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!