Have you ever sat down to work on an academic manuscript and just started writing…and writing… and writing? Not necessarily in one writing session. I’m talking about the academic manuscript that gets ahead of you, that starts with one observation or argument but turns into a piece of writing that’s twice as long as it
What are you doing for the rest of the year? I know, I know. What a question! If you’re like most academics, you have no idea. Whether you’ll be teaching face to face or online is to be determined (no matter what your institution is saying right now). You don’t know if your kids will
Have you ever taken a knife skills course? Generally, you only need 3 or 4 knives in your kitchen; a chef’s knife, a serrated knife, and a paring knife will do most everything. The key to successful knife skills is knowing how to use each knife to do multiple jobs. With a chef’s knife,
If you’re writing a book, it’s important to create a system for receiving feedback. That system might include feedback from close friends, colleagues in your discipline, mentors, and experts in your subject area. It can also include working with a developmental editor. For that feedback to be effective it’s important to know what type you
Writing a book is really freakin’ hard. With summer starting, some writers will want to turn their attention to their books – especially after this beast of a semester where much of your time was focused on teaching via Zoom, Canvas, and whatever other digital tools your university (and your kid’s school) threw at you
This is the fourth entry in my mini-series on how to start writing a book. To read earlier entries in this series, you can click here, here, and here. You have what seems like a million decisions to make when you start writing a book. How will you structure the chapters? Should you use
In my work as a coach, I spend a lot of time in conversation with scholars planning complex writing projects. Lately, this has meant developing writing plans for books, as nearly 80% of my 1:1 clients are writing one. The meta cognitive work required to successfully plan and execute the writing of a book is
When I first speak with academics who want to do 1:1 coaching with me, they often come to our consultation call with two things: a deadline and a calendar. They ask me a question that sounds something like this: “if I have 8 hours a week for the next 6 months, save two weeks when
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Impostor Syndrome and what it means. We identify Impostor Syndrome as a mindset problem – one of insecurity and self-doubt. It’s a problem that afflicts high-achievers, who are ignoring the evidence of their own success. One way we express our Impostor Syndrome is through perfectionism. As a coach, I work
Writing a book is one of the most overwhelming, intimidating projects a junior scholar can undertake. Many writers quite logically look for resources on how to write a proposal, what should go in an academic book, developing a timeline for writing it, and so forth. There’s some excellent advice out there – in books, blogs,
How do you make sure that you follow through on your plans? One strategy I talk about often is breaking down big goals into their easiest first steps as a way to maintain momentum. In this blog post, based on a video coaching session I recently conducted, I’m going to focus on one specific technique
Sabbaticals. Academics look forward to them more than canceled faculty meetings, payday, and Beyonce tickets – combined. The prospect of so much unstructured time is exciting and overwhelming. Exciting because you finally have time to work on your writing! Overwhelming because there’s a lot of pressure to do all. the. things. during your sabbatical. You
Happy New Year! I’m so excited for 2020. In 2019, Up In Consulting had a year of growth and I learned so much. I worked with clients in a multitude of capacities and identified what I’m best at as well as how to be most helpful to my clients. In this post, I’ll share what
We’re approaching that lovely time of year when academics claim they’re going to take a break but actually intend to work. Sound familiar? If you’re raising your hand, then keep reading. I’m going to explain how you can get work done over break without burning out or ending up disappointed. What’s Urgent? If you
Do you struggle with asking for feedback on your writing from your peers and mentors? Writers often seek my support for developmental editing because they’re scared to ask for feedback from scholars in their field. In my conversations with clients, I’ve discovered there are four reasons writers hesitate in asking for feedback. In this
Do you ever reach Friday afternoon and wonder what the heck you did all week? Do you find yourself working 60+ hours a week and wondering how some academics manage to get everything done in less than 45 hours? If so, you should do a time audit. This is an exercise I’ve been doing with
Do you have a daily to-do list? How often do you check off every item on it? If you’ve been a reader of this blog for any amount of time, you know I rarely take hard, uncompromising positions. In fact, I pride myself on the personalized, iterative approach I bring to productivity when working with
If you’ve been reading this blog, you know how important it is to break down big goals into small tasks. I’ve shared examples here and here. Good planning relies on paying attention to detail. I think about planning not only in terms of organizing your calendar, but also in organizing your thoughts. One of the
During a recent newsletter coaching call (are you signed up for my newsletter? I offer occasional group coaching to subscribers), a participant asked about aligning her goals with her priorities. More specifically, she expressed concern that she wasn’t completing her work in a reasonable amount of time. I bet you can relate. Here’s the general
How can you effectively manage your writing time when you don’t have a lot of it? For many writers, short periods of writing time are particularly challenging. Yet, short writing sessions might be your only option. Academic writers romanticize long blocks of uninterrupted writing time. Very few scholars, however, can devote an entire day
Have you ever sat down to make a to-do list and felt overwhelmed by the enormity of your goals? Many academic writers struggle with this feeling. There’s just so much to accomplish (publish these articles for tenure, prep an entirely new course, plan this conference, etc), and the journey to achieving those goals can feel
With a new semester comes changes to your writing schedule. During the summer, you may have had long blocks of writing time away from faculty meetings, office hours, and course prep. Once the semester starts, you may only have short writing blocks —as short as 15-30 minutes a day— when you’re teaching, so it’s important
The beginning of the semester brings a new opportunity to make a semester writing plan. For academics, late summer can have a New Year’s resolution vibe. But, just like the New Year’s plans that end up in the resolution graveyard, your writing plans can be similarly unattainable. The problem of unattainable goals has two
I read The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results by Gary Keller and Jay Papasan because I saw Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega mention it on his Twitter feed. I thought it would be a useful book for my work with academic writers in The Productivity Pipeline and Simple Productivity. Although this isn’t an
Summer’s finally here (at least in the Northern Hemisphere)! The weather’s warmer, the lemonade is flowing, and it’s time to get sh*t done. If you’re an academic writer, your summer work plan probably includes more than one project (keep in mind I consider each chapter of a book as a separate project). Between writing,
Summer is right around the corner. Finally, three long months when you get to focus on your own writing. You’re either relishing the prospect of having long, uninterrupted blocks of writing time or you’re feeling like that much unstructured time is a recipe for disaster. No matter how you’re feeling, it’s essential that you
Congratulations! You opened your email to a message of revise and resubmit. This is an excellent response for your submitted manuscript. Articles rarely get accepted without revisions and desk rejection rates are high. A revise and resubmit means the editor and reviewers see promise in your work (no matter how snarky Reviewer 2 might sound!).
Clients normally ask me one of two related questions – “am I writing enough” and “am I writing fast enough.” There’s no correct answer to those questions. There are answers, but not good ones. There are, however, good ways to think about your writing practice and your progress. Many writers track their writing because
I was talking to a client the other day who told me they were behind on their writing. They felt disappointed at their lack of progress. Unfortunately, this client isn’t unique. This is a conversation I have with many clients. Writers who fall behind on their work often internalize a sense of failure and
Some time ago, I posted some Twitter encouragement for writing shitty first drafts. The response was, well, surprising. I didn’t expect it to resonate quite as strongly as it did. I believed everyone had read Anne Lamott and knew the importance of shitty first drafts. But perhaps they believed that shitty first drafts
Happy New Year! Did you make a resolution for 2019? Do you normally make resolutions? I used to love making resolutions. I’d spent a good chunk of December thinking through what I wanted for the new year, and what I wanted to leave behind. I always had a lot of hope for those
Congratulations! You just got a revise and resubmit. The necessary revisions will be extensive, but nothing you can’t handle. Unfortunately, the editor gave you a strict deadline, and you’re working on your book proposal. You didn’t expect this revise and resubmit to reach your desk so quickly, so understandably, you feel a bit panicked. You
It’s the beginning of the fall semester for academics in the Northern Hemisphere, which means many of you are setting your semester writing goals. Much of what goes into your schedule will be informed by what you did or didn’t achieve over the summer. Inevitably, you’re berating yourself because you didn’t complete all of your
Book writers face two obstacles. First, they plan to write their book as if they aren’t working on anything else. Second, they work on everything else at the expense of writing their book. Here’s what I mean: You’re writing a six-chapter book, and you give yourself nine months to complete it, from start to
Imagine walking through a bookstore and browsing the section on writing guides. You come across a title, How to Write Your Book in 90 Days: A Writer’s Manual. You roll your eyes and laugh. “What a ridiculous idea,” you think to yourself, “nobody can write a book in such a short amount of time.” A
Writing an academic book proposal is no joke. After spending countless hours thinking about your book and beginning the writing process, you have to distill the best ideas from your book into a document that is likely five percent of the length of your book (if you’re lucky). On top of that, you have to
Have you ever considered working with an editor and then talked yourself out of it? Perhaps you said something to yourself like, “I don’t need one more person to tell me what’s wrong with this article,” or “I’ll get all the comments I need during the revise and resubmit process.” In both instances, you may
You probably have someone in your department or workplace who works very, very hard. Their productivity is through the roof. You know who I’m talking about. Your colleague down the hall who is ALWAYS in their office. When you arrive in the morning, they are already there. When you leave in the evening, they’re still
Congratulations on completing another semester! You probably feel a great sense of relief. Unfortunately, this feeling is probably short-lived. This is what usually happens: We finish the semester in a frantic way (although hopefully less frantic than usual if you’ve been taking my blog posts to heart). We feel exhausted, and are just grateful to be DONE.
We’re nearing the end of the semester, so you’re probably beating yourself up for what you didn’t get done. Could have, should have, would have. We often exercise a merciless hindsight, where we are incredibly hard on ourselves while conveniently forgetting the reasons why we didn’t finish writing that article or grade 15 papers in
November is Academic Writing Month, or #AcWriMo. This is a month where you set an ambitious writing goal and write with a community of fellow academic writers. You get virtual support and accountability. To learn more about it, check out this blog post. You can also follow the hashtag on Twitter and Facebook. I think #AcWriMo
Writing is hard, and sometimes we don’t feel like doing it. When that happens, we make excuse after excuse. “I’m tired,” or “I’m busy,” when what we really mean to say is “I don’t feel like it.” There are a plethora of feelings one can have towards their writing, and my intention is not
Raise your hand if this has happened to you: You sit down at your desk to start writing and you have every intention to get a lot done. Unfortunately, there’s a pile of student papers on the desk. You begin to think about grading them, then you remember you have to make photocopies
Many, many years ago I had a complicated surgery. Thankfully, my surgeon was a badass. He traveled the world giving lectures and worked at one of the most prestigious teaching hospitals in the country. In addition to pioneering surgical procedures, he mentored residents and published prolifically. Now, I’m not writing you to brag about
I taught at a liberal arts college and prepped many courses. I spent hours on course prep. I’d review the reading, read supplementary material, develop handouts, and more. Sometimes this felt very rewarding, but sometimes it didn’t. Over time, I found that there was a very weak correlation between the amount of time I spent
Eight months ago I launched my signature coaching service, The Productivity Pipeline. I started the service in response to a problem many of my clients faced. Now, I’m relaunching the service, to so speak. Although anyone can sign up at any time of the year, the beginning of the semester is a great time to
Have you ever been in a situation where you fully intend to say no to a request, but your guilt gets the best of you? Then, before you know it, you’ve taken on an additional commitment that is more time consuming and frustrating than you ever would have imagined. This is a problem that
When I was on the tenure-track, I spent the month of August frantically uploading articles to Blackboard, maneuvering to get better classroom assignments for the courses I taught, and trying to wrap up my summer writing projects. The writing goals I had set at the beginning of the summer now seemed like a list of
There’s a lot of productivity advice out there, even on this blog. Much of it focuses on thinking about different ways to “manage” or “maximize” your time – to do as much as you can with limited resources. Productivity is, of course, a type of production, and as such being productive means having greater output.
Signposting is important – it gives your reader a map of sorts so they know where you intend to take your argument. I’m a strong proponent of the argument that in nonfiction writing, you have little reason to surprise your reader. I’ve made this point before on the blog. A well-structured manuscript should guide