Everyone has a path to expertise, and sometimes it’s helpful to loop back to an earlier time, when I was trying to work out how these book-length things even were possible, long before I accidentally wrote three books in a year. It’s a story involving a typewriter and a very long poem.
Do you have a writing practice? Has it grown or developed since you were last at university? Is it working for you? Is it painful?
So I love a good plan, and a good schedule, and a good daily resumé/done list. I keep track of all my projects on a
Often, we feel we should wait to feel ‘inspired’ to start writing. We want to wait until we feel we are filled up with ideas and certainty and energy to write. And yet, as Boice found in his research, turning up regularly and ‘just writing’, whether or not you felt inspired or had time or were ready, could make someone nine times more productive.
People often think hobbies are for kids, or retired people; for people who have holidays that aren’t really conference travel, or weekends that aren’t spent
Sometimes you have a task that is essential, but will only need to be done once. It can’t be done with your multi-use tools or even some of the more niche tools you have in your writing tool box. Nope. It needs a specialist, with a specialist tool, to intervene once.
Focus is a skill you can learn, and there are some basic steps that can get you started. If you are supervising or advising someone who struggles with focus, you will also find this advice useful.
If you want to listen to an audio version of this post, listen here. So often people talk about ‘boundaries’ like they are unfortunate, negative,
A couple of weeks ago, I actually did that thing on a Monday where you look at all your emails, turn them into to-do items,
You might love your PhD. Or you might have been told you are supposed to love your PhD. And love is weird, and complicated. PhDs are messy and complicated. Let’s talk about feelings.
