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 […]
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Starting your academic writing year in mid-summer
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Starting your academic year in mid-summer When do academics celebrate the new year? This is a serious question for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, where the beginning of the calendar year in January is more like the middle of the academic year. It seems like […]
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Are you dropping the “eating well” ball?
When you are busy and tired making decisions about what to eat and preparing healthy meals is more difficult. This is particularly difficult if you eat your main meal in the evening. The Covid pandemic just makes it worse. Principles for solving this problem and ideas to try.
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Projects vs Workloads
I really need to share this post by Helen Kara with you. She makes some excellent points that fit very well with my approach to planning. And she made me realise something: There is a big difference between project planning and workload planning. What I focus on here most of the time is workload planning, […]
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Shifting priorities within your research during the pandemic or other crisis
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Shifting priorities within your research during the pandemic or other crisis This post was written in the early stages of the Covid pandemic. One of the issues that had come up in both Office Hours (a group coaching session for members of the Academic Writing Studio) and in […]
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Planning for known unknowns
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Planning for known unknowns When I write the monthly review newsletter I try to say something specific about that particular month. This is complicated by the international audience for my newsletter. There are different term dates, different holidays, and different weather. I’ve got newsletter subscribers at all stages of […]
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Prioritising meaningful work when you are feeling overwhelmed and powerless
This is a follow up to the post about being an academic in dystopian times in which I encouraged you to : “Double down on the work that is meaningful to you. What makes your teaching meaningful to you? What makes your research meaningful to you? What makes your writing and publishing meaningful to you? How […]
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You are not behind!
When I read Burnout by Emily and Amelia Nagoski, one of the things I noticed was the way that expectations affect stress. I’ve been a fan of low expectations for a long time and there is an entire chapter in that book that summarises the science behind this practice. I encourage you to read (or listen to) […]
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Taking a real break between semesters
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Taking a real break between semesters In the past week or so I’ve had a few conversations with clients about the relationship between accomplishing their writing goals for the semester and taking a real break over the Christmas holiday. As one of them put it: “How do I not […]
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Reconnecting with the desire to write
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Reconnecting with the desire to write I was talking with a client about writing and motivation recently. We started with “It’s really hard to write with a gun to your head.” which strikes me as a pretty widespread problem. Whether that metaphorical gun is the REF, the tenure process, […]
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Process vs Product
I have an ambivalent relationship with goals. I know they are important but I find setting specific goals with an output and a deadline stalls my work rather than motivating it. I see that a lot of you struggle with similar issues in your writing. This post uses a long analogy to my own process […]
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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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