,” she says. “I tell students they should allow 24 hours for a response, but they seldom have to wait that long. If I’m sitting here and I get a text, I’m going to respond to it.”