Creating Career Impact Through Writing

In today’s episode, I’m unlocking the secrets to creating a powerful career impact through writing. Discover the key to securing grants, unlocking mobility, and creating real impact in your field. It’s time to say goodbye to the fallacy of ‘more is better’ and embrace a curated approach that amplifies your message. Learn how aligning your publication pipeline with your academic mission statement leads to more impact and career fulfillment. 

Are you ready to create the most impactful career possible? Tune in and see how writing and publications can make your ambitions a reality.

3 Reasons Writing Impacts Your Career

Reason #1: A Clogged Pipeline Silences You. A consequence of being overworked is a clogged pipeline or backlog of articles. When you are not publishing, your outward impact is stifled. Who the world sees you as does not match who you are as a scholar.

Reason #2: Leverage Publications Into Grants. Getting publications out shows granting agencies that you are doing the work and are using funding to develop high-impact peer-reviewed publications.

Reason #3: Position Mobility. Publications are marks of achievement in the academic world. Regardless of the type of institution you want to move to, having significant publications on your CV will increase your mobility.

Why Aren’t You Creating Impact Right Now?

Early academics and tenure track faculty have a false truth that more is more. However, spending your time and energy on projects that do not align with who you are as a scholar is detrimental to your overall impact. The culture of overwork in academia serves as an obstacle to career growth.

• You are trying to publish for quantity, not impact.
• You believe in the sunk cost fallacy and don’t want to cut things from your pipeline because you have already spent time or energy on them.
• You are afraid to put your flag in the sand, stand up, and say, “This is who I am!”

When these three things are true, you end up with publications that send a diluted message to the world about who you are and who you are about. It makes it harder to use your publications to create a clear career impact.

Curation Equals Impact

Curation of publications means you are not going for quantity; you are going for impact. So, how do you curate?

In Navigate, you will get crystal clear on who you are and who you want to be as a creator of impact in your field by writing an academic mission statement. Your academic mission guides you in making decisions about what to publish. Once you get clear on your academic mission statement, your time and energy are spent on publications that align with your message, and you become more relevant. 

“There are many, many ways to create career impact and peer reviewed publications is just one of those ways. Peer reviewed publications help align your outward impact with the impact you know that your work can have on your field if only more people know about it, or if only there was some kind of citable publication with your name on it.”

“Curation equals impact. The more curated your pipeline is, the more curated your time is, the more impact your publications will have on your career. So if what you’re trying to do is use your peer reviewed publications to make your career better, and have impact on your career, then having a curated pipeline where you have selected what goes in instead of just publishing everything is key.”

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:

• • 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!
• •  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!
• • Want to train with us for free on your campus? Now you can when you recommend our Scholar’s Voice Faculty Retreats to a decision-maker on your campus! Download the brochure with the retreat curriculum and both in-person and online retreat options here.

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