Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · This is *not* your new year, new start The beginning of the calendar year is accompanied by a lot of cultural pressure to reflect on the year just ended and make some big decisions about the year ahead. Reflection and planning are both practices I encourage. However, if you […]
Read More »decisions
What to do about a stalled book project
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What to do about a stalled book project Are you *not* writing a book? Maybe it’s your “thesis book”. Maybe it’s something else. You might have a contract for it. You might not have started it, but think you should have by now. You might have a lot of […]
Read More »What if you need an extension?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · What if *you* need an extension? I’ve been seeing a lot of conversation on Twitter about granting extensions to students. Much of it is framed in terms of compassion and kindness. There seems to be a prominent school of thought that you should just do this, almost automatically. That […]
Read More »Start By Noticing
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Managing Energy: Start by Noticing An important element of my approach to planning is that, instead of focusing on all the things you may need to fit into your plans, I focus on the concept of managing your time and energy. Noticing the changes in your energy can be […]
Read More »Planning as Practice
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Planning as a practice The purpose of planning is to enable you to take action. Making a plan helps you prioritize the things you want and need to do, so that what you take action on includes the things that are important. Planning also helps you ensure that time […]
Read More »Email sign-offs
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Email Sign-offs Every once in a while there is a bit of a social media storm about how we sign our email messages. There are some humourous memes attributing passive-aggressive intent to various formal sign-offs. They are only funny if you don’t regularly worry about whether the way you […]
Read More »Spotlight On: Email Overwhelm
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Spotlight On: Email Overwhelm. One issue that seems to affect your ability to find and protect time for writing is email. You may disagree on details. Not every suggestion will work for you. But I hope you find something in here that you can try to make your situation […]
Read More »Making Decisions: peer review
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The general principles—habits, routines, and default responses—are explained in the first post in the […]
Read More »Making Decisions: meetings
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The general principles—habits, routines, and default responses—are explained in the first post in the […]
Read More »Making Decisions: planning & scheduling
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The general principles—habits, routines, and default responses—are explained in the first post in the […]
Read More »Overcommitted? Declaring a moratorium
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Overcommitted? Declaring a moratorium It’s easy to get overcommitted. In addition to all the things you have to do, there are a lot of things you would like to do. You don’t want to manage your workload by dropping everything that makes your work meaningful. In fact, I encourage […]
Read More »Managing the energy you use to make decisions
This post was originally written in February 2021 as a follow up to Planning Your Winter Semester and was shared in the Academic Writing Studio. It has been edited and divided into a series of shorter posts for ease of reading. The others are available at the end of this post. Jo VanEvery, Academic Career […]
Read More »