275: [Leadership Series] Leading Yourself Through A Writing Season
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Jun 24, 2025
Discover the power of self-leadership in academic writing. Learn to align your writing goals with your personal mission and values. Embrace seasonality by designating specific writing periods, allowing you to focus deeply while juggling other responsibilities. Master time management techniques like time blocking to enhance productivity. This discussion emphasizes personal growth through writing, equipping you with tools to lead yourself effectively and become more intentional in your academic career.
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Self-Leadership Beyond Productivity
Self-leadership means making decisions grounded in your mission and values, shaping who you become, not just what you produce.
Embracing self-leadership shifts the focus from mere productivity to personal growth alongside output.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Manage Your Writing Season Intentionally
During a writing season, turn up the volume on writing tasks and scale back on other duties.
Use the metaphor of a soundboard to balance your academic responsibilities intentionally.
volunteer_activism ADVICE
Clarify Mission and Values
Define your mission and values clearly to guide your self-leadership.
Writing mission and value statements can clarify your academic and career goals.
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We’re in the middle of a series on academic leadership, and today, I focus on the foundation: leading yourself.
In this episode, I unpack what self-leadership really means: making decisions grounded in your mission and values that shape who you become, not just what you produce. I’ll explain why embracing seasonality—intentionally focusing on writing during specific periods while scaling back other commitments—is a powerful way to adapt to the challenges many academics face today, like frozen grant programs and shifting research priorities. Finally, I share practical tools and mindset shifts you need to lead yourself through a writing season with clear boundaries, effective time management, and focused energy.
If you’re ready to take control of your writing and academic career by mastering self-leadership, this episode is for you. Tune in to learn how leading yourself is the secret to writing more intentionally and productively.
Our 12-week Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap® program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible. Get on the waitlist here!
Cathy’s book, Making Time to Write: How to Resist the Patriarchy and Take Control of Your Academic Career Through Writing is available in print! Learn how to build your career around your writing practice while shattering the myths of writing every day, accountability, and motivation, doing mindset work that’s going to reshape your writing,and changing academic culture one womxn and nonbinary professor at a time. Get your print copy today or order it for a friend here!
If you would like to hear more from Cathy for free, please subscribe to the weekly newsletter, In the Pipeline, at scholarsvoice.org. It’s a newsletter that she personally writes that goes out once a week with writing and publication tips, strategies, inspiration, book reviews and more.
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