280: Increasing Your Capacity For Writing And Publishing
Jul 29, 2025
Discover how to expand your writing and publishing capacity without burning out. The discussion highlights the transformative power of capacity building through personal anecdotes of balancing parenting and a farm business. Learn to challenge the myth that you need to wait for the perfect moment to grow your career. Shift your mindset to embrace growth now, and explore practical strategies to achieve your goals. Get inspired to take the leap and push forward with your creative pursuits!
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insights INSIGHT
Capacity Can Be Expanded
Capacity is a container you can actively expand rather than a fixed limit.
Building capacity allows more output without increasing stress or working hours.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Parenting Expands Capacity
Cathy Mazak shares how having children expanded her capacity to manage time and energy.
Each child required adjusting and growing her ability to juggle responsibilities and love.
question_answer ANECDOTE
Farming Expanded Practical Capacity
Cathy intentionally built capacity managing a large farm business while balancing family and academia.
She streamlined payroll from hours of stress to 20 minutes of calm work weekly.
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Do you want to take on new projects or tackle more writing and publications but feel like the number one thing holding you back is time?
What if I told you capacity isn’t fixed, you can build it?
Today, I’m sharing what capacity building means and how intentionally growing your capacity can help you do more of the work that matters without burning out.
In this episode, I share my own experiences juggling personal and professional responsibilities. I share vivid, real-life examples of how my capacity expanded over time, from parenting multiple children to managing a large farm business alongside my academic coaching career.
I’ll also address common fears about timing big career moves, especially the myth that you have to wait until you have more capacity before committing to growth.
If you’ve been hesitating to push forward with your writing or career goals because you feel maxed out, this episode is for you. Listen in to shift your mindset around capacity, learn practical ways to grow it, and get inspired to take action now because waiting for the “perfect” time only holds you back.
We're receiving applications for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and start your application process here.
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:
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. Apply 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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