Congratulations on getting this far!
At this point in the series you have already done several things that most PhDs skip when they are thinking about career transitions.
- You named the career you are trying to build.
- You audited where your time actually goes.
- You have built a bio
- You’ve defined your lane(s).
- You researched real job titles.
- You benchmarked the skills those roles require.
That is more strategic work than most people do in months of anxious job searching!
Now we address a quieter problem that derails even the best intentions.
Inconsistent action.
The pressures of the academy fuel a cycle that looks like this:
- Burst of energy: You research careers, revise documents, read job postings, maybe even start applications.
- Disruption: The semester intensifies, or life intervenes, or the work simply becomes emotionally heavy. Weeks pass. Nothing moves.
Once again we discover that the issue is not motivation; the issue is structure.
The structure is increasingly untenable workload. So, think about embedding the practice of repeated small actions, not occasional heroic efforts. (This can apply to all your work, by the way, and even perhaps your domestic chores and free time pleasures, not just the career-seeking realm).
So, this week I am challenging you to do another thing that I personally hate, but I know is valuable: a weekly habits sheet.
The purpose of a weekly habits sheet is simple. It makes career work visible and trackable in the middle of everything else you are responsible for.
How to go about it?
First, set aside twenty minutes and open a new document or spreadsheet.
Across the top write the days of the week. Down the side list five to seven actions that directly support your career goals. These should be small enough that you can realistically complete them in a limited window of time, say 15 – 30 minutes. (FIFTEEN MINUTES is fine, by the way. You can change your life in 15 focused minutes a day, for real, which I say more about below.)
Examples might include researching job titles, reviewing job postings, networking with new people or organizations, revising resume language, learning a new tool or platform, or drafting application materials.
The key is that each item represents a concrete action rather than a vague intention. “Work on career stuff” is not trackable. “Send one informational interview request” is.
Your habits sheet is not a productivity competition. It is a visibility tool.
Each day you check off the actions you completed. If nothing gets checked one day, that is information rather than failure. You begin to see patterns. Certain days may consistently work better for career tasks. Others may be consumed by teaching, meetings, or caregiving responsibilities, or for downtime and mental health recharge!
This is why the sheet matters. It replaces vague anxiety with observable data.
By the way, there are pre-made versions of habit-trackers widely available! I quickly found this one on Etsy but there are many others!
The academy teaches you to believe you are making no progress if your steps are small and scattered. You know those colleagues who brag about how they “wrote for 7 hours yesterday” (ugh). But when you track those steps you see something different. Progress accumulates.
You may already know this from your dissertation or other writing projects. You may have never applied it to this kind of more amorphous enterprise though.
This tool works for another reason as well.
Academia trains people to pursue large, ambiguous goals. Finish the dissertation. Publish the article. Write the grant. These projects are important but they stretch across months or years, which makes daily progress difficult to perceive. See Kel’s post on this.
But by contrast, career work benefits from the opposite approach. Small actions repeated regularly create momentum. One networking message each week becomes dozens over the course of a year. One job posting review per week becomes a clear understanding of how the market operates.
And more importantly, small actions create IDENTITY. Ie, “I am a person who…”
A small story. Years ago I used to swim every day. Even when I had young kids, I’d get to the university pool by 7:30 and swim for thirty minutes, shower and get dressed and then start my work day (looking back, I can’t believe I ever had that much energy… but I digress). I was not a good swimmer. My form never improved, despite my efforts. People passed me. One time I was passed by a guy with only one leg. I didn’t care. Or rather, I did vaguely care and was vaguely frustrated that I never seemed to improve. But the frustration was exceeded by my satisfaction that I did swim, that I did keep in shape, that I did do this thing for myself, and that I did feel a million times better every single time I finished.
There were days, though, that I did not get to the pool by 7:30. Some days I could only fit in 20 minutes of swimming. Some days, only 15. But I made myself a rule. If I could fit in 15 minutes of swimming, I’d swim. Why? Because then I could say, “I swam today.” And that was not because I thought the 15 minutes of swimming was meaningful AS EXERCISE. I didn’t really believe it was (although I think later science may be proving it was). I did it because the 15 minutes of swimming allowed me to say, “I swam today.” Ergo, I could still say, “I am a person who swims every day.” And that IDENTITY was important to me. It was giving myself a message of success, rather than failure (ie, ugh, I didn’t swim today). In turn, this maintained my morale, and kept me invested for the next day/week/month.
I did draw a line at 10 minutes, however, because I didn’t see the value of getting soaking wet and having to shower and dress, etc., for only 10 minutes. But that line is arbitrary. Another person might just jump in the damn water and get back out and say, I did it. Actually, now I recall, for years I used to say to myself, the moment I jumped into the water “the hard part is done, the rest is gravy”, and I believed it. Because for me, the hassle of making sure my swim bag was ready, getting to the pool, getting into my suit, etc etc, was honestly harder than swimming however many laps.
By the way, when I found myself considering getting trained to swim better, I instinctively knew that would be a mistake. Because the goal of swimming for me was NOT competition. It was not “performance.” It was just… a gift to myself. To do a thing that was DOABLE by me, as I was, within my crazy schedule. Which allowed me to do it with regularity.
OK, so this story ended up super long. But I wanted to spell it out because in my work with clients, and in this blog post series, I always focus on the mental/emotional work. The positive IDENTITY project. “I am a person who…”
By making your habits sheet, you are crafting this kind of positive identity: “I am a person who…
- is actively executing a career change
- is committed to daily action.
- is prioritizing my own career success…”
Any of those work, or any other version that works for you.
The updated 2026 edition of The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your PhD Into a Job is OUT! Entirely rewritten for our post-covid, MAGA-fied conditions; new chapters on academic harm, leaving academia, and strategies to make academia sustainable. Get yours now!
In fact, why not put that identity at the top of your sheet? And, I’d LOVE if you shared yours in comments below!
In any case, your habits sheet protects your actions from disappearing inside the chaos of academic life.
Keep it simple. A single page is enough. Five to seven actions is enough. The goal is consistency, not perfection.
At the end of each week take two minutes to review the sheet. Which actions happened regularly? Which never happened? If they didn’t happen, why not? Unrealistic? Or just not ideally scheduled?
Adjust the sheet if necessary. Remove actions that were too ambitious. Add ones that reflect what you learned from previous weeks.
What you’re doing is building a system that supports your goals, rather than relying on vague motivations that do ebb and flow with your feelings and energy levels.
Next week we will turn outward. We are going to tackle your LinkedIn profile! Do not fear–it’s not hard. And it’s going to reflect all the competencies you identified earlier in the series. And it’s going to reflect the positive new identity that you are forging through this work.
For now, create the sheet. Track the actions. Let small steps accumulate.
The updated 2026 edition of The Professor Is In: The Essential Guide to Turning Your PhD Into a Job is OUT! Entirely rewritten for our post-covid, MAGA-fied conditions; new chapters on academic harm, leaving academia, and strategies to make academia sustainable. Get yours now!
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