Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · You can get better at resting As I return from a week of annual leave, I have a few thoughts on rest I’d like to share. I talk about rest a lot, not just because it’s necessary but also because it is objectively difficult. I hope these musings help. […]
Read More »holidays
Squaring “write every day” with “take the weekend off”
Habits are important. Rest is also important. How do you square the advice to write every day with my advice to take weekends off and have real vacations? Change “write every day” to “write every working day”. Your brain is perfectly capable of distinguishing between work days and rest days. You can have different habits […]
Read More »Enjoyment and hard work
My friend Norma Miller posted this picture with a jokey comment her friend made: “A friend told me that if I was smiling, I wasn’t trying hard enough.” That kind of joke is not a joke That kind of joke causes injuries. That kind of joke makes you doubt yourself. You push yourself harder. You stop trusting your own […]
Read More »Reruns: Holiday Parties: turning dread into opportunity
I originally published this post in November 2010 and reran it in November 2011. It’s that time of year. No matter what you celebrate (if anything) you are going to be invited to parties. Many of these parties will involve talking to people you don’t know very well — the husband of your department chair, […]
Read More »