Choosing Your Next Season

Too often, scholars fall into the trap of trying to do everything at once—writing, grant-getting, mentoring, teaching, program-building—on full blast. But sustainable success comes from focused seasons, not constant hustle.

In this episode, I introduce the concept of “academic seasonality” and walk you through how to select your next season with purpose. Whether you’re heading into a writing-intensive fall, supporting graduate students, or bracing for a new admin role, this mindset shift will help you take control of your academic path without burning out.

If you’re ready to move into your next academic season with clarity and intention, this episode is for you. Tune in now to reframe how you approach your year and discover a more sustainable way to thrive in your academic career.

What Is Seasonality—and Why It Matters

Seasonality is a powerful framework for navigating your academic career with purpose rather than pressure. Rather than trying to keep every aspect of your work at full throttle, seasonality invites you to shift your focus intentionally. I explain how thinking in seasons helps you prioritize your energy, reduce burnout, and gain momentum where it matters most. You’ll learn why academia’s cultural push to “do it all” is unsustainable and how aligning your goals with the natural rhythms of your year can create clarity, control, and career satisfaction.

How to Choose the Right Season for You

Deciding what your next season should be isn’t about guessing—it’s about assessing. I guide you through how to think strategically about what’s coming up in your academic life: Are you nearing a tenure or promotion milestone? Do you have students who are nearing graduation? Are you anticipating new administrative responsibilities? With these factors in mind, I’ll show you how to identify your best area of focus for the coming months and how to commit to that focus with intention. Choosing your next season is about claiming agency over your time instead of reacting to every demand.

Make This Academic Year Work for You

Your academic year doesn’t have to be a chaotic blend of due dates, pressure, and scattered goals. Instead, it can be a focused season that supports your long-term vision. Whether you’re heading into a writing-heavy year, preparing for a job transition, or balancing new roles, this episode helps you plan intentionally and without guilt. I share examples of how others have structured their seasons and offer mindset shifts that support a more sustainable approach to success. If you’ve been stuck in reactive mode, seasonality provides a roadmap to bring purpose and ease back into your academic planning.

“The idea of seasonality is that there’s this underlying pull in academia for you to do everything at once. For you to be writing grants. For you to be publishing papers. For you to be teaching awesome lessons, maybe developing programs. For you to be administering a program or being an administrator at your university. To advise students. to build a lab, to do all kinds of things. There’s this cultural pull inside of academia to do all of those things at once.”

“You need to look at a bigger perspective, like a longer perspective, and think about all the things that are happening in your career. What’s coming up in the next 2,3,4,5 and years? Then decide what your next season is going to be. If you think your next season is a writing season, then it is a great time for you to do my upcoming Navigate program.”

We’ve opened the waitlist for our next cohort of Navigate: Your Writing Roadmap®. Check out the program details and get on the waitlist here.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION:

1. 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. Get on the waitlist here!
2. 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!
3. 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.

CONNECT WITH ME: 

• LinkedIn
• Facebook
• YouTube