How to set realistic goals for academic writing

It is the time of year when most of us get out the ‘big board’ and endeavour to do some planning about our writing goals for the year ahead. Last week, I talked about the importance of reflection in the writing process before we begin planning, so that we might learn a few things about our behaviour, what went right and what didn’t last year.

So, now we are at the goal setting stage, how do we go about it?

what is a goal?

Let’s start with the basics. A goal is something you intend to work towards, an idea or thing you intend to achieve. You decide that this is the ‘thing’ you want to make happen, and then make a plan in order to make that idea a reality. So in academic writing terms, a goal is a specific grant, specific book chapter, specific journal article, specific book that you want to complete. Note, I say specific. A goal cannot be ‘write 4 articles’. It is too vague to action - a goal is ‘write article X for journal X’. That is a goal.

What is realistic?

Goals need to be realistic. There are two mindsets in play when goal setting. Aim high, and be happy with what you achieve. Aim low, and achieve everything.

Aim high, and whatever you achieve might be more than if you had kept your sights low. Aim for the stars and all that. This really works for many people: having ambitious goals that will stretch you is a way to motivate and lift your performance. These still have to be realistic for you at your career stage - but what does this mean?

I am not referencing time here. I am not referencing how much teaching you have vis a vis X member of staff to whom you regularly compare yourself. I’m referencing experience and track record and so on, and also your motivation. So, don’t set a goal to apply for a €10 million grant in an area you have no track record in, or no track record in winning grants for example. This is not realistic. Otherwise, dream big!

People who adopt the aim high mindset are OK with failure. If they don’t achieve everything on their list, they are not wounded beyond all measure, they are not wracked with imposter syndrome, and they are not going to focus on the one thing they didn’t do. Rather they will focus on all that they achieved.

The other type of mindset is one that aims lower, but achieves everything on the list. This means you won’t be faced with any kind of failure, and you can build confidence in your ability to set realistic goals and execute them. There is nothing wrong with this approach. If you are the kind of person who focuses on the one thing that didn’t come off, make your goals something you can absolutely without doubt achieve. Keep it small, and manageable, yet more than ‘let’s see what happens’ (this is not goal setting). What is achievable for you depends on your life, your discipline, single or multi-authored and so on.

Break it down into priorities and tasks

Once your goals are settled, you need to break them down into tasks, and prioritise completing those tasks on a week by week basis. I talk about this a lot, because it is the single thing that academics do not do as a matter of routine. They set goals, but no concrete action plan is in place to achieve them. You can read here about priorities and tasks.

Set deadlines

You must set a deadline for any of this to work. Set a goal, and at the same time, set a deadline. Avoiding setting a deadline is a little bit like admitting you have no real plan to achieve that goal - a goal without a deadline is a wish.

Backward map

Once you have your goal, your deadline, your tasks and priorities, you can backward map in your diary - from the deadline to today - what you are going to do and when you are going to do it. Assign diary slots to your tasks, and make sure you have prioritised correctly.

This is how we set realistic goals for the coming writing year! Good luck!

New Year, new writing resolutions?

It’s that time of year where we start to think about what we want to achieve in our writing in the coming year, and when we might like to plan our goals moving forward.

But wait. Before we move forward it is really important to take a moment to reflect on what happened in 2020. Academics really suck at reviewing the things they did - they want to move on and on and on to the next big thing. No celebration, no reflection, and very little joy is taken in actually achieving things.

Is that the sound of the apocalypse?

2020 was…quite a year. It probably felt like a car crash in slow motion on repeat, and I can understand why you just want to wipe that slate clean and move forward and pretend that all that <gestures all around> is, if not over, not something you care to dwell on. As someone who managed to get cancer in the middle of a global pandemic, boy, do I understand that urge only too well.

Nonetheless it is important to think about what else happened. What, even in the midst of a global pandemic and its associated breakdown of how we work and live, might you have achieved be it personal or professional? (Survival is a listable achievement here).

Moving your mindset

I’m hoping that when you look back at 2020, despite everything, you can pick out some things you achieved that you never thought you could. If someone had said to you, in 2019, I’m going to throw a global pandemic in next year - this will mean you are too afraid to leave your house and you will simultaneously home school and do your work - but you will still manage to do x or y you would have laughed in their face. Absurd!

But somehow, someway, you managed.

Moving from deficiency to sufficiency

When you begin to think about the year ahead, I want you to do so from the perspective of having everything you need. From being everything you need to be. From the perspective of there being enough time, enough space, enough understanding and empathy to set realistic goals and then to achieve them. I know that is a big ask, I really do. But just try it for a second.

Along the way, you have probably achieved some amazing things in the last 12 months in the face of unimaginable disruption. I’m sure your writing plans took something of a hit, and maybe you didn’t hit the dizzying heights of your own predictions back in the before time, in January 2020. Radical adjustment of life is to be expected.

Taking time to appreciate the things you did get done is important. But also moving your mindset, from one that laments all you lack, to one that celebrates all you have, is an incredibly powerful motivating force. It celebrates your resilience, and your achievements, and tethers that appreciation to your lived experience.

On a practical note, it can help you set more realistic goals for the coming year where all that will still be going on in some fashion or another for much of the year. You will have managed to get things done you could never have imagined - so take a moment, before launching into the new year’s planning, to celebrate what went right.

You are still here for one, more or less intact. That is a thing worth celebrating all on its own.

What is an Academic Coach for?

There is something of a curiosity around people who leave a full-time, tenured, super secure position at a leading research focused institution at the peak of their career. Especially people who are still publishing, still writing, still actively engaged in research and for all intents and purposes are behaving as though they are an academic within an institution and, more importantly, still have a mighty fine relationship with their previous employer. That is me - I am a curiosity - perhaps not to close friends and colleagues who know me well, but I imagine those colleagues who are less close looking in wondering…what happened there! Leaving academia, or an academic institution, is considered shameful by other academics - an abdication of a core identity - and insane by those who are striving against the odds to obtain such a position.

Many people leave academia for all kinds of reasons. I am not typical. I have no hard feelings, I really loved my job, my colleagues and my academic life. Yet, I always knew there were other things in this life I could do, and wanted to do - alongside doing research - that I was not granted time for within a University structure. And that is what I do now.

What kind of an Academic Coach am I?

There are of course many coaching styles and approaches out there: executive coaches, life coaches, and so on. I am speaking about what I do. First, yes, I have undertaken training to be a coach: executive coaching, management coaching and so on. I have done various courses. I have also undertaken specialist training to support clients with dyslexia, and I will continue to train in all sorts of different ways I am sure. As a previous appraiser of mine was wont to comment ‘you sure do like going on a lot of courses, don’t you?’. Yes, I do! I like to learn things.

I have trained in coaching, but I am not the kind of coach who is going to ask you to colour in your wheel of life - that is just not my bag. I understand the principles and models of coaching - T-GROW, STEPPA, ACHIEVE, OSCAR and all that jazz, and I employ them as is appropriate. My courses and coaching is based on the latest research as well as my experience as an academic. But I am above all things pragmatic. So many years in academia has wedded me to research-based training and mentoring, but also ‘outcomes’.

What I do works.

I want to help you publish that book, get that promotion, win that best presenter title, get your paper published, change your attitude to, and relationship with, writing. Help you to rediscover your writing mojo. As the tag line says, I want to help you become a happier writer.* That is the kind of coach I am.

What kinds of things do I do as a Coach?

Besides training in coaching, I have a lot of experience in academia which generic executive / life coaches do not have. That is not to say these type of coaches cannot help you in other ways - each type of coach does something rather unique and different. I see many people without experience of ever having worked a full time permanent role in an academic institution setting up as academic coaches, which I find peculiar to say the least. There is a lot of tacit knowledge gained through long years of experience that outsiders will never possess and research does not necessarily convey. The unwritten rules, and how best to navigate them, is not taught on generic coaching courses.

My work covers a gamut of things: it is focused on writing, becoming a consistent, productive and happy writer. It enables you to master academic writing techniques so there is more time for life. Various programmes tackle different and specific challenges, and the Membership provides holistic training with that elusive yet critical aspect of academic writing - accountability. Besides these programmes, I offer 1-1 coaching for some clients - to help with a specific paper, with writing a monograph, with promotion forms, job applications, and R&Rs. I provide career mentoring through the Elevate Programme. I help with drafting grant applications. I work with people who, for whatever reason, find writing a challenge for practical or emotional reasons. I help them to work out a way of writing that works for them. I provide accountability, I help with planning and organisation. I provide mentoring for more junior academics who through me, have access to all the tacit knowledge it took me 17 years to accumulate, so they don’t need to stumble around in the dark making bad decisions. I am a shortcut, a leg up. I am a safe space where you can admit the unsayable. There is little I have not heard.

Coaching can be a short term intervention, or a long term partnership. I can provide a space to reflect, resources to use, course materials to walk you through all manor of skills or pragmatic editing of text. We co-design our sessions so you can get exactly what you need.

Why am I an Academic Coach?

I love mentoring. I love helping people in ways that I was never helped. I like to make other peoples’ experience of academia easier than mine. I don’t think junior colleagues / PhD students should suffer just because I did. I like to see other people have success, and if I can play some small role in helping them to achieve that, I am both honoured and delighted to have done so. This suits who I am as a person.

Coaching speaks to my core values, and what better reason is there to do the job that I do now? For along time after leaving academia, I still researched, and published, and advised government bodies. But coaching is my full time focus now. It gives me something that none of that does - a sense of joy in watching other people reach their potential and go beyond anything they thought themselves capable of.

*These are just some examples of things I have helped clients achieve through my coaching. You will find me credited in papers and books and all kinds of things.

Writing academically when you are neurodiverse

This is another one in a series of request blogs, and one I was hesitant to tackle. Even now I am not sure I am really answering the question.

I want to start by saying (a) I do not claim to be an expert in neurodiversity and (b) I am not neurodiverse myself. I do have many neurodiverse clients and I have had neurodiverse students in my 17 year academic career. Due to the demand for this kind of specialised support, I have undertaken specific training on how to support neurodiverse students, particularly students with dyslexia.

When this blog came in as a suggestion, I felt hesitant about writing about it. I sought clarification and advice from my own clients (some of whom are neurodiverse) about the kinds of things that I do in my coaching that help them specifically with regard to their individual circumstances. I think we can all benefit from some of these writing hacks and techniques.

Take control

One of the most important things I do for clients is to allow them to tell me exactly what they need, rather than me trying to control the process from my end, and this becomes a flexible and fluid arrangement depending on what they are working on. I get out of the habit of trying to do what I would always do with students. Sometimes, for example, a client’s needs might be time focused - managing what happens when (and why) in a rigid and structured fashion provides clarity, especially if this is followed up by repeated engagements with the planning process. Some clients however hate working this way, and prefer to flit from one thing to the other, so we try and come up with methods of ensuring progress on the main things whilst allowing dipping in and out of other chapters. Working in short sharp bursts enables progress without feeling like I have imposed rigidity. Some clients need quite close editing of their work because there is a tendency to skip over sentences and paragraphs. Citation practices, never explained, can be especially problematic; unexplained assumptions about what we ‘just absorb’ from reading others’ work are to be avoided.

There are plenty of resources out there on the internet, in the form of books, scholarly articles and websites, that are dedicated to supporting students at all levels (including PhDs) who are neurodiverse, and I am not attempting to collate them here (see here for a website that does this).

I want to concentrate on a few simple things that students can do themselves and should flag up to their supervisors as soon as possible.

Disclosing your neurodiversity

This will give you access to resources in the University you otherwise cannot access.

Of course disclosure is your business, and you do not have to disclose. But if you do, UK Universities will have an array of resources, including dedicated 1-1 support, for students which you will greatly benefit from. You are entitled to this support and should absolutely take it. It can include:

• Writing support tutoring

• Particular equipment you might need

• Funds for particular software (eg voice to text software)

• Support for organisation of your time

• Funds for editing support services

My experience is that some students are hesitant (even when they have disclosed) to take up all of the resources available to them for a variety of reasons. My advice is take everything there is and figure out what works best for you. This is arduous, but it is worth the endeavour.

Be explicit in stating your needs as you discover them

Flag up to your supervisor exactly what you need (when you know what that is) in order to get the most out of your supervisions. Don’t expect them to be trained, or even mildly aware, of the kinds of things you might need; training in this area is woeful. I was never trained as a lecturer, and never offered training.

This might include:

• Very regular meetings dedicated to organisation of time as well as the ‘intellectual’ side of the PhD

• Recording of in person meetings to capture feedback so you can process and retain it at your own pace and in your own way

• Small text turnarounds that are frequent and very detailed

• Email clarifications on what you didn’t understand as and when

None of these requests are unreasonable and you are entitled to them. They may however mark a departure from how your supervisor is used to working. Tough for them. Explain to the best of your ability why you need these particular working patterns, or have a support officer do it on your behalf. Get this documented in a learning contract at the start of your PhD, whereby the supervisor is explicitly informed and agrees. I’m afraid this might need reiterating again and again and that burden will fall (unfairly) on you.

Make sure your particular needs are met

Institutions like one-size-fits-all people and they design policies around that concept. There is no one size fits all solution here. Some of the things that are helpful in moving your writing forward are:

• Reading. You might find reading long articles a challenge because of the amount of time it takes, but software that enables the computer to read it out to you will help a great deal and you can do it in bite sized chunks.

• Note taking. Get a good structure of note taking. Ensure you separate out the facts, from the author’s argument, from your argument or analysis. Use colour coding and headings in your notes. This is good practice for everyone and will help you define your ‘voice’ in the PhD.

• Writing. You can also get software where you dictate your thoughts into it and it is converted into written text. Everyone’s first draft is garbled rubbish. I find neurodiverse students are really very tough on themselves and the ‘standards’ they imagine they should be writing at straight out of the gate. My own first drafts are a train wreck. That is what first drafts are for.

• Editing. You may need more structured and definitive advice on how to push your text forward: ask for it. It might be about sentence construction, how you insert citations correctly, paragraph construction, creating flow in an argument, or chapter or section structure. Ask your supervisor to explain what is wrong and why and show you how to fix it. Supervisors can be poor at this, and you may need to be a little dogged - the truth is it might be ‘instinctive’ for them, and they have to think hard about the ‘why’ before they can tell you. This is very important for you to incorporate feedback properly and will need to be done repeatedly.

• Ask them to edit a section to show you how it is done. Ask explicitly what do they mean when they say ‘level’ or 'voice’ or it’s not ‘scholarly’ enough, or the structure just isn’t quite right. Don’t let them get away with this kind of bland commentary: it is lazy and not helpful to you. I should note here that not all academics have this skill set. Thinking about writing, and analysing the how, why and what is not something many academics take time for. They just do, rather than think about it, and hence their explanations might be poor.

• Organisation of text, of paragraphs and sections, might be a difficult challenge. Editing techniques like reverse outlining can really help to clarify a long piece of work so that it is digestible and easy to reformat. I do this with my own work; it is a common editing technique that helps everyone.

• You might need to print out your chapter and physically cut it up with scissors rather than on screen - so be it.

• Try using diagrams as another way of visualising the text to check for flow.

• Lastly I ask my clients to repeatedly use title separation (literally copying the titles out of your chapter and placing them in a blank document) to check (a) do they tell a story that flows on their own (b) are they descriptive (wrong) or analytical (right) and (c) are they in the right order?

Neurotypical people don’t understand how you learn

Essentially, neurotypical people think it’s about spelling, grammar and paragraph organisation. They don’t understand that they learn in one way, and you in another. For example, many neurotypical people learn by osmosis or mimicking. We mimic what we see in academic writing - there is an ability to see a thing (on paper), intuit what was done and why, and put that learning directly into our work, without really thinking about it too hard. Academic writing is ‘learned’ though this process. If your supervisor learned how to write through this absorption method, they will expect you to do it too, unless you tell them explicitly what you need.

Academic writing takes a particular form and is does not come naturally to anyone. It is learned, one way or another. Citations are required to show that we are not making unsupported statements. There is a formality to academic writing; it is not conversational. Whilst academics can and do write for a number of different audiences (and so adopt different writing styles) purely academic writing is for an academic audience and as such should conform to the requirements imposed by that discipline. All of this ensures that your work can enter the conversation with others - the form and content is recognised by other academics and is therefore deemed of an appropriate standard to contribute to the discipline. Find the form of help that enables you to make this transition in academic writing.

Get support

Writing hacks are all well and good, but proper supervisory support is essential, especially for micro planning (or getting help with micro planning) all the steps you need to take on your PhD journey, and in particular, close editing the individual chapters so they are organised correctly. This accounts for (by a long way) the highest proportion of my work as a coach. I try to create a predictable and stable architecture where there is stability of process, and lots of feedback on your written work. This is a really important first step in feeling like you are in control of the PhD text and not vice versa.

For more information on the various ‘genres’ of academic writing, (Analytical, Descriptive, Critical, Persuasive), check out Tara Brabazon’s excellent video series of three which deals with genres, quick fixes and jargon.

How is a PhD structured?

This is another blog in response to reader requests. If you have a request for a blog, please visit the Facebook page and write a request there.

What does a PhD thesis look like?

This is a question I find myself answering a lot. On social media, in direct emails to me, and from clients that I coach. Sometimes this comes in the guise of asking questions about editing, sometimes it is more direct.

As an academic coach, I am involved in coaching students from a wide array of fields: from various fields within social sciences and humanities, to STEM, to the creative arts. Coaching is not of course the same as supervision, although there is a massive overlap between the two when PhD supervision is done properly. Alas, it is sometimes a little lacking in various ways.

I obviously do not have an in-depth subject knowledge of all the students I coach/supervise: this is not what students really require, and once they have surpassed their supervisor’s own knowledge on their particular original contribution to knowledge (usually by the second year), it won’t be what they are getting from their supervisor either. What students do need however is writing advice, and this advice is rarely forthcoming from their own supervisors for a variety of reasons.

In my coaching practice, I ‘supervise’ traditional big book theses, PhD by publication theses, and artefact and exegesis or practice-led theses. Disciplines vary widely; from economics, to anthropology, from geography to digital communication, from politics to dance. Not to mention, of course, law theses (my own field). As such, I am probably one of a few academics that see a wide variety of shapes and sizes that a PhD might take. It is a privileged position to be in and I see such an array of amazingly brilliant work. Because I work across disciplines, I know there is no one-size fits all, that is for sure.

Start with the basics

I always make sure that students read multiple finished and recent PhDs in their department and if possible their sub-field. You can’t bake a cake, if you have never seen a cake, tasted a cake or even have a recipe for a cake. Often, this is what supervisors expect students to do - write a PhD, with no advice as to HOW (not what), never having seen one before. Inexperienced supervisors may have a very narrow view of what a PhD should look like (their own, for example, that was done 20 years ago), and may be nervous when a student strays from the path, or starts to question the advice being given about chapter structure and so on.

So, like most things, my advice is first do your research as to what a successful PhD looks like. Be aware though that the finished PhD that you are looking at doesn’t tell the story. It doesn’t tell you whether the student rescued their PhD through the viva, or whether they had major or minor corrections and so on. It might not be a perfect template. Doing interdisciplinary work is especially challenging as there will not be an exact fit between your project design and someone else’s. A clear introduction justifying structure and methods is key here, as well as smart decisions about the external examiner. But reading an already completed PhD is at least a place to start from.

What is the right size and shape?

There is no one answer here obviously, and much will depend on your discipline, but there are a couple of things to keep in mind. Try not to front load your PhD with too much ‘throat clearing’ material. So here I am talking about the methods and literature review chapters and if you do have a lot of this, make sure it is part of your novelty.

In some disciplines, the structure can be a bit like this. There might be an introduction chapter, a literature review, a contextual and/or background chapter, and then empirical chapters (and if practice led, then an artefact). This has a fairly long lead-in before the ‘meat’ of the PhD is arrived at, but if it is a PhD by publication you might need this long lead-in to tie together the individual publications that make the ‘meat’ of the PhD. In other disciplines (and depending on your puzzle and research design), you might condense your introduction, methods, and literature review all into one chapter, and get straight into the ‘meat’ immediately. Other disciplines prefer a solid introduction, literature review and methods chapters as separate entities. But do you have to do it like this every time? Well, that depends on where your novelty is best expressed, and this comes down to your research design.

how much of this material is novel and how much is derivative?

Badly written literature reviews are entirely derivative and can cost you minor or major corrections. Your literature review needs to do more than be a litany of x said this and y said that. That is a masters level synthesis of material, and is not a review. You have not done anything with it to qualify as a review. If this is where you construct your theoretical lens however, and you are explicit in that construction, then you can claim novelty here. Same with methods - is this a novel method you have invented? Or are you employing a bog standard method to something new or through a new lens? If it is bog standard, don’t spend precious word count on it other than explaining the basics and why you have chosen that method. Don’t bore your examiners with things that might go in the appendices. Tell them what they need to know to understand your original contribution.

The test of a PhD is: have you made an original contribution to knowledge?

This means derivative material should be kept to a minimum to convince the examiner of your originality. Of course, you build on the work of others and reference it accordingly. You have a literature review to map the field and show (a) you have mastery over it and (b) where your scholarship will fit in and fill a gap or move knowledge forward. But you have to do something with it. Not just recite it. Same with the method - do something, or be brief.

You don’t want your examiner to have read 40,000 words and have not encountered anything novel; they start to write notes saying: ‘I can’t see why this is original’ and once that idea is planted, it is hard to shift.

This is how PhDs fail. Original contribution to knowledge is the standard and that is the standard regardless of your discipline. You showcase this at every possible opportunity and in every chapter your write - that is the commonality of all good PhD theses, regardless of shape and size.

If you want to know more about macro (size and shape) editing, and micro (chapter, paragraph, sentence, word level and title) editing, check out these two online webinars in the Academic Coach shop.

Managing expectations of yourself as a writer

This blog comes as a request from readers, and again, not one I would have thought to do on my own. I want to say this is not addressed to one particular individual, because this does come up a lot in various ways, from various different requests. However, the phrasing of this particular question caught my eye.

As a writing coach (and an academic who writes a lot) this thought would never have crossed my mind. The request was actually phrased as: ‘managing expectations of yourself as a writer in the context of other obligations in your academic job’.

My immediate response to this is that I can read this question in two ways.

Unrealistic ambitions?

The first way to interpret this is: my expectations of what I can achieve in my writing are all out of whack with reality. I am expecting myself to get a €10m grant, write a book and publish 7 solo articles in one year. And if that is the case, I am overjoyed at your ambition, and I can happily refer you to my previous blogs about writing in your reality, managing a publication pipeline and why planning is essential. Some time management and a bump with reality should sort that out in no time. Happy days! As those awful posters on the wall of my workplace used to say: you asked, we answered!

The second way to understand this question though is, to me, infinitely more depressing.

Teaching is all I care about

How do I manage my expectations of myself as a writer when I have so many (more important/other) things to do?

There is something underlying this statement that is unsaid. And that is that writing isn’t a priority, it just isn’t as important as teaching. Writing is just one thing on a long list of things I have to do in any given week/term/year and I’m not certain I can fit it in, and so, how can I lower my expectations of myself i.e. stop feeling the guilt of not writing or being disappointed in myself that I can’t get it done? If you genuinely feel that teaching is all you care about, the solution is to have a job that only has a teaching element to it. If this is not how you really feel, let me, as the song says, flip reverse it.

You are a writer

What if I asked you this? How can you manage your expectations of yourself as a teacher in the context of your writing obligations in your academic job? Oooooooh.

Have a think. Let that just roll around in your head for a while. Let it percolate. Let it breathe. You are a writer. You research. You read, for a living. That is what you do. You also teach. You fill out lots of forms. You manage budgets and book rooms. But you are a writer: this is actually what you get paid to do.

How does that sound? Do you feel called out and confronted? That is what I am going for.

I spend 10 weeks (it is that long for this sole reason) training people out of the mindset that they are teachers who write on the side, rather than academics whose job it is to write and teach. That they are paid for both, and must do both in their working week. Yes, it is possible. Yes there are lots of tips, tricks and hacks, but also solid research that supports my course materials. It is possible, and people do it. I did it. I trained colleagues to do it. I now coach other people so they can do it.

It is not easy. It requires discipline and just a teeny, tiny bit of brain re-engineering via repeated engagement with my online videos and materials.

This is such a wild idea for some people it takes repeated run throughs of my course for it to really bed in. People actually start to miss my video missives (rants? brainwashing? serious talking to?). It is the reason that once you are enrolled, you are in for life - you just keep on (for free) because it takes a while to get used to the idea.

You manage your expectations of yourself by knowing who you are and what your priorities are, and you plan your schedule accordingly. Not what you think they ought to be, or what tends to happen. Is this easy: no! It is easy to be overtaken by events, not commit, not stick to your word. It is hard to stay focused. Your expectations must be realistic, for you, in your life and coaching can help you figure those things out. But after that, it is a mindset.

Happily that is all in your control.

How to deal with feedback

*or what to do with a broken soul. This one’s for you!

This is a common problem for academics. Feedback in all its forms, from colleagues, from friends and family, from anonymous reviewers and editors, and of course, Reviewer 2, can be brutal. Academics can be fragile when it comes to receiving critique of their writing. Of course, we merrily criticise students’ work all the time and when they are broken, we are like: ‘get on with it’!

It is always so much worse when it happens to us. Of course.

We need feedback

Whilst this might seem a tad obvious, it is worth breaking this down a little. Feedback is provided when work is voluntarily handed over to be judged. When you press submit, you are inviting a critique of your work; this is what pushes your ideas and your communication of those ideas forward. We can’t do this alone and in a vacuum: we must have the input of others. Academia is a profession where you never do anything at all without it being criticised, be it teaching, research or administration. It is why a lot of people find solace in meetings - it is about the one place where criticism of your performance takes a break (mostly).

This never ending onslaught of criticism can grind you down, for sure. Hence, why academics are so prickly about their writing.

Recognising the difference between feedback and other stuff

Genuine feedback seeks to engage with your ideas. It seeks to see things from your point of view, and endeavours to push you to do better by suggesting where you might improve the text or the ideas so they can shine. When you see this kind of feedback, grab it, embrace it, even when you feel your hackles rise. This is just your ego talking, and it is not helpful.

Feedback might not, though, be dressed as gushing praise, and might initially make you feel a bit dense and demoralised. In my experience even the most egregious attacks on our intelligence, dressed up as feedback, contains within it in a kernel of truth. A nugget. A snippet of something that might be useful if only we could see it through our tears. Even the ‘newspaper editorial’ guy had some useful stuff to say before he slipped sidelong into his own personality vacuum.

Anyway, as we all know, there are many axes to grind in academia and occasionally someone decides to grind their axe on you. On your very writer’s soul. It is not remotely fair. I know this.

What about when you get rejected?

There is no two ways about it: this sucks. Not even being given a chance to remedy the situation is quite annoying. Worse if it gets rejected after major revisions (this should not happen as often as it does, and it is often down to totally new reviewers). Look, sometimes we just are not in the right knitting circles for that journal. Sometimes they just didn’t get it; it is a solid paper for the right audience. We must pick ourselves up and resubmit somewhere else the very next day. Don’t sit on it, don’t agonise, just change the style and re-submit. Publishing is a numbers game these days, and the key is to not give up. So what if it takes 10 submissions, just keep batting that thing back till it sticks.

Learn something

We all like to learn. It is why we became academics. Feedback is an opportunity to learn and we should grab it. Of course, it might sting for a few days, and by all means have a sulk. Call them names. Put it in the drawer for a day (or two, not more). But then take it back out with clear eyes, and find that kernel of helpful advice within it. It won’t all be helpful. Maybe not even most of it. But some of it will be helpful. Make a list in a table of the comments, rephrased in your words, and then slowly and surely work your way down the list in order to improve your piece.

You may not think it improves your piece, and this is just somebody’s hobby horse that you have to ride to get it published. So be it. Don’t get precious; this is how the journal article game is played. Reviewers want to be acknowledged and heard, so absolutely address every (meaningful comment) using a table. Any defamatory language will naturally not have made it into your table. Don’t sweat it. Once it is not in your table, it is like it never existed in the first place. Then tabula rasa. Move on.

How to do a peer review of an article

This blog once again comes as a request from readers, and surprisingly, it is something I see again and again on social media forums.

In the past, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I was a junior scholar just starting out, there was a thing called ‘mentoring’. Not the kind your institution writes about on a REF submission, but the real kind where senior scholars actively tried to help and ‘train’ more junior scholars into the mysteries of academic life. One of the things they might have instructed you in, is the secret art of how to do a peer review for journal articles.

It seems that time is long past (for many and various reasons I will not rehearse here). So, instead, I will provide some pointers on how (and crucially how not) to do a journal article peer review.

First principles

A decent and well run journal should send reviewers a review template which should guide your review. Not all do this, and perhaps when they do, these guidelines can be a bit wooly. In the absence of such a guide, there are some cardinal rules of good reviewing:

1. Don’t take too long to return it. You know what I mean - someone is desperately refreshing ScholarOne every 30 seconds to see what is happening to that paper. If you can’t do it briskly, don’t take it on.

2. How long should it take to do the review itself? Not long. 2 hours to read the paper (10,000 words) and construct feedback. Get on with it, you are not scouring the earth for the last Airbender. Move on with your life.

3. How long should your review be? Maximum 2 pages and preferably shorter. If you are writing more than this, you have fallen into asshole territory and should stop and check yourself. Nothing screams ‘insecure junior scholar who knows nothing’ more than someone who feels the need to write lengthy reviews to demonstrate the extent of their own brilliance. DON’T DO IT. Also know that senior editors are unimpressed by your posturing and you look like a fool.

Content rules

1. The question you are answering is: is this paper worth publishing?

   • Is it well researched? Are the appropriate scholarly articles/areas included? Is the referencing sufficient, careful and complete?

   • Does the author do what they claim to do - do the composite parts add up (abstract, introduction, middle and conclusions)?

   • Are any claims made properly substantiated?

   • Is it rigorous and does it display originality? Does it bring a new angle or way of thinking about something? Or is it addressing a pressing issue, or filling a gap by updating something?

   • Does it fit the brief of the journal (the editors should have already desk rejected anything that doesn’t, so this isn’t really your area to comment on unless something has gone very wrong).

   If the answers to the above questions are YES, then you should recommend that the article is published.

2. What do you do if there are minor infelicities in the language or errors (I mean errors in the literal sense) or some of the things listed above are there, but could have been articulated in a clearer fashion?

   • Send it back with minor revisions pointing out exactly what could be better articulated with the above list in mind, and construct that advice with word count restrictions in mind.

   • Be concise and specific.

3. What do you do if there are major problems with the piece (i.e. the list above has not been met)?

   • You can send it back with major revisions, indicating what these revisions are. If this is ultimately a new paper, it is not a major revision.

   • If you do this, be prepared for a second round of reviewing. Do not indicate major revisions if you cannot be bothered to do this again. It is rude beyond belief and a massive pain for editors.

   • Finally, and exceptionally, you can reject the piece.

Reasons to reject a piece in good conscience:

• It is not well researched. The appropriate scholarly articles/areas are not included (with the word count limit in mind). The referencing is insufficient, sloppy and incomplete.

• The author does not do what they claim to do - the composite parts do not add up (abstract, introduction, middle and conclusions).

• The claims made are not properly substantiated.

• It is not rigorous and it does not display originality. It does not bring a new angle or way of thinking about something.

• It is a partial piece of research that has been ‘salami sliced’ too many times from a bigger project so that it no longer really contributes something meaningful in its own right.

How do you construct your feedback?

Just like we are told to do for students, it should be a feedback sandwich. You know just how much effort that poor academic has put into that paper. They have wept, they have bled.

• Start by saying how much you enjoyed reading it, and list some positive aspects of the paper and inquiry. It costs you nothing and it must have something positive about it or it would not have been sent out for review.

• Then move on to any critique and weigh your words carefully. Imagine you were reading this review on your own paper. Phrase it professionally at all times. Don’t be an asshole (I’m looking at you: ‘this sounds more like a newspaper editorial than a scholarly paper’). Reader: I was published.

• Finish the review with something positive about the project in general and why it is interesting.

Things you must never ever do

1. Reject a paper because it is not the paper you would have written. This is bullshit scholarly backstabbing and should not ever be entertained. Why don’t you go ahead and write that paper yourself, and leave this poor creature to publish the paper they have actually written?

2. Write endless reams of feedback to demonstrate just how smart you are. Yes, we are all smart. Get a life. Short and structured in deference to the word count is professional.

3. Request minor revisions but really you are asking for a whole new paper (a different paper, i.e. the one you would have written). This is impossible for the author to do in the word count available to them. If you want something included, why not point out the things that could be cut to make room. If you can’t find anything, you are being as asshole again. Everyone needs to respect the word limit, including reviewers.

4. Get personal. Don’t be snarky, snidey, supercilious, hectoring or patronising. Be professional. Someone has spent an awful lot of their (probably unpaid) time writing this piece of research. Respect the author.

Reviewer 2 is a thing because we make it one. Don’t be that person.

How to plan your writing week: goals, priorities, and tasks

Academic Coach is a planning fanatic, because planning works. It just does. It works. It moves you from A-Z because you know where (and what) A is, and you know where (and what) Z is. 

I have more blogs on planning than on any other topic because (a) it works and (b) I still feel there is a lot of resistance to serious planning. Most academics tend to, let’s be honest, lurch and stumble through the teaching term, hanging on with their bare fingernails for the end, only to be faced an avalanche of grading the minute teaching stops.

Academics are notoriously pushed for time due to many reasons which we need not rehearse here. The purpose of this blog is to try and help you to understand the fundamentals of planning. I’ve talked about planning a publication pipeline, what goes in it, how you understand how long things take you, and planning in the midst of Covid, but I have not broken down planning into the specifics steps and concepts that you need to get to grips with.

 Scheduling your week

One of the first things I get coaching clients to do is to have a proper online schedule. Yes, you can also have a paper diary, but an online one is essential. The reason for this is the detail an online diary allows you to visualise. You can colour code, you can write detailed notes. I ask clients to programme in all of their non-negotiable commitments (work and life) each week. Then we talk about what non-negotiable means. Sometimes this is straightforward and sometimes a momentous battle of wills commences. Eventually, when the dust settles, I ask them to weed out things that are not really non-negotiable, but are more in the genre of ‘someone else expects this’, or ‘I’ve always done this (so I always will)’, or ‘FOMO’, or ‘I might upset people’. Once the schedule is set, we go about filling the diary with writing, reading, and note taking slots that are feasible and realistic for that particular person. Everyone is different, because everyone’s life is different. We fill it with breaks and rest periods. We make it as realistic as we can. Often I end up reining in clients who enthusiastically pencil in 8 hours straight research: not realistic if we want to stay healthy.

This is pretty straightforward stuff (getting people to stick to it, not so much, hence the coaching). But then we start to talk about how we are going to fill those slots and a blank expression arrives. Now we have to talk about goals and priorities and tasks, and the difference between the three.

Goals

Goals are aspirations, or big picture end results (outcomes if you will) that you want to achieve. Goals are your long term objectives. You want to submit a promotion application, submit a grant proposal, submit my book for a prize, submit 4 journal articles this year and so on. These are goals. Your goals are best planned on a long term basis – quarterly and yearly (sub goals and main goal). These need to be realistic for you, because if they are too aspirational (i’d like to win the lottery) you will repeatedly fail and this is not good for your writing confidence. Too easy and there is little point in setting a goal. Notice I didn't write ‘win a grant’. That is not in your gift or control, so don’t set up goals you alone cannot achieve.

When you are breaking down your writing projects, you can do so by setting mini-goals if you will - quarterly, monthly, weekly. These should be discrete elements that take you to the big goal at the end of the year.

Priorities

Priorities, on the other hand, start to narrow down which goals have more importance (a ranking function if you will), and what concrete steps you need to take (and which concrete steps should be prioritised) in order to move towards the bigger picture goal. It is most effective if you plan these in weekly segments – anything longer than that, and you soon find your weeks are spent doing things that are in fact not furthering your progress towards your goal. You weekly priorities should amount, when added together, to the steps you must take to hit your weekly mini-goal.

Tasks

Tasks are the discrete things you need to do daily in order to meet your priorities each week. These should be broken down into as much detail and as small a task as possible because they should be able to fit around your other non-negotiable commitments.

Whilst this appears quite straightforward, academics are usually great with goals, but not so much with prioritisation or making task lists. The reason for this: fear and reality. This provokes a very hard look at life as it really is, rather than what we would like it to be and some people are more willing to do this than others.

As we lurch towards to the end of [gestures vaguely to the *outside*] all this year has brought us, it might be time to think about how we are going to move forward towards our goals come the new calendar year. To meet our horizons, we have to see the path the get there.

Writing accountability through social writing

I wanted to write a post to mark the Academic Writing Month of November (yes, it is a thing). I don’t know who decided this was a good month for writing. November is not a particularly auspicious month in the academic calendar. Perhaps it comes at a time where that first sting of term has (supposedly) died down, and we might turn our attention to all the writing projects we have been neglecting.

In any case, it is now that #Acwri comes alive, and things like NaNoWriMo (for novelists, but academics can use it too) get underway.

It is a good excuse for me to talk about my favourite writing subject - social writing - and give a shout out to my writing buddies (hello to Susannah and Marieke) without whom I am certain much less writing would have taken place in the last couple of years.

Why do people fear social writing?

First though, I must convince you on the efficacy of social writing. Alot of people work in (largely) sole author disciplines so by and large do not write with other people. Writing has been formulated as a solitary and private space where the small sparks of joy are enjoyed and the deluge of fear, doubt, shame, avoidance and procrastination are endured. Many academics (of a certain age) dismiss the possible benefits of social writing out of hand - they never learned to do it as a PhD, therefore, it can’t be real.

I know that doesn’t sound very much like a scholarly or evidenced based reaction. Nonetheless, I do encounter this kind of reaction in response to my coaching suggestion that social writing might just be the key to getting unstuck. It might be the first step in medicating the malady that ails them.

The reason for this out-of-hand rejection is simple; people want to keep their fear, shame and procrastinating habits private, because the overwhelming feeling they have in relation to writing is shame. I get it, I really do. But the only way out the other side is through. What you are doing isn’t working, so why not try something new.

Research shows it works

Regardless of scholarly discipline (science to humanities), research shows that academic productivity increases as a result of social writing. Social writing can be enacted in person (difficult now of course) and on-line. It can be done in physical or on-line writing retreats, writing workshops or informal (or formal) writing groups set up within departments, amongst colleagues, or can transcend departments, Universities and disciplines. My own social writing groups are across different countries, Universities and disciplines. The key is to try lots of different methods until you find the mix that works for you. I had a few brushes with social writing that really didn’t work for me but eventually I got there.

Why does it work

Social writing enables accountability, visibility and shared learning. It enables solidarity in the same struggle which no-one except another academic can really empathise with. It centres your writing in your academic life, and gives you the opportunity to talk about your on-going projects in a pragmatic fashion (today I am doing X to move my article forward). It provides an opportunity to make an appointment with your writing that involves other people: this means that you will show up. The shame of being a flake is weightier than the shame of not writing.

The key to all this is to find writing buddies that WILL show up and who, like you, prioritise their writing. These might not be your closest friends and allies, and in some ways, it is better if they are from outside your department because you will not be tempted to rant about the latest office debacle in a precious writing slot.

So, if you have never tried social writing before, do give it a whirl. It is the gift that keeps on giving.

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.