Do you get to the end of the day and wonder if spending that last 30 minutes writing will be worth it? Would that happen even if you had a deadline next week and a big chunk of writing to do to meet it? How come you aren’t getting to that writing until the last […]
Read More »Developing a Practice
Your academic life is more than a string of articles published, classes taught, and meetings attended. You write because this is how you articulate and develop your ideas. You publish to communicate those ideas to others. Posts in this category help you develop the practices you need to do the work you love well without burning out or compromising your values.
You Need a Writing Practice is a good place to start to investigate the Writing subcategory.
Juggling 101: Elements of a good plan is a good place to start investigating the Planning subcategory.
From Conference Presentation to Journal Article
In an earlier post, I suggested that conference presentations make great first drafts of journal articles. The hard part is actually sitting down to turn that excellent first draft into something good enough to submit to a journal. Dealing with criticism. Maybe someone in your conference session asked some awkward questions. Or made some suggestions […]
Read More »Maybe sitting at your desk to work is the problem
Do you struggle with research because you think you need to be sitting at your desk to do it? I know that schools are really big on sitting still and being quiet as the necessary precursor to doing academic work. You did well in school. But just because that’s how school trained you, doesn’t mean […]
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There will always be things you don’t know
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · There will always be things you don’t know You are an intelligent person. You have successfully completed an advanced degree, secured a position, maybe even already have tenure. You may have won competitive scholarships along the way. (If you are still doing your PhD, you have still accomplished much. […]
Read More »“Cutting” words
A participant in A Meeting With Your Writing admitted that she was discouraged. She needs to cut 2000 words from a paper. She thought it would be easy but it turned out to be really hard. This is one place where counting words works against you. You wrote all those words for a reason, dammit. […]
Read More »Stop diminishing your accomplishments
Whether it is in the weekly e-mail that clients send me, in tweets, or in casual conversations I’ve been noticing that academics seem to diminish their accomplishments. “I’ve had a slow week.” “I only marked 2 essays.” “I only wrote [insert number here] words today.” “I only read 10 articles this week.” Negative talk demotivates By […]
Read More »You always have time for yoga, mama
When you’re busy, it’s easy to forget to look after yourself. You feel like you don’t have time to go to the gym, to go for a run, for yoga, for meditation, for sleep, to eat properly … If you’re lucky, your kids or someone else who loves you will remind you that you always have time. […]
Read More »Break time
One of the principles about focus that I really like is the value of breaks. Whether you take them every 25 minutes, every 90 minutes or something in between, taking breaks actually improves your focus. Breaks create containers for your focus. Breaks also shift how you view the inability to focus for long stretches of […]
Read More »Be careful how you use the term “binge writing”
Short writing periods regularly don’t work for everybody. @jovanevery thank god. Every time I see someone tweet that I think why doesn’t it work for me. I write 6 hours straight. Can’t do short. — M.M. (@ProfessMoravec) March 7, 2013 Or Tony’s comment on my Pomodoro technique post in which he indicated he liked 2 […]
Read More »Why I don’t recommend the Pomodoro technique
This little Italian tomato has been popping up in my tweet-stream, blog comments, blog posts I read, and other places around the Internet. It looks like a really cool technique. (There is a video on that site that explains the basics.) Lots of people are using it and getting good results. So why do I […]
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Take guilt off your to-do list
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Take guilt off your to do list This is the third post in a short series about guilt. You may also be interested in Stop feeling guilty, and More about guilt. As I was writing the post on making difficult choices another important aspect of this discussion about guilt […]
Read More »You aren’t just managing time and tasks
In a post for University Affairs Careers Cafe titled Time Management is Not Primarly A Technical Problem, republished here, I talked about how standards and priorities can complicate what seems like a simple task of deciding how long something is going to take and then allocating time to do it. I was talking to a client […]
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