Stopped writing? How to start again

Wow. It has been a tough few months. Many of us will have been hanging in there, particularly parents, waiting for the mythical day when children go back to school. That thought has probably sustained you, right up until they did actually go back to school, and then came back days later with a cough. And around and around you go.

Worse - on top of the into school, out of school Hokey Cokey - you were faced with the mother of all onslaughts: preparing on-line teaching. I’m sure some of you work for institutions that had this all organised well in advance of term starting (I mean, surely somebody did), but for the rest this term is starting to feel like a programme of torture. Between dealing with the technology, wondering whether you will literally survive in person teaching and supporting the isolated and bewildered student body and fearing for your own mental health, there is rarely a moment to sit back and breathe.

But just for now: breathe. Slowly. Take a moment.

What happens when you stop?

I want to talk about what happens when the hopes and dreams and coping mechanisms of the last few months start to falter, because that is sure to happen. Right now you might be in the white heat of it all, and are merely crawling through each day. I’m sure you had great hopes for your shiny new on-line all singing and all dancing teaching module, yet instead, you sit in your room staring at 400 blank black boxes wondering if anyone is out there. You created this thing of beauty in a frenzy pushing all other obligations aside, including writing.

There might be a sense around you that you have successfully pivoted - and somehow it is, in a sense, all over. You are done here. You have got used to it. You have become a teaching robot. The new normal. But it is anything but normal and don’t be moralised, brutalised or gaslit into thinking anything else.

At some point, whatever coping mechanisms you have developed to keep on pushing through will likely come to a crashing halt. And then what?

Rethink your goals and priorities

It is time for a serious rethink about your priorities and where exactly you spend your energies. It is time to re-think the publication plan, but not so much that you have nothing on it. The thing about writing is that it is both a joy and a time suck, a respite and an unbelievable pressure, the thing that gets put off and the thing where deadlines start to loom hard. Some of you may have re-set your expectations in the summer, only to have missed the mark (repeatedly) and piled on additional pressure now it is term time.

It is time to get real. But it is also time not to fall into the trap of saying ‘I have no time to write’. This isn’t true. It just isn’t. Writing can take 15 minutes. Everyone can find 15 minutes, but some of us just don’t want to. Cool. Own it. Just own it, and feel that rush of denial just slip out of your body. This is the first crucial step forward.

Writing is a habit, but not the fun kind. It has the inverse effect of most habits. When you break the writing habit, it is unbelievably difficult to start up again. When you have the writing habit, it is like being on a gentle down hill slope - you kick your little pebble along the ground without thinking about it too much. Break the habit, and you are Sisyphus pushing that boulder up the steepest of mountains. Then you think this is what writing is like, and you don’t much care for it. This gets hard wired into your brain - you begin dreading writing - and around we go. Denial. Fear. Avoidance. But that is not the truth of writing. Writing is only like this when you break the habit.

Identify your motivations

When things get tough on the writing front, the most important thing to re-centre is your motivation. Why do you write? What is it about your research that gets you up in the morning? I talk a lot on the course about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, the differences between the two, and that what really matters is that you can locate some motivation whatever its form. Be it instrumental (I need x publications to get promoted / a job) or more cerebral (I just have to tell the world about x), it doesn’t matter. Even if it’s ‘I need to keep this job’ that works too. Motivation comes first.

Start the habit

Starting writing again after a long halt is a bit like aversion therapy. Small, repeated exposures build up a tolerance. Don’t start in a rush or start big: ‘today I will start my paper’ is a sure way to fail. Start small: ‘today I will find my notes, read them, for 30 minutes’. Then ‘tomorrow I will open up a document and bullet point/ write headings for 15 minutes'. Slow and steady. Break your writing tasks down into 15 minute jobs. If necessary, do one 15 minute job a day until you start to lessen that fear reaction. Eventually you will build up the momentum you need to get to a 25 minute Pomodoro. A couple of these a day and you are back on the down hill slope, writing merrily without drama.

I made that sound easy, and it isn’t. It requires a concerted effort to change your mindset - that is where the real work is. After that, it is all down hill from there.

The video abstract

Today I want to talk about different modes of communication for research (and teaching) and how these are skills you are likely going to have to teach yourself.

As a result of Covid, in person conferences were cancelled. Some moved on-line with more or less success, and this move has prompted a discussion about the efficacy and ethics of in person conferencing and long distance travel. In parallel we have moved to the zoom method of communication for teaching. We have, of necessity, being doing things differently. Some have clearly embraced this shift, making movie trailers for taught courses, and some will be more reluctant to change from doing what they have always done. So now is an apt time to introduce some technology based solutions to communicating research.

The opportunities to disseminate research in various different formats have been around for a while and for some podcasts and video abstracts as methods of research communication are decidedly old hat already. However, for other disciplines, successful adoption of podcasts and videos are still seen as novel (if not down right heresy). Today I want to talk a little bit about one of these modes of communication, and that is the video abstract.

Dissemination by video

Science has been doing video abstracts for ages, and is particularly suited to this mode of delivery with animated cells and complex biological processes rendered undersandable in bite sized chunks through visual aids. Publishers have been keen to jump on the bandwagon offering yet one more thing you can pay them for (besides your free labour) so that they can provide you with a video abstract.

You can of course do this yourself and for free. They are not particularly complicated, and there are many (some terrible) Youtube videos on ‘how to’. Whether you choose to simply talk to camera interspersed with basic graphics or go full on J J Abrams, it is really up to you. How amenable is the subject matter to different media? Record on your iPhone, edit on iMovie - technologically speaking it is not that complex to produce these videos.

The question I want ask and answer first is ‘why’?

If you casually google this question, you will get many a page from the big multinational publishers telling you about increasing your altmetrics. You may or may not care about this, but it is certainly true on a basic level search engines rank video first so that optimising your research content to make it more discoverable can certainly include (amongst many other things) having some video content.

I think a better way to think about it is what is the function of a video abstract, and do you want or need to engage with this style of communication? Clearly a video abstract is not you simply reading your paper abstract out to the camera, or indeed summing up the conclusions of your research in the same way. Neither is it talking over animated lecture slides in an on-line lecture fashion.

Some reasons are:

1. To tell someone clearly why you wrote the paper, what is the puzzle or problem, and what are your conclusions in a short, clear fashion that indicates to them whether or not they should read the paper for their own research;

2. To update a paper that has been published but is already out of date when it came out due to publishing lags;

3. To update a paper previously published with new events/ findings;

4. To promote a paper / book (as a teaser or trailer);

5. As a teaching aid to ease students into the content;

6. To share on social media in an engaging and quick fashion your research findings.

If you have your own website, or use social media a lot, having video abstracts is a good idea in terms of search engine indexing and because you have a forum that you can manipulate to suit your needs. If you are stuck with an institutional page, it is probably not worth it. You most likely won’t be able to in any case.

So since you are about to become achingly familiar with all things video, maybe consider developing the skill of including a video abstract to accompany published work. You are after all a practiced marketing guru.

The Entrepreneur Academic

Today’s academia is much like being in the circus, except in this circus you are the ring master, fire eater, juggler, clown, acrobat, tight-rope walker and every other single act inside the tent. There is no support act. You are the main, and only event.

Here is a crude representation of the evolution of the academic job. In a galaxy far, far away, it looked like this:

I know this is a little simplistic but it was a reasonably simple job.

Alas, it has now morphed into this:

There are no more hours in the week than before. This is upsetting, I know. This is what academia looks like now. Yet, you are perplexed why it is so hard to find time for writing. Wonder no more. This is why.

And of these burgeoning responsibilities, what exactly have you been trained for? By now, most people have been trained to teach classes (though not-online). You have been trained in some aspects of research via your PhD. Everything else you have taught yourself. Every single thing.

You are already an entrepreneurial academic, albeit, not through any choice of yours.

This is not a vocation

I want to end this series of 9 blogs with a particularly challenging concept: academia is not a vocation.

You are not on the front lines (probably) battling Covid. No-one is clapping for you. Even the handful of academic scientists working on a vaccine like science for science I bet. Finding stuff out. Everything after is a bonus. 

Why is it important to recognise this? It is about creating balance in your life, and enabling you to set boundaries about what is and is not reasonable working hours. It is about being able to carve out time to do the various aspects of your job without sacrificing the rest of your life (health, family and friends) on the altar of academia.

Some academics bridle at being told it is not a vocation. It REALLY winds their clock and I’ve seen a lot of angry social media exchanges on this topic. I rarely use generational / class tropes, but forgive me, I am going to. The belief that academia is a vocation is particularly prevalent amongst a certain millennial-and-later generations, and I have to say it, folks from the middle classes more generally. Millennials and the after millennials (and the middle classes) have been brought up in a world where they believe work should be:

• (a) rewarding (on a personal level)

• (b) they should receive personal recognition of their greatness and be taken care of, nurtured and cherished by their employer

• (c) that work should be their passion.

There are outliers of course, and I personally know a few Gen Xer’s who need a reality check. Whilst these are lovely sentiments, they are just that. Sentiments.

I call bullshit here. This became a thing only to convince people to work for free and be enslaved by neoliberalism. Also it’s a thing that makes you feel important and special because I know we can all think of jobs that do not fulfil a, b and c and yet are critical to the functioning of society. The people that do those jobs are not inferior to you. 

Work is to there to pay you for your labour. It puts food on your table and a roof over your head. The minute it is unable to do this, you are engaged in charity. It is not work. When people use the phrase ‘vocation’ they mean working for free. You work for free, for nothing. There is a certain kind of self-indulgent bullshit in this narrative I cannot imagine my father, who worked down a mine, ever partaking in. 

This is not academia. Academia is for profit. Yes, you may enjoy some parts of your job, and that is wonderful. It’s still a job, and there is a lot of bullshit nobody enjoys in that job. You would not think working for Goldman Sachs was a vocation (trust me, I did, it wasn’t), and if anyone suggested it to you, you would laugh. They are for profit too. You probably don’t think working in Tesco’s is a vocation either, yet I think if recent times have taught us anything, it is a far more important job than yours. 

Academia is not special. It is a job. Nothing more, nothing less. When you frame academia through this lens, things look a little different. You may start to ask questions like ‘why am I working on Saturday to do the 30th open day this year when my contract states Mon-Fri 9-5?’. Why am I working evening and weekends and never taking my contractually entitled annual holiday? Why do I revel in busyness exchanges? Why do I not call in sick when I am in fact sick? Why am I checking my emails at all hours? Why do I allow myself to be routinely exploited, and then feel terrible about not meeting the norms of my exploitation?

It is not a vocation. It is a job for which you are paid. 

This is important to remember as in 2020/2021 all kinds of requests are going to be made of you that engage some kind of latent charity (vocation) instinct. They are not reasonable, humane, or your job.

Why I am saying this and making your feel bad? Because 2020/21 is going to be tough, and if you want to preserve your sanity and your writing and research career you need to start saying no to things otherwise you will have a mental or physical health crisis in the name of a vocation that does not exist. 

It is nice to like your job. But it is much better to have a life beyond it.

(If you are not being paid, please find a job that actually pays you. It is the very least your humanity demands for your labour – being an academic is not that great you should sacrifice your life trying to achieve it. It is a literal human right to be paid for your labour).

Changing gears in your writing practice

The purpose of the Academic Coach Writing Course is to build up writers who feel stuck, and writers who are not stuck but need better habits through a series of modules that gradually increases your writing time to solid blocks that are regularly scheduled. 

The psychology blocking many academic writers from being more productive and efficient is based on the one of the toughest writing myths to crack: ‘I can only write when I have big blocks of time’. Because big blocks of uninterrupted time rarely materialise, writers who believe this don’t write, or if they do write, it is gruelling through the night binge writing. And when sabbatical or other ‘big block’ opportunities do arise, they still don’t write as they are so out of practice writing has become a THING of fear and loathing. They cannot work without being 3 months over a deadline.

 Cracking this particular nut is hard work.

The course progresses from writing for a mere 30 minutes to longer periods (perhaps 2-3 hours). This is about bringing you into the writing habit, making it like the brushing your teeth habit. No fuss. No drama. We call this rhythmic writing, from Cal Newport’s book ‘Deep Work’. Writing is just a thing that, at a particular time of day, appears in your diary and you do. The aim, by the end of the course, is to move you from not writing, to writing regularly, to writing in fairly large regularly scheduled blocks. Once you become proficient at this, the course aims to move on from this type of rhythmic writing (regular scheduled slots) to so called journalistic writing – anytime, anywhere.

We look at other types of writing practices of course, what Newport calls bimodal scheduling (big blocks of writing and big blocks of non writing time) and monastic scheduling (the archetypal cabin the woods, or writing retreat). These two particular writing philosophies are generally not that practical, but it’s possible in the time of Covid 19, at least some element of monastic scheduling might be either necessary of attractive depending on your particular life circumstances.

The changed practices of HE in 2020/21 are going to pose a particular challenge to those writers who are welded to the ‘I can only write in large blocks’ myth. Even small blocks of time might be hard to come by. Practicing the art of journalistic writing will be crucial for moving projects forward. Dipping in and out of writing, 15 minutes here or there, will move your writing projects forward enormously, but this type of writing requires a massive mind shift and a writing practice that facilitates it.

If you’ve never done this before, it can sound rather fantastical, but with support this kind of writing can become second nature. Join us on Academic Coach to find a supportive writing environment where we can change up our writing practice together.

Happier writing needs a flexible mind.

Planning in the new reality

Academic Coach is a big advocate of planning: it is a prerequisite of becoming a happier writer. Many academics don’t like to plan, and in the case of reluctant or sporadic writers, there is some underlying writing anxiety that provokes a disdain for planning. Without a plan, you don’t write, and if you don’t like writing, well that all works out just fine. 

Here are ten reactions I see when planning is raised as a must to be a happier writer. In no particular order:

1. I don’t plan – I’m not a planner (the absolutist rejection of planning as a concept)

2. I don’t plan my academic writing because … (this accepts planning might be beneficial per se, but has one thousand excuses about why they don’t do it, along the lines of ‘I can only write when…eg all the planets are aligned).

3. I don’t plan as it never works out (the defeatist position)

4. I don’t like planning (I only do things that make me feel good position) 

5. I can’t plan because I don’t know how to do this effectively (the perfectionist position: this I can help with)

6. When I plan and it doesn’t work out, self-loathing occurs (the perfectionist position)

7. Things never go as I planned (the fatalist position)

8. Planning makes me feel bad (the fear of failure position)

9. I don’t like to estimate how long things take me (the fear of reality position).

10. Other people ruin my plans, so I don’t make them (the lack of personal agency position). 

To hijack Silvia’s phrase, these are specious barriers to writing. None of it is real, it is a story you choose to tell yourself. Excuses 1-4 are simply excuses not to change your behaviour. But these excuses are a substitute for a more visceral fear of writing that has developed over time, and accordingly you have reverted to the Ostrich position. 5-9 are rooted in perfectionism, the twin of the fear of failure. The last one is my absolute favourite because it’s so very common and so easily cured by taking control of your own diary.

If you recognise your reaction to planning in this list, fear not, Academic Coach has the cure where over 10 weeks we engage in some gentle brain reengineering about planning, imposter syndrome, perfectionism, procrastination, and all the other reasons you don’t like to plan.

Planning has always been important to being a happier writer, but in the next year or two, planning is indispensable to your happiness, precisely because ‘here there be dragons’. When the unknown presents many terrors, planning is the remedy. You will have to take control of your diary or you will do absolutely nothing of merit writing wise. Enough with the Churchill nodding dog routine. It is not possible to do all that is being asked of you, so choose the things you will commit to and accept there are things you cannot do.

Micro planning

Once your teaching has been allocated to you, you can plan all your writing and research activity in slots in your on-line diary. At the beginning of term, there will be official meetings you have to attend – exam boards, boards of study and so on that are planned a year in advance. Put these in. When unplanned meetings appear out of the ether, missing a fixed agenda, you can ask yourself: do you have space in your plan, or don’t you? If that slot was allocated to writing, you do not move writing to attend that meeting. You would not move teaching. Don’t do it.

Macro planning

This is the part academics struggle the most with. Or should we say realistic macro planning. Planning the year, or two, when it comes to your research is seriously important. You set (realistic) targets for yourself, that in turn requires the micro planning above to achieve. Let’s say it takes 100 hours to complete an article to submission, and you are planning your diary from Sep-Sep. If you have not started, it is pointless putting in ‘article completion by October’. It is not going to happen, because you can’t find 100 hours in your diary between Sep-Oct to complete it. This is why planning upsets people. The cold hard reality is, this stuff takes time. But with realistic deadlines (perhaps you can find 100 hours over 3 months), stuff does get done. This also means sticking to your allocated slots, which helps when saying no to meetings. It is a lovely virtuous circle of writing harmony.

A viable plan for the year will differ depending on your teaching load, career stage, and discipline, single or multi authored, theoretical or empirical research, so I am not here to say X is a realistic target for you. This is something you learn after trial and error (note, error, not failure).

I have some planning resources you can find here if you absolutely don’t know where to start, but the basics you need to consider is what, why, how and when. It’s that simple.

 Happier writing begins with serious planning.

Research rescue: how, why and when

Today I want to talk about stalled research and how (and if we should) rescue it. Stalled research is perhaps the trickiest type of research: this is the research that you were engaged with before Covid, but have not looked at since. If you have project deliverables for a funder, you do not have the luxury of abandoning this project. In that case, fortitude is needed and extensions need to be negotiated. But at least you have somebody to be accountable to and with. You are also probably working in a team that will also keep you accountable.

If you are not tied into a funder, it can feel easy to just bin it, and move on. Dispense with the guilt. Stalled research lacks the shiny new excitement of the freshly started project. Like relationships, research is just better at the start. You don’t know how hard it’s going to be, and it’s all a wonderful discovery. It’s the follow through that is tricky. It is absolutely possible that you have started new research during Covid, but left that stalled project in a box marked ‘failed’. 

 The question is, will you leave it there?

If you have a stalled research project, it is possible that you have convinced yourself you have legitimate reasons for not bothering with this research anymore, eg your research method became unfeasible because the lab was shut, samples died (do samples die? I don’t know anything about Stem), or you were unable to observe participants, or carry out in person interviews etc. Someone else has written the thing you were going to do (unlikely). Maybe this is true, and you are not able to adapt your specific research method, or maybe, could it be, that you could not face making the necessary adjustments to the project to move it forward? 

Picking up old research is hard. Often we have just ‘gone off’ it. Eight months ago it was cutting edge and timely, now it feels a bit ‘bleurgh’.

Should you continue?

Writing and researching slots are going to be incredibly precious in the next 12 months, so whilst in my usual writing advice I would say never abandon research (wasted time!), I think this is a genuine time to make a pragmatic call. Answer these simple questions to help frame your decision making, and take away the guilt, feelings of failure and all the *emotions* of it. Get practical.

1. How far along is it? Are you closer to the end than the beginning? [If Yes, this is a tick in the continue box]

2. How critical is this to your own personal goals (this might be tied into promotion, REF, working with certain people, publishing in certain journals)?

3. How difficult is X problem to overcome (new ethics committee to change research design, or just tweaks around the edges)?

4. Do you have partial data you could reframe into a different article / piece?

5. Can you work with someone who can bring a different theory/angle and ditch the empirical parts (also bonus – half the work)?

Sometimes it will not be so much abandonment than rescuing a project by changing its shape or angle, by bringing others on board or only having a partial dataset that answers one question (or poses further questions for research).

Do you want to continue?

It is only practical to engage in research rescue if you are motivated to do so. And I mean really, really motivated. In normal times, you ought to have a full research pipeline where you can move projects up and down the list, and pick up and leave off depending on deadlines, waxing and waning motivation and so on. 

These are not normal times.

The next 12 months will be HARD on research and writing time. Motivation, which is always key to being a happier writer, really comes to the fore. Do you really want to do this research in the next 12 months? If there is any doubt, abandon it now and begin something you actually feel motivation to work on. In the coming academic year you will have severely waning motivation to do anything beyond just making teaching work, so you need all the help you can get in moving any research forward.

Why should I care?

Although this all feels a bit *who cares, we are in a pandemic* it is important to remember it won’t always be this way. Or, worse, it will. Regardless, you are still going to have to produce research to keep your job, and I can guarantee you this, University promotions and hiring committees will not give a fig about the pandemic as an excuse for a publication gap because other people will have continued production because this is a super competitive career. You know it, I know it.

 The classic writing advice to finish the thing that is closest to completion (regardless of how much you like it) still stands. If the pre Covid research is nearly done, bite the bullet and finish. But if you are anywhere else further back than nearly there, it is seriously time to ask those five questions and decide this: if I have only got time for one piece of research in the following 12 months, is this going to be it?

Next time: This is not a vocation

The value of rest

The Academic Writing Course is big on scheduling. Many a module is on the joy of scheduling. I am big on scheduling. We don’t find time or make time to write. Time is not lost down the back of the sofa. We are not a time traveller, or God. The best we can do is schedule time (I hate the phrase manage time, as though it’s an unruly toddler -  you are not chasing time around the living room). 

Scheduling time is thus important to being a happier writer (and a happier academic). You may have noticed that your schedule is presently looking zoom bombed. 

 That is something we need to talk about.

 How do you fill your diary? Do you allow others to simply control it by filling it with endless meeting invitations? Or do you take control, map out your hours and what you will do with them, and then should meetings appear, either you are free or you decline as you are otherwise scheduled.  You do not schedule your work around other people’s meeting whims.

The single biggest hack for becoming a happier writer is taking control of your own diary. It is like magic!

 People who don’t write love meetings because it gives them a legitimate (in their mind) excuse for not writing. If you are a regular academic (not a head of department, dean etc) and you had previously a small x number of meetings per week, there is no reason you should be attending an exponential of that number now. Most ECRs and junior staff generally don’t have weekly administrative meetings (I’m not talking about teaching here), and if you do, you are probably doing  role that is so far above your pay grade you are being exploited.

 Just because other people can’t get their shit together to have one meeting, does not mean you have to become their zoom slave. Meetings without written published agendas are not meetings. They are opportunities to ambush you – don’ fall for it. If it’s critical, they will put it in writing, and you can read it at your leisure. If they have not committed it to writing, they are, variously: using your time to do what is their job; fake consulting you on decisions already taken; or giving you updates on things likely to change next week.

This is the sound of experience you are hearing, not cynicism. 

Time can’t be found, made or managed. But I do believe that time can be wasted and meetings are a classic example. 

Of course, I could suggest tuning in and dropping out as the oldies used to say, but I don’t believe this is a good idea. Be in a meeting, or don’t. If you are in it, contribute. If you have nothing to contribute, then you didn’t need to be there – this is a good early lesson to learn (some people never learn it). When you have tuned in, you have already decided not to write, and that’s a fact, no matter what you do when your camera is off. 

The Academic Coach Writing Course thus prioritises practicing scheduling writing. It is a lot harder for some people to do this than you might imagine. But in these Covid times, I think it’s important to actually practice scheduling rest too. I hear all you parents of small children bristling and laughing at this suggestion. However you are managing your children and work at this time, within that work slot, you must also schedule rest. Even if things remain undone. You are (I’m assuming) not a brain surgeon and no-one will die if your work doesn’t get done. Get some perspective. So what if you are late with your report, your marking, your book manuscript or whatever. So what. The world continues to turn.

Rest is critical to productivity and stable mental health. Those who work all through the night produce less than those who work regular calm hours. Without rest, we become emotionally and physically depleted. Without rest, we have no reserves. Without rest, there are, as doctors are fond of saying, no good outcomes.

So as well as scheduling time to write, you must now schedule time to rest. Rest between any on-line interactions. Move away from the screen, your chair. Have periods where you are in fact taking a break (you are legally entitled to these). This will inevtibly eat into your writing and research time. So be it. The whole point of the Academic Coach Writing Course is creating efficiency in your writing routines – spend less time doing it, getting more done.

Since some academics find doing nothing more agitating than working, rest periods can also be periods where you plan and think and reflect (but not in some hardcore journaling or homework type of activity). I would always encourage that.

Rest is the most important thing you can schedule. Do it today.

Next time: Research rescue: how, why and when

Navigating the (old) new HE context

Today’s blog seeks to draw your attention to the new (old) HE environment. I say new (old) for a reason. It has become apparent to me in the last couple of years that many academics – PhD’s, ECRs, established researchers, and tenured professors have a highly individuated experience of ‘academia’. Sure, we can all get behind some easy tropes: reviewer 2, tyrannical administrators; over-paid Vice Chancellors. But actually scratch the surface, and there is no one ‘academia’ we all seem to recognise. There are good reasons for this. Those at the beginning and at the end of their career have a lot in common in that they understand very little about what it is to be an academic for the vast majority in the trenches. They are both hopelessly disconnected from reality but for completely different reasons.

A professor who never even needed a masters degree to get a job has had (and STILL has) a very different experience of academia than the professor who needed and got their PhD sometime between the 1990’s and 2000. Professors and established academics who got their PhDs and needed multiple publications to get a (probably permanent) job (say between 2000-2010) have had a very different academic experience again. Those who got their PhD, need multiple publications, suffered extreme precarity, and probably needed a monograph and a grant, and needed a huge amount of luck and connections have had a different experience again. Those still doing there PhD know all about precarity and publications, yet still seem to have a hopelessly romantic idea (and ideals) about what it is like to actually work at a University on a full time contract. Throw in the intersections of discipline, geography, race, gender, and disability and these communities will describe an academia that the first cohort can never and will never recognise (although they sit in hugely senior positions).

I’m not talking about different experiences of the job market here either, but different experiences once you have entered academia proper. These shifts in the job market merely reflect the broader shifts within universities, that have in turn moulded the expectations of staff too. These expectations play out differently amongst the different cohorts.

The Covid era academia may look staggeringly different to some colleagues, when in fact all Covid has done is rip away the mask. It’s a business, run by people who know little about business. It has the legal trappings of a charity, but is operated as a purely for-profit enterprise. Accordingly it seeks to exploit its workforce at every possible turn, who willingly, in the name of vocation and believing in the charitable status, passion or a number of other tropes, will work 24/7 in order to maximise its profit. 

This is the old (new) university. It’s one of the most competitive careers out there filled with over-achieving type As. For the last 20 years, it has been nothing but chaos, with restructurings, department closures, redundancies, financial mismanagement, invention of new annual league tables with ever changing goal posts, and continual reinvention of the administrative wheel as an army of administrators seek to justify their existence. Covid is just another turn of the chaos wheel.

The Covid era University expects unlimited access to your personal space via zoom; scheduling classes at any time of the day or night; preparation for teaching on-line (without training) but also for you to come into campus and teach in person in a pandemic whilst offering no meaningful personal protection. 

 Is this so different to the old academia? Not so much. 

 You’ve been expected to work 24/7 for a long time via email and instant responses to students, journal editors and administrators. You’ve been a slave to timetabling officer for time immemorial, and some people have regulary taught on the weekend for many years, not to mention the away days and the open days that eat into your personal time. Training? You can be given a course you know nothing about a week before term starts. Transforming your teaching pedagogy at the drop of hat to meet some NSS target is commonplace. One year, feedback is the priority. Next year, its ‘learning communities’. And the wheel rolls on. Change for the sake of change is the watchword. Is on-line teaching such a jump? Giving more, more and then some more again is hardly Covid specific. 

Granted, being forced to come into work to contract a deadly disease is an untenable step further, but it’s not so far off the well-travelled path. Colleagues have been striking over workload and work conditions for the last two years, with a suicide and mental health crisis in academia ever present. Care for your well-being has been distinctly lacking for some time. We are all a little tired of the downward dog solution.

Navigating with the compass of truth

So, how do you navigate this new (old) Covid University. First, it is up to you to face facts and begin to see Covid academia as an extension of the same academia as before. Once you accept that perhaps exploitative and unreasonable requests are being made of you, most likely in contravention of basic health and safety and your employment contract are not a one-off (this is a crisis) situation, but merely an extension of the previous exploitation, your mind-set ought to shift towards what is possible and reasonable for you to do, and what is not. These will almost certainly fall short of what is being requested from one week to the next. 

Facing this truth will prevent you falling into the trap of self-doubt, imposter syndrome and wondering why you are just not good enough. These thoughts are a spiral downwards to abandoning research and writing in the never ending quest to be the perfect on-line tutor.

The boundaries you can put in place now, having accepted these facts, will keep you sane later. Become your own committee of no. Think carefully about the battles you pick.  It is important you think through your survival tactics early and doggedly define your priorities and stick to them, otherwise the next 12 months are going to be very difficult indeed.

Remember this – just like we don’t all experience academia in the same way, we will not experience Covid academia in the same way. The winners will keep winning. The losers will continue to do all the heavy lifting right until they have worked themselves into the ground. You must see your situation as it is. Be your own advocate.

See the old (new) University as its always been. It’s not you, it’s them.

Next time: the value of rest

Academic writing in the time of Covid: first steps

This is the third in a series of blog about academic writing in the time of Covid 19. Whilst much traditional writing advice is still absolutely valid, it needs to be placed in an entirely new context that raises particular challenges. The tenth blog will transition from Covid to deal with academic life beyond Covid and how this time is likely to accelerate changes we have already seen in the last few years.

 First steps: Your new reality

The mission of the Academic Coach is to create happier writers. The emphasis is on the happier. For some, this means more productivity, more efficiency or more elegant prose, but for others it is about having a more balanced relationship with the research /writing aspect of your career. Having time to write that is not late at night, at weekends, and in place of holidays. Whatever happy means for you, there is no doubt that your ability to do research in 2019/2020, and 2020/21 will have been (and will continue to be) severely compromised for a variety of reasons. A global pandemic and its associated trauma, including but not limited to sickness of you or your loved ones, home-schooling, lack of childcare, a complete shutdown of your research lab and/or research methodology are just some of the reasons that writing and research might grind to halt. Besides the fact that the world as we know it has completely changed, and a toothache can become a significant life altering event. 

Even if you were a super productive, happy writer in 2018, things might have drastically changed. 

Your new reality is something you need to face head on. I know it is tempting to sit and scream that it is all just so unfair. I feel this deeply. But, alas, reality is still there at the end of the tantrum. Facing this reality is the key first step to moving forward.

Your truth matters

One of the key components of the regular Academic Coach writing course is facing the truth about you, your life, and your writing (or procrastinating) habits. Facing this truth has never been easy, and when colleagues come to the part of the course which challenges them to record what they do all day, and record how long each aspect of writing and researching takes, they tend to shy away. Why? Because it is hard to face up to your perceived failings, and hard to look the cold hard facts in the face. Conversely, it is sometimes dispiriting to find out that the component parts of creating a finished piece of writing actually just take a really long time. In fact you are not lazy or procrastinating, it just takes ages.

Because knowing is hard. Denial is easy. 

That denial underpins many bad writing habits that we too easily ascribe to our ‘unique’ style of working (I can only write when…….). We spend a lot of time debunking this nonsense on the course, either practically or psychologically, in order to move into a space where we can accept our particular reality, and create writing routines that fit into that reality as opposed to actively work against it.

Everyone’s reality is different, yet we are all measured professionally by indicators that were designed for and therefore favour the old school norm of the single white male scholar – or the married with a stay at home wife scholar – both of whom are utterly devoted to the singular pursuit of publishing. This is exceptionally tough on those who are not in either of these categories. The pandemic has only underlined this situation with research demonstrating male authors increased submission of articles and female author submissions dropped off a cliff . This isn’t news. Yet…yet…somehow we fail to accept this single truth of academia and continue to hold ourselves to standards that have no relation to our own lived realities.

This is the shaky foundation of the unhappy writer.

Face facts

So, the first critical task in order to get back to your writing and research is to face your new reality. This reality might mean children at home all the damn time. Even if we are now technically in the summer holidays (in some places), your usual summer childcare arrangements will most likely be null and void. Granny is off-limits and so on. Even without children in the house, we face separation from family and friends and leisure, and perhaps we have another body permanently in our workspace (flat mates, partners) who would normally be at work. Our partner (or us) might be a key worker. We might not have a proper workspace at all – a rickety chair, a bad back and a kitchen table. 

This might go on for many, many more months. All our coping habits have been removed. 

These things pose significant challenges to writing. If you normally go to a lab and now you can’t, all your research might be compromised. Endless zoom meetings about absolute nonsense will fill your calendar. No doubt, you are being subject to the ‘will we, won’t we’ two-step of on-line or face to face teaching come September, and the associated disruption that brings. You are probably preparing on-line and in person teaching simultaneously while jumping through endless administrative hoops that try to run you over like a big giant evil trucker every single day. This may well go on and on until September, when student fees have been collected for tuition and accommodation, and the cold hard reality of crumbling, crusty buildings that allow zero social distancing will intervene and settle things. For a while at least.

This stuff is stressful. I mean really, mind-bendingly stressful. Preparing courses takes time and energy, and you are not being given any time and you are all out of energy. Writing everything from scratch for September in a vastly different format: nightmare. You are probably being told there will be job losses, pay cuts, more teaching, less (if any) research time. You are probably still working out how to say no to online meetings, or whether its impolite to have the camera off (I marvel at people who care about this: they are clearly nicer than me). If, on top of this Armageddon, you or your dependents have particular health, caring or disability needs, these are surely not being met either by the health and social care service, or your institution. Stressful doesn’t really cover it.

 All of this is an awful, incomprehensible nightmare. But once you have faced your new reality, instead of trying to operate as if nothing had changed, as if its ‘business as usual’, you will (after the shock) feel calmer in knowing that certain compromises will have to be made and some uncomfortable choices that perhaps fracture our ideals of what it is to be an academic will need to be accepted. This is part and parcel of the Academic Coach writing course in normal times because sometimes the things that hold us back the most are based on an internal narrative about how things ought to be, rather than how they really are.

Here there be dragons

We are now in a place of uncomfortable ‘not knowing’. We are at that point on ye olde world maps that proclaims ‘here there be dragons’. And for good reason. You don’t exactly know how things are going to pan out. Worse still, you know it’s likely going to be unpleasant and chock full of unrealistic expectations (from you, and your employer). This is taking up brain space. The worst part is you will have to be your own advocate, mentor, and champion. What I have learned from running Academic Coach is that most academics absolutely suck at being their own advocate, mentor, and champion. But you will have to. We are all drowning, not waving, and you will be fortunate indeed if your usual support groups have the ability to reach out and support you. No-one is on the life raft.

Nothing short of your physical and mental well-being is at stake here, and rest assured, your institution does not care one jot for either.

This I know is all a bit depressing. 

Over the next few weeks Academic Coach will provide a series of blogs and vlogs to help you navigate this new reality. There will be some hard talk about Universities in the time of Covid, and some strategies offered for caring for yourself and your writing practice in the midst of this new environment.We will cover topics ranging from rescuing stalled research to planning in the midst of the unknown. I hope you will find these useful scaffolds for building a happier writing practice.

Working from home for academics

Being forced to work from home isn’t like working from home by choice

Academics are by and large used to working from home. Even those in purely lab based disciplines will at times write or do other work from their home. But now things are different. Working from home is no longer a choice, but something forced upon us. Not only that, you are now teaching as well as writing and administrating from home.

Worse, you are now doing this with your children in attendance, or your partner, or with your pets, (or all of these), or in total isolation from anyone you know and would normally interact with.

All of these situations are unprecedented in your experience.

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE THIS UNDER CONTROL. You really really should not.

It never happened before. The idea that you can seemlessly transition into this chaos whilst maintaining sanity, let alone productivity, is ludicrous. Absolutely off the scale nonsense. Of course you can’t. No-one can. So let go of that bullshit right now. Breathe. Get through this moment. Then the next. Then the next.

Transitioning to coping

Here is a simple of list of things to keep in mind when transitioning into a being able to cope.

1. Dramatically lower your expectations (oh but the students will suffer, think of the students).

We are all going to suffer, regardless of what you do, and students will not be insulated from suffering as a special category of people. They are going to be stressed, and worried, but we are all stressed and worried. You are not a super hero. You are a person and you can only do what you can do. Grade kindly. Lower expectations of them and of you. This does not come easy for super competitive I-must-always-be-the-best personality types of academics. There is an apocalypse on - get a grip.

2. Stuff will go wrong.

Yes, children will interrupt lectures, tech will cut out, there will be delays. You won’t have all the answers. It will take time to work stuff out and get stuff together. Accept it. Do what you can. Move on. Accept imperfection.

3. Administrators will ask the impossible: ignore them

At the best of times, administrators have no idea of quality teaching. They don’t understand the classroom dynamic because they don’t really know what goes on in there. So the imperative to ‘just put it all on-line’ is yet another way in which they manifest that complete ignorance. You cannot do the impossible.

4. Trust your professional integrity

You know how to teach. You know how to examine and you know how to be kind and generous in recognising that students are not receiving the optimum teaching experience at this time. You know exactly what they need to know and what they can do without. Trust that professionalism. Don’t wait for someone who knows nothing about your course or material to tell you what to do.

5. You will work less

Yes. It is true. You will work less. But you will probably work much more intensely because between homeschooling, feeding and caring for a household there will be little time available for actual work. Accept it.

6. The kids will be alright in front of the telly for a few hours.

Release the guilt.

7. Prioritise yourself and your family.

Work is after all just work. Academics fetishize work above all other things. It is time for a reset. Look after yourself, your family. Eat well. Stay healthy and exercise. Meditate or do whatever you need to in order to get through this uncertain time. Devote a large part of your day to these activities.

8. Research will wait.

Some of you may take refuge in writing and there is no judgment from me on that. For some people, this is a type of escapism by utter absorption in a task, and certainly, we would all like to escape right now. If that is you, have at it. Get a schedule together. Find a quiet space in your house and begin. Block out a maximum of two hours in your day and write to your heart’s content. Get a task list together and slowly work your way through it. At the end, write down tomorrow’s tasks, and repeat.

For many, this won’t be feasible, either due to little (or indeed grown) people in your tent, or the fact that right now you could not give a rat’s ass about research. That is also a completely acceptable reaction. In time it might change, but for now, just breathe.

9. Dynamics of communication will change

Communication will be difficult at this time. By this, I mean that people are worried, they are scared, they might be snippy or downright unreasonable, and at the best of times, email is not a great way to communicate. It lacks nuance and tone is often misconstrued.

Exercise a bit of patience with colleagues and students who are flailing about and are under who-knows-what pressure.

10. Practice kindness

Be kind to yourself and others. Academics are notoriously hard taskmasters with each other, with students, with themselves. Instead, choose to be be kind. It is a much nicer way to live.

Working from home hacks

Some of us work from home anyway outside of a pandemic and have actually experienced little disruption to our daily schedule outside of not being able to get everything they want from the shop. I feel like I have been in training for this my whole life, as I am a natural born hermit and normally work from home.

I have my ways, naturally, but have never given much thought (until now) to how I organise myself.

I have read with some amusement the many ‘work from home hacks’ articles which exhort you to ‘get dressed’ and ‘get up as though you are going to the office’ and all that jazz. Let me tell you, this is not how I work from home.

I have never done any of those things and am a very productive person. You do you. Wear what you want, do what works for you and your family. You will find your own equilibrium through this chaotic and unprecedented time.

My courses are in essence about managing your time well, and in regular life, I would certainly recommend setting a realistic schedule, whilst being absolutely honest about your real life circumstances. Your real life circumstances now include a global pandemic, and an entire disruption to the way we live and work and communicate. Try not to pretend anything is other than it is.

I would recommend setting very small goals, breaking down tasks into very small parts, ticking them off a list, and doing one tiny thing at a time. I would usually recommend a plan, because I am a planner. But right now, I have erased my whiteboard of plans because everything turned upside down and now I can’t leave the house. What I planned before, I now cannot do (or at least I cannot do it as I planned it). Accept it.

Crucially, don’t set yourself up to fail by putting in place unrealistic expectations. We need to really readjust what we can expect of ourselves in this period of unprecedented uncertainty. It is not business as usual.

Writing routines in a global pandemic

We are living in strange times indeed. At this point, you have probably been given 24 hours notice (at best) to take everything you do and put it ‘online’ (as though this were no problem). The last thing you are thinking about is your research and writing. And that is fine. And that is normal.

In the interim, you are going to alternate between terror scrolling through Twitter, and staring at your leg. That is also fine. Whilst marinading in social media terror, you will come across a number of different Twitter asshats who will swing between ‘Shakespeare wrote King Lear when quarantined’ and all that productivity bullshit, and people bragging about how much writing they will get through because they have no child care ( and possibly no humanity either).

You will also come across those who tell you to down tools and do nothing. These same people overworked and will still overwork through this pandemic - they were the ones who raised the bar in the first place, and burned the ladder underneath them.

I’m here to tell you: ignore all this bullshit. It is hard, I know. These are extreme times, and if you are able to keep any writing going I salute you, but most won’t and that is OK too. All those hard fought for writing routines are under incredible pressure right now. Just stop worrying about research and writing at least for a few weeks in the midst of a global meltdown. Eventually you will (probably) adjust to the new ‘normal’ of online lecturing whilst a toddler is swinging on your leg. Or not. Eventually you may find your feet. Your eventually might be three weeks, three months or however long. That is OK.

All your writing progress is not lost. Depending on your personality, you might actually find a bit of solace in writing, since it is a solitary activity, requires utter concentration, and a blocking out of the world. This kind of fits the bill right now. For an hour or two, it might sooth your soul. That is OK. But equally, it might not.

Needless to say your publication pipeline will need some severe adjustment. When you wrote that, a global meltdown was not on the cards.

There are a lot of people holding free online social writing events (check out ScholarShape and the Professor is in offering free stuff, and CampNaNoWriMo). There are some asshats trying to monetise this disaster of course too. I won’t shame them here. When people tell you who they are, believe them.

All my courses will be pushed back a wee bit until we have found some equilibrium in this new world. I will continue with the free stuff as much as I can. If you would benefit from a free Write with Me Friday, I am happy to put these on in the future when we have had time to adjust. Please post any interest on the Facebook page.

For now, stay safe. Forget the rest.

Conferencing: to conference or not to conference?

Conferencing: the dark ages

Conversations about the pros and cons of attending conferences are beginning to change. In ye olden days (10 years ago) it was simply a must. You must go and be seen and network In Real Life. Then, the questions were about choosing the right conference in order to get the most out of it. In early scholarly life, this would have been decided by reference to the following:

• Were the right people (major thinkers in your field) going to be there?

• Was this going to be a real opportunity to get good feedback on your work?

• Could you afford it? Would your meagre conference budget be blown on one outing that year and if so, was it going to be worth it?

These were the BIG questions. No-one really thought about whether conferences would be accessible, in terms of not being ableist in their design, location or structure. No-one thought (or cared) about the differential impacts conferencing had on women with children (ie those primary carers who could not go), let alone the imperative to provide on-site childcare facilities to mitigate these impacts. No-one thought about the ‘othering’ and outright discrimination that can occur at these events for POC.

Less still (though all women knew it) was it openly discussed whether these venues would be safe spaces for women. Would they be able to navigate them without the customary, nay expected, bout of sexual harassment that openly populated women’s experience of conferencing.

The big decisions were between the major conferences in your field with thousands of papers, which in reality meant giving a paper to 4 of your work colleagues in a hotel room on the other side of the world (or to literally no-one), or whether to go to a smaller subject specific workshop where there was an actual opportunity to meet scholars closely connected to your field and get feedback were the hot topics of debate.

Shamelessly, the other major consideration was whether it was a lovely location. The more tropical the better. The more distant and exotic the better. It was one of the perks of the job.

Conferencing, climate change and accessibility

This attitude to conferencing seems woefully out of date with the times. Whether to conference or not at all is high on the agenda of many academics for ethical reasons. Whether to restrict your air travel (easier or harder depending on where you are located), prioritise train travel, offset your carbon emissions, or simply only attend local conferences are today’s conferencing questions.

Despite all the changes in technology that make remote participation a possibility, the people who organise conferences seem unwilling or unable to change with the times. We still hear the familiar narrative that in person drinks (hello, yet more exclusionary behaviour) are just so essential to building a network, but the truth is many of us are addicted to what we still see as the perk of the job. And unless conference organisers grasp the nettle, the pressure on junior scholars to go to these events will not abate. They feel they have to go. They must build their career through conferencing.

Of course, it is not just conference organisers that are to blame. The international conference is the spawn of many parents. Universities still have archaic ‘indicators of esteem’ in their promotion criteria which are most easily fulfilled by showing you have been invited or presented your work at an international conference. Similarly, the establishment of a global or world leading reputation in a field is seen as being concomitant with travelling to far flung places. Grant bodies require evidence of extensive dissemination of your work and whilst this can be achieved in many ways, the obligatory international conference circuit is still important. You can get enormous amounts of funding to build networks which in and of itself require travel to fulfil the grant conditions. Building cross disciplinary teams with international partner Universities also reflect the priorities of big grant funders.

No-one disputes global collaboration is part of moving knowledge forward. But does this require we all travel to multiple far flung places every year to huge conferences? I’m not sure it does.

Whether and how you choose to conference, or to limit your conference travel, is a decision for each scholar to make, but we should all be pressuring conference organisers and Universities to rethink centuries old mentality. The format of conferences must change for so many reasons: accessibility, discrimination, equality, sexual harassment and climate change are just some of them.

Curating your on-line presence

In order to build an effective academic brand, and be able to constantly curate that brand, you have to actively manage your on-line presence. What happens when you google your name? If you have an unusual name, you are in luck, since it will require less work for you to maintain your academic brand on-line. If you are blessed with a name like mine (Smith), well, those are the breaks.

It is tough to be a Smith on-line.

What are your options?

There are many different approaches to managing your on-line presence. Some people maintain that you should have one profile, on one social media site (besides your institutional affiliation) and that is all you need. Do one thing well.

I’m not a fan of this approach simply because of the way algorithms on Google stack pages. The more (consistent) social media presence you have, the easier it is to build a brand. You don’t have to do everything but the more you do, the more your profile will be at the top of the list on Google.

First make sure you have a on-line list of your publications. Whether you choose Academia.edu, Google Scholar or ResearchGate to list your publications, make sure it is kept up to date. I have ResearchGate and Google Scholar because these are very searchable platforms and free, and they take a lot of the work of updating away from you. I am not active on these platforms and I don’t use them for research per se. I update them once a year, so they are not particularly onerous. I don’t share publications over these platforms due to potential copyright issues, and I don’t post draft work due to the possibility of it being stolen (it happens).

There are certainly better ways to engage with peers through these platforms than I do. But this doesn’t matter. These pages help tie my profile together and rank highly on Google. I also have a LinkedIn profile to reach an entirely different (mainly industry) audience, but still with the consistent information about who I am and my publications list.

Institutional profiles

You probably have an institutional webpage that lists your publications. In the UK, it is compulsory for REF purposes to have such a thing. Do not let this be your only online presence. These are usually clunky, ugly and badly maintained, and they unnecessarily tie your profile to your employer. Your brand is not where you work remember. In my experience, it takes several weeks and many forms filled in triplicate to alter anything on these pages. It is just not worth the effort.

Should you have your own webpage?

I think you should. These can be cheap (or free depending on the platform) and are within your sole control in terms of style, how you present yourself and the different ways you can engage with your peers, be it through podcasting, blogs or video abstracts (blogs on how to do this later). Your personal webpage (with your name as the domain) offers a whole host of possibilities to curate your online presence and your academic brand in a way that you see fit.

Video content and podcasting are also listed first by Google in searches, so one way to increase your visibility online is to make some content using this media. This would be impossible to post on your institutional webpage, but easy when you have your own.

The idea of running your own webpage may sound a little intimidating and also alot of work. But maintaining a webpage for research projects is increasingly common (and sometimes a requirement of funders) so it is never too early (or late) to try and learn how to do this. Typically, academics use Wordpress (ugly), or sometimes Wix (nicer) to build pages, but there are many other platforms out there.*

This sounds like work

Well it is a bit, but it is not too bad. Building a webpage can take a couple of days or a week if you are learning for the first time. I use a social media management platform to manage Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. The joy or your own webpage is that all of this is totally integrated. I can post to LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Vimeo and so on all from my webpage. So once it is set up, it is a good way to take control of how you present yourself, rather than relying on the dusty, fusty institutional dungeon to show your wares.

However you choose to do it, it is wise to show an awareness that the first thing people do when they hear about you, or meet you (or potentially think about hiring you) is to Google your name. Make sure what they see reflects your brand.

*My websites are all hosted on Squarespace which is stylish, but not for beginners.

Self promotion versus engagement in brand building

Today I want to talk a little bit about the idea of your academic brand vis a vis the concepts of engagement and self promotion.

Building your academic brand is a minefield because it requires you to carefully traverse the terrain of being an insufferable ****** on social media who everybody hates, and someone who genuinely shares things to engage and inform a relevant audience about your research or ideas.

Twitter I think is probably the most difficult platform to manage in this regard. First you should be on Twitter. But how you use Twitter should be consonant with building your professional brand. If you want to re-tweet cat videos, probably get a personal account for this.

Twitter can be a valuable information source for your own research and it can be a good place to share your research, especially if your followers are people in your field (or connected) who might actually read and engage with what you are tweeting.* However, it can seriously damage your mental health too, so it pays to think before you Tweet, and also, think before opening Twitter.

I tend to use a social media management platform (I use Hootsuite, but others are available) to manage Twitter (and Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn etc). I am not just randomly hanging about there, because it is not a good place to be hanging out.

I am mindful of my social media health and you should be too.

Engagement

When you use social media to engage, you are sharing valuable information that other scholars might find useful. This can be a direct self promotion - here is a link to an article I have published on X. You can @ particular scholars who might find it helpful. This is of course telling everyone you published (hoorah) but it also serves a community purpose. It shares useful information. This is a good use of Twitter. This is engagement. You have built a following (or follow specific people) who are relevant to your research and field and you have given them a heads up on something they might find useful. You are building a community and a brand. If you are a senior scholar (but not the head of school) you should absolutely promote the work of junior scholars you think is interesting and useful via referencing it and its content. Use your platform to pay it forward. Be a generous and kind mentor.

You can even Tweet about being at a conference if you have something to say about it, the panels and the papers. Share what you have heard, or presented. Thinly veiled ‘it was great to be here’ references are pretty pointless. It is like writing ‘I WAZ HERE’ inside the toilet stall. With your name attached.

Grandiose self promotion

If all you do on Twitter is promote your CV (I was here, here, here and here, and also here; I did this, look how important I am, LOOK AT ME) you are one of those people I have to mute. I’m pretty certain others are muting you too. Similarly if all you do all day long (it appears) is Tweet things (such as calling out stuff) also know I have you muted too. So when you do Tweet something useful (if you ever do) I will absolutely not be reading your work, because you were muted.

This head mashing, screaming into the void tells me a couple of things about you. I might not want to work near you, and I might think twice about hiring you, if you appear totally self absorbed in relation to your social media posting. You might not be giving out signals that appear very collegiate or community building orientated. So it is worth considering how you use social media to engage peers.

Be aware of the signals your Twitter feed is sending out about you and the kind of colleague (and scholar) you might be. Navigating the line between building your brand and sending out the kinds of tweets that annoys everyone because they are grandiose acts of self promotion (or worse, the humblebrag) is something you should pay serious attention to. This is not the same as building your brand.

*If you are looking for tips in managing algorithms on Twitter and getting more followers, please see @careerconversations who has really excellent technical advice.

Building an academic brand

Immediately some academics will recoil at the title of this blog. Brands are for Nike, Starbucks, Coca Cola. Not for academics. But I’m afraid this is a rather old fashioned view. Like it or loathe it, the need to curate your brand is real.

You can either consciously curate your brand, or leave it to the vagaries of the internet to curate it for you. I would rather be in charge of mine.

What is your brand?

Your brand is what you stand for as an academic. It is more than your skill set (I know R!). It is more than whether you are a quants or qual person. In fact, it is not really any of these things at all. Your brand is not really your skill set per se. Lots and lots of people have these skills. Your brand is (a) what you are THE expert in (b) what your USP is and (c) what professional image you have created for yourself outside of your institution.

Your brand is not where you work

Academics change workplaces a lot for a wide variety of reasons. Thus your brand is not where you work. Your brand goes with you. Your brand is not what your close friends or even your immediate colleagues think of you. Your brand is not the ‘bio’ that gets trotted out at conference introductions by the Chair who has never met you and has not read a single thing you have ever published. It is not the awful three sentences at the beginning of edited collections that trot out your name, title and affiliation.

Your brand is the shop front. The logo.

Creating your brand

Brand creation happens in your professional interactions with others outside your department. These interactions can be with other academics, stakeholders, policy makers or industry. These interactions can be on In Real Life, or on Twitter, Facebook, Google Scholar, SSRN or any number of other social media platforms.

You have the power to create your brand, or let it be created for you. Managing your interactions, especially on social media, is critical to how you will be perceived by others who may one day recruit you for a job, research, expert advice or other work related opportunity.

What are you THE expert in?

Being an academic requires a lot of flexibility. Even in so-called research intensive, research-led teaching Universities, the reality is oftentimes we do not teach what we are experts in. We might teach on the edges of our wider expertise (if we are lucky). We might simply be required to teach an enormous compulsory subject that all undergrads must take because someone has to. So we can say we know quite a lot about a range of topics. We have flexibility. This is not the same as not having a brand.

Indeed, this is one reason why your brand is not located inside your employing institution. Whatever research excellence you were hired for is long forgotten in the handing out of teaching, which is a process of sticking fingers in a leaking Dam. Constant exposure to this ‘flexibility’ can make you doubt you have any expertise at all. But you do. This is your brand. If there was an imaginary rolodex* in someone’s hand, where would your name be located? What would someone say about you in answer to: ‘Who do I need for this? Oh, yes [blah blah] is the person for x’. Consciously build this brand by promoting this particular expertise through publications, impact and engagement work. And on-line (but more on this next blog).

What is YOUR USP?

What is your unique contribution to field X. Let’s say you are an expert on Brexit. This is a pretty big topic, even within one single discipline. There are by now literally thousands of academics claiming expertise in this area, even within one discipline. Even within one sub-sub-discipline within one country. Thousands. What makes YOU special? What perspective, contribution, and skill set do YOU bring to this topic that makes you more desirable than A, B, or C? And how have you summed this up as your brand identity?

What is your professional image?

What are you known for outside your institution in terms of attitude, or positioning. Do you occupy a specific disciplinary school to which you are an ardent disciple? Do you call out others on Twitter who do not agree with your position? Are you passive aggressive (or just plain aggressive) to those who are outside your knitting circle (obviously the answer to this ought to be NO). Are you a community builder or destroyer? These questions are important particularly when you are at any stage in your career that does not occupy the territory of being 3-years-from-retirement-after-a-40-year-career pigeon hole. And even then, it ought to be important if you are a decent person.

A brand is bigger than the one-trick-pony

Getting known for THE THING is clearly central to building a brand. But beware of becoming a one-trick-pony or talking head. This does not hurt your brand directly, but it hurts your academic reputation in a number of other ways, which in turn compromises your brand. Promotion, for example, requires you to show development of your skills and knowledge, a branching off into other (connected yet different) areas that complement your expertise. Development indicates growth and change, yet this does not warrant a scattergun approach of doing whatever is asked, whatever crosses your desk, whatever the next zeitgeist is. This starts to make you look like jack of all trades, and master of none. Flimsy. And flimsy is not a good brand.

Next week I will continue the academic brand theme by talking about self promotion and engagement.

*a rolodex is a round thingy containing business cards. Think Mad Men. It is how people in the olden days used to locate someone they needed outside their organisation.

Saying No and Yes: opportunities and distractions

One question which junior scholars (and sometimes senior scholars) struggle with is recognising good opportunities when they arise as distinct from a black sink-hole of despair. It would seem like these two things should be pretty easy to disentangle. Not in academia.

Most things are presented as an ‘opportunity’. And indeed many things are opportunities. But how do you decide whether this is an opportunity you want to say yes to?

Not all opportunities are good. This bears repeating. Not all opportunities are good.

Deciding what is good for you

It is not just the classics you need to beware of. The classic head of school two-step: ‘why, only you can perform this [insert soul sucking admin/teaching task here] due to your particular skills and experience - the department absolutely needs your input here’.

I mean right away, alarm bells ought to ring. You are not a trained administrator, you didn’t get a PhD to administrate. Try to remember, this does not speak to your skill set. When flattery occurs, break left. Quick. This usually means no one else will do it (yes, yes, we all need to perform some admin, but not all the things, all the time: others also need a turn). Same for BLOT101 that no-one wants to teach. We all must do a turn. But it should not be your turn for the rest of your life.

When these ‘opportunities’ present, the first thing to do is say you will get back to them. Take time, maybe a week, to mull it over. What will this new opportunity take away from me? Because make no mistake, it will take something you already do away from you because you are already overworked and your time is full. You cannot keep adding to an already full list of tasks without some deficit occurring somewhere. You will either do other things badly or not at all, or you will work every weekend and evening and you mental and physical health will suffer. So the questions is, what am I prepared to sacrifice to do it? Will the opportunity add to my CV? Will it take away crucial development in other areas? Is it time limited? How long will this really take as opposed to the advertised time it is meant to take? Will you end up doing this one-time thing for the rest of your career within that department?

If anyone presses you for an immediate answer, the answer is NO. You need to consult your schedule, check on what obligations you are already committed to.

Ask yourself this. Have you done your turn? Are there others who have not? Is this something you have not done before and will add a distinct and different line to your CV? These are good questions to ask yourself. Distinct and different is important especially in administration or wider service. If you do the same task for 15 years, for example, like convening a particular conference, it is only one line on your CV for 15 years of work. Think about that.

Publishing ‘opportunities’

I recently heard a podcast instructing junior faculty to say yes to all publishing opportunities all the time without any thought. Take all publishing opportunities. With respect, this is terrible advice. Your time is limited. You can only do so much and if you don’t manage yourself in academia, you will burn out. Quality matters.

So my advice would be different. Don’t take all publishing opportunities: they are not all equal. Think carefully. Do I have space in my pipeline? If I want to do this, what can I delete from my already full pipeline. One in, one out.

Quality publications should be prioritised. If it is a choice between a peer reviewed journal article (new opportunity) or a chapter in an edited collection (already in the pipeline), the choice is clear. Negotiate extensions or pull out. Don’t just pile work or work on work because you are afraid of never getting another opportunity. Curate your publishing strategy to build your brand. An Encyclopaedia entry is not equal to a journal article. An expert report for an international institution may be more important than a journal article.

All publishing opportunities should be run through the same filter. What does this bring to me? Where am I positioning myself by doing this?

There is nothing more soul destroying than committing to write something you have zero interest in just because you were asked and it is one more publication. It will destroy your writing happiness, which will in turn, put you off research and writing altogether. All too soon this can lead to a downward spiral.

Academia is full of distractions (some nice, some not so nice) which are parcelled as ‘opportunities’. Take time to decide when ‘opportunities’ present, do I say Yes or No?

Productivity apps and project management for academics

Part of the Academic Coach’s mission is to create happier writers. For some, this means writing more, but for others it means having a completely different, more balanced, relationship with writing. You do you.

Regardless of your motivation for taking a writing support course, there is no doubt that part of my writing coaching is about increasing your efficiency in the writing process, which in turn, will probably increase your productivity (or give you extra time for Netflix: no judgment).

So today I want to talk about something that comes up a lot. The utility of productivity apps.

Apps: useful or procrastination?

There are certain things I prescribe on my course. An app that tracks your time to provide you with data on how you spend your time, not in your head, but in actual reality. It requires minimal set up (10 minutes) and literally open and click to start and click to stop. This is efficient. There is a point to it. You are learning about your habits so you can change them. It produces a data set.

I also recommend using the Pomodoro method when you are stuck or can’t face writing. No app required, just your watch / phone, alarm and off you go. Of course there are a number of apps that behave like an alarm (like Focus), or you can just use your browser and type in tomato timer too.

But in my experience keeping it simple is best.

There are apps that delete your words if you don’t type fast enough (weird) or plant Trees as you type etc etc. These types of apps start to feel like procrastination tactics. Stay clear of these if you want to actually do your writing.

Project Management apps

Similarly there are lots of apps that claim to be project management apps, but most are optimised for business management or building sites / architects etc. They may have some utility if you are managing a huge grant with multiple partners, work packages and rolling deadlines on deliverables. In the name of research, I have tried most of these apps and whilst for 10 minutes they seem like they might help, in reality, such apps end up being very sophisticated methods of feeling like I am writing but not actually having to do any hard intellectual work. There is an app graveyard on my phone from failed experiments in productivity.

Whilst I am sure you might need some kind of interface for managing teams of people working on projects (eg Slack, Trello etc), in single authored disciplines, such things are, in my experience, an enormous waste of time. I have tried all the leading apps, and in the end, found I spent more time on the app than I spent writing which is definitively not the point of productivity management.

I’m very busy organising my Trello Board, so that’s work no? NO. IT ISN’T.

There simply is not a good enough app on the market for sole authored academics to manage their research time on. I want to love Trello. But I just can’t. I can’t see the point of endless lists and boards and yet one more thing to think about and manage (and I am an ardent list maker). One more thing to forget to login to, and then it soon becomes redundant.

Honesty: is this a diversion from actual work?

Whilst seeking technological help to improve your work flow is natural, it is useful to sit back and do an honesty check. Why are you really trawling the App Store for more productivity apps? Why didn’t you spend that time writing which, ahem, is far more productive?

Planning your work is important, but you don’t need an app for that.

I plan my work for the year in January (perversely outside of the academic year). New year, new plans. I review my pipeline and adjust accordingly. I pull out of commitments I cannot do, or renegotiate deadlines for things I want to commit to.

I have a white board as a physical reminder of work in or out and deadlines.

I have an on-line calendar which I plan my individual work sessions, and I review that each Monday morning for one hour to see what’s cooking this week.

I have a physical list of things to do each day and goals to achieve each week which I cross off as I achieve them. It is simple and clean and there is no room for procrastination in this technique. I spend more time actually writing than planning my writing which increases my efficiency, and in turn my productivity, and gives me more time for Netflix.

So give yourself a break from trying to make this or that app work for you. Just keep it simple, functional and you will spend more time writing than thinking of ways to improve your time management.

Realism and Time Tracking: a feasible pipeline

The most difficult part of building a viable pipeline is estimating how long something will take you to do. If you are just starting out in your career, this will be particularly difficult because you are doing many things for the first time, but fear not, experienced academics are just as likely to suffer from this too.

It is why the notion of deadlines are for some merely laughable aspirations. Even as they are signing on the dotted line of the book contract, they pretty much already know that deadline will not be made as they have NEVER made a deadline in their life.

I find this very depressing. And incredibly anxiety inducing.

This lack of realism in time management is also compounded by your institutional workload matrix. You may be given 2 hours to prep a brand new lecture, but we all know it is more like 2 days work (and longer if you know nothing at all about the subject). Longer still if you are inexperienced. Everything about the departmental workload matrix is based on deceit. Literally no single task is accurately reflected in these tariffs (because chronic understaffing, rising student numbers etc).

The point is you are used to being lied to. And you are used to lying to yourself. You have to. It is a coping mechanism to deal with overwork. I understand, I really do. But you cannot build a viable pipeline in this way. You too will carry on this deceit in your pipeline. You will overcommit, fail and get dispirited. Yes, I can write a book from scratch (including all the research) in 6 months. No problem (but it is a very big problem).

How to stop this behaviour

As I tell all my clients, honesty is key. Honesty with yourself (forget anyone else). Time tracking enables honesty as it provides you with an incontrovertible dataset that you cannot excuse or wish away. There are many apps out there, and you can search one that suits your needs.

I am not a fan of complex planning /tracking apps, because this feels like another distraction tactic from doing your actual work. Like Trello. I hate Trello.

I use myhours.com for this reason. This app is free. It is developed for freelancers who charge for work and so the focus is on time spent (billable hours) rather than lists of things to do like Trello. The premise is simple. Create projects. Create tasks attached to each project. Click record and stop every time you sit down to work on a particular project-and-task and it builds up a picture of how you spend your working week. It will provide you with charts and other fun stuff.

You should open up the programme first every morning before you have opened email or anything else.

Create a project for everything to begin with. Don’t bother with assigning tasks to non-research activities unless you are really dying to know how long it took you to upload your grades onto Blackboard (please for your own sanity, don’t find this out). Set up a project for teaching. Teaching Prep. Admin. Student hours. Emails. Meetings. Article X. Blog X. Conference presentation Y. Peer review. Grant body review. Grant applications. Dealing with finance. Booking travel. Writing references for students. Writing promotion references. Writing promotion applications. Study leave applications. Reading a thesis for examination. Grading. Whatever fills you working week record it. And then sit and marvel about how unbalanced your time is. Where do you need to adjust, and importantly, given this is how you actually spend your time, how much research can you propose in your timeline.

Dual benefits

This timetracking forces your to confront your behaviour. Perhaps you spend too much time in meetings or on teaching prep and do not respect your writing slots. If you are a dedicated researcher, and stick to your writing slots, you now begin to understand how long it takes to read and article and take notes. How long to compile a bibliography. How long to fill in footnotes in a nearly finished piece. How long to write the abstract (these are your individual tasks in each project). Pretty soon you are going to have a detailed picture of your research and writing process. From this, you can plan a viable pipeline, by allocating the hours you need in your diary to complete Article X around your other commitments. From these diary entries, a viable pipeline emerges.

Time tracking is something most academics avoid for a number of reasons. Ignorance is bliss. Do I want to know it will take 120 hours to write that article? Well, yes, yes you do, if you want to have a viable publishing pipeline.

Understanding your Pipeline: What goes in?

In the last post I talked about the importance of having a timeline. So you don’t get derailed. So you don’t say yes to things you ought not to do, out of some habit of needing to please or thinking every ‘opportunity’ is a good opportunity. It is not.

I also talked about the four crucial steps that you need to incorporate into your pipeline planner: What; Why; Steps; Deadline, with the emphasis on the why.

Today I want to talk about how you decide what to put in the planner and how to be realistic.

What should go in?

What goes in your planner will of course depend on your disciplinary expectations and career stage. What is expected in multi-authored disciplines far outweighs what is expected in sole authored (humanities disciplines). It also depends on what your expectations are. If you are looking for promotion, your pipeline should reflect the promotion criteria of your institution. If you are looking to build your academic brand in a certain direction, your pipeline should contain the research activities that reflect that brand.

Everyone will have certain things to do for their employer regardless of whether it maps onto your brand or what you care about or even promotion criteria. High quality peer reviewed journal articles will probably top the list. Thus your planner should contain a high proportion of these as your starting point. If you don’t know where to start, start with these.

All of your writing should go into your publishing pipeline. Articles, research monographs, grant applications, edited collections (as editor), chapters in books, journalistic pieces, blogs and any other research-related writing should included. Not all of these attract the same prestige, but all serve different functions. A warning here. If you are thinking about publishing a textbook for undergraduate students, please speak to senior professors about the desirability of this for your career goals. If you are in a teaching focused institution, this may well be the thing you need to do. In research intensive institutions, probably only senior professors who are not trying to build their career via publishing should be engaged in writing text books. Text books are a never ending publishing grind that squeeze out any opportunity for you to engage in research. Don’t kid yourself it is anything other than this.

A multiplicity of things in your pipeline means when one project is stuck on pause (waiting for feedback or data collection) you can turn to another and move that forward a little bit. You are never stuck wondering what to do with your research time.

The five year plan

When applying for jobs, an indicative research plan is usually one of the things hiring committees will request as part of the application. If you already have a publishing pipeline, you have this 5 year plan (more or less) ready to go. Although I would recommend a 1-3 year pipeline plan, it will be easy to scale this up to 5 years once you have a realistic grasp of how long things take to complete.

Progression is key

Your pipeline should consist of a mix of big and small projects that describe your potential, aspirations and development as a scholar. You can’t always work on, or claim to be working on, huge grant proposals. One grant proposal is more convincing that 5 grant proposals. More convincing still if you have built up to making a big grant application at the end of a suitable period of publications in the area.

A mix of a grant size might be desirable. A small grant which in a few years could be the basis of a large grant shows that you know you need to build up reputational capital in order to be successful. So a network grant that might lead to a pilot that could be rolled out to a much larger interdisciplinary project shows both a grasp of reality, how to build a potential team of collaborators, and a sense of academic vision.

The same is true of publications. You can’t put 5 single authored top tiered original journal articles as one year’s pipeline. It is unlikely (depending on your discipline) that you have the time each and every year to work up 5 original ideas and data sets, research and writing. But a mix of linked journal articles, some alone, some co-authored around the same dataset might be feasible. Salami slicing findings for a number of mid-ranking journals might also be feasible, but be careful in doing the too often. Quality matters. Speak to mentors and others in your field.

Journalistic pieces and blogs could also be included, alongside conference papers. Producing a 100,000 word research monograph from scratch takes more than a year so your pipeline should reflect that. It should detail how many weeks/months you are engaged in research for what chapters, and how many weeks or months you need to write that research up. Spread out your projects so that they build a picture of your career as you want it to develop, and of you as a scholar. What is your brand? What will you be known for? Have definite aims and objectives for your career and brand attached to each project.

How do you know how long something takes?

One of the key lessons I try to impart at Academic Coach is that you must start to understand how long something takes YOU to do. Everyone else is irrelevant. And the way to do this is to time yourself. You can use lots of different apps for this, but the sooner you start doing this, the sooner you will know how long research takes you (in hours). How long data collection design takes you. How long it takes to get the data and then how long it takes to analyse the data. How long it takes to read, write and edit a paper. How long it takes to do revisions.

You might think: ‘it depends on what I am doing’. Of course. Research will take different amounts of time depending how familiar you are with the topic to start with. But the writing part takes about the same amount of time in my experience. You just need to find out what that is for you. And when you do, you can break down those sessions and plot your pipeline accurately. How many writing sessions per week for how long is 100 hours of research (or whatever your number is). From there you can plan a 1-3-or 5 year pipeline in a way that ensures you are writing in your working week, not your evenings and weekends which is key to being a happier academic writer.

Taking on too many things is a cause of stress and academic burnout. Usually, no-one but yourself put you in that situation because you did not plan and you said yes to anything and everything that crossed your desk. Opportunities for working for free (publishing) are never ending. Make sure you get paid for your writing by making a pipeline that you tackle in your working week alongside your other teaching and service responsibilities.

If you want helping designing and then implementing your Publication Pipeline, join us on the Activate your Publication Pipeline Programme. 12 months coaching Programme with live coaching and lots of online course materials to guide you step by step through designing a pipeline that maximises your outputs.