Moving beyond equating teaching with telling, this post explores how academics can design learning spaces that encourage active thinking. Learn practical strategies for creating environments where students engage deeply with ideas, transforming passive listening into active learning while making your teaching more sustainable and fulfilling.
Academic metrics like the h-index can drive unhealthy behaviours and distance us from our core purpose as scholars. While these traditional academic metrics provide comfortable validation, creating meaningful impact often requires looking beyond citation counts to measure how our work benefits real people outside academia.
Discover how embracing academic productivity through quality over quantity can transform your work life. Instead of constantly expanding workloads, learn to focus on meaningful impact, sustainable practices, and deeper connections. Doing less, but doing it better, can lead to more valuable academic outcomes.
Most academics make the mistake of scheduling work first and trying to fit life around it. Discover why reversing this approach is key to achieving better academic work life balance. Learn how prioritising personal commitments in your schedule can lead to more focused and productive work hours.
Breaking the cycle of using academic breaks to catch up on work? Create a “do not do” list instead of a to-do list. Learn how to maintain academic work-life balance during breaks by setting clear boundaries, avoiding work email, and embracing genuine rest without guilt. Your future self will thank you.
Moving beyond the traditional concept of work-life balance in academia, this post explores how viewing your academic career through the lens of harmony rather than balance can create a more sustainable and fulfilling approach to scholarly life. Learn how different aspects of academic work can complement rather than compete with personal life.
Building academic momentum isn’t about working longer hours or multitasking. It’s about finding your natural rhythm and maintaining steady progress. Learn how to move beyond busy-ness to create sustainable patterns of meaningful academic work through practical steps like protecting creative space and leaving intentional re-entry points.
New research shows how AI tools might transform academic productivity by enabling knowledge workers to focus more on meaningful core work while reducing administrative burden. Like software developers using GitHub Copilot, academics can leverage AI to streamline workflows, work more autonomously, and explore new research directions – particularly benefiting early-career researchers.
Dedicating one day a week to scholarship can transform your academic productivity. Drawing inspiration from Iceland’s successful shorter work week experiment and Google’s 20% time policy, explore how protected time for deep scholarly work can help you produce better outputs without working longer hours.
Strategic scholarly retreats offer academics a chance to step back from daily pressures and focus on career planning. These retreats, whether a full day or a few hours, provide time for reflection on research goals, teaching methods, and professional development. Regular retreats can lead to more impactful research, effective teaching, and a fulfilling academic career.
This post explores the challenges of balancing academic success with personal well-being. Redefining productivity, embracing vulnerability, and prioritising mental health can lead to a more fulfilling academic career. Explore strategies for speaking up and seeking support in the high-pressure world of academia.
Feeling guilty about taking time off work is common in academia. This guilt often stems from organisational culture where everyone is expected to work during leave. To break free from this guilt trap, we need a strong culture that values time off, starting with leadership and permeating the entire organisation.