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Jo VanEvery

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Developing a Practice

Image of person at a desk writingYour 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.

Just because it doesn’t feel productive…

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

A couple of my clients are working on writing projects right now. And some weeks, their updates are less than enthusiastic. They are discouraged by their progress.

Here’s a different angle on reading that doesn’t feel like real research.

You might spend a lot of time reading with a particular project in mind only to discover that nothing you read is going to end up in what you are writing.

Although that feels like you wasted several hours reading stuff you didn’t need to read, it was actually time well spent.

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What is “research”?

Posted on March 8, 2012 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What is research? In early 2012, Rohan Maitzen published a few very thoughtful posts about: what counts as research the apparent conflict between research and teaching and related issues. One of these, “When is Reading Research?“, really highlights some of the underlying issues. “When we talk about “doing research,” I […]

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Volunteer before you’re drafted

Posted on March 2, 2012 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

If your level of frustration with your working hours is more about what you are doing in them than how many of them you are working, how do you increase the proportion of your time spent doing things that are meaningful? Try this suggestion from the #femlead Twitter chat. (Which sadly doesn’t happen any more.) […]

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Is “number of hours” the right measure?

Posted on March 1, 2012 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

Recently a client asked me to help her figure out how to work less. She is frustrated by long hours, working weekends, and so on. She figures at this stage of her career, she should be able to have a better balance. As we worked together, it became clear to me that the number of […]

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Dealing with email is NOT a task

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

 Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Email is not a task Are you treating dealing with your email as one task on your to-do list? Do you get frustrated at how many hours a day you spend on it? Is your measure of success dealing with all of it? Do you then chastise yourself […]

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An interesting tactic for managing ideas

Posted on July 21, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

We all know that research produces more questions than answers. You can quickly get overwhelmed with those questions and lose the focus necessary to finish work on one of those questions. The best advice I got as a newish PhD student (some time ago), was to make a file for all the things I would […]

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What’s Your Research Work Flow?

Posted on July 5, 2011 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

So many academics complain about not having enough time for research. This can be incredibly frustrating, especially if you have research that you really want to be doing. Often, we focus on how to manage non-research tasks to make more time for research. But maybe thinking about how you use your research time might be helpful, […]

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Write Early, Write Often

Posted on July 1, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

An excellent post about writing, especially for those with heavy teaching and family commitments. She offers 4 rules: Write Early, Write Often | jliedl.ca.

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Prove Them Right

Posted on June 28, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Prove them right This post by Charlie Gilkey applies to a lot of academics: Prove Them Right. What about all the people who said you could do it? The people who always saw more in you than you ever saw in yourself. The ones who caught you when you […]

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From Conference Presentation to Journal Article

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Jo VanEvery 1 Comment

A conference presentation is an important stage in the development of your research. It allows you to get feedback, helps you refine your arguments, and begins to build an audience for your work. Now comes the hard part: actually sitting down to turn that excellent first draft into something good enough to submit to a journal. […]

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Are you valuing your time?

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

It is really easy to overvalue tasks that other people ask you to do or see you doing. And to undervalue the tasks you do alone. Writing happens alone. Sometimes it doesn’t even look like work, especially when you have to do a lot of thinking. It takes a long time to get a product […]

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Hook and Eye: Guest Post: Recycling is not a bad thing

Posted on May 6, 2011 by Jo VanEvery Leave a Comment

Are you worried that you are “recycling” your work? Are you trying to make sure each paper and presentation is completely new and unique? You are not alone. But you are probably more at risk of not publishing enough and not reaching the people you want to reach, than you are of repeating yourself. I […]

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