You might think that, as professors, we get our summers “off.” The reality is that summer is our most productive time of year for research. While it is lovely to be left to our own devices, for us (and we suspect most of our colleagues) summer is also the time of year when guilt comes into bloom.

We hear you asking, “What’s wrong with you two?!” Let us explain.

Our summer work goals and deadlines are self-imposed. Since we set the expectations, we should easily meet them, right? Ha, no. Being experts on judgment and decision-making does not make us any less susceptible to the planning fallacy, optimism bias, and the many other cognitive distortions that cause people to overestimate their ability to get stuff done. At the same time, we expect ourselves to be fun parents, supportive partners, and great friends all summer long.

Guess what? That’s all not actually possible yet we convince ourselves that it is and when we fall behind in even one of those categories the guilt creeps in. Paradoxically, being high achievers only makes it worse.

In the iconic film "Dead Poets Society," John Keating (an educator like us, played by Robin Williams) encourages his students to think beyond the rigid norms of their conservative preparatory school. He urges them to seize their days, make their lives extraordinary, and sound their barbaric yawps over the rooftops of the world. Unfortunately, this leads to tragic consequences for which Keating is plagued with guilt. We get it.

Of course, educators do not have a monopoly on........

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