Episode #291

[Mid-Career Series] Why You’re Still Exhausted After Getting Tenure (And What To Do About It) (Re-Release EP 96)

Many post-tenure professors find themselves more exhausted than ever, despite achieving what they thought would finally bring balance. In this segment of the Mid-Career Podcast Series, I unpack why you’re still so dang tired and what you can do to reclaim your energy, focus, and purpose in your academic career.

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I’ll dive into what exhaustion really looks like for scholars who’ve spent years pushing toward tenure, only to find that the same habits and overbooked schedules have followed them into the next chapter of their careers. From managing others’ fires to working without time for real thinking and writing, we’ll talk about the deep structural and emotional reasons behind mid-career fatigue, and how to change them.

If you’ve been running on empty, constantly giving your time to everyone else’s priorities, this conversation is your permission slip to slow down, reevaluate, and rebuild your career from a place of power and purpose.

Listen now to learn why exhaustion isn’t a personal failing. It’s a sign it’s time to take control and create the career you really want.

Why You’re Still Exhausted (Even After Tenure)

Earning tenure was supposed to fix your exhaustion and overwhelm, marking a milestone in your career where you finally feel stable and in control. But for many mid-career academics, that sense of relief never comes.

I discuss how years of pushing toward degrees, jobs, and promotions condition you to keep saying yes, to every request, every committee, every fire that isn’t yours to put out. Without boundaries, your schedule fills with urgent tasks, leaving no space for the deep thinking and creative work your career was meant to center on. The result? You’re left overbooked, under-inspired, and unsure how to slow down.

I share how to:

Recognize the hidden causes of post-tenure exhaustion.
Understand why your circumstances changed—but you haven’t (yet).
Reconnect to what truly fuels your scholarly impact and creativity.

Building a Legacy Career

You can rebuild a career that is energizing instead of depleting. I share how to reclaim your schedule, reestablish boundaries, and reignite your motivation by focusing on what truly matters.

Sign up for my newsletter to get ongoing strategies, success stories, and guidance for creating your legacy career.

“You are exhausted because you are trying to do that impactful thinking and writing and knowledge making work while your schedule is completely overbooked, while you’re putting out other people’s fires. So of course you’re exhausted. That is totally understandable.”

“If you don’t feel like a big goal is possible for you, I am here to tell you that it is. That is the thing that is going to get you to have a career that you love, a legacy-building career. Instead of a career that you are scrapping by or that cat with the fingernails holding on. That’s not what we want. You are too smart for that.”

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.