How to Have a Productive Summer: Three Tips that Work

Most academics I talk to this time of year are looking forward to summer, when classes are over meetings are few and far between and we have lots of time to write. We can finally pay attention to that writing project that has been inching along all semester. Now that summer is here, we can jump in and devote ourselves full-time to writing and research productivity.



The joy with which we start our summers, however, is not always paralleled by a strong sense of satisfaction at the end. Many academics recall summers past when they planned to finish the book, send off the articles, and submit grant proposals where the plans did not materialize. In this post, I explain how you can have a productive summer, and how you can emerge from summer feeling refreshed, accomplished, and ready to take on the new academic year.

Tip #1: Make a Research and Writing Plan

The very first step to a productive summer is to make a plan. And, no, I do not mean that your plan should look like this: “FINISH BOOK!” Instead, a plan must include a lot more detail. Your plan needs to be divided into weeks and broken down into manageable tasks. Most of us have about 12 weeks in the summer. Thus, your plan could look like this:

Week 1:

• Read three articles on due process
• Write section on due process for Chapter One
• Make plan for completion of Chapter One
• Complete at least two tasks on completion plan for Chapter One

As you can see, you do not have to know exactly what needs to be done to complete chapter one to make your plan. Instead, you can include making a completion plan as part of your plan. Once you finish with week 1, you can do the same for Weeks 2 to 12.

The benefits of making a plan are that 1) you develop a better idea as to what you can reasonably accomplish; 2) you set clear benchmarks for yourself and ensure you are making progress; and 3) at the end of the summer, you have a realistic idea as to what you have and have not accomplished.

Tip #2: Develop a reasonable summertime writing schedule

You will not be working 24-hours a day over the summer, no matter how few external obligations you have. In fact, you likely will not even be working consistent 8-hour days. The reality is that academic work is hard and requires an extraordinary amount of mental energy. Most people are unable to devote 8 hours a day, 7 days a week to academic writing, reading, research, and data analysis. People that try to do this quickly burn out.

Each of us has our own internal limits to how long we can reasonably expect ourselves to work. It is difficult to come to terms with our own limits. However, once we do, it can be remarkably liberating. I am the first to admit that I can write for no more than three hours a day on a consistent basis. Not too long ago, I learned that I can either spend all day at the office trying to get that three hours in, or I can simply spend three hours in front of my computer first thing in the morning and get my three hours of writing in.

Once I have done my three hours of writing, I have done the hard work for the day. At that point, I might collect articles I need to read, respond to emails, pay bills, or do any of the other myriad tasks that occupy my day. If it’s the summertime, I stop early to ensure that I make time to enjoy all of the benefits summer offers.

You too must come to terms with your limits and figure out how long you can expect yourself to write, read, and research each day. If you have no idea, one strategy is to track your time for a week or two to see how much writing, research and reading you actually do. Be careful, however, to note that you have at least two kinds of limits: how much work you can expect yourself to do in a short period of time and how much work you can do on a regular basis that is sustainable. You may be able to write for 8 hours a day for one week, but then find yourself unable to produce a coherent sentence the second week. That indicates that you overspent your limits.

Once you figure out your limits you can develop a reasonable schedule. Keep in mind that many people are very productive over the summer working four hours a day, five days a week.

Tip #3: Write every day

The only way you can ensure that you actually have a productive summer, i.e., that you emerge with real progress on your writing projects is to sit down and write. The best way to ensure that you write a lot is to write every day, five days a week.

Thus, when you make your plans and your schedules, make sure that you plan to write every day of the workweek. If you have never tried daily writing before, this is the perfect time to start!
Have a fantastic, productive, relaxing, and refreshing summer!

How to Give a Fabulous Academic Presentation: Five Tips to Follow

One of the easiest ways to stand out at an academic conference is to give a fantastic presentation. If you have ever been to an academic conference, you should be able to see my point. The majority of presentations at conferences are not very good. This makes it fairly easy for you to be impressive.

In this post, I will discuss a few simple techniques that can make your presentation stand out. It does take time to make a good presentation. However, it is well worth the investment.

Tip #1: Use PowerPoint Judiciously

These days, most good presentations make some use of visuals. The extent to which you should use visuals will vary a lot depending on your field. Nevertheless, there are a few basic things you should know if you will be using PowerPoint or another method of showing visuals.

• Never use less than 24 point font. If you use smaller font, people will not be able to see your information and you will have too much information on the slide.
• Use bullet points. PowerPoint slides do not need full sentences, and should never have a paragraph full of information.
• Use images effectively. You should have as little text as possible on the slide. One way to accomplish this is to have images on each slide, accompanied by a small amount of text.
• Never put your presentation on the slides and read from the slides.
• Do not have too many slides. Definitely do not have more than one slide per minute of presentation.

Tip #2: There is a formula to academic presentations. Use it.

Once you have become an expert at giving fabulous presentations, you can deviate from the formula. However, if you are a newbie, you need to follow the formula. Again, this will vary by the field. However, I will give an example from my field – sociology – to give you an idea as to what the format should look like.

• Introduction/Overview/Hook
• Theoretical Framework/Research Question
• Methodology/Case Selection
• Background/Literature Review
• Discussion of Data/Results
• Analysis
• Conclusion

Tip #3: The audience wants to hear about your research. Tell them.

One of the most common mistakes I see in people giving presentations is that they present only information I already know. This usually happens when they spend nearly all of the presentation going over the existing literature and giving background information on their particular case. You need only to discuss the literature with which you are directly engaging and contributing. Your background information should only include what is absolutely necessary. If you are giving a 15-minute presentation, by the 6th minute, you need to be discussing your data or case study.

Tip #4: Practice. Practice. Practice.

You need to practice your presentation in full before you deliver it. You might feel silly delivering your presentation to your cat or your toddler, but you need to do it and do it again. You need to practice to ensure that your presentation fits within the time parameters. Practicing also makes it flow better. You can’t practice too many times.

Tip #5: Keep To Your Time Limit

If you have ten minutes to present, prepare ten minutes of material. No more. Even if you only have seven minutes, you need to finish within the allotted time. If you will be reading, a general rule of thumb is two minutes per typed, double-spaced page. For a fifteen minute talk, you should have no more than 7 double-spaced pages of material.

Good luck!

Start Writing and Don’t Stop

Do you have a writing project that you can’t seem to get moving on? Is there an article you need to finish, a short essay you need to begin, or page proofs you must attend to?

We all have different relationships with our writing, and most people have at least one kind of writing they find harder than other kinds. In this post, I will discuss one strategy that will help you to finish that very project that seems interminable.

The strategy I suggest is to find 20 to 30 minutes a day each weekday to dedicate to the project. When the time comes to work on it, turn off all distractions. Turn off your phone. Cut off the Internet. Put all of your reading material away. Open the document and work on it for 20 to 30 minutes.

Do not stop before 20 minutes are up for any reason. Well, anything that is not a real emergency, like a fire alarm. If, while writing, you realize you need a reference, or need to double-check a piece of information, or need to go back to your data, do not stop to check anything. Instead, make a note to yourself about that and find something else to do in the document that does not require fact-checking.

If you get stuck on a word choice, put down both words. You can make stylistic and grammatical changes later. There is no need to stop to check the thesaurus.

Don’t stop to check your data or to fix your tables. Just keep going and make a note to yourself.

Don’t stop for anything. It is only 20 to 30 minutes, and nearly all phone calls, emails, visitors, and even bathroom breaks can wait.

If you dedicate just 20 to 30 minutes to your writing project, you will be surprised to see how quickly you are able to move it along.

When you are nearly done, or when you find yourself with more time and less resistance, you may be able to take a longer writing session to tie things up. You can also use longer writing sessions to go back and check your references, make word choice changes, and fix your tables.

Concentrated, short writing sessions are often the best time to produce new prose, as this process takes lots of mental energy. By working on your project every day, with whatever time you have available, the ideas around the project will percolate in the back of your mind throughout the day, making it easier to get back in the saddle and begin to write again when the time comes.

Ready, Set, Write!

Forced Creativity? Why Daily Writing Works

Are you waiting for that strike of inspiration for you to write? Do you keep reading and thinking, hoping that the muse will visit you, and when she does, that you will produce pages and pages of prose? Or, do you wait until the weekend to write, with the idea that you will have long blocks of uninterrupted time? If any of those questions resonate with you, you are not alone. Many writers think that they write best when they are inspired.

The truth is that inspiration is most likely to come when you sit down and begin to write.



A study by Robert Boice, reported in his book, Professors as Writers: A Self-Help Guide to Productive Writing, provides concrete evidence for two concepts: 1) writing daily produces more writing and more ideas and 2) writing accountability works.

The Test: Does Writing Accountability Work?

To find out if daily writing and accountability can be effective, Robert Boice conducted a test with 27 faculty members who desired help with improving their writing productivity. He put the 27 faculty into three groups and examined their writing productivity for ten weeks.

The first group was instructed to write only if they had to write, but asked to keep a log of creative ideas for writing. The idea behind this group was that planned abstinence would lead to the production of creative ideas for writing when the time came.

The second group scheduled writing sessions five days a week for ten weeks, but was encouraged to write only when they were in the mood. They also were asked to take the time they had scheduled for writing to log a new creative idea for writing each day. The idea behind this group was that writing only when they were in the mood would be favorable for creativity.

The third group agreed to a strict accountability plan. They scheduled five writing sessions a week for ten weeks, and kept a log of creative ideas for writing. To ensure that they would write every day, the members of this group gave Boice a pre-paid check for $25, made out to a hated organization. If they failed to write in any of their planned sessions, Boice would mail the check. The idea behind this group was that forced writing would require the group to come up with creative ideas for writing.

The Results: Daily Writing and Accountability Work

Boice’s study revealed:

• Abstinent writers produced an average of 0.2 pages per day, and only one idea per week.
• Spontaneous writers produced an average of 0.9 pages per day, and one creative idea every two days.
• Forced writers produced an average of 3.2 pages and one creative idea each day.

These results show that, contrary to what one might think, creativity can be forced. Sitting down and making yourself write every day is a great way to make those creative juices flow.

How to Write Every Day

The lesson here for writers is to not wait until you feel like writing to write – as that might not happen very often – but to schedule your writing every day, and to show up to your writing session.

If you have already tried scheduling your writing and it has not worked, then it is time to think about what accountability mechanisms might work for you.

Here is a list of ideas for accountability:

Free options:

• Find a writing buddy with whom you meet to write. Agree with each other that when you meet, you will share your goal for the day, but then get down to business and write.
• Find a phone buddy and agree to call one another at the beginning and end of your writing times.
• Post your writing goals – for the day and/or the week on Daily Writing Updates – my Facebook group.
• Create an accountability group where four colleagues get together at the beginning or end of the week for an hour. Each person has fifteen minutes to say: What their goals were for the past week, whether or not they accomplished them, and what their goals are for the next week. Most people will not show up week after week to report that they did not write.

Paid Options:

• Gina Hiatt’s Academic Writing Club: The Academic Writing Club is an easily-accessible, interactive and supportive online community of experts and colleagues that provides much that is traditionally missing in the typical academic environment.
• Become a Community Member at Kerry Ann Roquemore's National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity. Community Members receive the weekly Monday Motivator, access to 10 live tele-workshops (one per month) in 2011, access to our private moderated discussion forum, and access to our monthly writing challenges. The annual membership dues for a Community Membership are $120 for graduate students and post-docs, and $240 for faculty members.

I hope that you find the accountability mechanisms that work best for you!

Taking Control

When I explain time management techniques to academics, many respond by pointing out that one of the things they love most about academia is unstructured time, and that they are not willing to give that up. These academics look at my weekly plan and gasp: “Aren’t you giving up your freedom by so closely managing your days?” “What if a colleague stops by to chat when I am supposed to be writing; Do I send her away?!”



My color-coded calendar that marks my writing time in red, my teaching time in orange, and my administrative time in purple leads some people to believe that I have given up my freedom by structuring my days. They see that I have set aside specific times for writing, reading, preparing for class, teaching, and going to meetings and wonder why I would want to structure my unstructured time.

My answer is simple. If you are getting what you want done and enjoying a stress-free, productive life as an academic with lots of unstructured time, then time management is not for you.

If, on the other hand, you find yourself working long days and through the weekends and still never feeling caught up, then time management could be a useful tool.

Time management is not simply about being more productive; it is about deciding in advance how to make the most of our most valuable resource: time. When I plan my week, I include time to take long walks, to exercise, to have lunch with my husband, to pick up my children early from school, and to prepare home-cooked meals for myself and my family. I am convinced that, without time management, I would not find the time to do things that I think are important for my emotional and physical health.

In my current schedule, I have about five hours of teaching and three hours of meetings per week. With the remaining 32 hours of my 40 hour work week completely unstructured, I can decide ahead of time when, where, and what I want to do each day.

For some people, planning each day and week may sound a bit like their time is being too controlled. I like to think that taking control of my time is acceptable so long as I am the one making the executive decisions about how I will spend my time. With time management, you, after all, are the person making the decisions about how you will spend your time.

By deciding in advance, you can make sure you make time for leisure, reading, yoga, long lunches, trips to the dentist, or whatever other social, emotional, and physical needs you may have. You can decide before the week begins if you will spend your mornings reviewing articles, checking email, writing the third chapter of your book, or surfing the internet. You can also decide if you will grade papers this week or next, if you will revise your article on Monday or Tuesday. You can even decide if you will clean your house on Thursday afternoon or hire someone to do it.

I see unstructured time as a great privilege, because it allows me to decide how I will structure my days.

How to write a book proposal for an academic press

So, you want to turn your dissertation into a book? Or, perhaps you want to write your first academic book on an entirely different subject. Unless you are famous and have publishers soliciting manuscripts from you, you likely will have to submit a formal academic book proposal to an academic press to have a hope of publishing a book with such a press.

Many university press websites have guidelines that can help you through this process. UC Press has a good set of guidelines as does Harvard. Be sure to check the websites of the press where you plan to submit to find out if they have specific guidelines.

In this blog post, I provide generic suggestions for what should go in an academic book proposal, and then suggest a method for writing such a proposal.

A book proposal for an academic press has seven basic components:

1. A one-page description of the book. The most important aspect of this one-page description is the argument you will set forth. Here is one example of how to do this:
1. Paragraph 1: Hook – Invite the reader into your proposal with an interesting anecdote or some surprising data,
2. Paragraph 2: State your central argument. Back it up with a few sentences.
3. Paragraph 3: State the contribution to scholarship and place in the literature.
4. Paragraph 4: Provide a brief roadmap to the book.
2. A descriptive table of contents. Dedicate one paragraph to each chapter. Give the title of the chapter and provide a three to four sentence summary of the chapter.
3. A mechanical description of the final manuscript. Here you say that the estimated length of the final manuscript will be anywhere from 70,000 to 150,000 words. More or less may raise eyebrows. You also should specify how many illustrations and/or tables you anticipate.
4. A description of the audience for your book. Tell the editor who you expect to purchase your book. Will it be read only in your field, or also in other disciplines? Will undergraduates be able to understand your book? Or, is it solely directed at faculty and graduate students? Could it be used in undergraduate or graduate courses? If so, explain which ones.
5. Describe the competition. What are the existing books in your field? How will your book stand out from these? Do you use a different methodology or approach? Is yours designed for a different audience? If any of the competing books you mention are quite similar to your own, spend a few sentences explaining how yours is distinct.
6. How far along are you? Do you have a complete manuscript? If you do, say so. If not, say how many chapters you have completed, and provide an expected date of completion. If this is your first academic book, I discourage you from sending a proposal before you are certain you will finish the book within a year. If the publisher requires a complete manuscript, you likely want to be less than six months away from completion before sending the proposal.
7. Who might review your book? You can provide the names and contact information of people who you think might be appropriate readers for your book.

Now that you know what the components are, it should be easier to imagine how you will write such a proposal. I suggest you start with the chapter descriptions, as those should not be terribly difficult to write. Once you have those done, you can begin to work on the introductory first page. When you get stuck, turn to the other, easier parts of the proposal. Describe the audience; list the reviewers; say how far along you are.

Once you get a full draft of your book proposal, set it aside for a week and work on the book, preferably on the Introduction. Pick the proposal back up after a week and see how it reads. Edit it and give it to a friend to read. Once you are comfortable with it, send it out to presses.

You can send your proposal to as many presses as you like. Some presses even allow for multiple submission of the entire manuscript.

Good luck!

How to Respond to a “Revise and Resubmit” from an Academic Journal: Ten Steps to a Successful Revision

When I submit an article to a top journal, often the best possible outcome I can hope for is that the editors will invite me to respond to the reviewers’ comments and resubmit the article. At this point, I have successfully completed five requests to revise extensively and resubmit. Over time, I have developed a straightforward approach to these requests.

In this blog post, I will describe my method in ten easy-to-follow steps.

Step One: Read the Letter.

Read the letter from the editor carefully and make sure you indeed have a request for a revise and resubmit. Other possible responses from the editor include: 1) Reject without an invitation to re-submit; 2) Conditional acceptance, where you are asked to make minor changes; and 3) Outright acceptance, where changes are not required, but might be suggested. If you are unsure, you may make an inquiry to the editor or ask a more experienced colleague to read the letter for you.

Step Two: Create an Excel File to List the Revisions.

Create an Excel file with four columns in which to put the suggestions for revisions. I open a blank Excel file, and create four columns. I label the columns as follows: “Reviewer”; “Suggestions”; “Response”; “Done?”.If you widen the columns and wrap the text, that makes it much more readable, especially for the middle two columns.

Step Three: Extract the suggestions from the reviewers' and editors' letters.

Read the reviews to extract the suggestions for revision and put the suggestions in the Excel file. This step requires the painful and painstaking process of closely reading the reviews and extracting all of the useful suggestions. On some occasions, the reviews can contain useful information, but not relay the information in a congenial fashion. The beauty of this step is that you can rewrite the suggestions and not have to look at the mean-spirited reviews again. For example, the reviewer might write: “One major problem with this article is that the research methods are suspect.” You can re-write this as: “Provide a more accurate and complete discussion of the data collection.” Be sure to label each suggestion according to where it comes from: Reviewer One, Two, or Three, or the editor.

Step Four: Re-arrange the suggestions for revision in a logical fashion.

Oftentimes, two reviewers will both mention in different ways that you need to build up the conceptual framework or the literature review. If you group all of the literature review suggestions together, it will be easier to tackle the revision systematically. Be sure you have labeled each suggestion according to where it came from, in order to facilitate this process. Organizing all of the suggestions for the Introduction, the Literature Review, the data analysis, etc., will make it easier to respond to the reviews.

Step Five: Decide how you will respond to all of the suggestions.

If the suggestion is to more clearly define the difference between “transnational” and “transborder,” then you can write: “Add one paragraph to the conceptual framework that clearly explains the difference between transnational and transborder, and why this distinction is useful.” Be sure that the suggestions you lay out for yourself make it clear what the next step is.

Note: You must respond to all of the suggestions. There may be some suggestions that you disagree with. This is fine, but you have to make a conscious decision not to respond to any particular suggestion. For example, the reviewer might suggest that you return to the archive to explore more biographical features of a certain person. You can respond that this step is not necessary for your argument. Place all of your instructions to yourself for how you will respond in the third column.

Step Six: Tackle your revision plan, step by step.

Now that you have made a clear plan for revision by outlining all of the reviewers’ suggestions and have decided how you will respond, you can tackle the revisions one by one. If you feel intimidated, start with the easiest ones. Usually, the easy ones will be something along the lines of: “Find and add a quote from Diana’s interview that elucidates how subjects talk about discrimination.” Even easier: “Add citation from Stephens (2009) about transnationalism from below.”

Step Seven: Use your Excel file to write the memo to the editor.

You should not send the editor your Excel file. Instead, you can use your Excel file to write a neat, comprehensive, and well-formatted response memo to the editor. Here is an example from a memo to the editor:

Reviewer One suggested that I engage the literature at a deeper level to get the most out of the data. I have included a more in-depth analysis of transnationalism into my data analysis section.

Step Eight: Double-check

Go back to the original reviews, and double-check to make sure that you have not missed anything. Go through each critique, and double-check your memo to the editor to make sure you have addressed each critique and have explained how you have responded to the editor.

Step Nine: Do a final read-over.

Read over your article to make sure that you have maintained the flow and argument of your paper even after having made the revisions. Read it without thinking about the reviews, but imagine a reader who is unaware of your original article or of the letter from the reviewers, as that reader is now your intended audience.

Step Ten: Re-submit!

Send the revised article and the revision memo back to the journal editor!