I can't find time to write

The next couple of blogs will be a series on ‘Time’, and the stories we tell ourselves about time. We wrap ourselves in these stories so we don’t have to face doing the difficult intellectual work of writing, but the key here is to recognise they are just that. Just stories. Not fact, not true, just things we tell ourselves (and for some, have heavily internalised as a defence mechanism to criticism).

Today I am going to start with the greatest lament of struggling writers everywhere - I can’t find time to write. Wrong. The whole premise is wrong. We don’t find time. We don’t create time. We don’t make time. We don’t lose time (it is not behind the sofa) and we don’t manage time. It is not an unruly toddler that has to be corralled.

Your whole attitude to time has gone astray right from the get-go here. We must see time instead as something we schedule. That is all we can do. Time unspools before us - we don’t create it, or find it. We can choose what we do with our time though, because we have agency - still, in these difficult times - we still have agency to schedule our time. Most working professionals do in fact possess this same agency. Of course, we have fixed slots for teaching, determined by the gods of timetabling, but after that, we decide what we do with our time and when we do it. Your synchronous teaching slots might account for 2-14 hours a week depending on you contract, position and location. That’s still a pretty small amount of a 40 hour working week.

We don’t find time. If you are working from a position of finding time, you have already lost. This is not hide and seek. Time requires us to schedule our behaviour into slots where we match task to be completed to a fixed time slot. We all know many academic tasks - especially teaching related ones - will take as long as you give them, so decide ahead of time, how long you are prepared to give to X task. Let your time allocation model be your guide. Be honest. And here is the rub - so often we are NOT honest. We don’t know how long something has taken us to do because we never set out with a particular goal in mind, and we have never timed ourselves doing it.

Let’s start with a benign example. You have to grade 100 1500 word essays. You are allowed in your time allocation model 10 minutes per essay. You set yourself a target of 30 essays this week, which requires 5 hours of marking on this calculation. That is what you must give it. Use a timer, move on, get quicker at this skill. Use rubrics, autofill comments on Turnitin, whatever strategy you need. You can give excellent feedback in that time, but it takes practice and some investment in working out how to create efficiencies that will pay you back forever. Schedule the time you require and stop when that time runs out. You should not sit for 5 hours grading - no-one should. This task should be spread out, hour to hour amongst your working week(s), to be fitted in around other tasks.

Then, move onto your next task.

That is where people go astray. They ignore the clock, the calendar, and simply continue until they run out of steam. They won’t assess how long that task took them - in fact it took them 5 hours to mark 5 essays instead of 30. That is clearly wrong. You are not paid to spend 1 hour per 1500 word student essay, and no amount of hiding inside some justification about quality will save you here. This was not a good use of your time, because you are paid to do many other things. This is exactly why agency scares people. You choose to spend your time this way. It is not that you could not find time to write. You chose to spend 5 hours grading 5 essays. You chose it.

The key to scheduling your time is to obey the schedule, and of course, put writing in the schedule to begin with. If you show me your schedule, I can find you 5 writing slots a week, guaranteed. I’ve worked with hundreds of clients and I can absolutely guarantee you that. I don’t know how long they will last, but I do know, after a couple of weeks of coaching, your schedule will look radically different than it does right now, if you let me help you populate it. The first thing I ask clients to do is show me their schedule. Some are reluctant, some are a little sheepish, some don’t even have what I consider to be a proper schedule (classes written down on a bit of paper diary is not a schedule, it is a list of your classes). A few are wildly overcommitted, in life and in work, and their obligations have to be trimmed to match what they are paid to do; some clients have only a loose understanding of what is reasonable at any given career stage. Some have massive inefficiencies in their practice that can be streamlined to enable more writing slots to be scheduled.

I don’t think this is revolutionary but experience tells me this should be said explicitly. It is no good having a schedule if you ignore it at the first opportunity - the first time someone asks you for something, interrupts you, or an email pops in, or indeed, if you delight in writing a complementary essay of feedback on the student’s essay.

People resist scheduling for all kinds of reasons, but mainly, they resist it because then - when they scheduled 5 hours to write that week (a mere 1 hour per day) and they did not do it - they can have plausible deniability as the movies say. I just didn’t have the time: oh but you did, and it is RIGHT THERE IN YOUR SCHEDULE. You chose not to. And that recognition is the first step to unwiring these writing myths - the greatest of all being ‘I can’t find time to write’, facilitated by the second greatest myth which is ‘I have no control over my schedule’.

The self care narrative, gaslighting and academia

Today’s blogpost is something of a personal reflection on how academics can both protect themselves and ultimately flourish in what has become a sometimes hostile work environment that grates against the ideals of academic freedom, nurturing student potential through teaching excellence and contributing research excellence. This post was prompted following an exchange I witnessed on social media about the deification of the self care narrative as a solution to systemic inequalities, overwork, understaffing and a diminution of the academic mission as most academics see it.

Disclaimer: this is not an apology for a broken system

In the last few years before Covid, the self-care narrative was predominant in Universities. Over Covid, it has merely increased 100-fold, but it is not a new tune. Let me be clear what I mean: staff survey reports chronic overwork, unequal workloads, understaffing, an obsession with metrics that actually creates bad teaching, a dilution of academic autonomy and overbearing micro managing administration. Solution: here are some lunchtime yoga classes - do your downward dog daily and everything will be well. Obviously this is not something I am on board with - who can be? The problem and solution are unmatched. If the staff survey had proposed a universal condition of stiffness and bad backs, then the free downward dog would indeed be helpful. Alas, the cure and the disease remain strangers, not even kissing cousins. This kind of management response to systemic problems of overwork and inequality is rightly derided as a hollow gesture. It is gaslighting on a massive scale. Because the problem is money and inequity and they won’t spend money - Universities are in the money making business, not the money spending business - or solve the inequality that pervades all of academia. Downward dogs are cheap. This is the system: by all means, join a Union and fight the good fight. But what to do in the meantime before the revolution?

Uncomfortable truths

Any suggestion that there might be some strategies that the individual could adopt immediately becomes tainted by this yoga infused self-care narrative associated with downward dog solutions. Should anyone suggest to you that actually there are things YOU can do for yourself to survive and thrive in this broken system, they somehow become management stooges. This is unfair, frankly naive, and also, totally inaccurate. In fact, holding tight to that attitude - that the only way is universal overthrow and there is nothing anyone can do for themselves - actually perpetuates this current configuration of academia as we bend and comply and keep on propping it up whilst being convinced the revolution will come and save us. In the meantime, we keep on doing the work of ten men. Literally. And the meantime goes on and on and on and on and on and on….

When someone is looking for help with how to navigate this new-old University world, a coach can step in to help you. They do not tell that person to join a Union - systemic change is not the goal here - individual survival is. Immediacy is important for someone on the edge. Tangible results. Something they have individual control over. The truth is there are ways of being and doing academia that allows you to have a good career and a stable work life balance, but part of that solution is not constantly waiting for that magical systemic change to come around whilst holding onto debilitating beliefs that served you well in before times. The solution is to navigate better through the system that you are currently working in whilst ensuring you look after your mental and physical well-being.

These are treacherous waters and you need a new compass, a new way of thinking, and doing, academia.

changing belief systems

One of the things you can start to do for yourself is review your belief systems. We come into academia thinking it is one thing, and it has turned out to be something else. Perhaps when you came into academia is really was that thing - although I am suspicious of the good old days narrative - but that is not the reality anymore. When you start to see things as they are, rather than how you would like them to be, it is the beginning of making concrete changes in your behaviour that will help you to navigate this new world order more effectively and, as doctors say, with a better outcome. This is not about compliance: no-one would ever accuse me of that. We are talking about understanding the environment in which you work, not the one you wished you worked in. There is room on an individual level to create space that protects you from chronic overwork, burnout and physical and mental meltdown, but it requires some tough changes and ripping off a band aid of old beliefs that no longer serve you. You can do this by yourself or with support, but the message is: you can do this. There is space to put in place strategies that can help you thrive and the first place to start is untangling the idea that self-care, or other workplace coaching strategies, are somehow the enemy.

How to become an expert advisor

One of the things that I get asked to talk to PhD students about is how to leverage their PhD beyond the academy on the basis that I have had a career as an expert advisor to European institutions. We all know the academic job market is thin and precarious, and it is necessary to think about where you might want to go beyond your PhD if the academy does not work out (or indeed you have already decided it is not) for you.

I recently had the opportunity to give a short interview on the wonderful podcast The PhD Life Raft to talk about this topic, so I thought an accompanying blog might help PhD students to think through this too. Many of you will disbelieve your own expertise, and many of you might think this cannot possibly be a career option for you, but hear me out! I had no connections. I was first in my family to go to University, I was from a working class background with the wrong accent. I did not in short look like the type of person a European institution might use as an expert advisor, so before you count yourself out, please take a minute to consider this as a possible opportunity for you.

Why become an expert advisor?

In or out of the academy, it is important to move your research into the real world where it can make some sort of difference - to influence how policy makers or industry acts, and if you remain in the academy, this is also good for things like proving the impact of your work or engagement with relevant stakeholders. If you are looking for an academic job, these industry/outside links are becoming prioritised as Universities seek to prove their worth to the ‘real’ world. It is a competitive advantage to have these links. Good old fashioned money is also a good reason - depending who you eventually work with, these companies can provide an excellent income stream for you personally. If for no other reason, cultivating these contacts is a good way to future proof your career - who knows where you will one day end up looking to work and building strong relationships over time with industry partners can only be a good thing.

What does expert consultancy look like?

This obviously depends on your subject area but usually you are holding an expert advisory role in one way or another, for example:

• Advising professional regulatory bodies

• Advising legislators, governments and international organizations

• Advising industry (private companies or individuals)

• TV / Radio – become a ’talking head’ for media

• TV / Radio – make research programs / content

When can / should you do this?

You can do this as soon as you have your PhD, but it is important to start making relationships as early as you can. I made my relationships whilst still doing my PhD because I went to the institutions in question to conduct research and talk to as many people as I could, but not to make connections; simply to gather the information I needed for my PhD. I had no agenda, and that is probably a good thing. It is important to think early and make a conscious decision that this is going to be part of your research career, and that it is an important part. I was only ever interested in getting my research into the institutions to convince them my approach was the right one and influence them to make decisions about policy and legal change. You must, in the early stages of any relationship formation, be generous with your time. It is part and parcel of the give and take.

Be flexible in what you consider your expertise

Sometimes, in our insecurity, we can draw our expertise quite narrowly, and usually, when industry approaches you for advice, that advice is often rather wide-ranging, coalescing around the kernel of your expertise but perhaps not only on that ONE thing you consider yourself to be an expert in. Here is where we need to demonstrate a bit of confidence in our research skills and know we can get to grips with lots of things in a relatively small space of time. You need to be flexible and a little bit brave.

How does it happen?

It happens though two things: establishing your expertise in ways that matter and building relationships with those you want to work with. Traditional academic publications are obviously one way to demonstrate your academic expertise, and they are the baseline, but not the only way. You need to reach the audience you want to work with. If you are working for an institution like I was, they are reading academic publications because they are staffed by researchers. But if you are working with industry, they are more likely to be reading practitioner led / industry led journals, so you need a good publication strategy to reach these audiences. This is a different kind of writing too, so this requires some learning and flexibility on your part. You can also showcase your expertise by building a convincing brand online (where you can also showcase your research) but can demonstrate your expertise in any number of formats.

In terms of building relationships, you can network through professional organisations, conferences and workshops (you can organise a workshop and invite these people to speak!). Make these opportunities happen for yourself - don’t be passive, hoping the right one will come along. Maintaining a public profile (webpage, Twitter, LinkedIn) is pretty important and following the industry people where they interact - on LinkedIn for example. Once you make contact through research activities, maintain these contacts, and be helpful when you can. Sometimes this does mean providing a little free advice now and again, but beware of exploitation and ‘exposure’ payments.

If you want to hear more about this, please check out The PhD Life Raft for this and lots of other PhD related advice!

Losing your confidence as a writer

Many of the people that come to me for advice as a writing coach describe a state of mind which circles around the notion of losing, or having lost, their confidence as a writer. Many don’t use that precise expression, and mercifully, none have expressed the concept of writer’s block (which I simply don’t accept as a thing). But losing your confidence as a writer is a real and tangible problem: the first thing we need to do is find out why.

Reasons: You, or someone else.

It might be the case that you have gotten out of the writing habit, and by that, I mean very specifically the scholarly research publication type of writing habit. This is very different from the email, feedback, supervision, blog writing, presentation / speech writing, grant writing, text book writing or report writing habit, all of which have their own particular tropes and genres, and are very very different from scholarly research publication writing. If you continually eschew this type of writing in favour of all or some or one of the other types, there is no way that you can maintain your writing confidence in relation to journal articles and /or monographs. You might have gotten out of this habit on purpose (it is just so hard, I can’t face it) or by accident (you became an administrator-teacher) or by design (you were sidelined into other roles or your writing and research time was stolen from your workload matrix). We can take control of all these situations if we really want, but sometimes, we would all rather do the easy thing. The easy thing is not scholarly publishing.

Writing scholarly research for journals and monographs is considered the gold standard, is heavily policed, and is difficult to do. It needs to be a habit to maintain confidence in it like any difficult thing. And by a habit I mean regular soft and hard contact with it, day in, day out. If you have left it two months, or three, or 12 months or 5 years, it is an uphill mountain to climb. The longer the absence, the higher the mountain. It can be done, but without help, it will be painful indeed. The longer the absence, the more work you have to put in to unwire your now hardwired behaviours of avoidance to re-engage with the writing habit.

It might be the case that someone, somewhere in your scholarly life has (intentionally or not) destroyed your confidence through insensitive and unprofessional feedback, criticism or ‘advice’. When we are being subjected to such people - and we have all been subjected to such people - honestly, our bodily responses don’t lie. We know when someone is trying to help, but their words are bruising our egos, and we know when someone is behaving like an asshole. In the moment we KNOW it. But afterwards, it is easy to let that encounter settle, become authoritative, then fester, then be obsessed over (overtly or internally) until it undoes every shred of confidence we ever possessed. Sometimes, people really are out to get you in academia because they are painfully inadequate and insecure. Pity them. An honest internal inventory should point the way: real, or memorex? as those adds used to say.

Fixing it

Unpicking such damage is hard psychological work and has to be faced. Without it, at the slightest sign of difficulty, reluctant writers will fall straight back into their now well established patterns of behaviour and avoidance. Sometimes we can face this head on by ourselves, sometimes we need to approach it softly, over time, and with a certain amount of side eye. Nonetheless, face it we must. Only then can you really start to build new practices of engagement with your writing that will re-establish confidence. Establish that you will keep showing up. You will keep your word to yourself because only you actually cares about your writing.

Turning this around takes courage. It takes a lot of courage. Coaches can provide you with the tools to unpick this damage and reinstate your writing habit (one that actually works for you) but they cannot give you courage. That is yours alone, and so is the ultimate progress you make daily in re-engaging with the difficult task of scholarly writing. It is hard to take responsibility and decide to do things differently, but for many academics, it is harder still to give up on that side of their professional identity where expertise, voice, agency and making a contribution reside. Research is important - it motivates us, and is a real privilege of academic life to find out new things and tell the world about it. Don’t give this up lightly, and certainly, don’t let anyone take that away from you.

Small steps forward

If this sounds like you, please don’t try to run full pelt up that mountain this week or next. Like an endurance event, writing requires build up and small repeated ‘training sessions’ before you can start putting serious time in, lest you do yourself a mischief. You might be severely, moderately or lightly out of shape. So start by unearthing something half started, or if that doesn’t motivate you, start something new that feel excited by. Commit to new practices, new ways of researching and writing, schedule reading, writing and research sessions. Engage for small amounts of time every day, start out with the simple tasks, not the blank sheet of paper. Check out the free resources on this blog to give you ideas of how to do specific things like plan projects and execute them. There is lots of help out there to re-engage with writing, like writing retreats and groups. Just don’t forget to ask yourself how and why you became a reluctant writer. All progress starts from there.

Getting back to writing

It has been quite a year, and I know that some of you feel like robot zombie on-line teachers who cannot even remember the idea of research, let alone the process and feelings associated with that side of your scholarly identity. So how are you to try and reclaim the researcher, the scholar, the writer that has been left by the wayside?

First Principles

Rest. Rest. Rest. Book time off, take it, and I mean really take it. Remove your email from your phone. Do not connect into anything academic for a whole two weeks. Unless you are a surgeon, nothing is urgent. Literally nothing. Just stop and rest and do things you used to like doing. But mainly, rest.

When you are rested, I want you to remember. Remember what your research profile had looked like before the pandemic. What were your rhythms before then? What excited you about research, your project or article? Are there half finished pieces of research in the drawer? Can you rescue some of it, and should you?

Take a hard look at reality

Take your diary and cross through every day of marking resits, resit exam boards, the rest of your vacation days, and the two weeks (yes, you heard me) that you will devote to teaching preparation for next year. Decide now whether in fact you want to devote the precious little time you have left to pointless meetings and University open days. How many actual full days do you have left for research? If your answer is 3, or 5, or 10, then that is your answer. That is your reality and it is just better to know that now, then to wake up every day with the silent dread of once again not working on your research and berating yourself.

Writing every day that is not a vacation day

On my course, I equip people to continue writing when they are grading, when they are teaching, when they are doing admin, but I encourage them to be ruthless with their scheduling. So graduates of this course will not only have 3, or 5 or 10 days to write this summer, because they write every single day. The only time that is free of writing is vacation, weekends and outside your working hours. If this seems like a fantasy, please take the course. It works, and it will free you from the idea that you have NO TIME. You have time, but it might not be as much as you would like to have once those vacation days are in. Just like you have time to teach because it is scheduled, similarly you have time to research. Just not big blocks of time, or free days or weeks, or the biggest myth THE SUMMER. But you do have some time. The question is, what will you do with it?

Dramatically lower your expectations

There is no way to really describe the hell of the last year, so I won’t try to. Let’s agree, it has been difficult. We are not the people we were 12 months ago - it is going to take a minute to reclaim that scholarly identity.

Take control

Don’t wait for your employers to give you permission, or [laughs hysterically] encouragement to re-engage with research. Some may do just that of course, and that is wonderful. But some universities have realised this robot zombie teaching thing can be quite the moneymaker, and might not in fact be enthusiastic about supporting you to return to your research or life as we knew it pre-pandemic (if indeed that reality was one in which your research was supported). REF is done - it is another 5-6 years before research will be cared about once more by the higher ups. It is not their job to connect the dots between support now and research output later - they just don’t work that way.

It is up to YOU to decide to not allow this part of you to be taken away.

Reflect and remember

Schedule some time to have a think about how you have been treated in the last 12 months by your employer. Just think about it. Marinate in it.

Now, make some decisions.

Decide now the kind of scholar you are setting yourself up to be in the future, independent of what your external environment screams at you is URGENT URGENT URGENT every single day. Decide now to reclaim your research identity, your scholarly identity. You are not in fact a teaching robot zombie - this is not why you went through hell to get a PhD. There is just so much more to you than that.

Remember.

Then decide to do things differently.

What is 'enough' for a PhD?

I have had a number of requests lately about the end of the PhD. What to do about ‘gaps’ last time, or in this case, what is ‘enough’ for a PhD. In some ways I think both of these questions, obliquely, refer to the fear of finishing a PhD. For many people, the idea of being afraid of finishing the PhD might come as something of a surprise. The PhD is a long hard slog and is something we talk a lot about ‘getting through it’ or ‘putting it behind us’ - in other words, for many, we can’t wait to finish it! There is though a definite cohort who fear the end of the PhD, although they might not recognise that is what is going on, so today I want to work through this, and then answer the question: what is enough for a PhD?

Is it your fear talking?

If you feel hesitant about submitting your PhD, you might well have the following thoughts:

• This thesis will fail

• This thesis is not good enough

• I’m not good enough

• This thesis did not go as I wanted it to, so it is not going to pass

• I don’t think I have done enough

• What will I do once I press submit?

• What will I do for money?

• Who will I be once I submit this thesis?

• What will the future be when I am not writing this thesis?

Most of these feelings can be equated with the experience of ending anything. If you ever teach students across a programme of study, you will witness this feeling time and again. First years are full of optimism and excitement and insecurity, second years are bored, but ask final year undergraduates how they feel two weeks into the final year (9 months to go), they get this look of terror. Oh no, this part of my life is coming to an end and now I have to figure out what comes next. No more school. No more provided structure. The real world awaits and it is terrifying. They remain stunned like deer in the headlights right up to the pre-exam period where they work like their life depends on it. The fear of ending is unsettling, and it is no different towards the end of a PhD.

Check for signs

What should you check for to check if it is enough? Word count is the first place to start - have you literally created enough text (by this I mean the maximum word count allowed?). A short thesis is a light thesis and that is not a good sign. Is your structure correct? Have you spent time writing the PhD together as one coherent whole (the final editing)? Is there massive gaps in theory / methods /data or analysis that you have consistently refused to tackle because you think it is too hard? Is there a consistent bit of feedback from supervisors you have left unaddressed (this will come back to haunt you in the Viva)? Has it been properly referenced, and presented? These things cannot be ignored, and you absolutely need to do more work.

What should be there?

A PhD is an original contribution to knowledge. You need to make that claim, demonstrate it, and substantiate it. That is what needs to be there. You should be able to say why this work matters.

What does your supervisor say?

This is tricky and can be a double-edged sword.

Experienced supervisors will tell you the following things when you have done enough: you are ready; stop dragging your feet; it is time to submit. They will tell you that done is better than perfect, and that it will probably never be perfect, but you have done enough to get through. A PhD is not the Nobel prize. It is just a PhD and hopefully the poorest work you do as a scholar. Experienced supervisors will also tell you no: this is not done, you need to address X and Y before we are at this stage.

Unfortunately, inexperienced supervisors can become nervous (for you, but also for their own reputation) and stand in the way of submission even though you might have done enough. It is very hard for students to know the difference between these two types of supervisor, and that is when we need to listen to the supervisory team as a whole. An experienced supervisor who knows they have been telling you to do X from year 2 (you didn’t, and still have not, and this is a very BIG PROBLEM) is giving good advice, but an inexperienced supervisor might say similar things, when in fact, this comes from a different place - this is not the thesis they would have written. They don’t agree with it, therefore it is not done.

Toxic supervisors are on a whole other level, and they actively try to stand in the way of some PhDs completion, because they benefit from the PhD students labour.

Only you know what kind of supervisor you have, and the quality of the relationship you have with them.

Time to decide

Ultimately it is your PhD and you must make the call. Have you made, demonstrated, and substantiated an original contribution to knowledge? Is it well written and professionally produced piece of text? Have you abided by the regulations governing the PhD for your programme? Are you just fiddling around now because of fear, or have you run out of energy without having done the work you needed?

These are really tough questions to ask yourself, but the ones you need to ask to answer: is this ‘enough’?

How to make time for reading as an academic

This is another blog post in response to a reader request, and you can tell that by the title they supplied - here at Academic Coach, we don’t believe you ‘make time’, ‘find time’, or ‘manage time’. Time is immutable. But in the spirit of the request, I think I get to the nub of it here.

Academic reading

One of the most difficult things to get right as an academic is seeing ‘reading’ as your job, and consequently, scheduling time for it. Reading is of course an integral part of your job without which you can neither teach nor research, nor do service. But how do you find a balance between all the reading you have to get done. In other words, when to ditch what, or how to prioritise?

Different types of reading

There are a lot of different types of reading to get through in any one academic day (I’m not counting emails here).

Teaching related reading:

• reading essays to grade, and reading teaching related material to prepare for class.

• reading student work for continuous feedback such as PhD and master’s dissertation students (not ditchable but time spent doing it is elastic and within your control)

Internal service reading:

• Committee paperwork, Boards of Study paperwork, departmental memos and instructions, policies, guidelines and a plethora of bureaucratic nonsense

• Reading to review colleagues’ work for feedback, mentoring, REF review reading (at your discretion and on your timetable)

External service reading:

• Reading to enable review of articles, book proposals, book manuscripts, grant applications

• Reading submissions for conference calls, workshops and in preparation for chairing panels (ditchable in the sense of don’t take it on)

Research Reading -Required

• Reading that you need to do in order to carry out research - books, papers, chapters, articles, primary and secondary literature, and a plethora of other source material

• Instructions for filling in journal submissions, article guidelines, grant submissions

Time constraints

Of all the things you do as an academic, reading is one of the most time consuming activities, yet how many of us schedule time in our diary to read? How many of you have that entry in your diary - not many, I’m betting. Reading for research requires what Cal Newport calls ‘Deep Work’: concentration and long periods of it. Yet, as we are pulled from pillar to post, the idea of scheduling a diary entry to ‘read’ seems laughable. The truth is though we MUST read to do most of our job, and we don’t have the luxury of being able to research without reading. So whilst some reading is indeed optional or can be put on the long finger, some cannot.

Finding the balance

So how do you find a balance? You can see from the list above what is discretionary and what is not, what involves other peoples’ deadlines and what does not. So first things first. Schedule your own reading for research. You should have scheduled time for teaching prep already. Internal service reading should be allocated into your admin slot if it is core to your role, put in a folder for ‘later’ or ditched altogether. This prompts feelings of guilt and all the things, but tough. You don’t have inexhaustible time.

What about reading colleagues work for feedback? Well, if you have a trusted circle (they read yours) you should have an explicit understanding that you will return that work in x days/week with comments, and schedule that task - this is reciprocal help and you both need it. If it is one way traffic - get a new circle. There is not the time to be the only one everyone comes to in the department and serious writers will understand this. If you are somebody’s mentor, this is part of your core role as a mentor, and this should be prioritised alongside your own research.

External service reading is purely discretional, so if you do take it on, do it swiftly. Do not agree to peer review and then hold some poor author hostage for 8 months because this was not a priority for you. If you cannot do it within one month (by this I mean identify a two hour slot in your diary to complete the task within the next 28 days) don’t take it on. No-one is making you. A good rule of thumb is to review 2 pieces for every article you submit within 1 year. When viewed through this lens, you are providing a service to colleagues which is in line to the service you expect to receive in return. It is not too onerous.

The point is to remember that reading is time-consuming and takes up a large part of your job, so you need to schedule time to do it.

How to deal with 'gaps' in the dissertation?

This blog is in response to a reader request on PhD writing, and is a summation of a number of requests I have along this theme.

‘Gaps’

Thesis writing is a genre that has many requirements and tropes in order to be recognised as a PhD and pass examination. Regardless of your type of PhD - professional doctorate, creative-led PhD, practice-led PhD, traditional ‘big book’ thesis or PhD by publication - they all have the same benchmark for passing and that is an original contribution to knowledge. That is it.

So when I am asked the question about having ‘gaps’ in a PhD, and how one might go about dealing with those gaps, I find myself pondering what kinds of gaps we are talking about and whether they are significant enough to mean you cannot reach the threshold of an original contribution to knowledge.

First things first: the good news

The best thing about doing a PhD is that for the one and only time in your life you get to set the question and decide what the right answer to that question is. This is marvellous. The question can be reformulated at any point before submission (and in some cases the day before submission) to reflect the actual answer you provided. It is a joyous thing - remember all those times lecturers graded your papers and said hey, this is a great answer to a different question, but this is not the question you were asked? Those days are behind you. Because you choose the question and the answer, and you can swap the question for one that fits the answer you have written. Hooray!

So when I see this query, and armed with the knowledge of retrofitting the question to suit the answer, I am wondering what kinds of gaps can present themselves, that cannot be remedied by a change in question?

There are gaps, and there are gaps

How do you define a ‘gap’? Is it that you just didn’t get as many data points as you might have liked in an ideal world, or is it like an asteroid has hit and all you have left are the edges?

So, you have no data? That is a chasm of a gap, but not if you changed tack and made the PhD theoretical in nature: crisis averted. Some more reading and a different methods chapter, but not the end of the world.

Did your data collection get skewered by a global pandemic (lovely in person things were no longer possible)? Well, either you pivot your method to a method that can be conducted online (surveys, questions, interviews and so on) or pivot to a different type of inquiry that is paper based. Supervisory input here is crucial.

If you are in science, and have less experiments/ samples than planned, your supervisor should have a plan for you - accessing the lab at different times and in different ways might make collection slower, but still doable. What if you can’t get the chemicals you need? You definitely need supervisory input here. Can you redefine your study, and do different kinds of experiments?

Archival trips no longer available? Work closely with the archive and librarians to see what can be achieved remotely. If your archeological dig was cancelled that is quite a big problem, but your supervisor should have a plan, including an interruption as a nuclear option, until things can be started up again.

I certainly foresee a lot of theoretical work coming out in the next couple of years due to Covid and yes, that is marvellous work too.

The PhD students’ gap

There is I think a fundamental misconception that plagues all PhD students - and that is the nature of research as a thing. Research is messy. It is unpredictable. It doesn’t come out like we thought it would. You ask a bunch of questions and expect answer A, B or C, and they all say no, it is X, Y and Z (real example from my own PhD). Arrrrghhhhhhhh, this is not what I had foreseen.

A PhD is an act of creation, and these rarely follow straight lines. You can do all the reading and planning imaginable, and even without a global pandemic, your research will not go as you planned it to. This is the gap in your knowledge about the nature of all research: it goes its own way. It is like riding one of those rodeo horses - you hang on for dear life and hope you can hang on long enough. If your supervisor seems a bit nonplussed by your dilemma, yet you are running around screaming in horror, this is because this is how all their research goes. Every. Single. Time. And they have forgotten it is your first time. So if they are a bit ‘meh - these things happen’, it is not that they don’t care, it is just another day in research paradise for them.

Research doesn’t go wrong - if we knew the answer to the question, why would we bother asking it in a PhD? By definition an original contribution to knowledge is a voyage of discovery, it is not a linear journey from A-Z.

Will the examiners cut you slack because of COVID: bad news AND GOOD NEWS

No. You might be able to get accommodations at the ‘doing’ phase - funding and departmental / University extensions on time have been forthcoming on the whole, but once you submit, you will be held to the very same standard as everyone else. Of course, you will (as you always would have anyway) define in the introduction what the project is and is not. What it does and doesn’t do, and why you chose one method and not another. For the first time, you have the easiest justification of all time: PANDEMIC. A short section, no? And not one the examiner can realistically argue with. Choice of method and its justification is the one place a pandemic helps you if this was the reason you had to go with one method over another.

The question will remain: is it an original contribution to knowledge, or not? This requires you to confront that difficult question - what is my original contribution? If I subtract X or Y from the execution of that contribution, does it still stand up to examination?

Engage with your supervisor about this specific question

Keeping your panic to a minimum is your responsibility, and lecturers are feeling very fried right now. Don’t imagine for a minute you are their top priority and they are holding all your PhD in their mind and can immediately see this might be an issue for you. This is YOUR PhD, so you need to take the initiative in bringing up your worries to their attention so that they can engage with you. However, they can and should help you rationally and without drama reframe your project and help you to understand whether this still hits the threshold of originality (and that the claim of originality is properly substantiated). This might well mean adjusting long held plans, and doing a lot more reading in a new area that you had not foreseen at the beginning.

Keep calm. All is not lost and you can still get your PhD. Remember, redefining your question is the biggest flexibility you have.

Motivation and academic writing

Today I want to talk about motivation and why it is key to successful academic writing. Without motivation, writing happens in a sea of misery. If we are miserable about writing, we don’t want to do it and it is a vicious spiral all the way to oblivion. It is not impossible to write when motivation is either missing or low, but it is not a happy writing experience. We have all written when motivation is absent: in a PhD, doing an R&R, writing a grant proposal because our metrics require it rather than because we care about the research itself. Low motivation isn’t fatal to writing, but it is fatal to happy writing.

The motivation - procrastination mash up

Many people mistake a lack of motivation for procrastination, and don’t recognise the qualitative difference between the two. Procrastination is what happens when we avoid doing something. We may well be motivated to achieve this thing ultimately, but we don’t fancy doing it right now, or soon. That is procrastination. We accept ultimately we ought to be doing it, and we certainly want the end result of having done it, but we would rather clean the toilet bowl first. That is procrastination. At the heart of procrastination there lies many things - but a lack of motivation isn’t one of them.

A lack of motivation means you don’t want to do the thing, and you don’t really care anymore about the consequences (in the short term) of not doing it. It is an infinitely more negative space to occupy and it won’t go away when the house is sparkling clean.

Motivation is not accountability

Motivation is often mistaken for accountability in a lot of writing related advice: it might, for example, be treated as synonymous with writing groups or writing retreats. These types of solutions to unhappy writing are methods of writing, not motivation to write. Accountability through writing groups ensures you show up to write. Motivation comes before this - you are already motivated if you put these mechanisms in place.

Motivation - intrinsic and extrinsic

Why do you write? 'Because it’s my job'. True. But this is not enough to get us through the dark night of the soul when things are hard, because consequences of not writing are very far in the future (sometimes decades) and quite diffuse. This is in any case an extrinsic (negative) motivation (fear of one day being fired). These are negative motivations because you cannot control them. They do not hold sway for long.

You may write because you want to get past probation; get promoted or tenure; have a burning desire to be submitted to the REF (or fear the consequences of not being submitted); want to be the shining star of the impact case study; want respect of your friends, enemies, colleagues and complete strangers.

All of these are a mixture of 'hoop jumping' and of being considered successful by people whom we have no control over (ego). None of these are wrong: why we write is intensely personal and can depend on your career stage and personality / personal and financial circumstances.

Later on in your career, each of these (extrinsic, negative) motivations start to diminish. You have by then achieved a degree of respect as a scholar (your ego is somewhat satisfied); you are a professor or have reached the stage at which you are personally happy to stay so promotion no longer motivates; you have probably been through enough REFs to know none of that is in your control and cannot motivate you. If you don't show up to that conference and give that paper - well, shit happens, you have discovered this by now. If you are six months late on a book, or book chapter (and sometimes abandon a book altogether) there is very little consequence. So then what? Then what?

ACCENTUATE THE POSITIVE

You need a raft of positive motivations to keep you afloat that are not based on threat or ego alone because when you don't want to show up to write, when you don’t want to show up to the sessions you have scheduled, something must keep you going. Something positive, or it becomes very difficult to keeping showing up for yourself without some outside moderator of your behaviour. And we don't have one.

Often people motivate themselves by working collaboratively with others (so you push each other through the tough times); or they find joy in actually getting out into the world of empirical discovery; or (common for me) they have something they just have to say because everyone else is wrong about X. They want to (and can) make a positive contribution to a field and change policy, the scholarship, contribute new methods of doing things that just excite them on an intellectual level. There are probably many more positive motivations you can identify for yourself.

But it is important that you know why you are writing. Try to identify something positive that you can control (hint: you cannot control other people's judgment, including REF, promotion, or journal editors or grant bodies accepting your paper or proposal). Stick these to your computer to remind you: why am I doing this?

The motivation - energy (Youth) level symbiosis

We tend to think of motivation as a static state or thing. I am motivated to do this, and I am not motivated to do that. And we also think that we remain in this binary state at a steady level, but this just isn’t true. Motivation levels wax and wane in response to the ebbs and flows of our career, and it ebbs and flows in response to any particular writing project we undertake, and let’s face it, in response to the ebbs and flow of life, and where we are in it.

Let’s take a book for example. At the beginning we are super motivated: we do a book proposal, we love the idea, and we get the contract. The initial stages of research are still exciting, but as we move further into the project, and things gets difficult, our motivation starts to ebb away. When we come to the middle, we are spent, yet there are miles to go. Motivation may desert use, or at least it feels that way, yet we are committed to completion. This is where we need to connect our motivation (or lack thereof) to our energy levels more generally.

A universal truth we can all agree on is that: bad sleep + bad diet + no exercise = low energy. At least if you are over 30 years old. And this age factor is relevant, and something it is hard to make your 30 year old self understand: you will not feel this effervescent sense of wellness and go-getterness forever. Yet in a cruel twist of fate your 30 year old self simply cannot comprehend of feeling any other way than you do now [ah but you will learn my fleet footed friend <laughs manically> you will learn]. I digress. My point is motivation to write is often easy to find when you are young(er) - you have many less life distractions, and if you are an academic, it is common to find people putting off life distractions (eg kids) until much later still (yes I am speaking in generalisations). Your energy levels are just HIGH. Motivation can be everywhere, intrinsic and extrinsic alike - it is a veritable buffet of motivational snacks.

Later though, things might get tough. Further into your career, having hit many of the extrinsic targets that motivated your writing originally, you begin to look more towards intrinsic motivations to keep you going…and you find the well has run dry.

Restocking the motivation well

Just like how we restock our energy levels through good sleep, diet and exercise, we need to do the same in relation to motivation. It is not in endless supply and when you have drawn down on it for a long time, it will run out without proper care-taking. Many times we don’t even notice this is happening, and we think we are just procrastinating.

I think this is especially hard now in isolation. We are missing the corridor conversations, intellectual exchanges, staff seminars and in person conferences that puts motivation back in the well. The chance exchange of comments or ideas that spark some creativity in our thinking is hard to recreate over Zoom.

The first step to restocking the well is noticing it is empty. It is not procrastination: it is something more fundamental, yet eminently fixable. For me, conversations with people in my research area become absolutely essential to restock that cupboard. Giving a paper, hearing comments (even if over Zoom). Perhaps a Zoom reading group to discuss new publications in your area. I find myself fixated on Twitter - not for doom scrolling - but for intellectual exchange of people in my research areas, like a woman in the writing desert searching for an oasis. Whatever activity restocks your creative well - and it might be baking - make sure you make time for that. Invest time in thinking about how you replenish motivation even in these direst of days and you will be rewarded ten-fold.

When motivation is low, we don’t always recognise we have hit rock bottom, and we just keep digging hoping to hit another spring but instead, we hit the molten core and burn out. This is not the time to start digging further in, it is time to restock. We need to do this ahead of hitting rock bottom and as often as we can.

How to edit your writing

I have these little mantras here at Academic Coach and this is one of them: write without fear, edit without mercy. Write quick, edit slow.

What is editing?

Let’s start with the basics. Editing is the process of re-sculpting your rough text into something that resembles an intellectual contribution. You can engage in large scale editing (macro, think structural issues) or small scale editing (micro, think sentence construction and paragraphs) and these serve distinct purposes in finalising your text.

Some writers don’t recognise editing as a distinct stage in the writing process because they are engaged in this process from the very first sentence (perfectionists). Others don’t recognise it because they have no discernible drafting process at all: writing, reading, researching, editing and polishing text is one unholy jumbled mess that is circular, unstructured and totally inefficient. Time ebbs away when we think of editing in these terms. ‘Writing’, or (properly speaking) producing a piece of finished research, becomes an interminable nightmare.

Why is editing painful?*

It is painful because if done at the correct time in your drafting process it forces you to confront reality, and that is despite your best heroic efforts the text still isn’t working. You might have come to this realisation yourself, or (more likely) you have come to this realisation because you have received feedback (criticism). Either way, this reality is inherently painful. Re-working the text is not re-working the idea necessarily and this is another reason that many lament editing. It starts to feel like this writing malarky is less Hemingway and his muse(s) and is more technical (mechanical) in nature. Less Leonardo da Vinci, and more spray painting the basement.** This can horrify the academic soul.

The joy of editing

I like editing. You are past the blank page. The hard (research) work is usually done and the joyous part of the writing process truly begins. It is here that you move from Frankenstein’s monster, to something that is quite well put together. It starts to flow. It starts to work as a piece of intellectual contribution. It stops lurching from one thought to another and starts to flow. Most importantly, it starts to make sense to someone other than you.

The guiding principle

This is the foundation of editing. It is no longer about you. It is no longer about your vision, your understanding, what you think is good and right and logical. It is about the reader. The reader! You have moved from it’s all about me to it isn’t about me at all. Regardless of what my internal narrator thinks is awesome and simple and clear, I now have to think about how someone else might encounter my work. What will make sense to them? How will they understand it?

This requires a bit of intellectual gymnastics. Hence the pain (for some).

Good editing is about structure, flow and signposts. It concerns your audience and how they will receive it. It is not about you. Your creation has left the building, flown the nest and is about to try and make its way in the world. Editing helps it to be useful to others and make a contribution to a dialogue that exists outside of your head. Embrace it: set it free.

*actual title suggested by a reader

** Paul J Silvia, How to write a lot, describes writing in these mundane terms.

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.