How to Write More (Spoiler Alert: It’s Not About Time)

“What’s the biggest obstacle between you and writing more?” -this is the question we often ask our clients.

Here’s what they say:

“Time!”

“Time management and my teaching load at a teaching intensive university”

“Time and motivation”

“Distractions, time, fear of failure”

“Time management and split focus”

“Time, motivation, lack of confidence”

“Juggling teaching and chairperson work”

“Time management”

See the pattern? In this article, I want to really dig deep into why most academics think that time is the biggest obstacle to writing more, and then convince you that actually, time is just one small piece to the prolific publishing puzzle.

The importance of writing in your academic career

Everyone knows that writing and publishing are the backbone of an academic career (whether we like it or not). Publications get you a job and keep you that job. With a strong publication record, you are more mobile, more confident, and a better teacher/researcher. If your writing and publishing is healthy, you feel secure in your career and can fight back imposter syndrome (easier said than done, I know!).

Writing is how we show the world our expertise. But most importantly, writing is how we contribute to our fields and make the world better. We need to write more because there are problems to be solved, new ways to look at the world, and deeply important understandings that need to be heard.

This is not to say that you are not a good academic if your publication record is not what you want it to be. But there is a reason why writing and publishing more is extremely difficult, especially for womxn and nonbinary academics.

You are doing too many things

Let me say that again: you are doing too many things. It feels like academia is pulling you in a thousand directions because academia is pulling you in a thousand directions. Seriously.

You have so many things on your list—many of which fall into the “urgent” category, like giving a lecture tomorrow or grading final exams—that writing keeps falling to the bottom of the list. It’s not that you don’t want to do it, it’s that it never really feels urgent in the way that other things are, so even though it is very important, you just keep not getting to it.

Why you think it’s about time (but it’s really about so much more)

Because of this, it feels like time is your obstacle. If you just had more time, an extra day in the week, say, reserved for writing only, then you would write and it would all be fine.

Actually, that’s not true. If you had an extra day in the week for work, you would still grade and answer emails and go to too many committee meetings. In fact, there are plenty of people who have gone on sabbatical with the sole purpose of writing and have not completed their writing projects (or not as much as they wanted to).

That’s because writing more is not about time.

The key to writing more is putting writing first. It is about centering your whole career around your writing and creating a real, lasting shift in the way that you see yourself and your work that makes writing the foundation of everything else. Once writing is truly set as that foundational block, everything else falls into place.

You are probably thinking, “Yep, sounds good, Cathy, but I can’t possibly do that!” I hear you. The kind of shift I’m talking about is not easily accomplished. It is not just reading this article and ta-daa! it is so. But this shift is learnable. You can take action and make the shift happen.

How to write more if it’s not about time

Here’s what you need to do to write more. Truly, sustainably write more.

1. Get clear on your academic mission. You need to have an articulated academic mission statement that will drive your career. This mission is at its core the change you want to make in the world through your academic work.
2. Align your activities. Use your academic mission statement to say “no” to projects that don’t align with it. All your energy needs to support that mission.
3. Manage your time. Since I already told you that you are doing too many things, it is time to pull back. Yes, I’m talking about strategically quitting stuff. You are doing too many things!
4. Develop your writing system that includes soaring (vs slogging) sessions. To have confidence in your writing, you need a process. You have to establish a predictable system for writing that works for you.
5. Set the “write” goals. Learn the “write” goals method for goal-setting that gains momentum.
6. Master your mindset. You have to believe you are a writer, that you deserve to be published. This is so hard, but you can do it!
7. Propel your projects. Finally figure out how long it actually takes to do things so that you can project plan like an expert.
8. Power up your publication pipeline. Map out a plan for publication and figure out where things tend to get stuck for you on this plan.
9. Map out your year. You should be thinking about your career strategically, so that you are driving it (instead of it driving you!).
10. Create your five-year framework. Envision your next five years and reverse engineer to reach a big goal.

Writing & Publishing More

The fastest way to learn these things is to join our Navigate program!

Check out the Navigate program details and get on the waitlist here! Our 12-week program helps tenure-track womxn and nonbinary professors with a disruptive perspective on their field to publish their backlog of papers so that their voice can have the impact they know is possible.