Academic Coaching Field Notes
The Inside Track is where I share what I'm noticing in my work with academics — the problems that keep appearing, the patterns behind them, and what I think they tell us about writing and academic careers.
Field note 001: AI anxiety is real…and fictional
This week I’ve spent some time with clients across various programmes thinking together about the impact of AI and academic writing, and by that I mean their academic writing. When academics come at this topic, they generally do so from a student perspective - how everyone is using it, and how bad the work is produced by the students who use it. How pervasive it is and how Universities absolutely suck at responding to this - what feels like - an existential threat.
But then when it comes to using AI themselves for research and writing…the tide somewhat shifts. Smart people can sometimes think that smart use will overcome limitations they see in student work. Academics start to ponder if thinking could be easier. Should I be doing it? What are others doing? Am I behind? Are other people writing more because they are using it? (the question should be are other people successfully publishing more using AI, to which the answer is NO). Somehow when the question of AI is raised in relation to academic scholarship, critical thinking departs and the urge for easy answers and quick solutions abound.
There are lots of things I would use AI for in academia, and most of them come under the banner or task management, emails, and admin, planning and other related tasks. Yes, including drafting various internal reports and applications for things, at least as a first draft. Because these things are mundane and do ot deserve the time or energy you are giving them.
But when it comes to rigorous, intellectual, complex research and thinking, AI is your enemy. It’s very plausibility is seductive, but not actually….accurate. It is not a great brainstorming partner - and using it as such lulls you into a feeling that you are thinking when you are actually abdicating the thinking. It is weakening you as an academic and robbing you of skills you really need.
Let the anxiety about AI writing your papers drift by. Some stats for you:
In the 2026 Organization Science study using the journal's complete editorial dataset: 6,957 initial submissions from January 2021–February 2026, i.e. pre-ChatGPT data, post-ChatGPT data, AI-use estimates, and actual editorial outcomes.
Since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022:
submission volume increased 42%; (but noone admits using AI 😂)
writing quality of submissions declined substantially;
the authors attribute nearly all of those trends to manuscripts classified as heavily AI-generated;
papers estimated at 70%+ AI had a 69.6% desk-rejection rate
only 3.2% of the 70%+ with AI use received an R&R
importantly, AI score remained strongly associated with desk rejection even after controlling for measured writing quality
In summation, you still need the skills. You cannot outsource the thinking or even the drafting because AI drifts into banality and inaccuracy. It sounds plausible but is easily knocked over. Skills still matter. Judgment matters and writing for journals is one judgment call after another. That is the skill that you cannot outsource.
If you are interested in my longer thoughts on this you can read them here:
Can AI Read the Academic Literature?
And if you would like help perfecting these skills and my 👀 on your writing, you can get that here:
Field note 002: Challenges in book Writing
This week was a monograph live calls week so book writing has been very much on my mind. And I want to share two insights and experiences around book writing, one from clients and one from my own 😄.
Many clients are in one of two scenarios: the first book, generally a PhD -> book scenario, or the second book where you are starting from scratch. A PhD -> brings its own unique sub set of challenges bound up with with the psychological baggage around the PhD itself; the second book is really the first book you do without any prior research or backup and this brings problems of confidence in drawing boundaries around scope and scale, and of decision making more generally.
Regardless of the scenario, book writing brings unique challenges to academics, but mainly we can say these are related to scope (size) and length of time required to execute. Technique in writing (not sentence structure) is the what we emphasise in coaching, alongside developing the fundamental skills of deciding what is in and out and why. Of course lack of accountability is a massive factor that hinders book writers (which is why we have coaching calls), but it is the time scale that exacerbates this: much academic research work comes with little real accountability.
So this week in coaching we spent time on these classic questions - what should be in here, when should I stop working on X and move on, and so on. These are those incredibly important fracture points: does your project move or stall, does it takes 10 years or 1. These are the points when coaching really matters, beyond learning the technique of the writing habit, the structure, the ideation and all the things clients learn through the curriculum itself.
As for myself…
I wrote my own book during the monograph programme and shared data with my clients about how long it took me in hours, and what that process looked like - from ideation to editing, to writing. Because my book is my business, I wanted to self publish so I could keep my copyright and that has been QUITE THE JOURNEY! I have not especially enjoyed it since every single boring question has come down to me, and as an academic publishing books traditionally, all that work has been done by someone else. I don’t enjoy this bit and never did. The words ‘time for proofs’ filled me with absolute dread.
Anyway…what I have re-learned is something I always knew. The longer a project drags on the less interested I am in it…and now, I have no interest in my own book because the post production has dragged on forever!
This is a lesson for all book writers - a longer project does not mean a better quality project, it means decision making stalled, and then motivation slipped. Mercifully my book was written and proofed before I fell out with it, but many academic book writers enter this phase before it is finished.
If you want help with your book, you can get it here:
Field note 003: Strategy
Last week’s coaching was busy. Ostensibly these sessions were about journal article writing, monograph writing, in several VIP one off sessions that ranged from job applications to monograph completions, and career acceleration inside my Elevate programme.
So many different coaching sessions, and I was wondering what the common thread was through these sessions?
Strategy. It is the one thing that is really missing in academic development training (even if there is such a thing where you are). And that is because people think you are either a ‘strategic thinker’ or you are not, and this is not accurate. Strategic thinking is a skill, just like writing excellence or any other academic skill. For some people it may come easier, but EVERYONE can learn this, and in a time pressed environment, it is becoming increasingly crucial.
The kinds of strategic decisions that come up: how to do you plan a paper for publication in a top journal; how to go about bringing around the almost done monograph together for the final editing according to a timetable that is executable; which job to apply for and how to choose those opportunities; which grant to optimise for and what optimisation requires; how to work out one’s intellectual identity and map the gaps between where we are and where we want to go. This is jut a snippet of the variety of coaching conversations last week where the topic appears very different, but the underlying frameworks that I use to coach clients through these decisions are the same.
Developing and deploying strategy is so much easier when you have an experienced sounding board and it is quite difficult to develop that skillset in isolation. The idea of coaching around strategy is not to develop dependency on a coach, but have a coach who enables you to develop these skillsets through repeated iterations. A coach that can show you the frameworks that enable strategic decision making skills to be honed and then done independently - with confidence.
If you think coaching might be for you, have a look here at my advice pages on how coaching works and when it is the right time for you to take the next step:
Is coaching right for you?
FIELD NOTE 004: Calibration
The last two weeks at Academic Coach have concerned what I think of as calibration, or recalibration. We are in a changing season of the academic calendar and that brings many challenges to clients who have been writing more or less consistently over the last 6 months. New term, new responsibilities and it feels like you are right back at square one: putting off writing, putting off thinking about your career, putting off making better decisions (or any decisions) about publishing and your research career more generally.
Everyone appears completely frantic around you and that energy just bleeds you dry. I know it. I have been there.
What is the solution? Because it is true, the beginning of term is very busy indeed.
When we move from Summer into Autumn, it is important to recalibrate. Our expectations, and our self judgment. This is not a get of jail free card though - it is not a moment to think: “to hell with everything I am just surviving here”. Yes, it is tempting to sink into that way of operating, but ultimately futile. Only you suffer. Every year there is another Autumn, every week there is another pressing urgency.
The key to a happy academic career is to move beyond scarcity and into - if not abundance - at the very least, practicality. It is simple to do when you know how, and with the right support, maintaining your summer momentum becomes something you begin to excel in.
When I talk to clients about the doom loop they can sometimes enter, it is - quite often - not about the ‘amount of work’ to be done, but the mental real estate they are giving over to things that don’t deserve the amount of attention it is getting. Things are occupying your mind and squeezing out your capacity for progress on meaningful projects, and it is so prevalent, it becomes normalised.
How many times do I hear…I do not have time to apply for promotion. For that grant. For sabbatical? To write the book proposal? Things that ultimately move the needle on your career get replaced by room bookings, and organisation and committees that ultimately…don’t.
I don’t want this for you. All the things you had going on need to keep going. I don’t want you to feel like you are attached to elastic band, getting so far and then snapping right back into old ways of thinking and doing that do not serve your interests, your desires, your goals and the kind of career you deserve.
If you are ready to move out of this cycle, I would love to help. You can book a free strategy call here:
FIELD NOTE 005: REWRITING ACADEMIA IS NOW HERE!
The book is here 🎉
So finally….the book is here! I have been spending alot of time in the previous months getting this book over the line…and I had submitted the manuscript in March! Anyway it is finally here: I was determined to get this coaching book out to as many people as I could, so they can reclaim their time, and their writing joy. Making coaching as accessible as I can, in as many formats as I can, was part of this reason for writing this book.
I started writing this alongside my Mastering the Monograph book writers last October- partly as a way of putting my own advice into practice and showing it works, but of course, really for the only reason anyone writes a book.
I had something to say!
I’ve been coaching now for 7 years, and an academic for 17 years before that, and across that time I have seen academic life change, dramatically. Some things though remain constant - the importance of writing for your academic career remains, yet many academics experience writing as a source of guilt, pressure and unfinished work. So far, so familiar.
What is exacerbating these familiar academic stories is now the ever diminishing time you have to execute your writing. Let’s be honest, to execute your thinking.
This can start to make academia feel like a prison - one you entered with ideas you wanted to pursue and communicate to others about, and a smaller and smaller (mental) room to do it in. The walls feel like they are closing in. So how to break out of this prison without resorting to being an asshole and metaphorically shivving your students and colleagues in the break room?
My mission in this book is to aid your release from this prison, step by step.
What can you do with this book?
This book is a practical guide, in other words, it is something you put into practice. It is not a meditation on higher education, but a toolkit that enables you to recognise, manage and then overcome your barriers to writing, and then implement the 6 tools of writing I teach you inside the book so that you can rewrite what being an academic writer means to you. You will use this book to create your own ‘Breakout Blueprint’ that you will then implement over successive weeks to change your real life academic practice. It is not meant to be something that is one and done, but something that is used to coach you through these changes over and over. You’ll recognise your own patterns and put new ones in place as you apply ideas to your own practice, and return to it as your circumstances change.
So if you are ready to change how writing - and academia - feels to you, and you want some help on that journey, this book brings me along with you step by step as you make the changes you need to thrive in your academic writing.
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FIELD NOTE 006: The Inside Track on Writing My book
So I have finally had time to review my book writing stats and thought it might be useful to share insight into the process of writing this book. Usually I bring you notes from my client’s experience but today I would like to share some of my own.
Did I take my own advice? Why yes I did! I did indeed. And like all advice I give, I always encourage clients to mediate it through there own lived realities, and I did the same.
So what did the timelime look like?
I started this book in earnest in October 2026 and submitted the manuscript to the publisher at the end of March 2026. And because I executed the number one piece of advice I give to ALL my clients - time tracking - I have the receipts. So we can do a deep dive together on what this timeline looked like. I know exactly how my book was written, when and how much time it took and how that time was split. So if I were to write my next book, well, my planning would be super accurate, as now I have a - albeit incomplete - dataset.
I wrote this book alongside my clients in Mastering the Monograph and I implemented the advice I give in that programme; just like those clients, I used the Writing Sprint Club to write this book too.
Background
First, the background information which is important - with all the caveats. The first is on length - this book is only 50k, not the 80k of a standard monograph. The second is about ideation - my ideation process was pretty much completed on this project way in advance of me writing it, so that time is missing, because this is a book I have been thinking about for a long time, and have developed a lot of thinking inside my coaching materials. Ideation is essentially not tracked. Similarly the third caveat is this is not an academic research book, but a light hearted self-help coaching book, and the research and note taking stages were already done. This research forms part of my coaching programmes so all the reading and note taking were already complete.
So this for me was largely a writing, editing, copy editing, polishing, thinking, exercise. With all this in mind, let’s do a deep dive on figures.
The stats
This book took about 203 hours 39 minutes to write. That time has not ended yet, because I still have to put time into doing something with it, and I will record that time too. But for the purposes of thinking through the writing, this is our headline figure.
When we look at how much of that time was dedicated to drafting and editing (ie producing the manuscript to initial submission to publisher) it took 177.81 hours, which accounted for about 25% of my workload between October-April. In the period where I was working most heavily on it (Oct-Dec) it had 41% of my workload. So alongside running my business, managing my team, doing coaching with clients and universities, marketing and all the never ending admin involved, I still gave this book a hefty amount of my working time.
What about when I worked on it?
94% of all the time spent on the book was between 9pm-6pm with just one session (editing) extending to 7.30pm, confirming my advice on work life balance and not going over my 40 hour week, even now as someone who is self employed. Around 42% of all my writing time was in the morning, notably any small amounts of ideation and more drafting than editing. Even though morning writing is my preferred time, clearly it was not always available and I had to adapt my practice to something that was doable. Coaching tip: have a good routine, but be prepared to write anytime, anywhere. That is writing freedom.
26 of my writing sessions happened inside the Writing Sprint Club - because as I will always tell you, writing is better, together. Social writing is proven to increase your output.
What did writing blocks look like?
I often worked in separate blocks of time (hello time blocking) and might have as many as 3 in a day (eg on Nov 11 i worked from 10.30-12.30, 2-4, 4.30-6 - that was a BIG day). But of all my entries, 49 were 2 hours or less in length, busting the myth that ‘big blocks of time’ are required.
Many entries contained shorter multiple working blocks (30 mins).
30% roughly of my writing time was spent drafting, and 70% was spent editing which if you’ve followed my 5 drafts to finish model, you will recognise as the kind of practice I would teach (this does not include checking the copy editing or final polish).
Overall, I had a flexible daytime practice. I worked on the book roughly every two days out of three in my concentrated period of engagement. I then took an extended holiday period in January (with a great off ramp in place 😀) and then returned directly to editing - the draft was completed and I had to edit around my other work which now took priority. So 50% of my time on the book it was THE priority and then it had to be juggled in the closing stages. The hard yards had already been done and the final phase of editing was much more intermittent. I was well inside the deadline I had given myself, which was that the bulk of it be completed by Christmas.
Writing the book was a joyous exercise for me. I truly enjoyed the act of creation, and I really had fun bringing something I have been thinking about to fruition.
You can see there was no perfect pattern. There was no strict recording of every single thing I did, broken down into minute tasks. Sometimes I forgot no doubt to press the record button.
The things I want you to take away from this are: there was though a consistent engagement with the project and a long period of prioritisation over other work before I could rebalance my attention, to when all the hard yards of thinking and creating were over. There was in fact more writing in my none preferred times, because I had other appointments and had to adjust. There was some planning, but it did not consume much time. There was a consistent goal for each session, but not necessarily detailed task lists. Periodically I can see a did a review of my engagement and task list.
Most importantly when time got tight, I did not abandon the project, I did not get stuck in perfectionist loops. I also didn’t feel like I could not take a holiday - I had 3 weeks away. I finished the book quickly whilst I still liked the idea, and I will die on that hill.
A book is a joy to write when you have not been on it long enough to question whether you really want to do this book. If you’re ready to escape writing prison and create a new relationship with your writing, this book is for you!
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