Academic Writing Amplified

Learn six strategies to build writing momentum and overcome guilt and overwhelm. Discover the importance of small, consistent writing sessions and creating cycles of positivity around your writing. Find out how to use 'Tiger Time' for peak productivity and set achievable goals for successful writing practice.

Challenging the traditional academic path, this podcast talks about embracing diverse journeys in academia. It highlights the importance of defining success on your own terms and discusses programs like Elevate and Amplify for supporting academic women in their careers.

Discover why the host of the podcast avoids words like 'bootcamp' and 'balance' when talking about writing. Learn about the importance of reframing writing practices and promoting a positive environment. Explore alternatives that focus on intentionality, gentleness, and community support for academic success.

Explore the benefits of New Year's resolutions for academic writers, focusing on forming habits for a better life. Learn about incremental upgrades in writing habits, theming your academic year for focus and productivity, and practical tips for improving writing routines.

Need a gift for the academic woman in your life, or ideas for what to put on your own wish list?  In this episode of The Academic Woman Amplified, I’m sharing 5 of the books you should gift yourself or someone else to make this the best year yet for your professional life.    The Slow Professor: Challenging the Culture of Speed in the Academy by Maggie Berg and Barbara K. Seeber   The authors of The Slow Professor explain how academia is wrapped up in ‘fast capitalism’ and what that means. They point out patterns that show why we are being asked to do more and more with less and less time and how it leads to overwork and overwhelm. They give us ways to push back against these ideas and expectations, and point out the universal nature of these issues.  I especially love the introduction and first chapter, so if you read nothing else (although it’s a short read, you can do it!), be sure to read those.   Click here for a copy of The Slow Professor. Finish: Give Yourself the Gift of Done by Jon Acuff   The big idea in this book is that we go about goal-setting in the wrong way, and therefore start a lot of things we have trouble finishing. The author talks about how to change this pattern, and finish the projects that are important to us. It’s funny, accessible, and full of practical wisdom. He gives concrete ideas for creating processes to set yourself up for success. Two of the methods are cutting our goals in half, and giving ourselves double the time to do them (sound familiar? He talks about a lot of the same things I do!). It’s not your average productivity book. It’s engaging and fun, and it’s a whole new way to view goals and goal-setting.   Get a copy of Finish here. Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead by Tara Mohr   This is an excellent book for women in academia, and any woman who is trying to make an impact and have her voice heard. The author connects feminist history and conditioning to our current experiences as women creators and leaders. She shows us why we may have fear around “playing big”, explains the different types of fear, and ideas for how to deal with our inner critics.  She also makes an argument for why we should disconnect from both criticism and praise as we present our work and ideas to the world. (Hint: they both tell more about the person giving the feedback then they do about your work.)   Get a copy of Playing Big here.   Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World by Cal Newport   The author explains the difference between “deep work” and “shallow work” and why it’s important to stay in deep work as much as possible. Deep work as an academic would be writing and other creative, idea rich work. Shallow work is things like email, scheduling, and other maintenance tasks. Newport talks about the importance of boundary setting, and how to protect your deep work time. He also gives advice for how to accomplish more deep work.    “When we get lost in the shallows...our energy is not going to the most useful place.”    Get a copy of Deep Work here.   The Positioning and Making of Female Professors: Pushing Career Advancement Open (Palgrave Studies in Gender and Education) edited by Rowena Murray and Denise Mifsud   This book is a collection of chapters written by women in academia, including yours truly! The journeys and theories of success in academia are told in narrative form by each woman.  My chapter is “Baby’s Taught Me How to do Academia: Crafting a Career in an Institution That Was Not Built for Mothers”. I tell the story of my career through the births of each of my 3 children, framed through a feminist and motherhood lens.  Get a copy of The Positioning and Making of Female Professors: Pushing Career Advancement Open here. This episode marks the end of my first podcasting “semester” of 15 episodes to match the 15 week semester model. I will be back after a break with a spring semester of 15 more episodes, and a summer session after that.    I wish you a Happy New Year filled with growth and purpose. If you are making writing and professional development a priority in the coming year, be sure to check out https://www.cathymazak.com/ for all kind of resources and programs for pre-tenure and tenured academic women. Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode15.

The culture in academia sets us up to see breaks as a time to catch up or get ahead. But should you spend break time writing? My answer as a writing coach might surprise you. As the semester reaches a crescendo, tasks pile up and it seems like there’s just not enough time to do it all. It gets very tempting to push things into break time. After all, you don’t have teaching tasks during break, so that’s the perfect time to finish those annoying tasks, right? Wrong. Break time should be just that, a break!    My First Suggestion for Break Take a break! Seriously, if there is any way at all that you can do it, I urge you to completely disconnect from academia over your break. You need that restorative pause in order to come back with a fresh, energized brain that is ready to think creatively. So if you can, take your whole break off. If you feel like you just have to get something done, consider following my 3 week framework. “Disconnecting from your work is vital to not burning out.” My 3 Week Framework for Break If you feel like you have to get something done over break, don’t make it those undesirable, annoying tasks that you didn’t want to deal with during the semester. Follow this plan and come back rested and with something accomplished that moves the needle for you.   Week 1: Completely disconnect from work. Do not go in to the office, do not check email, do not read that latest article on your project. Set an auto-responder on your phone and email and STEP AWAY. Do only those things that make you feel rested and clear your mind.  Weeks 2-3: Do a sprint on one project until it’s done. First, choose a project. Be sure to choose something that you are able to finish, and that is satisfying for you and your career. Second, set up your sprint schedule. Make a list of tasks to do for the project, block off 1-3 hours a day to do them, and keep to your schedule. Check out this blog post for more information on how to do a writing sprint.    Some Final Encouragement If you can, disconnect and choose deliberate rest for the whole break. If you can’t do the whole break, take 3-7 days at an absolute minimum! Be sure to PLAN for rest and put up solid boundaries around this time. Remember, this is good for you and it’s good for your work.    “Taking those rests leads to better work. It’s not taking away time that you could be working, it’s investing in your work to take a break.”   Interested in more community-based ways to improve your writing? Want to go up for tenure with confidence and without overwhelm? Consider applying for my writing accelerator program, Amplify. The program is a small cohort of tenure-track women encouraging and learning from each other, with my support and writing advice. Learn more here. Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode14.

When you’re in a season of overwhelm you might feel like all you’re doing is putting out fires, and nothing is getting accomplished. On this episode I’m sharing how to work through the overwhelm and move the needle forward.  Are you at a point in your semester where overwhelm is taking over? If you are having trouble figuring out where to put your energy, distinguishing between what is important and what is urgent, or you can’t seem to decide what to focus on, you might be struggling with overwhelm. I’ve got some advice and practical ideas for cutting through the distractions and staying on track.   Combating General Overwhelm When you’re feeling like nothing is getting done and you can’t focus, it’s important to set yourself up to make progress where you can. Here are some simple ways to do that.   1.  Do a brain dump. Find a place that is easy to access and write down All The Things. Put everything on this list that is bumping around in your brain and stressing you out. I recommend making the list somewhere that is easily accessible when you need to add to it, like the notes app on your phone or Trello.   2.  Pick 3 things each day to get done. At the end of each day, peruse your master list of to-do’s from the brain dump and pick just 3 things that can reasonably get done the next day. Be sure that you are picking small manageable tasks (grade 5 papers, read an article for review, etc.) and not projects (do all the grading, write an article, etc.).    “Checking 100% of the things off the list is actually not the goal.”   Writing Through the Overwhelm Your writing is often one of the first things to suffer when you are in overwhelm. Getting realistic and paring back is the best way to keep your practice going. Here’s how.   Use your “tiger time”. Tiger time is your best, most focused and energetic time. During seasons of overwhelm it’s vital that you use your best time for writing. In episode 2 I walk you through the process for finding your own tiger time, and why you don’t need to write everyday. Dial back to the basics. Don’t try to write every day! For now, dedicate 1-2 hours per week during your tiger time to writing and no more.    Things to Remember During Seasons of Overwhelm   Plan in advance. Taking just 10 minutes at the end of the day to choose your 3 things for the next day will save you headache and help you focus. Be realistic about what can get done in a period of time. (Check out episode 3 for ideas on how to break writing down into manageable tasks.) Go back to basics. Dial back your writing to a few productive hours, and reign in extra time on teaching and service as well. Be gentle with yourself. Give yourself a break during these seasons, and always!   We are looking for coachable, dedicated, pre-tenure women on the tenure-track who are open to our vision of an academic experience free from guilt and overwhelm to join my Amplify program. If you are interested in support and professional development and would flourish as part of a deeply connected community, click here for more information. Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode13.

So often our (lack of) writing makes us feel guilty and overwhelmed. Why is that? What can you do to change it up by changing the way you think about your writing and how it fits into your academic career?  Guilt is the biggest killer of writing productivity for academic women. In this episode we are learning how to cultivate a positive relationship with writing by fighting back against the guilt. I’m giving you concrete ways to shift your mindset, move writing up on the priority list, and show your writing a little love. Why Do We Feel Guilty? Academic women often share with me a sense of guilt around their writing process. No one wants to do something out of a sense of guilt. The first step to eliminating those negative feelings is to drill down to some of the reasons we feel guilty in the first place. The ‘shoulds’. We as women are often plagued by a long list of ‘shoulds’. We feel like we ‘should’ have gotten more done than we did; we think we ‘should’ be able to manage “all the things”, and we can’t; we know we are “supposed to” write, but don’t really know how and feel like something is wrong with us.   Writing is seen as a high-stakes gatekeeper, not something joyful. Dissertations get you a PhD, article writing is part of the tenure process.. we’ve all heard the phrase “publish or perish”. Pressure builds pretty quickly when we only see writing as something standing between us and our dreams. We don’t feel like we deserve to take the extra time. Take a look at other times in your life where you feel guilty. Going to the gym? Taking time for yourself? As women we often struggle with putting our own priorities at the top of the list.   “You deserve to spend that time invested in your own self-development and your own career development.”   How to Combat Guilt and Align Everything to Your Writing So what can we do to fight back against those feelings of guilt? How can you move writing up the list of your priorities to the spot it deserves without getting burned out? I have some ideas for you. (If you haven’t listened to episode 6 yet, head here for my thoughts on what it means to put writing at the center of your career) Start with an Academic Mission Statement. When you can link your writing back to your fundamental purpose in academia, you will be reminded of why it’s so important, and worthy of your time and energy. Click here to read my post about how to craft your own academic mission statement.  Align other academic responsibilities to your writing. One semester, I was able to combine student participation in classes with research and reading for a grant project I was conducting. The students were given real-world experience and up-to-the minute information, and I was able to use class and prep time to further my writing goals (remember: writing includes all the tasks you need to do in order to produce finished work, including research, preparation, etc.). Writing and research drove my semester; I incorporated it into my teaching instead of feeling like it was getting in the way of my teaching. Love your writing, it will love you back. Feeling good about writing doesn’t happen by accident, as I discussed in Episode 5. But when you make the choice to invest in yourself and your writing by listening to podcasts (like this one!), or finding professional development opportunities, it will pay off. “If you center your writing, everything else falls into place.”   Your Next Step to Combat Writing Guilt If you’re ready to fight the culture of guilt and overwork, grow your writing proficiency, and go up for tenure with confidence, click here to apply for my Amplify: Faculty Writing Accelerator program. We’ll walk you through the application process to see if you are a good fit for our year-long, small cohort program.    Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode12.

Sometimes it feels like writing and teaching are at odds in our academic lives, but they’re not! There are ways to level out your teaching tasks, create more room for all your responsibilities, and give yourself a more comfortable semester experience.  When you are in the throes of the busiest times of your semester, you may feel overwhelmed, like you can’t possibly keep balancing all the different plates you have in the air. You might be behind on grading, swamped with prep, and doing more hand-holding for students who are also feeling the crunch. On episode 10, I talked about how to approach these times in the semester and still keep your writing in your plans. On this episode, I’m talking about teaching; survival tips to manage your teaching right now, and ideas for creating more space in the future.  Creating Breathing Room in Your Teaching Right Now Here are some ways to manage teaching to give you a little space to breath. Remember that tweaking things to make them doable at this stage in the semester is ok and understandable.   Re-evaluate how you are doing assignments and assessments. Drop assignments if possible, change your grading strategy (pass/fail, less feedback, make something in-class instead of take home), look for any way to take some of that grading weight off your plate. Corral your prep. At times like these, it is ok to not be the ‘ultimate expert’, and to just stay two steps ahead of your students. In order to keep your prep time from ballooning out and taking too much time, schedule it up against a firm boundary, like class time. Build more participation into your class time. This is a win-win, because it alleviates the burden of preparing a full out lecture, while letting the students have a chance to really engage with the material and each other.   “A lot of times we feel like we need to be the end-all and be-all experts, and we don’t.” Creating Time Savings in Teaching in Advance When you get ready to start planning your teaching for next semester, or for the next time you’ll be teaching a particular class, remember what this busy time of the semester was like. Reflect in advance on where your focus will be in a given period, and do future-you a favor by implementing some of these ideas:   Corral your prep. This one is important whether you’re in survival or planning mode. Don’t let prep time take more time than it should.  Don’t reinvent the wheel: re-use systems, templates and themes. Plan to re-use templates for assessments and assignments and use long form or response heavy formats only when really necessary. Set up structures that you can re-use between classes and/or from semester to semester.  Get creative about keeping up on readings, for you and your students. Assign readings that you are interested in and want to read for your own work! This is a win-win: you get an added motivator and time-saver, and the students get to stay up on cutting edge information. Also consider having students present on the assigned readings and lead class discussion. Create opportunities for “in-the-moment” assessments. Use apps or digital assessment tools, check off work or participation on the fly, anything that cuts down on the pile of paper you need to bring home.   “You can’t do everything at level ten out of ten all the time.”   My Amplify program is now open for enrollment!  If you’re looking for help and support to organize your academic life while keeping up a productive pipeline of writing and publishing, and providing high quality educational instruction to your students, this could be the place for you. For more information and to apply for Amplify: Faculty Writing Accelerator, click here.   Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode11.

Academic years ebb and flow; some parts of a semester are much busier than others. As your semester ramps up, your writing might need to take a backseat, but make sure you have a plan to bring it back to the center. Semesters have pretty predictable pattern. In a traditional North American semester system of 15 weeks, things start coming to a head around week 10. You may notice any of the following:   You have more than one assignment waiting for grading. You’re officially “backlogged.” There are so many meetings and reports due. You consider pushing the reports until the end of the semester, after grades are in, which means they’ll be late. But something's gotta give. Panicked students are starting to show up at office hours, which means you can’t use that time for other things. Your lesson plans used to be typed out neatly, but now they are jotted on a sticky note on the back of your hand, or stuck to your growing pile of grading. You’ve been making time to write, but now those 1-2 hours once or twice a week during your tiger time are overrun with meetings, grading, students, and exhaustion.    You might think “the writing will need to wait.” As an academic writing coach, I’m actually going to tell you that maybe the writing can wait. We’re going to cover some ways to handle a busy period in your semester, and how to plan for your writing, even if you need to shuffle it to the back of your priorities for a time.    Making a Plan for Busy Times in Your Semester In episode 4, I talked about creating your ideal week. Around week 10 of the semester, your ideal calendar has probably gone out the window. If the semester always feels out of control in weeks 10 to the end, then what can you do before you get the out-of-control feeling to stop it in its tracks? And what happens to your writing when those out-of-control feelings set in?   “I’m all about how your day-to-day life in academia feels.”   Here are some ideas:   1. Plan for the shifts in the semester. Get out your calendar and some markers. Choose a color that represents caution (yellow maybe) and mark the weeks of the semester when things always get rough. You know the weeks that they are. Stop letting them take you by surprise!   2. Manage your expectations for yourself during those weeks. Do not expect the same level of writing productivity during the weeks you marked. If you can hold your writing time sacred without feeling guilty and overwhelmed, do it. But if you can’t, then don’t hold yourself to that unrealistic expectation.   3. Forgive yourself. You are amazing. Even your C- work is humanity’s A work. So lower the bar and give yourself a break. You are allowed to slow down. You are allowed to NOT feel busy and overwhelmed. Just because everyone around you is freaking out doesn’t mean you should be freaking out, too.    4. Define what doing less means to you and do it proudly. Decide what cutting back to the bare essentials means for you, then do it. Longer turnaround time on email? Cutting an assignment? Excusing yourself from a faculty meeting? Take some time and make a plan for pulling back on your regular standard of excellence in all things and just be excellent in the things that really matter right now.   5. Make a plan for your writing. Maybe your writing can wait until the semester calms down. But it would be great if you could keep one toe wet in the writing waters. In order to keep from completely sinking your writing ship, you’ll need to think about the best options at this moment, and make a plan.    Making a Plan for Your Writing Above all we want writing to feel good. A focus on how you feel, how you manage your reactions to stressful situations, and how you maintain a positive relationship with your writing will help you avoid burnout and keep your voice out in the world influencing your field.    Here are some ideas for how to manage your writing during your busiest seasons:    Try to get in just one hour of writing per week, during your tiger time, and preferably on Monday.   If you can’t manage any writing time at all right now, get out your calendar and schedule a writing session  when you will get back in the game. Keep this date with your writing without fail!   Plan a one-day writing retreat for yourself to catch up and put writing back at the forefront.  Put it on the calendar, arrange your family’s schedules, go somewhere else (not your office or your house), and take time beforehand to make a work plan.   “The most important thing about your writing process is to continue to create positive feedback loops between you and writing.”   If you are a pre-tenure woman on the tenure track and are looking for support and encouragement to write and publish more without breaking down or burning out, consider applying for my year-long program, Amplify: Faculty Writing Accelerator. Our goal is to help you achieve a tenure process that feels less like hazing and more like inspiration. Click here to apply.   Connect with me: Website Facebook Group Facebook Page This episode was first published at cathymazak.com/episode10.