Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide

10/06/2026

Many scholars look forward to summer writing for months. But everyone who works in education is exhausted right now.

Not only does fatigue make it harder to write, you also need to be less tired when the new academic teaching year rolls around in the autumn.

Planning Quarter 1 (Jul, Aug, Sep) helps you map out the time you have available over the next 3 months, notice where the transitions are, and figure out what you will prioritize in line with your values.

In the class on 12 June (THIS Friday) we focus on finding and protecting time for writing, and deciding what kinds of writing work would be the best use of that time.

We want you to be ready for teaching in the autumn and feel like you’ve had a good summer. One that included writing, rest, and fun.

Join us!

Stress isn’t caused primarily by overwork, though that certainly doesn’t help. The main contributor to stress is lack of control.

08/06/2026

What if it wasn’t about how MUCH writing you can produce in a limited amount of time?
What if you found the JOY in your writing this summer?

It's easy to say, harder to do, when we all know the reality is often very different.

Let's start by imagining what you'd do if all the stars aligned, that there were no interruptions, unpredictable things or stressors, and you had the time you really wanted to have for your writing.

Imagine that beautiful utopian vision. And remember your values, your dreams and your hopes for your writing. Lift them out from under the pile of Other Things that came up, and reconnect with them.

Your writing hopes and dreams can then guide your practical plans through a more fulfilling path, especially when things go awry later on, as they inevitably do.

Putting these dreams first ensures your plans actually serve your deeper needs, and stops the rush of an external schedule deciding everything for you, or sidelining them in favor of everyone else's needs.

Here are a few of the things participants in my recent Annual Planning Class shared with each other about their writing hopes and dreams for the coming year...

"I’d like to feel more grounded, not rushed, able to step back and make connections."

"I would like to reconnect with my book, which has been on pause for two years as I’ve done other stuff. It needs to become more central as it brings me lots of joy and energy."

"I would like to find a way to write this book without it taking over my whole life."

"Having a structure to reflect on what is possible, and being in community with other people who share some of your values, can make a big difference to the kinds of plans you make."

How would you LIKE to feel about your writing this summer?

We’ll be making plans for July, August, and September on Friday 12 June. (THIS Friday!) Come dream with us.

03/06/2026

I was saddened to learn of the death of Raul Pacheco-Vega earlier this week. I’ve known Raul for a very long time.

Like so many of you, I use writing to process things. I’ve written something for my website.

Over the years, I have linked to and shared his posts in my posts, and on Twitter and then Bluesky, for many years and assume some of you also followed him.

He will be missed.

Read here: https://jovanevery.co.uk/in-memoriam-raul-pacheco-vega/

27/05/2026

Last chance to join me THIS Friday for planning support that helps you get more writing done and feel more in control despite the dystopian conditions.

Design a plan that *actually* puts your values first, reflects your specific changeable workload and unpredictable personal life together with live guided prompts that ask you to interrogate, experiment and dream.

Then I help reassure and solve the inevitable struggles of putting your plan into practice with coaching amongst a community of likeminded lovely people just like you!

If you're free on Friday 29 May (or want the recording!) don't just save this to your bookmarks again, join us.

20/05/2026

If you're struggling to cope, think, and juggle everything right now, you're not alone.

It's not just you, it's the lack of good quality support.

"I took so much confidence, hope and optimism from attending.

I loved the practical advice on how to structure time (including some personal feedback and ideas for resources).

And I liked the community aspect and opportunity for a joint moan.

It also helped me to realise that I'm not the only one who feels things are difficult."

That's the words from a previous Annual Planning Class attendee, Rebecca, sharing how planning together in my live group class helped her feel more hopeful and able to tackle the months ahead. If you want to feel more hopeful, join us on May 29 to overhaul your overwhelm, feel more fulfilled and get more writing done!
https://academicwritingstudio.co.uk/plan-your-academic-writing-year/

14/05/2026

If you are motivated by novelty, planning can feel like it sucks the novelty out of your work.

If you are demand avoidant, even when you are the one making the demands on yourself, planning can feel like making a whole lot of demands of yourself that you’ll then not do.

If you like to work in intensive bursts of focus, planning can feel like a way to turn you into someone else who magically works consistently.

Planning doesn’t have to do any of those things.

In my classes, I provide a structure for you to assess what time you have available for your writing amongst everything else, and how *you* can work best to move your writing projects forward.

If you are demand avoidant, or motivated by novelty, you probably accomplish a lot but not necessarily the things in your plan. In my classes we celebrate our accomplishments and notice what supported us in achieving those things, whether or not they were things we planned to do or not.

If you like to work in intensive bursts, it can be helpful to block off time that could be used for that kind of working well in advance, so your calendar doesn’t fill up with other things. It can also be helpful to figure out how to manage your energy before and after those intensive bursts so you don’t burn out. We help you block that time and manage your energy. The classes also help you plan rest, which you might also need to do intensively.

We start with the 29 May big picture overview to guide your best intentions into a motivating yet realistic Annual Plan. Then we have 4 other Planning Classes and Monthly Review prompts throughout the year to help you revisit and *adjust* your plans regularly – because we know one plan won't solve everything when you've tried so many times before. These regular classes also support you through experimenting with different strategies over time, evaluating them, and then adjusting your plans based on what you’ve learned.

We help you notice what you *do* actually get done, and remind you of the things that get temporarily sidelined.

You can register for all the classes of 2026-27 for a cheaper price. Or you can try one class (£40) and see how my approach works for you...

You can do this!

08/05/2026

You often forget the things you tick off your to-do list. They're done; they're gone; why clutter your mind with extra stuff?

You move swiftly on to the next thing. And the next. Always frantically treading water and never catching up.

You don't sit and think about the support that you've had, about the projects you've worked on, or the progress you have made.

It's important you allow yourself to be pleased with what you *did* get done.

It may not be where you hoped to be, but you *have* done something.

If you're finding that difficult, take a few breaths. Tell your brain gremlin to go away for a while and refocus.

Remind yourself that there are probably very good reasons that you didn't do as much as you would have liked.

Allow yourself to be pleased anyway.

Support for reviewing, refocusing and planning your writing time is on 29 May. Join our wonderful community of academics sharing their struggles and celebrations. You're not alone. You can do this!

06/05/2026

With long term plans, there is often too much you *don’t know* or *don’t control* to hold on to those plans too tightly. When something changes that you couldn't predict, it can end up feeling pointless to try and plan anything properly.

Even so, planning is really important for identifying priorities and setting yourself up well. Flexible plans that reflect your real life, not an imagined perfect version of your life, help you feel more in control -- even when unexpected things still come up.

You don’t need to set goals for outputs, especially if those goals are likely to make you feel bad about your ability to do this job. You can, instead, set priorities for projects to work on, and determine how and when you will work on your projects so that they progress. Then you'll have these priorities to come back to when everything hits the fan.

Your cognitive capacity for deep intellectual work will vary over the year, along with the amount of actual time available. It is possible to make a plan that accounts for variation in time and capacity. You might just need a bit of support.

I encourage academics to think about Annual Plans starting on 1 July. This switch from the traditional Gregorian calendar or institutional teaching start enables you to put writing first. It charges your batteries with the summer of writing and rest and gives you a solid foundation going into teaching.

This plan can then guide you when you make quarterly, monthly, and weekly plans throughout the year. It will remind you of your priorities when you get overwhelmed with the immediate demands of those busy periods of the year. It will remind you of strategies that you wanted to try.

Looking at the shape of your year, the things you’ve already committed to, the other responsibilities you have, and leaving space for The Chaos is much easier when you have the structure in place to help.

The Annual Planning class is now available for registration, and gives you access to self-paced exercises to review 2025-26, and start to collect relevant information about the year ahead.

We meet on Zoom on Friday 29 May for 2 hours to make some initial decisions about how much time you have for writing in different parts of the year and what that means for your plan. That session also includes group coaching for some of your planning challenges. The self-paced resources help you flesh out your plan.

We also offer Quarterly Planning Classes to make more specific plans for each 3 month period of the year. Planning Quarter 1 covers July, August, and September and has a live session on 12 June. You can purchase all 5 classes (Annual + 4 Quarters) together if you prefer.

25/04/2026

What if you thought of your academic year STARTing in the summer?

By April you've probably long since lost the goals you set back at the start of 2026. It's ok. Things happen. This is not a place of shaming. It's a place of reshaping your calendar to *actually* work for you & your writing, not the calendar companies.

January has lots of New Year, New Start energy in the culture, but for academics it doesn’t feel like a 'beginning'. You struggle to plan along with everyone else at the 'wrong' time of year, then blame yourself for being 'bad' at planning. For you, January is actually more like a mid-year reset. Many of you are in the middle of the year mentally & institutionally, there's piles of grading or you're BUSY with new term prep.

September is more typical. Heck all the big planner companies produce “academic year” versions of their calendars to align with the beginning of the new school year. Students are returning. Everything feels new. The thing is, that makes your summer writing feel like desperately 'catching up' on alllll the writing you didn’t get around to when you got busy during the year. And the unbounded time with less structure can leave you feeling guilty for every minute you 'waste' (going outside, playing with your kids, being alive, etc.)

Don’t get me wrong. Summer is still a great time to focus on your writing.
But I’m proposing switching it to THE Beginning.

If you start your year in summer, you *start* with writing. You put the thing you love doing, your research, the reason you still do this job despite everything going on, first. You charge your academic batteries & set yourself up for a year on better foundations.

You can plan to do the kinds of things that you really need the extra time & spaciousness of summer to do: churning out a first draft; thinking through the tricky structural issues; etc.

Maybe you don’t get as far as you hope you will, but it’s still early in your new writing year. You can figure out how to improve your setup & keep things going, even if the pace will be slower.

Then when teaching starts you can do the tasks that gradually improve the draft. Tasks that can be broken down and done in shorter amounts of time.

We've got support to help you commit, then keep this going all year round with gentle accountability, guidance & community.

We start with the big overview for 2026-27 in Annual Planning on 29 May. This helps you get a general sense of the shape of your year, the big moves, transitions and expected things. It also helps you dream bigger and get idealistic before the cynical reality sets in. (This is the fun bit!)

Then we help you zoom in a bit more and plan the first 3 months of the new writing year on 12 June. This covers July, August, September for some summer structure and support.

We also have a bonus session on 26 June to focus on how to actually rest and recharge over the summer. Because this is hard. And we're here to help!

Join us for the New Academic Writing Year!

15/04/2026

Planning is not impossible for people with ADHD!

It is challenging. It might not look like what some people tell you it should look like. And, frustratingly you may need to change how you do it regularly. But it can be done!

My latest podcast episode is a conversation with Christine Weddle of Lightspirit Coaching.

She’s been coaching women with ADHD for over 15 years. And figuring out how to run her own business when she has ADHD herself.

We met years ago in a group that has been a huge influence on me accidentally creating an ADHD friendly set of supports for academics that includes planning classes.

We talk about why planning is challenging if you have ADHD. What planning even is. And why self-compassion, experimentation, and tiny steps are important tools to bring to the task.

In this conversation Christine admits that she often lets the dirty dishes pile up but realized that doing the dishes has become much easier since she’s started pairing that task with listening to podcasts. So pull on your rubber gloves, and fire up your podcast app!

Planning is hard. It's especially hard when you have ADHD. In this episode, I talk to Christine Weddle, an ADHD coach, about how we think about planning, and what kinds of things work for folks with ADHD. Because we all have things we want to...