Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide

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Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide I also offer coaching services for those at all stages of an academic career, from finishing up a PhD to contemplating retirement.

I help transform academic life by helping you juggle your myriad responsibilities and prioritize meaningful work through coaching, community, online co-writing sessions and classes. The core of my business is the Academic Writing Studio which provides resources and community to support the development and maintenance of an effective writing practice.

Using small bits of time for writing can sometimes feel pointless. It might be that you feel too scattered in between th...
23/10/2026

Using small bits of time for writing can sometimes feel pointless.

It might be that you feel too scattered in between things, or it's the end of the day and you feel like you don't have your best thinking brain to commit to getting anything substantial down.

It might be about the fear of having to spend ages editing that 10 minute stream of consciousness later down the line, adding more work to your already overwhelming to-do list.

But there are lots of reasons why you shouldn't fully discount these pockets of time.

To get started using time differently, have this prompt ready to go, written somewhere you'll see it.

"What does this project need?"

Then, take your answer to that prompt and break that big overwhelming step down into what you *actually* need to do TO achieve that.

For example, if you need to read an article, what could be really helpful is if the article was already ready in whatever form you want to read it in: printing or downloading the PDF to your e-reader from your work computer is a task you can do in a small bit of time.

It might sound silly, but these sorts of things become task initiation barriers all too easily when left in the procrastination pile.

You don't have to do the annoying smaller tasks in the focus time you'll be reading, writing or working.

If you have some time that feels like not enough to do anything truly sizeable, having a separate list of *small* things that can be done in these short windows of time will make bigger tasks feel easier.

Let's get Future You ready so that next time you're buzzing with ideas and just want to get words down quickly, you're already ready to start.

What are the small administrative things that you need to do to make your best eight o'clock in the morning writing time even better?

What would you really like already on your desk when you have that three day block of time to finally work on this project?

What would you like to have already done for you?

What do you do when your institution announces a massive restructuring with hundreds of job losses and a really tight ti...
17/10/2026

What do you do when your institution announces a massive restructuring with hundreds of job losses and a really tight timeline?

Too many people are facing this question. I’ve seen reports circulating with estimates that UK Higher Education has lost 30,000 jobs in 3 years. Several smaller colleges in the US have closed completely. Many are facing internal restructuring. Attrition of faculty lines is now being compounded by job losses due to financial exigency.

Although framed as financial decisions, restructuring is often executed in ways that compound more overt ideological and political attacks on the teaching of certain topics and subjects. You write to politicians. You take part in union action. You vote.

But what do you do in your day to day working life to resist these seemingly relentless attacks on the things you value most about your scholarship, your teaching, the mission of your specific institution, and education itself?

In this episode, I interview a client of mine who went through an unusually brutal restructuring at her institution 5 years ago. We focus on what she and colleagues did during the initial phase, and how they have stayed focused on their values as the institution recovers and reforms in the wake of that event.

The consultants who are driving these decisions do not share your values. Some of the people around you will submit to their vision to save their own skin. But there are many who share your values and will work with you to save what you can.

This is a long game. And we also talk about how to protect your mental and physical health, especially when things feel so urgent and awful.

On my website and your favourite podcast app now.

“I think one of the really sad things about teaching in university is the way that we often see it as taking away from r...
23/09/2026

“I think one of the really sad things about teaching in university is the way that we often see it as taking away from research time … Whereas for me, I write about my teaching because I have lived experience of my teaching, and we are all - we all have auto-ethnographic observations and perspectives around teaching.”

Writing about teaching isn’t the only way Lucie Matthews-Jones addresses the apparent conflict between teaching and research. In my latest podcast episode Lucie and I talk about the work she’s done around creativity and history teaching, how it came about, and how she’s collaborated with others to develop that work and publish it.

That conversation leads us into a wider discussion of neurodivergence in academia, Lucie’s research and writing more generally, the relationship between teaching and research, and the importance of knowing your values so you can make decisions and do satisfying work in the circumstances you find yourself in.

You can search and listen on your favourite podcast app now or read the full edited transcript on my website.

One of the things that particularly struck me in my interview with Lucie Matthews-Jones was this:“I started to actually ...
20/09/2026

One of the things that particularly struck me in my interview with Lucie Matthews-Jones was this:

“I started to actually think about this idea of actually how creativity is about making and unmaking, and that is what it means to be knowledge producers. We're always making knowledge. We're always un-making knowledge. We're always building on knowledge”

Initially we were talking about her teaching practice, which is very interesting, but this insight could describe everything about how she has made and unmade assumptions about what it is to *be* a historian, what it means to do research, how we create and share knowledge to make contributions to our fields and beyond.

We all have things we want from our career, and we are all limited by the options available to us. This episode is a really interesting example of how one person was able to rethink some of the standard assumptions, ground herself in her own values, and find ways to do interesting and meaningful work that makes a contribution.

I hope our conversation helps you see opportunities in your own situation.

New podcast episode out now!In this next episode of Creating a Satisfying Academic Career, I talk to Lucie Matthews-Jone...
19/09/2026

New podcast episode out now!

In this next episode of Creating a Satisfying Academic Career, I talk to Lucie Matthews-Jones about how she’s resisted the competition between teaching and research in her own career. Through discussions about creativity, teaching, and neurodivergence she provides a perspective on what it means to be a historian, including an expanded understanding of what kinds of outputs can become meaningful ways to share your work and make a contribution to the field.

“I think one of the really sad things about teaching in university is the way that we often see it as taking away from research time, and yet I believe that in some ways the frustration of that comes because we are so dogged by an institutional context that means that we are seen as producers of outputs, and those outputs should only be research outputs if we're thinking about our identity.”

Find it wherever you listen to your podcasts. If you prefer text, a full edited transcript is available on my website now (🔗 in comments).

11/09/2026

One of the hardest things about making plans is realising that there are things that will just *not* be able to happen in the time period you are planning for.

Making decisions about which things won’t happen often includes figuring out how to communicate that decision to someone else. Someone whose own plans will be affected by not receiving the thing you aren’t going to deliver when you originally said you would.

Assume you made the original commitment in good faith.

At least some of the reason you are now not able to keep that commitment is out of your control. Even things you know you could have done differently, are now in the past and you can’t go back and fix that.

You are where you are.

Your colleague would rather *know* than wonder. Do not ghost your colleagues, whether they are co-authors, editors, or something else.

Your colleague would rather know *now*, while they can still adjust their own plans, than 2 days before the agreed deadline, or (worse) several days or weeks later.

Be honest about whether you can do this at all. And if you can, be realistic about when.

If you don’t know when, then communicate to say you will not make the original deadline.

Tell them where you are with the project, and commit to communicating with them again at an agreed date to update them. Then add that to your calendar.

Regular communication goes a long way to reduce the frustrations of uncertain timelines, for everyone.

08/09/2026

If the goal you set yourself makes you feel like you are incapable of writing, then you need a different goal.

The purpose of a goal is to motivate action. Don’t make your daily/weekly writing goals more complex than they need to be.

An example: One of my clients is writing a book.

They set themselves weekly word count goals to help them get a full draft completed.

However, they were stuck on one chapter because they couldn’t really do anything until they had all the sources on the topic of this chapter. They have a plan to get those, but they are not in hand.

They were reluctant to switch to a different chapter because: "THE PLAN"!

My client's weekly goal is only 2000 words. This is reasonable IF they focus on a chapter where they can actually write something.

It turns out that they have a partially complete chapter with all the necessary sources for the part not yet written.

That means they can still meet the weekly word count part of their goal. It just won’t be words in Chapter A, it’ll be words in Chapter B.

Reminder: All words in all chapters contribute to the Big Goal: getting a first draft of the whole book.

It is absolutely okay to write things out of order. Sometimes it’s necessary because you need to wait for something else to happen before you can do a particular bit of the writing.

And sometimes, you need to abandon your word count goals because there is other work that needs to be done to enable you to write words.

A goal more suited to the type of work that will move your writing project forward will work better.

05/09/2026

It’s not surprising if your writing gets set aside as you transition into the first semester of a new academic teaching year.

Registering for my next Planning Class, means you have a date in the calendar to take a breath and think about how you’re going to pick the writing back up, as well as what kind of work you’ll do on your writing projects for the rest of the semester.

The dedicated 2-hour live session of the class is happening on Friday 18 September and includes coaching for participants on their challenges this coming semester..

There are self-paced resources to help you prepare, and to figure out how writing, teaching, and getting enough rest all fit together. You choose how much of those you use based on your needs and the time available.

Just attending that session *will* make a difference. Registering now will ease your anticipatory anxiety.

Registration is open now and it's only £40!

03/09/2026

Your research matters.
I know there are a lot of very loud voices saying it doesn’t. But they are wrong.

You don’t need to write to convince the nay-sayers.

You can write to communicate with the other people who are interested in what you are interested in.

To say: “Look what I’ve figured out! Isn’t this interesting? I hope it helps you figure out something you’ve been trying to figure out.”

Because that’s what scholarly communication is about.

Whether it’s conference papers or articles or monographs or edited collections. Or policy briefings, op-eds, or some other way of communicating to people who aren’t scholars themselves.

Finding time to work on your research and writing is difficult.

But it’s even harder, when you’re wondering whether it’s even worth it, or are trying to write for readers you don’t care about that much because you think you have to.

What would happen if you give yourself permission to write the things you want to write for the people you most want to communicate with?

You might not know the answer to that until you try it. Do you want to try it and see?

What would be the smallest useful amount of time you could give this kind of writing? As an experiment.

How can you remind yourself who you’re writing for, so you don’t get distracted by those loud voices?

Who would support you, even if only with gentle encouragement to keep going?

We’re at the beginning of a new budget year in most northern hemisphere institutions. I know many Associate Deans and He...
28/08/2026

We’re at the beginning of a new budget year in most northern hemisphere institutions. I know many Associate Deans and Heads of Departments are also thinking about how they can support their colleagues at this point in the REF cycle.

Did you know that you can purchase a block of Academic Writing Studio memberships to give to your colleagues?

If you ask researchers what they need most to get articles written they will often say TIME. An Academic Writing Studio membership allows your colleagues to attend A Meeting With Your Writing regularly.

Not only that, it sends a strong signal that you fully support them in blocking out time every week to attend those co-working sessions and work on their writing *during working hours*.

Academics time is squeezed even more than your budget these days.

Restructuring, voluntary and compulsory redundancies, increasing student numbers and reduced module offerings … All of those lead to higher demands on academics time.

You can remind them that they are allowed to spend X% of their time on research, but most of them struggle. For good reason.

Paying for them to attend coworking sessions once or twice a week during normal working hours sends a powerful signal about your support for them doing that.

If that sounds like a good use of your budget, contact me by DM or book a free consultation to discuss your options and budget.

Free consult with Jo: https://tidycal.com/1r8pxo2/free-consult

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