Welcome!

Does any of this sound familiar?

• You feel overwhelmed because you are being pulled in a thousand directions.
• You have this nagging feeling that you should be writing, but you can’t figure out
how to fit it in.
• You have about three articles almost done, two others half drafted, and three new
projects percolating in the back of your mind. But nothing under review.
• When you finally do sit down with time to write, you’re not sure where to start.
• Tenure is looming, tenure is looming, tenure is looming….

We learn a lot of things in graduate school, but time management isn’t one of them.
Though our PhD programs prepare us to be outstanding researchers, and maybe even
great teachers, we rarely get instruction about how to balance research, teaching, and
service. And forget about learning how to integrate our job as academics with our home
and family life.

I’ve been thinking about this question for a long time, and I finally came up with this idea
of a writing roadmap as a way to talk about this dilemma that we find ourselves in as
professors: we need to write more, but how?

There is no one “trick” or “hack” to finding time to write. And truth be told, it is not only
about time. There are plenty of people who have gone on sabbatical and, suddenly
faced with huge spans of time just for writing, still have not completed their projects.
That’s because it’s not actually about time, but more about a whole series of other
behaviors and decisions that add up to more writing. Enter the writing roadmap.

A writing roadmap is basically a heuristic to guide you through adopting the necessary
behaviors and making the appropriate decisions that will lead to you writing (and
publishing) more. Think of it as a series of adjustments or alignments that, put together,
will lead to more publication.

1
 Here’s the high-level Writing Roadmap:

1. Map your mission

2. Align your activities
3. Manage your time
4. Develop your writing system
5. Manage your mindset
6. Set up your publication pipeline
7. Map out your year

There’s a lot here to unpack. I'm super excited to get started, but first I want you to know
exactly what to expect. This ebook takes you through seven lessons that correspond to
the seven stops along the Writing Roadmap. The lessons will include exercises and
action items. It will take a between 5 and 30 minutes to complete each lesson. If you
dedicate the time to do the exercises, you’ll see tangible results from participating in this
mini course.

Lesson 1: Map your mission

Writing an Academic Mission Statement is the first step to finding focus and taking
control of your career. If you feel like you are constantly putting out fires, that you
are reacting instead of acting when opportunities (and problems) come your way, then
you need an Academic Mission Statement.

But if you write this statement and then just keep sailing along, the helpfulness of this
exercise will wear off. So let’s really talk about how to use the mission statement.

1. Focus your intention: I’m not trying to sound all “woo” here but how we think about
our careers and the day-to-day activities that make up our careers matters. So once you

2
have your mission statement, put it in your workspace and read it first thing in the
morning before you get to work. Commit to doing this every day for two weeks. This
exercise will focus your intention and set you on a clear path for the day.

2. Use your statement to make decisions: Your mission statement is like a litmus test
for the many decisions you need to make about your time. Your mission should remind
you that you have big, important work to do. When opportunities (however awesome
they may be) come up that won’t have a direct impact on advancing your mission, you
should say no. The same goes for obligations.

3. Your mission should drive your writing roadmap: I don’t want you only to use
your mission statement to react to calls for your time. I also want you to use it to drive
your career forward. Part of writing more is having a vision that looks out several years
(we’ll talk more about this in the lesson about establishing a publishing pipeline). You
need research on the back end feeding your pipeline. At least once per semester you
need to dedicate time to strategic planning (ok that sounded really corporate for a sec).
Guided by your mission statement, look for grant opportunities and plan projects (such
as organizing conference panels) that help you enact your mission.

You may feel that having a mission statement makes you inflexible or “stuck” on one
path, and less able to react to new opportunities (hello there my free spirits!). Your
Academic Mission Statement is not etched in stone, but rather should evolve as you
evolve professionally. For this reason, you should re-visit your mission statement at the
beginning of every semester and once in the summer. Do a gut-check to see if the
mission is still you or if you need to revise and add a new twist or angle.

OK, here’s your mission statement template and an example:

Template:

I use [methodologies/theoretical frames] to study [population] [phenomenon] [context] in

order to [change you want to see in the world].

3
Example:

I use ethnographic methods to study translanguaging in Puerto Rican university

classrooms in order to normalize bilingual content learning and inform theories of
bilingualism.

Your action items:

1. Write your mission statement, print it out, and hang it in your workspace. Read it
every morning before you start working, every day for two weeks.

2. Get out your calendar and schedule 10-20 minutes at the beginning of the semester
and once in summer to re-evaluate your mission statement.

Please post your Academic Mission Statement in the I Should Be Writing! Facebook
group to inspire others and make connections!

Lesson 2: Align your activities

In the previous lesson you wrote your Academic Mission Statement, and in this lesson
you're going to start to put it to use.

Today’s lesson is about aligning your activities. Part of being an academic is doing
many different types of activities. We traditionally group these into the three bins of
research, teaching, and service, but within these categories there is so much more
going on. Not only that, but activities overlap the categories. It’s hard to keep track of it
all, and even harder to do it all.

One of the reasons that you feel pulled in 1,000 directions is that you are pulled in 1,000
directions. Reducing the number of things that you’re doing is one way to alleviate this
feeling. But many of us feel guilt about quitting things. So today we’re going to re-frame

4
“quitting” in order to alleviate this feeling. We’re not quitting, we’re aligning your
activities.

Your goal is to make all of your activities support your academic mission statement. I
know that this is difficult, so let’s talk about a systematic way to do it.

1. Identify the outliers. Get out a piece of paper and a pen. Read your academic
mission statement. Now make a list of 5 things that you are currently doing that do not
support your mission. These can be courses you give, people you supervise,
committees you’re on, grants you’re co-PI on, articles on your “to-write” list—whatever.
Write them down.

2. Analyze. Now you’re going to give each item a “quitable” score on a scale of 1-3, 1 =
totally quitable and 3=will be difficult for me to quit. For example, an unwritten article on
your to-do list is quitable. It is in your control to do it or not; right now it is just an idea
(even if this idea is based on collected data).

As you score your list, you’re going to need to realistically check any reaction that
sounds like, “I couldn’t possibly not do that!” Continuing with the example of an article
that is not written but is based on data you already collected, you may think that
you must write that article because you already put hours of work into collecting the
data. I’m asking you to re-analyze this thought pattern. Think about all the hours that
you will need to put into the article in order to get to submission, then all the time in
revision. All of this precious time would be invested in writing something that does not
support your mission.

Instead, consider if you really have to be the one to write that article. For example, could
a graduate student do it? This would be good for the graduate student, and could get
you a co-authored publication with much less work than writing the article by yourself.
Take a step back and really think about it.

3. Align. Now it’s time to make a plan to quit the quitable things on your list and align
everything else. We can’t always just write an email and quit something. If you’re on a
committee that you want off of, let your term expire or set a date in your calendar to
write a letter and resign from the committee. Put the letter writing on your calendar and
commit to doing it.

5
For the things on the list that you can’t quit, think about how you might be able to align
the activities with your mission. For example, if you’re giving first year student courses,
could you incorporate undergraduate research experiences in your area of expertise?
Could the readings in the course be related to your mission? Get creative.

Your action item: Do this exercise! ;)

Lesson 3: Manage your time

Being super-awesome sometimes means that students are attracted to us. This is
wonderful, but can also be very time consuming. In this lesson, you’ll learn how to set
up a system that will ensure that you give high-quality time to the students and
situations that need it most.

We teach students how to treat us by setting healthy boundaries. By doing this we do

not only guard our own precious time, but we also help students to learn appropriate
professional communication habits. I suggest creating a sort of “funnel” through which
students must pass to get to one-on-one time with you. Again, this is not to be stand-
offish or cruel. This is to be sure that you aren’t wasting your time (and the students’
time). Not wasting time will mean that you have more time and energy to give to
students who really need your personalized advising.

The first level of the “funnel” is email. If students email you to ask for an appointment,
first ask them what they want to discuss. If they need a question answered that they
could find the answer to themselves, empower them to do so by emailing them
something like: “That’s a great question. Why don’t you call the registrar’s office and
ask, then let me know the answer?”

This puts the ball back in their court and teaches them (1) you don’t answer this type of
question and (2) they should try to answer they own questions first. This encourages
less hand-holding and “mothering” on your part. Mothering is great and all, but too often

6
students see us as substitute moms. Instead, teach them to see you (and themselves)
in a professional light.

You might notice that many of the emails that you get from students ask the same thing.
This might be a good opportunity to make a short video or write a blog post and simply
send them a link. For example, I have used the program Snag It to make screen capture
videos of processes that that graduate students need to do, such as filling out a
departmental form to take the comprehensive exam. It took me about 5 minutes to
make the video, I uploaded it to YouTube, and now when students ask me that question
I can avoid a meeting (saving both of us time) by just sending them to the video. Try to
find creative ways to automate processes that you do repeatedly.

A YouTube Channel or a blog with FAQs on it can be a great way to answer student
questions. Similarly, you could create a “copy bank” of email responses in a google doc
so that you can simply cut and paste emails that you often write, like replies to requests
for reference letters, etc.

If you can’t answer a student’s question or advise them through email, then try creating
group meetings instead of one-on-one meetings. Group advising can be very helpful for
students. Students at the same point in the program can learn from each other and find
a kind of partner in their progress through the program. A more advanced student in the
same advising meeting as a first-year student can become a mentor. Amazing things
could happen, and you are making good use of your time by seeing two or three
students at once.

By implementing some of these strategies, you can reserve your time and energy for
one-on-one meetings that really need your guidance and expertise. If you feel calm and
collected instead of over-worked, taxed, and frazzled, you will be a much better teacher,
advisor, and mentor.

Your action-item: Write and save at least one email that you often write to students.
This will kick-off your “copy bank”!

7
 Lesson 4: Create a writing system
You made have heard me talk about "tiger time." That's a term that I picked up from
entrepreneur Amy Porterfield. The idea is that if you use your most focused and
energized hours of the day, you don't need big blocks of time to write. Instead, you can
get more writing done in less time. You can get a full explanation of how it works in this
video.

But everyone is different, and writing is a uniquely personal craft. So today I'm going to
teach you another option to get writing done: sprinting.

Sprinting is what we do in my Virtual Writer's Retreat course. Basically we take two

weeks and break down an almost-done writing project into all the tasks that need to be
done to finish and submit the writing. The idea is to give your attention to just one
writing project for only two weeks and sprint to the finish line.

You can use this sprinting technique even if you're not working on an "almost done"
article. For example, you could use a two-week sprint to get from outline to first draft, or
from book idea to proposal. The key is to ONLY focus on ONE writing project during the
sprint and to FINISH that project (however you define "finish" for your particular project).

Here's the breakdown of how to do a sprint:

1. Select the two weeks when you'll do the sprint. Mark off 1-2 hours per day for each
day of the sprint. Try to be realistic and kind to yourself. It's best not to plan a sprint
during the busiest time in the semester.

2. Choose your writing project and define what it will mean for that project to be finished.
Then make a list of all the things that have to be done to get you there. For example:
write the abstract, finish the results section, add more sources to the lit review.

8
3. Go back to your calendar and write in the tasks for each day of the sprint. Again, be
realistic about how long it will take you to do things. If you finish early then yay! That's
much better than over-booking and feeling guilty for not finishing.

Your action item: Get out your calendar and plan one sprint for a writing project that is
currently on your to-do list.

Lesson 5: Manage your mindset

One question that our inner imposter asks is: Do I really have anything to say worth
hearing?

How can we combat this negative thinking? Let’s think about who your imagined
audience for your work is. We often write with a very high-level audience in mind: our
most top-tier-publishing, competitive peers and critics. Anyone would have imposter
syndrome when comparing themselves to the most famous, elite scholars in their fields.

But you know who is more likely to read your stuff? The graduate student in her first
year working on a seminar paper. So, it’s time to stop writing to the snobby bastards in
your field and start writing to her.

What if your paper (or book) was the first thing a graduate student in your field read?
Did you cite enough but not too much to overwhelm her? Is your argument focused and
clear? Will she know what to read next to find out more? Will your reference list turn into
her reading list?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself when you start feeling like an
imposter. It’s a different perspective on academic writing, and I think that it is an
exercise worth doing.

9
Remember: Someone needs to hear what you have to say in exactly the way that
only you can say it.

There's no action item for today's lesson, but let me just repeat:

Someone needs to hear what you have to say in exactly the way that only you can say
it.

Lesson 6: Set up your publication

pipeline
Maybe you've heard that you should have a publication pipeline. What does that mean,
anyway?

Think of it like baking cookies: you've got a bowl full of dough, a cookie tray in the oven,
and yummy finished cookies on the other end. As your cookies are finished, you put
more in the oven--like a little cookie factory. :)

That's what you want with your academic publications: something in a raw form (data
being collected, for example), something "cooking," and then a bunch of yummy
publications that are DONE. You don't keep adding more ingredients to the bowl of raw
dough. You want to have enough dough to keep your cookie pipeline going, but not so
much that the dough will rot before you get around to getting it into--not to mention out
of--the oven.

Alright, that's enough cookie metaphor! But truthfully managing a publication pipeline is
not easy, and it is rarely taught. It takes a delicate balance of taking on new projects
and finishing projects that are in process.

10
The first step is knowing where you stand. So, here's the plan so you can begin to
analyze your publication pipeline:

1. Download this document: Publication Pipeline PDF

2. Fill out each square, listing ALL of the activities you have in process right now at
different point in the pipeline.

3. Identify pipeline blockages. When you take a good look at your pipeline diagram,
which box is overflowing? Which box did you need to grab another piece of paper to
complete? Those are blockages in your pipeline.

4. Make a plan to eliminate the blockages. I'm going to guess that you have lots of
things in two boxes: Research In Progress and Writing. (It's like I know you, right?) So
you have a blockage between finishing a research project and starting to write it up, and
finishing a writing project and submitting it. Wherever your blockage is, the only way to
unclog it (so many metaphors!) is to finish or eliminate projects. To finish projects, get
out your calendar and plan them out. What needs to be done to get each piece of
writing to submission? How long will it take? Which one is your priority? Then map them
out on your calendar (realistically!) so that they can get DONE.

Another thing to keep in mind about the pipeline: if you have too many research
projects, then you will have too many writing projects, and at some point you will form a
blockage. Be very careful about which new projects you take on before you clear your
writing blockage. Remember: the goal is to publish, not just to do the research.

Your action item: Do this exercise!

Our next lesson is the last one! You're doing great!

11
 Lesson 7: Map out your year
Yay! You made it to the last "stop" on the Writing Roadmap! It's time to put it all
together. First, let's review our travels along the roadmap:

1. Map your mission: You wrote an academic mission statement and learned how to use
it.

2. Align your activities: You did a brain dump of all your (many) activities, and decided
what would stay and what would go.

3. Manage your time: You learned how to manage student interactions so that you can
save your best one-on-one time for your students with the most need.

4. Develop your writing system: You learned the Sprint technique to get writing projects
DONE.

5. Manage your mindset: You learned a technique to talk back to your inner imposter.

6. Set up your publication pipeline: You learned how to identify and clear out pipeline
blockages.

7. Map out your year: You'll learn how it all fits together.

I hope that at this point in the mini course you're convinced that writing more is not just
about time. Instead, it's about using your mission to drive your decisions, reflecting on
your practices, and taming your inner critic. Just doing one of those things would be
great, but if you can do them all together then you can move mountains!

Keeping everything that you've learned in mind, now it's time to get out your planner
and map out your year. You don't have to use any specific kind of planner, but I like to
do this high-level mapping on a paper planner where I can see the month-by-month

12
overview and the weekly break down. I keep my day-to-day work calendar in Google,
but I use paper for strategic planning. Here's the step-by-step (and your actions items
for today):

1. Write your mission statement at the beginning of your planner (like on the inside
cover or on the first page).

2. On a weekly calendar, map your Tiger Time.

3. On a monthly calendar, schedule a sprint for sometime early each semester.

4. Get out your publication pipeline. Look at all the writing projects that you need to
finish and map them out, one at a time, onto the year. Leave space for upcoming
projects. Map out the research projects as well, including when you will collect and
analyze data.

Now you have a rough sketch of how your writing will work for the year. It's OK to be
flexible. The important thing is to make a plan, strive for consistency, and forgive
yourself if you deviate.

I hope that you have enjoyed the Writing Roadmap Mini Course. I am very excited to let
you know that the full version of the course is now open for registration. The Academic
Woman's Writing Roadmap course is made up of 8 modules (a welcome module plus
the seven stops on the writing roadmap).

The course is a deep dive into each stop on the roadmap, with video lessons, a PDF
companion workbook, and a private Facebook community for support. In six weeks I'll
take you from freaking out to a five year plan to publish more. They are options for
group and one-on-one coaching sessions with me. And you will plan your academic
year with the focus, clarity, and confidence in your writing that will take your career to
the next level.

I hope you'll consider joining me for the Academic Woman's Writing Roadmap full
course.

Thank you again for your time and if you have any questions, I'd love to hear from you.
Just email me at cathy@cathymazak.com!

13