Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Why being a straight A student isn’t necessarily a good thing I bet you were a straight A student. You got lots of praise for being a straight A student. You’ve lived your life thinking being a straight A student is a good thing. It’s not. It encourages all […]
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What you can change
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What you can change God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; courage to change the things I can; and wisdom to know the difference. (The Serenity Prayer —Reinhold Niebuhr) Whether you believe in that god or not, the sentiment of this prayer is just […]
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Opposite Day as a decision-making strategy
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Opposite day as decision making strategy An article in Inside Higher Ed about saying “no” and a question on a forum that I participate in combined to make me aware of a strategy that might be helpful when faced with a difficult decision. What if the default was “No”? […]
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When another project is distracting you from this one
This post is part of a series on Optimizing Focus. Finding it hard to focus is normal. Self-flagellation does not work to improve your focus. Furthermore it takes time and energy that takes you away from your writing; it is another distraction. I firmly believe that you can approach your work compassionately rather than violently. […]
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Abducted by aliens
I’m fond of this Eisenhower quote: Plans are worthless, but planning is everything. (From a speech to the National Defense Executive Reserve Conference in Washington, D.C. (November 14, 1957) ; in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1957, National Archives and Records Service, Government Printing Office, p. 818 ) This is […]
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Communicating manuscript edits
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Communicating manuscript edits I received a Tweet asking whether I had written anything about managing manuscript edits. I have a class available that helps with the emotional aspects of that process, and leads you through the process of making decisions (Dealing with Reviewer Comments, available in January for purchase, […]
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Managing Manuscript Edits
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Managing manuscript edits I received a Tweet asking whether I had written anything about managing manuscript edits. You need to figure out how to manage the work involved in revising the manuscript once you’ve made those decisions. And you’ll need to write a letter to the editor when you […]
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Practicing what I preach
I tell you to take a vacation. I am taking a vacation. My daughter and I are headed to Niagara to visit with my parents and see a bunch of plays at the Shaw Festival. I’ll be back in the office on Monday September 15th. I have arranged for someone to lead A Meeting With […]
Read More »Are you resisting routine?
During last Thursday’s Meeting, one participant commented that she’d noticed an interesting benefit of A Meeting With Your Writing. Like so many of us, J is prone to changing her schedule a lot. This means making decisions about whether to write now or to do some other thing on the big list of important stuff. A Meeting […]
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Turn Summer Writing Plans into Autumn Writing Plans
In the post about Summer Writing Plans I suggested that you don’t necessarily want to finish things in the summer, but rather get them to the point where what remains can be done during a busy term. One of my objectives in writing that post was to help you set yourself up for writing in term time, something […]
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Are you tempted to binge write for the last few weeks of the break?
I’ve written before about the mis-use of the term “binge writing”. I don’t just mean writing for long periods of time, which is what you’ve probably been doing all summer. I mean binging: Are you tempted to push yourself beyond what you know from experience is the optimum amount of writing you can do well […]
Read More »Flexibility, autonomy, and boundaries
One of the things you love about academic work is the flexibility and the autonomy. You don’t have to be in the office at 9 a.m. every morning. You don’t even have to be in the office every day. In theory you could take Wednesday off to go for a nice long hike and then work […]
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