Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

HAVE A BIO. Write a concise bio (you might like to take the twitter bio word limit as your guide) and use it across all social media. It’s worth using the same profile picture everywhere too. You can write longer biographies to use for conferences etc but having a nice short one and a good memorable picture mean that people will easily find and remember you online. It’s a little like branding yourself, which sounds icky, but don’t think of it like that. Many of us are really bad at remembering people’s names and faces – let alone now that we live so much of our lives online and don’t always actually meet the person behind the avatar. Help everyone out by always looking and sounding the same online. And when you get to meet people IRL (in real life) who you’ve mostly known only in cyberspace, they’ll recognise you in an instant and feel like they’ve known you for years.

Besides Bio , there some other important tips to be a hackademic. 

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

BE THE BIGGER PERSON. Be receptive to comments and advice on your writing style and content and remember it’s not personal. First, any criticism of your work is just that, criticism of your work, not you. Second, it’s useful. Every bit of feedback you get is information, even if you don’t act on all of it. Try to think about critical comments that seem unduly harsh as badly packaged generosity. It’s better to know as early as possible that your work might be received this way because you can adapt it in advance – depending on whether you agree with their points or not – or steel yourself for possible further criticism. You might also try to think of their input as somehow collaborative. All too often we are urged to see our written work as somehow finished, but really it’s a frozen chunk of an on-going and much more divergent conversation. When someone offers feedback, view your discussion with them as a way of working with them and making the exchange positive for both of you. You might even suggest working on an article together, and learning more about your own work and writing skills through theirs. Or you might go and scream out of an open window and move on because hey, life’s too short!

Maybe this tip can help your hackademic writing as well!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

TEACH TO WRITE. We strongly encourage building the interests of your current writing project, where possible, into the syllabi for courses you’re teaching. This doesn’t mean you should teach an entire course to college freshman in the evolution of the North American cave cricket or a senior seminar studying the penmanship in Jane Austen’s grocery lists. On the other hand, you will be more efficient with your project if you create moments of overlap between what you’re writing about and what you’re teaching. Plus, your students will get to benefit from your knowledge and enthusiasm about the project.

Maybe this tip can help your hackademic writing as well!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

HAVE AN EMAIL SIGNATURE. Make sure your email contains a short signature detailing your current job and the main place people can find you online. You might even consider regularly updating this signature with a link to your latest piece of work, whether that’s a journal article or a blog post. Just like an online bio/image combo, this consolidates and re-enforces your persona and area of expertise. It is also a way to get your work under the nose of new people whose curiosity in link-clicking will be satisfied in spates.

This tip also can help you with your thoughts.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

BUILD A TEAM. Set up writing task forces with friends and colleagues. Establish a procrastination free zone (at the library or a coffee shop) in which you gather every week to write. Have a quick pow wow at the start of the writing session to share your aims for that session, as this will force you to be clearer about your goals in your own mind. Another benefit of doing this is that when your pals tell you their writing agendas, you may well see the gaps in your own. This group can act as a sounding board or proof-reading service for drafts or completed papers. When there’s a few of you, it’s easy to make this a reciprocal relationship and share the workload. We think this can also lessen your workload.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

TEACH WRITING. Incorporate writing instruction into every course you teach. Never assume your students – let alone you – know enough about writing. By doing this, you will also create a culture of practice among yourself and your students, in which you can encourage and motivate each other. Jesse often tells his students that he stands to learn a lot more from them than they could ever learn from him. After all, there are 15, 35, or even 150 of them, and only one Jesse. The learning goes both ways, but given the teacher to student ratio, it’s a flood from them and a trickle from us. The other way Charlotte would do is to share her writing.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

CITE EFFICIENTLY. Take advantage of new citation tools. Everyone will have a personal preference but with so many tools to choose from, you can find one that – with a bit of initial effort – makes life a lot easier in the long run. Citation doesn’t have to be a laborious task tacked onto the end of an otherwise exciting project; now you can cite as you write and not lose track of important references.

Want to be a full-time Hackademmic ?Get on track and read this tips.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

BINGE WRITE. Dedicate a block of time to do an insane amount of writing. NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writers Month. During the month of November, novelists and aspiring novelists publicly commit to writing 50,000 words, which is enough for a draft of a short novel or the first 50,000 words of something longer. The scope of the challenge adds a playfulness to the writing process, and the very public declaration of high levels of output makes us more accountable, while also providing a support network. There have been a number of non-fiction incarnations of this type of project including PhD2Published’s AcBoWriMo (Academic Book Writing Month) which uses Twitter to co-ordinate activity and offer fast and furious advice on keeping pace. You don’t have to wait until November, write quite so much, or even be as public with your intentions. Instead, try setting aside a space of time, deciding on a goal, and then dedicate yourself for this period to writing to the exclusion of almost everything else. Does the thought of such wanton writing behaviour completely appal you? Maybe you’re better off with a more measured approach like this…

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

WRITE IN MODERATION. If working in pre-specified blocks of time isn’t your thing, and writing in excess fills you with horror, then break your writing tasks into moderate daily or weekly word counts. We all have different ways of working. Some of us write lots quickly and then edit into more refined copy, while others might take more time but write a near perfect text that requires little editing. Some of us research and write at the same time and some of us like to get all the research done before even attempting to put words down. Once you know which type of researcher/writer you are, test yourself to see how much writing you can get done in a day. As you get into a groove, you might challenge yourself to do a little more each day. For some people 250-500 words will be more than enough, but others might find they can get to 1000 or even 1500 words in a day. Find what’s comfortable and measured and go with it.

Maybe this tip can help your writing?