Creating a Satisfying Academic Career with Jo Van Every
I help academics build their confidence to do the work they find meaningful and find the time to do it.
This podcast includes a whole range of topics: strategies for protecting your time, writing and editing advice, thoughts on careers and the wider context, preventing overwork and burnout, etc.
Pursuing a scholarly career is tough these days. I firmly believe that your academic career has the potential for joy as well as success.
I also believe that you can pursue your scholarly work in whatever situation you find yourself in, even if it's not ideal. You don't have to, but if it's important to you, you don't have to wait for someone else to create the ideal conditions.
For more audio tracks, we started posting over on Soundcloud before beginning this distribution journey. We'll be adding more to the platforms you love as soon as we can!
Enjoy your writing
JoVE
Episodes
281 episodes
You need a writing practice
Of all the responsibilities you juggle as an academic, writing is perhaps the most frustrating. It’s very important to your career and your identify, but it’s also incredibly difficult to find time for, especially during teaching terms. I recom...
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19:23
End of summer writing panic
It is tempting to use the last week before teaching starts again for One Last Push on your writing projects, risking undoing all the resting and recharging you've also been doing over the summer. In this track, I discourage you from doing this ...
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4:39
Hyperfocus and intensive writing styles
Do you prefer to write in longer, intense, sessions? Does some of the advice out there make you feel like you shouldn't? You don't have to become someone you are not. In this track, I talk about how this kind...
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9:45
Being available with limits
One thing making it hard to find and protect time for writing, is being available to students and others. This track helps you set boundaries that serve everyone, including you. Read the post here:
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6:20
Flexibility, autonomy, boundaries
Autonomy and flexibility are high on the list of things that attracted you to academia in the first place. And yet, in order to really have those things you need to be extra good at setting and negotiating boundaries. Re...
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5:34
Letting go of unfinished projects
As you progress through your academic career, you accumulate projects that you didn't get around to finishing. Conference papers you meant to turn into articles. Articles that got stalled and abandoned. That kind of thing. ...
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7:23
Do good work
Is perfectionism making it hard to you to write at all? This is a bit of a pep talk that might help with that. Read the post here: https://jovanevery.co.uk/do-good-work/
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3:09
Sabbatical + book contract = Overwhelm?
A response to a query from someone who had a book contract and a sabbatical to work on it and was feeling overwhelmed and uncertain about how to proceed. Read the post here:
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5:54
Don't aim to finish articles in the summer
Most academics anticipate summer writing. Many find it difficult to keep writing when things get busy again in the autumn. In this track, I propose rethinking your goal for your summer writing in a way that sets you up t...
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4:36
When you stop writing
Have you stopped writing altogether? Would you like to get back to it? In this track I reassure you that it is normal to stop writing sometimes and help you figure out how to ease back into a writing practice. <...
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4:52
Work-life balance in academic careers
Inspired by something I read about the difficulty of work-life balance when your work is aligned with your purpose, I propose that what feels like a struggle with work-life balance might actually about the balance among the various kinds of wor...
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3:10
You don't need accountability
Some thoughts on "accountability" and why it might be counterproductive to doing the kind of creative work that academic research and writing is. My hope is that these thoughts may help you reflect on your own practices to determine...
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4:14
When your work doesn't look like work
Are you letting the public perception of academics as "having the summer off" constrain how you do your research and writing, especially in the summer? Are you also finding it hard to take a real vacation? Let your neigh...
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3:35
Planning Your Summer Writing Time
Summer is an ideal time to write in intensive blocks. In this track, I suggest planning your time as writing retreats and explain what that might look like. Read the retitled post here:
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7:56
Why finding time to write is hard
If you are struggling to find and protect time for your writing, you are not alone. Read the post here: https://jovanevery.co.uk/why-finding-time-for-writing-i...
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4:13
Are you treating your research like a hobby?
In this track I tease out the differences between hobbies and jobs to help you be more confident about making sure to protect time for your research and ensure that your research has the potential to benefit someone other than yourself.
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7:16
Thoughts on accountability, deadlines, and goals
Some thoughts on how and why you might use accountability, deadlines, and goals to motivate you to write. I include excerpts from some responses to these thoughts by Pat Thomson and Rachael Cayley. My goal in publishing this is to h...
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12:07
Stop worrying about recycling
Originally written for Hook & Eye blog (RIP) in response to one Aimeé Morrison's posts, in this track I talk about the ways in which you might present or publish your work for different audiences in ways that overlap and why that isn't nece...
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10:46
Good enough?
It is difficult to determine when an article, book, or other output is actually ready to submit. It is not uncommon for it to feel "not quite finished". In this track, I talk about how that feeling of "not quite finished" is not a reliable guid...
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5:27
Research produces more questions than answers
One of the reasons it's hard to know when a specific piece of writing is good enough to submit for publication is that writing it will have generated new questions. Read the post here:
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4:48
Of Many Minds: An interview with Lee Skallerup Bessette
An interview with Lee Skallerup Bessette about the book Of Many Minds: Neurodiversity and Mental Health Among Faculty and Staff in Higher Education, which she has co-edited with Rebecca Pope Ruark. We discuss the tra...
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1:19:14
Focus isn't just a mind problem - Hannah de Keijzer
A guest post from Hannah de Keijzer, book coach and non-fiction editor, about recruiting your office space and physical habits to help you get into focus more quickly and work more effectively...
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11:55
Optimizing Focus
Over the years I've written a lot about focus and distraction. This track introduces the collection of posts from my blog around this theme, with some new thoughts on the value of identifying the problem *before* you try to implemen...
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11:34
Make Your Manuscript Work: An Interview with Laura Portwood-Stacer
An interview with Laura Portwood-Stacer about her new book, Make Your Manuscript work. In March 2025 I wrote about the difficulty of writing a “shitty first draft” (JoVanEvery.co.uk/perfectionism-vs-impatience/) and concluded...
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1:05:35
