THE 40-HR FACULTY
EXPERIMENT
Your students matter. So does the life you keep postponing.
You want to teach well, show up for your students, and feel proud of your work. You also want an evening that stays an evening and a weekend that doesn't quietly become a workday.
The 40-Hr Faculty Experiment is a Skool community for women in higher education who want practical ways to put boundaries around their workweek. Follow my real faculty-workload experiment, use the tools, and try changes that fit your own teaching, responsibilities, and life.
The work keeps expanding
Your life needs a place on the calendar.
Reclaim Your Evenings
Maybe you sit down to improve tomorrow's class and look up to find you've used the evening you meant to spend doing something else. Or you accept one more request, then start rearranging your own plans to make it fit.
Protect Your Energy
You care about doing a good job. You also have people you want to see, a body that needs attention, and interests that deserve more than whatever energy is left after grading.
Stop Postponing Life
By this point in your career, you may be closer to 50 than 30. "I'll make time when things settle down" is starting to sound less like a plan and more like a semester-long recurring appointment.
Here's one place to start: before the next yes, identify where the work would go.
If the only available space is the evening or weekend you meant to protect, you have a trade-off to consider before you commit. The Experiment gives you a place to keep having that conversation, with tools to make your time visible and other faculty who understand why these decisions can feel complicated.
I'm testing this inside a faculty workweek
Meet Tama-Lea Lorenzen
I'm Tama-Lea Lorenzen, the professor behind Professor Lorenzen. My teaching background includes corporate training and college classrooms, and my interest in efficiency comes from wanting time for family, health, and a life beyond work.
In The 40-Hr Faculty Experiment, I track my work, test approaches, and share what happens. You get the daily perspective alongside the numbers: what I planned, what actually happened, what helped, and what didn't.
Forty hours is the experiment's target, not a guaranteed result. Your teaching load, employment conditions, service expectations, and responsibilities will shape what is realistic for you. The useful question is what you can change in your own situation. You can start with one part of your week rather than trying to rebuild your entire working life before Monday.
By week six
My Saturday mornings were mine again.
By week six of the experiment, I had reclaimed my Saturday mornings, spent two weekends a month with my mom, held craft nights with my friends, and started working out again. My teaching hasn't suffered, and I'm still available to students, committees, and scholarship.
I stopped believing the job required me to sacrifice everything I had for success, and built tools to make sure it didn't. That change meant I could make plans for my own life and actually be there for them.
Those are my results, in my circumstances. Inside the Experiment, I share the work behind them: the hours, the decisions, the tools, and the adjustments, so you can consider what fits your own situation.
Saturday mornings
Reclaimed
Two weekends / month
Spent with mom & friends
Physical wellbeing
Working out again
What's inside
Four ways to turn "I need more time" into something you can work on.
Daily Confessionals, Monday through Friday
Hear the ordinary wins, frustrations, decisions, and feelings of another professor through short audio entries with reviewed transcripts. Use them as a chance to check in with yourself, without turning listening into another daily assignment.
Weekly Receipts, weeks one through three
See my hours across teaching, service, and scholarship, with business hours labeled separately. Alongside the numbers, I share planned versus actual work, what worked, what didn't, weekly wins, and a check on work quality so the discussion goes beyond simply logging fewer hours.
Monthly Mini-Challenge, week four
Choose something to start, stop, or continue over the next four weeks. A one-page action card explains the steps, when the approach fits, when it may not, a smaller version, and what to observe, with an initial action designed to take about 10–15 minutes within your real work.
The Faculty Experiment Exchange
Bring your situation to an asynchronous discussion space for adaptation and encouragement. A Monday thread asks what you're trying and what might get in the way; return with questions or results as your week unfolds.
The resources change when the experiments give us a useful reason to improve them. The aim is to help you use what fits, rather than hand you a new stack of templates every week.
How to begin
Give one part of your week a closer look.
Choose a realistic goal
When you join, identify your workload and constraints, choose one realistic improvement goal, and select a resource or the monthly challenge to test one change.
Pick one test
You might begin by noticing where a planned work block regularly spills over, or by practicing boundary language before accepting another request. Those are starting ideas; your workload and responsibilities determine which test makes sense.
Review and adjust
Return to your notes and see what happened. Keep what helps, adjust what doesn't, and use the Exchange when another faculty perspective would be useful.
Is this you?
For the educator who wants to keep caring and have something left.
You teach in higher education
You work full-time or as an adjunct, and want a faculty-specific place to think through workload.
You have a life asking for your attention
Family, caregiving, friendships, health, or interests keep being pushed behind the next work task.
You want practical changes
You're willing to look at your time and test an approach that fits your circumstances.
You value an honest process
You want to see the difficult weeks and adjustments alongside the wins.
This membership offers shared experience, tools, and small experiments. If you need individual coaching or a promise that your workload will reach 40 hours by a particular date, that is beyond what this membership provides.
Join The 40-Hr Faculty Experiment
Founding member price: $29 per month. The price will increase soon.
Your membership includes weekday Daily Confessionals, Weekly Receipts in weeks one through three, a week-four Mini-Challenge, and the Faculty Experiment Exchange. Access begins immediately when you join.
Membership is billed monthly and you can cancel at any time. Payments are non-refundable, so please review what is included before joining.
Founding member price: $29 per month. The price will increase soon. Immediate access. Cancel anytime. No refunds.
Questions
Good questions before you join
Your workload and the parts of it you can influence are the starting point. The baseline worksheet helps you identify those constraints and choose a realistic goal; neither the tools nor the community can promise a particular number of hours saved. Good teaching remains part of the question we're testing. Use what fits your role and obligations, and evaluate quality alongside time.
Put something of your own back on the calendar.
Maybe it's a workout, time with your mom, or an evening with friends that you don't cancel because there's more work to do. Whatever you want room for, it deserves a place in the conversation about your week.
Bring your real workload and choose a first experiment. I'll share mine as it unfolds.
Founding member price: $29 per month. The price will increase soon. Immediate access. Cancel anytime. No refunds.
© 2026 Professor Lorenzen. All Rights Reserved.