First week of January 2021 -complete

Hello avid readers and congratulations. We have survived the first week of January 2021 and what a week it has been. If you are working in academia, perhaps your week has started with teaching, teaching prep or jumping back into research. Perhaps, you have had to significantly change your plans because of the evolving pandemic situation. This first week of the year, has probably felt exhausting and overwhelming, for more reasons that just work. We have already experienced riots that shocked the world, threats to democracy and constitutional rights, calls for impeachment, calls for leadership, orders to stay at home, more threats to industry, mental and physical health, and work-life balance. In the midst of all of these global events, many of us are just keeping our heads down, powering on, and trying to keep our own, individual worlds turning.

This year, moreso than other years, I feel the need to reflect on what I have achieved and focus less on what I need to achieve in the future. Such thinking has definitely been inspired by Petra Boyton’s #researcherrenew challenges, which I have engaged with for the last few years, and her book Being Well in Academia
Ways to Feel Stronger, Safer and More Connected. I was so grateful to receive the book as a Christmas gift and it is packed full of self-check tasks and resources to help with a variety of issues.

Being Well in Academia, 2020 by Petra Boyton

So far, my circumstances have privileged me to work from home with little distraction, but I have definitely struggled with researcher’s guilt and overwork. There have been moments when I have felt absolutely exhausted, but also guilty for not working when I am “doing nothing”. I did have a big project to work on throughout last year and certainly in the second half of the year I devoted all of my attention to it. Unfortunately, after it was complete, I experienced similar feelings as I did when I finished my PhD. I couldn’t let myself rest. I was upset and agitated, rather than happy and satisfied. So, in a bid to reset my tired mind, I am trying to recenter myself and focus in on the little and the big things I have managed to accomplish.

Last summer, I started bullet journalling, with a particular focus on goals. I have always had a “to do list” and take pleasure in scoring off completed tasks, but the bullet journal was a way to focus on a small number of large tasks each month. Unfortunately, the months when I didn’t achieve every goal I felt a little deflated, but it did help me re-evaluate what I can do in a month.

July goals

August goals

September goals

October goals

November goals

December goals

This year, I am continuing with bullet journalling, but I am also writing a list of things I have achieved. Some are as simple as reading a non-academic book or finishing a game. Others, are much larger achievements, such as organising and successfully delivering an online academic conference. If you want to know more about that see https://www.bsecs.org.uk/conferences/annual-conference/.

January 1-9th achievements

If I have taken anything away from the events of 2020, it’s that I spend too much time sprinting from day-to-day, month-to-month, with little reflection on where I have been. Academic goals are what drive me, but in a year of so much turmoil, which is unlikely to calm in the near future, it is important to take a step back, to slow down, and appreciate what has been possible in difficult circumstances.

Finishing a second master’s degree

Today, I submitted the dissertation for my second master’s degree and it is an odd feeling all round. I feel calmer and more certain about its outcome than any other degree I have completed, even though I have no idea what mark it will receive. There are many reasons why I feel this way. For one, I have a PhD and I work in academia, so I am familiar with the HE process. For another, this degree is lower stakes. My career doesn’t rest on its outcome…yet… Even so, I have invested time, energy and effort into it. I have done everything I can to make it the best project it can be and I have learned a lot. If I were to compare the two master’s experiences, this one has been much more pleasant, despite working full time, writing a monograph and… Covid! So, I thought I would take this time to reflect on the differences.

Time

The first time round, I did a one-year full-time master’s. My work was seasonal so I spent most of my days just working on my master’s project. And yet, I never felt like I had enough time. I fretted more than I studied. I spent more time figuring out basic problems, like how to devise and manage a project than actually working on the project. My ideas didn’t feel big enough, and yet, I had no idea how to achieve any of my goals. I finished on time but I worked right up to the wire. And guess what… I hated every minute of it.

Second time: I am employed in two intensive roles at two different institutions, I have a book under contract with a hard deadline in addition to the PT master’s. But, early on, I already had a clear idea about what I wanted to do and how I was going to do it. I mapped out peak times I could work on the project: November, December, February and June and even during these times it was a few hours a week, not every day. The project had one, focussed research question. I was slightly worried the idea was a little too narrow but I resisted the urge to make it any bigger. I only had so much time to do the research and write up after all! I decided on a timeline, got my ethics in early, and made sure each goal was met and carefully documented. Slight anxiety crept in as I reach each goal deadline, but I just took a breath and kept going. I finished writing the project with a month to go, so I sent it to different readers to give me edits. I finish the edits with two weeks to go, so I sent it to my supervisor. A few days before the submission date, I got all the documents in order and quickly double checked the submission details with the course convenor. It was submitted a day early and I know I have worked hard, and avoided killing myself to get it done…

Devising a project

First time: I remember I had a big question, a medium question and several little questions connected to my project. I wanted to explore them all but every book and article I read led to more questions and few answers. I am sure my supervisors advised my to narrow the focus, but I can’t really remember if they told me this specifically. It took me a long time to settle on something for the dissertation and even then I wasn’t sure how I would investigate it. I wrote the dissertation once, twice, heavily edited it a third time and finally turned in the fourth rewrite. I re-read it recently and the writing is so unclear, the direction unsure. Questions are asked but not answered. It’s a series of meandering vines that don’t have a structure to cling on to. It passed, so it can’t have been as bad as I now think it is but still…

Second time around: like I said, I knew exactly what I wanted to do and the idea was narrow and focussed. I know the whole point of a master’s is to learn something new, so perhaps selecting a research-focussed dissertation was a bit too close to what I am already trained to do. In my defense, it is in a completely different area of research and it gave me an opportunity to devise new research skills while excising the old. After sending it to my colleagues and my supervisor, they commented on how clear and focussed the writing had turned out. It reads like a coherent project, despite a dispersed working pattern. I will probably hate what I have written in a few years, but this time I have colleagues validating its clarity.

Supervisor relationship

First time: I had no clue what to do and I leaned on my supervisors for support. I needed their validation. I needed them to tell me everything was ok and I did not like it when they pointed out my errors. I was working hard and I wanted them to validate time spent, rather than the quality of the project. I thought I was listening but I wasn’t. I thought I had it figured out but I hadn’t. I thought I was asking for help, but I asked the wrong questions.

Second time: I spoke to my supervisor at the start and the end of the project. It was useful to run ideas past her and make sure it was following the correct recommendations, but I didn’t need constant validation. I tried to avoid taking up too much of her time and when I needed answers to questions I outlined them in a very clear and specific way. If I was unsure about how to go about a piece of research or if the format was typical for the subject area, I read articles and books instead of running to my supervisor. This meant I learned for myself, rather than relying on others.

Final thoughts

I’m not upset at my past self for not knowing what to do, for not managing time, devising a coherent project or working effectively with supervisors. She was new to all of this and just trying to find her path in a dark forest. She didn’t have all the tools at her disposal and often got lost. But, there are perhaps a few things her supervisors/superiors could have done to guide her through so she didn’t feel so anxious all the time.

This time round, I had a map, a lamp and a working knowledge of how to get from one end of the forest to the other. But this is after years of learning the tricks of the trade. I now know what it feels like to be unsure and to be sure and I can pass this onto my students. I can explain that learning what the tools for research and project management are is just as important as getting a project done. I can explain why figuring out which questions to ask is so important and that even a single question can result in a 15000-word dissertation, so long as the research is thought about in detail. But most of all, it has reminded me what it feels like to do a degree and this might be the biggest lesson of the whole process and the thing that will help me grow as a supervisor. So, even if you have a PhD, there is always value to doing another master’s, or even another course. Don’t forget how difficult it was the first time round and use that knowledge to help the next generation!

Marrying fiction and fact: experimental writing

If anyone is a regular reader, you may have noticed I didn’t post a blog last Wednesday. To be perfectly honest, I am so surprised that I have managed to consistently blog every Wednesday since the start of the academic term and before I beat myself up about breaking the cycle, I want to congratulate myself on this success. This is a feat I have never managed to achieve before, especially in term 1! Last week, however, was the final week of term 1 lectures, which means the dreaded marking is starting to roll in and I have an article deadline on the 31st December. I am not too concerned about getting all my work done, but it does mean time and brain space are at their limits, and I decided to take the last weekend to rest, rather than carving out a blog post.

That being said, with lectures now over, I find myself inspired by a myriad of new ideas and projects. My mind leaps from thought to thought, tricking me into thinking I could add a ton of extra work into my already full winter break. For the record, I already have an article to finish, a couple of funding applications I need to complete, lectures and seminars to write as well as making a start on the next chapter of my book. And yet, I somehow want to add updating this blog site, writing a series of short stories, creating ECR resources and starting a brand new major research funding application. Why am I doing this to myself?

This is probably down to how I have been trained. I have spoken before about “quick achievement payoff“. In short, I like the feeling of seeing a project through to completion, the only problem is it can take months if not years for most academic projects to “pay off”. I am in that situation right now. I have lots of projects I am working on, and though I have minor, self-imposed deadlines, I don’t feel the instant satisfaction. I run the danger of trying to find that satisfaction in other short-term projects, which ultimately distract from the work I should be doing. Then I end up in the vicious cycle of doing lots of things for others, but not the things that will propel my academic career forward, as is discussed in this article by an anonymous academic.

What do I do to resist the urge?

Well, this is where I need to find the balance of doing something I enjoy that will give me the short-term satisfaction without it eating into the time I need to achieve my long-term goals. I started this blog to improve my writing and it has now become a place where I share my deepest insecurities about my life as an academic. But, at the same time, it has allowed me to engage with a community, to document my desires, my achievements and to track just how far I have come. As I prepare my end of 2019 round-up blog, I am once again shocked at what I have managed to do in 12 months (more on that in a couple of weeks time), but I have also felt a real change in how I feel as an academic. I am slowly moving away from that unsure, uncertain, self-doubting person I used to be and I am starting to see what can be achieved with not just hard work and dedication but also a shift in mindset. This blog is not a distraction from my main academic work, rather it is key to my development.

So what do I do next that will help me personally and my academic work?

I have often thought about writing fiction. In fact, I have a 3/4-finished novel and a whole bunch of short stories that have never (and probably will never) see the light of day. As soon as I started my PhD, I put fiction writing to one-side and focused on academic writing instead. That was until I came to writing my book proposal. I found it really difficult to construct the introduction but became inspired to create a fictional reconstruction of the event I was describing. The starting point was a real-life letter, which gave a brief account of what had happened, but I couldn’t articulate the importance of the letter without imagining everything the letter didn’t say. Now, I know I can’t repeat this trope throughout the whole book (that would probably be very jarring) but I now find myself thinking about my characters 3-dimensionally and it is helping me to assess what I know, what I don’t know, but should, what I don’t know and will probably never know and, what my reader needs to know. So far, this thought process is in the mind and not on paper, but what if I turned this into a fictional, episodic adventure? This may sound like an academic pipe dream; how novel, turning your research into… well, a novel! But, I think this approach will benefit my writing overall. In fact, Addison Lucchi suggests using fictional writing techniques as it can benefit academic writing and KCL have actually created a course all about ‘finding the story in your research‘. In the last 6 months, I have found that listening to BookTubers such as Kate Cavanaugh and implementing some of her writing techniques, such as zero drafting and figuring out story beats has allowed me to find my flow as a writer.

Though I am not committing to writing a novel, this space may become a place where I experiment with different kinds of writing. After all, academia is hard-work but maybe I can implement a little play too.

 

Facing fears leads to an academic win!

On the 1st April of this year, I posted the following to the ‘Women in Academia Support Network’:

Hello everyone*. I hope you don’t mind me sharing a rather long post, but I want to make this year, ‘the year I face my academic fears!’ I passed my PhD with very minor corrections in 2016 (I got 2 weeks for the corrections) and I had always planned to turn it into a monograph. The perfect book series was launched right at that time and I got in touch with the editors and asked if they would be interested in a monograph based on my PhD thesis. After getting the ok, I created a proposal, re-shaped a couple of the chapters, acted on feedback given from colleagues and sent it in. I was so happy to get a positive response from the commissioning editor who sent it out to readers.

I didn’t get a response for almost a year. After a few chasing emails, I finally heard back in October 2017 that my proposal had been rejected. The commissioning editor’s email was apologetic and tried to provide constructive criticism, even suggesting a way forward. The initial read of the email confused me, as it seemed she was trying to apologise for something other than only being able to provide one reader’s report…

Well, as soon as I opened the single reader’s report, I was met with such nasty, negative comments it still makes me sick. This came as such a shock. Up till this point, comments had been positive and I falsely thought things were moving in the right direction. Even since this experience, I have had so many people who have read my thesis ask when the monograph will appear and I have no answer. Clearly, there are people out there who want to see more of my work and I continue to question ‘why?’

Since 2017, this review made me hide from my thesis. I put it away in a digital box and seriously questioned my ability to research and write. I still get really nervous writing and don’t think my work is good enough. Up until this review, I felt productive and didn’t struggle to articulate my thoughts. Now, every piece I write is an up hill battle.

Not this year! This year, I plan to turn my thesis into a monograph. This year, I will take a deep breath, get my head down and shape it into something I am proud of. This year, I will submit a proposal elsewhere and if it gets rejected, I will act on the comments and send it out again. This year, I will grow from the negative experience of 2017 and turn a resounding ‘NO!’ into a ‘Yes!’

I hope you don’t mind me sharing this experience, and I know many of you have had negative rejections as well. I hope others can learn from my experience and are not faced with the complete shock I experienced. I know it has made me better at research and writing in the long-run, but I didn’t need to drown to learn how to swim!

*Edit to remove ‘ladies’ as a recent request was made to use a more inclusive term.*

I received so many kind and encouraging comments on this post that it inspired to commit! I even received a PM from an editor who encouraged me to send her a proposal for the series she edits, which I did.

This post didn’t come out of no where. Turning my thesis into a monograph had plagued my mind since the viva and the sickness only got worse after the first rejection. Despite thinking about it non-stop I avoided finding the time to write a new proposal.

At the 2019 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies conference I visited one of the ‘Doctor is in’ volunteers and I spoke to a wonderfully supportive academic, who sympathised with my struggles and offered to turn the negative comments from the reviewer into kinder action points so I could more effectively work on the new proposal. I am so grateful to her for taking the time to do this and for telling me the proposal only need a little bit more work and certainly wasn’t as bad as the reviewer made it seem.

In the end, I didn’t use the old proposal as a template, rather I started with a new rewrite of the monograph introduction and from there I realised the new direction the book had to take. I worked on the rewrite while doing the Wendy Belcher task, which I posted about on here and got some feedback from my writing group colleagues on the chapter abstract. In truth, this chapter took about 3-4 months of work and I rewrote the opening several times, but what came out in the end really worked.

My writing group also gave me support with the proposal, with one very kind member sending me a copy of their successful book proposal. This was another month of work and thereafter I sent it to 5 wonderful colleagues who gave me comments on how to make the proposal and chapter even stronger.

And I can now say that I successfully have a contract with Routledge for my first academic monograph. This process was so different from my last experience. It was quick. The decision was clear and I felt supported by the series editors the whole time.

In respect of privacy, I have not included the names of those who helped me along the way but the intension of this post is to demonstrate the number of kind people who offered their free advice and time to help me throughout this journey and I am so very grateful to each and every one of them!

It took me 6 months from articulating my goal on #wiasn to actually achieving it and I am proud to go into academic year 2019-2020 with a contract under my belt. Fears are real and facing them is hard. But, with a little help from our friends it both possible and worth it!

Zero drafting: does it work?

In my last post, I briefly discussed experimenting with different writing methods over the summer. Why would I do this? Well, at the start of the summer, I had three very clear goals I wanted to achieve: 1 book chapter, 1 book proposal and 1 article. To some this may sound like a huge amount to get through, to others it may seem just the right amount, but I had secretly hoped I would whiz through these tasks by mid-July and get at least another article or two in the bag. Of course, this type of thinking just set me up for a fall and made me feel even worse about my general progress.

Let’s take this month by month —

June: I was on another research project for half of the month and most of my days were dedicated to it rather than anything else. Of course, I downloaded articles and took other books with me in the hopes I could steal a few hours to work on my three goals. You guessed it. Those opportunities never came around. By the end of the project, I had a half written article, which read more like a jumble of half researched ideas and I had been thinking non-stop about my book chapter and proposal without getting the chance to write out my ideas. Ultimately, I felt unfulfilled because I felt like I hadn’t managed to complete anything. I came home unsure of whether to finish the article or start on the book project. And that is where I stayed for two weeks… in uncertain limbo…

July: I am not exactly sure when I decided to fully focus on the book project, but I did have a hard deadline so I imagine somewhere between the end of June and the 1st July I had a panic and chose to make the book the priority. I had four, whole, clear days and I worked almost every single hour with almost no sleep. I already had several hand drafts of the book chapter as well as the original introduction from my thesis so I wasn’t working from scratch and I was so surprised that the process was not only quick but quite enjoyable despite the lack of rest. I liked exploring the new directions I was taking this project. At the end of the four days, I didn’t hate what I had written and after a little tinkering I sent it to a few colleagues for feedback. In general, the feedback was positive with minor corrections here and there… What was going on? The process had never felt so… Easy…

I took a few days off and started on the proposal. After a day of staring at a blank page, I could feel all of the positive energy draining away. However, this time I reached out to others and asked for advice. My writing group really helped me out with one lovely member even sharing their proposal. It was in a completely different field, but at least it was a start. The whole process of writing the proposal was difficult from beginning to end, not because the ideas weren’t there, but because I kept reading, editing, reading, editing etc. etc. and I never really got into a proper flow. After it was written, I sent it to colleagues for comments and unlike the chapter, the proposal still needed a lot of work. I got there in the end, but the experience was not pleasant.

August: Two projects complete and just the article to go. This had a definite hard deadline, which could not be adjusted, but I had one whole month… How hard could it be? The first week came and went and I avoided working on the article. I told myself I needed a rest but it was pure avoidance. By the second weekend, I had reread some notes I had made earlier in the year, reread previous articles I had downloaded but I still didn’t want to write… I couldn’t bare starting from scratch again.

Just at this time a YouTube video popped up in my feed talking about creating a zero draft. The YouTuber, Kate Cavanaugh is actually a novelist, but I was curious. (Also, the video didn’t focus on zero drafting specifically, but after watching a few of her videos I noticed she kept mentioning it, so I looked it up).

What is a zero draft? The following definition can be found on the BRTOM website:

‘A Zero Draft is your first attempt to assemble thoughts related to your research topic or question. It is a more or less unstructured piece of writing that flows quickly from your own mind as you reflect upon your topic, your questions, and your reading. A Zero Draft is focused freewriting … or the very next step’.

After discoving the zero draft method, I thought back to those times when I had a positive writing experience vs a negative one. Positive experiences tended to come after I had:

a) thought about a project for a very long time

b) had a loose plan with flexibility to change as I went

c) already had plenty of material written that needed editing

d) all of the above.

Negative experiences tended to happen when:

a) I planned too rigidly and was reluctant to deviate

b) only had a short time to complete the project

c) didn’t have previously written material, or had chosen to abandon previously written material completely thinking it was too badly written or wasn’t original

d) edited every word, sentence and paragraph as I went

So why can’t I replica the positive conditions all time? The problem is during the teaching term, I rarely have time to write and when I do it’s only in short bursts. I avoid writing detailed notes (which is a habit I need to change and build into my general research process) and I tend to only thinking through projects when I am devising a piece of formal writing. I didn’t realise this is how I process my research until this summer and had I figured it out sooner I might have prevented a whole lot of pain.

Initially, I wanted to sit down, write and produce a perfect or at least near perfect first draft quickly, but since I process my ideas through writing, my first draft was and is always going to be a jumble of raw ideas. And if I plan too rigidly, I am denying myself the opportunity to fully develop or indeed build in new ideas. Zero drafting allows an author to work through their ideas. To get words on the page as prose, which can be edited afterwards. In my case, this really worked.

But the zero drafting method is a tricky commitment. I started the article on a Monday and told myself that by the following Monday I would have zero drafted the whole thing, except by the very next day (Tuesday), I didn’t zero draft section two and instead edited section one. This wasn’t a huge disaster but I realised if I kept editing the previous days work I wasn’t going to get those intial, raw ideas worked out from beginning to end. So, I forced myself to handwrite each section (usually taking 2-3 pomodoro sessions), type in exactly what I had written and close the laptop. I only worked on it for 2-3 hours a day but by the end of the week I had a full zero draft. By the time I was working on the first draft, I felt much more positive and I was happy to add or subtract while editing knowing how it all came out in the wash. The second draft only took a couple of days reading everything and fixing errors as I went. It took me just over three weeks to go from blank to complete and while this might not be the same for every project, it was a much more positive writing experience overall.

My top tips for zero drafting are:

Do not be tempted to edit, not even spelling or grammar, just keep going.

I did keep a note of references such as title and page number in the footnotes. Obviously, these were put into the correct referencing style later but it was so much easier to keep track of everything.

If you can handwrite first, this may help with flow and avoiding too much editing. I did stop and start at times, but if an idea just wasn’t forming, I moved onto the next without scrubbing out the previous. All of the ideas were typed in, even if one trailed off. By the time I was editing, I was either able to fill in the messy idea and connect up the sections or delete it if it wasn’t working.

Once again… Where have I been?

The last few blog posts were many months ago and I realised I jumped from regularly posting about Wendy Belcher’s Write Your Journal Article in Twelve Weeks to a brief post about my adventures in Australia. I really wanted to post more, but instead I spent the summer actually writing. And I worked, and I worked and when I felt like I had had enough, I worked some more. In fact, by mid August I was feeling pretty burnt out and pessimistic about the whole academic thing. Seem strange? Why would I feel down and out after working so hard? Well, there are a few reasons and it is only after taking a step back (and following some much needed advice).

1. There were pieces I wanted to write, pieces I had to write and pieces that I probably should have written but didn’t…

Unfortunately, I am one of those easily distracted workers… Not in the sense that I get easily distracted from a task. I will work until I see a project through to completion, but I am interested in so many things (and I have worked on so many different projects) I now have a very diverse skill set. I tend to get asked to do more and I like being able to say yes and see that project through efficiently. The only problem is I say yes to more than I should, the projects don’t align, which means there is no logical, progressive pattern and while it may give me the satisfaction of finishing something, it’s not giving me the long-term momentum I need to establish myself as an expert in one particular field. Cathy Mazak describes this as building an academic brand and to my surprise, my line manager asked me this very question in my annual progress review. What is my brand? What do I want to be known for?

To be perfectly honest, I have lived for so long, desperately building a diverse skill set in the hopes of securing a permanent academic post, I never thought about what came next. Even after I got the permanent job, my mindset never changed. I have spent the last two years living as if I still need to prove myself to everyone, rather than decided who I want to be. That is a subject for a different post, but it explains why I worked so hard throughout the summer, but didn’t feel like I have benefitted much from it.

In my past posts I have often talked about following Cathy Mazak’s academic writing programmes, and she had recommended setting up a Trello to help see projects through from idea to completion. I started my Trello board at the start of the year and it has been really useful to see how much I am actually completing. It is more than I thought, which is great, but once my line manager pointed out my lack of a brand, I was able to go back to the board and see just how much my work varies from project to project.

I have a long list of ideas on all different subjects. Similarly, my completed pieces of work are also diverse. A range of funding applications – all different subjects, blog posts, conference papers also on a diverse range subjects, and pieces I have been asked to write, again mostly different subjects. All of these pieces of work have one thing in common – external deadlines. They need to be done because someone else depended on me to do it. There are only two pieces I have written of my own volition and this was partly because I got in touch with editors and had deadlines in place. In effect, these pieces became work I needed to do for someone else rather than work I should do for me. In these two cases, the end result was mutually beneficial but that won’t necessarily work for every future project.

So the real question is: can I work without an official deadline? The answer is yet to be determined…

That brings me to the next reason why I felt done…

2. I worked solidly every day, rarely took breaks and barely had contact with anyone other than my husband and my virtual writing group.

My virtual writing group are a wonderful bunch of academics. They provide support and encouragement and while I checked in with them and worked alongside them doing pomodoro sessions, and longer co-writing sessions, it isn’t quite the same as engaging with live people. On the other hand, it takes me a long time to get into the writing flow. A a result, I was reluctant to schedule anything other than writing days to ensure I got through all my projects. It worked, but at the cost of my physical and mental health. I stayed in and wrote all day, every day and such seditary behaviour caused me to put on a few pounds (which I hate and I am now working hard to correct). Mentally, I was frustrated, angry and emotional. I lacked confidence in my work and replayed past blows on my mind. I still feel uncomfortable when I receive praise and internally question I the person giving the praise is just being polite. Imposter syndrome is a hard condition to cure. I have experimented with a couple of writing styles to help with flow, so I don’t feel like I need to write all day, every day to finish writing project. They have helped and I will share that experience in another post as well.

3. I know change is in my future, but I’m terrified to move into the driver’s seat and take control of my own career.

An academic’s life is odd. Years are spent in training, and even after graduation is over and hopefully the student moves into their first post docs or lectureships, it still feels like driving with P plates. (I am going to continue with a driving analogy for while…) How does an ECR know when it is time to go the distance alone? To upgrade from their parents’ hand-me-down car –you know, that car that’s safe and reliable but fully expected to get a few dings– to a BMW or a Mercedes. It’s risky to do it too soon and maybe some never want to make that kind of investment, but if you are that person, if I am that person that does want the upgrade, when is the time?

Well, if I understand my line manager correctly, now might not be time to buy the Merc, but it is time to start saving and by saving I mean mapping my own path. It’s time to soul search and figure out exactly what I want and then to have the courage to go for it.

I didn’t come to these conclusions right away, in fact, it has taken me a good few weeks to get to where I am and I still have a long way to go in terms of work-life balance and understanding who I am as an academic, but at least it’s a start.

Productivity without hard deadlines

I like to think of myself as a productive person and I am aware that this is probably the impression I give as well. The reality is I find it extremely difficult to get anything done without a hard deadline. As a student, I was trained to work to a hard deadline and this has continued in my CPD studies. In my work, I am often asked to carry out tasks to a deadline. ‘No problem!’ is always my response and I get a thrill out of completely the task early. But, most of those really important areas of an academics life: open-call funding applications, writing and research ideas don’t have a deadline. So what to do…

This isn’t an unusual topic and a quick Google shows many articles from all kinds of professional struggling with self-imposed deadlines or motivation. Spencer Coon discussed his lacked of productivity in University and only found personal motivation once he had a clear goal. A lifehack article points out that ‘agreeing on deadlines with yourself just doesn’t work’ partly because the external pressure to finish isn’t there. Then there are a ton of self-help books that provide similar advice, including How to Get Sh*t Done: Why Women Need to Stop Doing Everything So They Can Achieve Anything by Erin Falconer which was released in 2018. Reading through this advice certainly clarified that this is not an unusual problem, and while I have taken on the advice including breaking large tasks into smaller ones so I feel more productive, setting a clear goal and finding my ‘why’ I still cannot deny that I am more attracted to tasks with hard deadlines than those without.

I should also point out that many of these articles address the ‘last minute person’. That person who needs to wait till the last minute before they get going. That person who is a thrill seeking, thriving on the threat on none completion. I am not that person. If a set deadline is coming up, I will plan weeks in advance to make sure everything is complete just before the deadline. I thrive on organisation and I hate feeling rushed. I am quite literally stuck between a rock and hard place. I like deadlines so I can organise. This is want makes me feel accomplished. Without a deadline, I have nothing to organise, even if I know writing an article or writing an open-call funding application is important. So instead of doing those things, I simply move onto a task that makes me feel a sense of achievement.

But I also feel a little confused when it comes to ‘self-care’. Here is an example. I emailed a journal over the Christmas break and received a hard deadline for an article. I had already been working on the article and had a clear idea of its argument and direction, but the deadline helped to move it from ‘tinkering’ to ‘complete’. I worked solidly on it throughout my Christmas break, and weekends throughout January. By the time it was submitted, I was exhausted. I believed I had earned my time off and I have spent most of my weekends in February doing nothing… And now I feel guilty and I also feel guilty for feeling guilty. I read and hear from other academics that self-care is important. Taking time off is important. Not feeling guilty is important. But then I look at my plans and to do lists and just feel deflated. I know I have to get this stuff done, but I don’t want to do it in the work week when I am distracted. And I am less motivated to do it at the weekend because I feel like I should have time off… Unless there is a hard deadline. Then I am all about powering through.

So, what’s a girl to do…

I have no pieces of advice here though I would welcome plenty!