Charles C. Mann presents me, an adjunct professor, with a sobering reminder that full-time professors are required to attend a lot of meetings. I hate meetings and believe most of them are poorly run and a waste of time. Perhaps, I should reconsider my goals?

Below is the rest of Mann's answer to Tyler Cowen's question, "What is your production function?" In other words, what do you do, that's different than anybody else, and makes you so great at what you do? I like his second and third thing. I'm reminded to seek experts on topics because they love to talk to people who are interested in their area of specialization. And, of course, reading. It's not my secret weapon, but I sure do love a person who says it's theirs.

Well, I don’t go to meetings. And unfortunately, academia is replete with meetings. One of the reasons for living in Amherst is that they don’t request me to come and talk to people. So there’s a huge amount of the overhead of, say, an academic job, that I’m very lucky not to have to do.

The other thing is that, because I live near a university, I’m able to use the University of Massachusetts Library. And there’s a bunch of colleges and universities around here, good libraries, a wonderful thing, and they’re kind enough to let me use it even though I’m like a parasite.

The second thing is the wonderful tradition of scholars in which, if somebody with a plausible interest in what they’re doing calls them up or writes to them, nine times out of ten, they’re very happy to talk to you about what they’re interested in. I can’t tell you how grateful I am to this tradition. People will talk to me for hours; it gains them nothing. I try to make it pleasant for them, but frankly, it’s sort of nuts, but they’re willing to do this.

Then the third thing is that I am able to sit down and read a lot of stuff, and my secret weapon is that I can read.

Source: “Charles C. Mann.” Conversations with Tyler, conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/charles-c-mann/.