About

This is a blog about productivity for academics.

The new generation of academics in the 21st Century are facing a more competitive, more performance orientated, less secure future in Higher Education. This blog is inspired by resources, books, podcasts, blogs etc. on productivity and creativity. Most of this content is traditionally aimed at managers or entrepreneurs, but I intend to discuss and apply it to the UK academic context.

Whilst the content will probably indirectly target PhD students and ECRs, the philosophy is very much about continuous self improvement whatever stage you are at. The spirit is one of experimentation and I write this blog as a participant myself in this process (you can read a bit more about my story and motivation here). I will be sharing my own trials and tribulations, reviewing some of the techniques that I try out and sharing my own failures and (hopefully) successes along the way.

I am generally interested in the following topics:

  • Managing and organising our time, juggling deadlines and commitments with different time scales and levels of priority.
  • Work life balance (whatever this might be interpreted to mean)
  • How to be creative and innovative in our work, to keep those ideas flowing
  • How to keep going, build/sustain momentum and stretch ourselves to achieve higher goals, maintain high energy to get more done
  • The psychological pressures of academia including rejection, imposter syndrome, emotional labour and self esteem

Experimenting with productivity

There are quite a few other content providers out there offering critical reflection on the practices of higher education institutions and government policy (see Academic Irregularities for example), or about academic writing (such as Write4Research or Explorations of Style), or offering advice and resources to researchers (e.g. The Research Whisperer or Piirus), but there are not so many who focus on the experimentation and journey to finding these best practice solutions. This is a unique angle, which I hope to offer. I’m based in a UK University, working as a Lecturer.

I would like to remain open to discussing university practices, albeit with the intention to focus on the day-to-day practical impact these have on the way I work rather than in assessing the right or wrong of them, but I will be doing this anonymously (to protect both myself and my institution) – this allows me to give you my honest views (good or bad).