Ep. 97 - Your Guide to Doing 10% Less Next Semester

As another intense year in academia comes to a close, you might be feeling equal parts relieved and completely wiped out. 

In this episode, I’m reflecting on what 2025 looked like in my business and why I intentionally chose to do less—and felt better for it. Then I’ll walk you through a simple, low-pressure reflection that can help you figure out how to do just 10% less next semester without blowing up your career or your conscience. 

This isn’t about quitting your job or radically changing your life overnight. It’s about small, strategic shifts that protect your energy and make your work feel more sustainable. 

If you’re craving a gentler way to start the new year, this episode is for you.

Transcript

YWU Podcast Episode #97

Your Guide for Doing 10% Less in the New Year

Hi writers! Well, we have finally reached the end of 2025!

You don’t need me to tell you what a wild ride it was. 

I must admit, when the Trump administration started its attack on higher education, I really worried that my business was over.

And I know that a lot of other service providers who work with academics and universities felt the same way.

At this point I can see that my business hasn’t been overly affected, for which I am so grateful.

I really enjoy what I do and want to keep doing it. So thank you to the amazing clients who have worked with me for years and for the new ones who continue to come.

Like I did last year, I wanted to give a run-down of what I did in my business in 2025. I hit some big milestones.

Let’s start with this podcast! I released a total of 25 podcast episodes. This year I surpassed 30,000 total downloads, which I’m really proud of.

The top 5 most-listened to episodes of the year were:

1. Ep. 81: How to Plan a Sabbatical That Revitalizes Your Life and Career (with Dr. Bethany Wilinski)
2. Ep. 76: How to Succeed in Academia without Sacrificing Your Well-Being (with Dr. Roxanne Donovan)
3. Ep. 87: How to Scale Back on Teaching (without Guilt!)
4. Ep. 86: Behind the Scenes at a Top University Press (with Editor Alison Kalett)
5. Ep. 80: Design Your Dream Life in Three Simple Steps

It’s interesting that only one of these was actually about writing and publishing! 

Obviously, people are feeling burnt out and trying to figure out how have a more sustainable life and career.

I’d also like to mention that my #1 most-downloaded episode of all time continues to be Episode 45: Leaving Academia, Part 1: Assess Your Situation.

So that’s the podcast update. I’ll be bringing on even more awesome guests in 2026 and appearing on other peoples’ podcasts too.

In terms of workshops, I only gave one this year, which was for the Society for Women in Sociology organization. 

I am still offering them, so check out the Workshops page on my website. I can also design one specifically for the needs of your group.

But as always, private coaching and developmental editing took up the vast majority of my time. I did 219 individual coaching sessions with clients! 

And I passed the big milestone of 1000 private coaching hours since I first started in 2018.

This year I worked with a total of 46 different clients from an extremely wide range of fields.

Since writing takes such a long time, my authors are finally starting to secure contracts and their books are coming out!

Here’s a quick run-down of where my clients ended up getting contracts:

-4 are with University of California Press, and one was just published this past summer

-4 are with Duke University Press, with two of them slotted for publication in 2026

-2 are with Princeton University Press

-2 are with University of Chicago Press

-1 is with Columbia University Press

-1 is with Ohio State Press

-1 is with Routledge

-and 1 was published with University of Washington Press

I am so proud of my authors, who continuously impress me with their ideas, curiosity, and commitment to getting things done.

Now let me talk about lifestyle. I did all of this while working between 25-30 hours per week. 

That is the amount I have landed on that allows me to maintain a healthy, three-dimensional life. 

Last year I did earn about 20% more because I worked non-stop and really burnt out.

So this year I consciously pared things back. I book fewer meetings in a week and spread people out more so that I can stay at a sustainable pace.

And I’m definitely a better coach for it!

Part of what helps is taking time off of work. In 2025, I took off a grand total of six weeks for vacation, during which time I did NO work!

Every year of solopreneurship brings new lessons to me. So many, in fact, that I’m planning to devote an entire episode to them next year.

So what about you? How was your year?

If you’re like most of the academics I know, you were doing (and feeling) way too much. 

Perhaps your students or even family members have been consumed with justifiable worry about profiling and deportation.

You might be an international scholar in the US who’s had to navigate the ever-changing, ever more discriminatory visa landscape.

Maybe you’re at a university that’s cutting ¼ of its faculty and staff members, as many are right now.

Or you could just be exhausted by having to manage the combination of unbelievably high work expectations and high uncertainty in higher education in general. 

What’s clear is that people want to be doing less. Yet more and more just seems to pile on.

Now that things have hopefully calmed down in your schedule and your nervous system, it’s a good time to do some guided reflection for the new year. 

I am going to give you a simple exercise for figuring out how to do just 10% less next semester.

Trust me when I say that doing less in strategic, intentional ways can make a true difference in your quality of life.

You can find the full transcript of this episode at YourWordsUnleashed.com/97.

A Spotlight on Focus Fridays

But before I get to that, I want to tell you about Focus Fridays, which is a great way to get your writing done in the new year.

Many faculty are struggling with writing motivation and momentum. If that's you, this group might really help you reach your goals in a sustainable way.

Focus Fridays is a faculty writing and wellness community led by my friend, Dr. Roxanne Donovan. She’s an incredible clinical psychologist, justice scholar, and professor. 

She was my guest on Episode 76 about succeeding in academia without sacrificing your well-being, which I just mentioned as one of my top-listened-to episodes of the year. 

Focus Fridays is made for overloaded faculty. You simply join co-working sessions on Fridays for 2.5 hours during the semester.

You’ll co-write as well as get psychology-based guidance, tools, and structure that have helped hundreds of mostly women of color faculty make real, sustainable writing progress. Without the burnout.

I personally know several people who have done this group and keep signing up every semester because the accountability, strategies, and social support are so useful.

To learn more and get $200 off the regular Focus Fridays rate, go to wellacademic.com/yourwordsunleashed. But this discount is only good until January 20th, so go check it out right away.

I'll also put the link in the show notes.

An Exercise to Help You Do 10% Less in the New Year

So now Iet’s turn to a really small, gentle reflection exercise to help you do 10% less in the new year.

You might be asking: why only 10%?

Well, every new practice only becomes habit when you build up to it incrementally.

And 10% of anything done consistently—whether it’s about adding something to your schedule or taking it out—makes a huge difference.

Let me connect this to when I first started meditating. I had just moved to Boston in 2013 and was stressed out beyond belief.

I approached meditation with the same perfectionistic vigor that I did everything else at the time. 

I believed that doing it “right” would somehow grant me total peace and calm, and I was getting really frustrated when my stress levels didn’t seem to be coming down.

Then I heard about this guy Dan Harris, who you may also know because he’s really famous.

He was an anchor for ABC News in the early 2000s when he suffered a debilitating panic attack during a live filming of Good Morning America.

That touched off a journey for him to reduce anxiety and be more present and less reactive through meditation. 

And even though he is a super skeptical, cynical person, he found meditation to be surprisingly effective at helping him manage his inner critic.

Anyway, he ended up writing a bestselling book called 10% Happier and hosts a podcast of the same name.

Now, I’m not necessarily his biggest fan, but I do embrace this pragmatic approach to mindfulness.

I’ve also seen first-hand how small shifts can make long-term improvements in your well-being.

Which is why they say that doing five minutes of daily meditation is better than trying to find a whole hour to do it during your week. 

So let’s get into this exercise, which should only take about 15-20 minutes.

If you implement the answers that emerge from this exercise in 2026, my hope is that your work might feel a little more manageable.

It will hopefully help you reconnect with yourself and commit to some very small changes that will add up to a more sustainable career, 10% at a time.

Exercise Instructions: Take an Energy Audit

Alright, this exercise is something I call the “Energy Audit.” It involves tracking your energy in relation to your work tasks and seeing the trends.

You’ll need a pen and at least two sheets of paper.

I want you to pull out your schedule from last semester and take a good, hard look at it. This might be a bit painful, but it’s worth it.

Choose one specific week that was pretty representative of your normal workload. So not midterms or finals week or when a bunch of job candidates came for interviews in your department.

Just one regular week. Think about every single thing you had to do for work, even tasks that were so mundane you didn’t put them on your to-do list.

This includes meetings, teaching, teaching prep, grading, answering emails, writing, research, reviewing papers, doing letters of rec, committee work, etc., etc. 

Take one sheet of paper and write out every single task you accomplished. Marvel at everything you fit into one 7-day period! 

Now, take another piece of paper and draw two straight lines down the middle to create three columns.

At the top of the left-hand column write the word “Draining,” in the middle column write “Neutral,” and on the right-hand column write “Energizing.”

Then, look back at your list of tasks and start sorting them into these three different categories.

On the Draining column, put all the things you did that felt heavy or exhausting to you. 

It doesn’t matter is these were so-called “normal” parts of the job—they just made you feel depleted. 

This could include things like sitting in pointless meetings, dealing with toxic colleagues or departmental politics, answering emails late at night, or saying yes to things you really didn’t want to do.

As a guiding question, you could ask yourself, “what things have I been doing out of fear, habit, obligation or external pressure rather than because I want to?”

And then on the Energizing column, jot down the work tasks you did that made you feel good. 

Pay special attention to things that you find easy and enjoyable to do, and that you can do even more of without feeling stressed or tired or angry or resentful.

Maybe you taught a class where the students really seemed to get it or you did an hour of focused writing that moved a piece forward. 

Maybe you mentored a grad student and helped them figure out next steps in their research.

Perhaps you gave a talk somewhere that was well-received.

The important thing is that this effort gave you energy back—both mentally and physically.

The rest of the tasks that don’t fit into either of these categories can go into your “Neutral” column.

Take a look at all three columns and see if there’s any obvious themes or trends about what depletes you versus what energizes you.

Now it’s time to think about how to apply some of these lessons to new year.

Consider your schedule, workload, and commitments next semester that overlap with the list in front of you.

Choose ONE thing you must regularly do that drains you and ask yourself, “How can I make this 10% easier on myself? What are some ways I can give a little less time and effort? How can I make this activity shorter or less frequent? How do I care less about it?”

Jot down some ideas.

If you’re up for a bigger coaching challenge, choose an activity you would like to take out completely—either permanently or just temporarily.

Think about what it would take for this to happen AND what you would put the time and energy you save to instead.

This is a big challenge for women in particular for two reasons:

1)    You need to give yourself permission to do what you actually want. This is incredibly challenging for helpful, conscientious team players who are prone to guilt when they put themselves first. 

2)    You will probably disappoint and/or create conflict with certain other people by giving yourself permission to do what you want. And that is also typically a very tough thing for helpful, conscientious team players to deal with. 

Conversely, you could choose one energizing thing and ask yourself, “What exactly can I do to protect 10% more space and time for this?” 

Jot down some different, easily implementable ideas.

The point of this exercise isn’t to fix your career in 15 minutes. It’s to help you see patterns that already exist even if you’re not consciously aware of them.

Remember that scaling certain things down incrementally while scaling other things up incrementally can produce really positive shifts.

Summing Everything Up

So let’s sum everything up!

I’ve told you all about my year and given you a simple reflection exercise to make your work a bit more sustainable in 2026.

If this exercise made you feel a little uncomfortable, that’s normal.

Most academics do far more than what’s written in their job descriptions, and they feel guilty any time they try to pull back.

That’s why if you’re looking to improve the quality of your work life, which will increase the quality of your personal life, you need to start with tiny shifts.

And when I say tiny, I really mean it. Something that’s small enough that you don’t feel any panic about it.

Maybe it’s protecting 30 more minutes a week on your calendar for something that really gratifies you.

Maybe it’s not answering emails after 8pm, which seems very fair to me.

Maybe it’s saying, “Let me think about it” to your next request instead of automatically saying yes.

Once you cut down on one draining thing and ramp up another that energizes you, it’s much easier to keep going.

But you don’t have to fix your whole career right now.

Take it one small step at a time.

And remember to check out Focus Fridays if you want more writing and career support with like-minded others. You can receive a reduced rate until January 20th at wellacademic.com/yourwordsunleashed. 

Happy new year, and I’ll talk to you again in 2026!