• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

The Professor Is In

Guidance for all things PhD: Graduate School, Job Market and Careers

  • Home
  • Immediate Support
    • The Art of the Academic Cover Letter
    • The Art of the Article
    • Unstuck: The Art of Productivity
    • Consultations and More
    • Quick Reviews
    • Webinar Recordings
    • Upcoming Live Webinars
    • Free Productivity Webinars
    • Gift Certificates
  • Individual Help
    • Document Editing
      • Testimonials
    • Interview Prep
      • Interview Testimonials
    • One on One Career Consults
    • University Workshops
    • Graduate School Application Assistance
  • Beyond Tenure Track
    • It’s OK to Quit
    • Moving On Coaching Help
    • Our Moving On Team
    • Testimonials from Post-ac Clients
  • The Blog
  • The Podcast
  • Merch!

Productivity Tuesday: Begin at the Beginning

By Kel Weinhold | July 4, 2017

Welcome to the inaugural Productivity Post and Podcast.

Each Tuesday, I will be posting a short blog post plus and recorded coaching session.

The topic this week? Rebuilding your integrity.

Do you trust yourself to show up? Do you write when you say you will? Are you confident in what you have to say?

Chances are if you are struggling to write, you are struggling to separate what you know about yourself from what other people do and how other people think and how other people operate.

The solution is to start reclaiming a sense of knowing.

That can start with trusting your own work. Trusting that you’re the one who’s been doing the research. Trusting that no matter where you are in your academic career, you’re the only one doing what you do. In other words, trusting that you’re the expert.

At the same time, rebuilding that trust means believing (and acting like) you know what works best for you in terms of writing. You know when you are the most focused. You know what location feels comfortable. No one else can tell you that. Stop taking what other people do as gospel. It’s just one way. What’s your way?

Unfortunately, that knowledge may be buried under so many “shoulds” that you can’t quite figure it out.

Finding your path requires paying attention! In a particular, paying to how you feel about your writing. When does your writing flow. When do you feel like sitting down and writing? When does the thought of it exhaust you? Why? Attend to the background noise (the chatter in your head). Whose voice is it and is it helping or hurting you? Are you willing to challenge it? To rebuild trust that you will protect yourself from messages that harm? These are the places for reflection, the places to discover the voice that has been drowned out.

Be advised, setting out on your own path, can come with a whole bunch of freaking out. (After all you have been training your brain for a very long time that writing is hell.) Take deep breaths and stick to your commitment.

Want to have daily advice and engagement around these issues?

Join the next session of Unstuck!

Similar Posts:

  • Productivity Tuesday: Why Would You Trust a Liar?
  • Productivity Tuesday: False Beliefs (with coaching podcast!)
  • Productivity Tuesday: You are NOT your Sh*tty Skills
  • Productivity Tuesday w/ Coaching Session: The Stories We Tell
  • Productivity Tuesday: Not So Happy Feelings

Filed Under: Productivity

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Kasia says

    July 4, 2017 at 2:21 pm

    Thank you for this post – it came right in the moment when I started having doubts if my Ph.D. thesis makes any sense, and if I can say anything new to the world:)

    Reply
  2. Teeroy says

    July 10, 2017 at 11:23 am

    Rad podcast!!

    Reply
  3. LindaCC says

    August 12, 2019 at 9:13 am

    Best tip I got from listening– decide what my successful writing life will look like ~irrespective of concrete outcomes~. Thank you.

    Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS
  • Twitter

Buy My Book!

4.8 stars on Amazon!

The_Professor_Is_In.indd

AOCLlogoFast, Individualized, Affordable

A 10-module, self-guided course, all-online, available anytime 24/7, that walks you step by step through the planning, info-gathering, writing, and editing of your academic job cover letter.

Read More Here

Recent Posts

  • Ivory Towers in The Rearview Mirror: Kate Krueger
  • The Zoom Teaching Demo: Eight Guideposts
  • #Dispatches – What Will You Do When The Pandemic Is Truly Over?
  • Ivory Towers in The Rearview Mirror: Lindsay Barone
  • You Belong

Categories

  • #MeTooPhD
  • #Resistance
  • Academic Job Search
    • Administrator positions
    • How To Choose and Manage Recommenders
    • How to Interview
    • How To Write Academic Job Cover Letters
    • How To Write CVs
    • Landing Your Tenure Track Job
    • Major Job Market Mistakes
    • Negotiating Offers
  • Adjunct Issues
  • Advising Advice
  • Alt-Ac Job Search
    • Careers Outside
  • Alt-University Critique
  • Black Lives Matter
  • Christian Colleges
  • Coronavirus
  • COVID19
    • Adapting
  • Dispatches
  • Goodbye Ivory Towers
  • Graduate Student Concerns
    • Bad Advisors and Good Mentors
  • How To Do Conferences
  • How to Get Grants and Fellowships
  • International Perspectives
  • Internet and Social Media
  • Intersectional Analyses
  • Makeup
  • Marginalized Voices
  • Mental Illness and Academia
  • Ph.D. Poverty
  • Podcast
  • Post-Ac Free-Lancing and Small Business
  • Postdoc Issues
  • Productivity
    • Book Proposals and Contracts
    • Publishing Issues
    • Writing
  • Promote Yourself!
  • Quitting–An Excellent Option
  • Racism in the Academy
  • Rearview Mirror
  • Resumes & Postac Docs
  • Sexual Harassment in the Academy
  • Shame
  • Stop.Acting.Like.A.Grad.Student
  • Strategizing Your Success in Academia
  • Teaching and Research Statements
  • Teaching Demos
  • Teaching Portfolios
  • Tenure–How To Get It
    • How To Build Your Tenure File
    • Surviving Assistant Professorhood
  • The Campus Visit
  • Unstuck
  • Webinars
  • What Not To Wear
  • Women of Color in Academia
  • Work/Life Balance in Academia
  • Yes, You Can: Women in Academia
  • Your Second and Third Jobs

Footer

About Us

  • Who Is Dr. Karen?
  • Who Is On the TPII Team?
  • In The News
  • Contact Me
  • FAQs
    • Why Trust Me?

Community

  • #MeTooPhD
  • Peer Editing
  • PhD Debt Survey
  • Support Fund

Copyright © 2021 The Professor Is In·