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.

BE ADAPTABLE. You’re going to need expertise in more writing styles than just thesis/dissertation writing. When we write academic dissertations, we are learning how to write for a very niche academic audience. Now you need to adjust your writing style for a new audience (the one that isn’t examining your PhD). For example, if you are writing for a more popular or generalist audience, you’ll want to use a lot less jargon. When writing a dissertation, we laboriously chose and qualify our terms, such precision ensuring the intricacies of our argument are clear. The typical dissertation is very different in tone and structure from the typical academic book. While a dissertation is usually directed toward a very small audience, a successful book must be accessible to a wider audience. This modulation of tone may take time to master so it is worth practicing early on.

What else does it take to be a Hackademic? Click here to find out.

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?

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.

GRAMMAR. If you haven’t done so before, now is the time to start taking an interest in grammar. Unless you’re an English super-scholar, nobody is going to expect you to have perfect grammar, but anyone interested in writing should be interested in writing well. There are lots of basic guides to grammar that can help you tidy up some common mistakes, but it’s also a good idea to start paying close attention to details in everything you read. This will help as you put your own mental map together of what good writing looks like. Editors will be there to help polish a final piece, but you’ll find your entire writing process easier if you write carefully from the start.

What else you should not do ? Maybe this tip can help you.

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.

TIME YOURSELF. Use something like the Pomodoro Technqiue, named after the iconic tomato kitchen timer. The idea is that you measure your working time in “pomodoros” which are blocks of time comprising 25 minutes of work, 5 minutes of rest. Each block of time is known as a “pomodoro” and signifies a unit of productivity. Even if you only do one pomodoro a day, you’ll find your writing output will increase greatly. Better still, though, try for 2 or 3 pomodoros a day. You can even use a focus boosting app – there’s lots based on the Pomodoro Technique which give you audio/visual reminders.

What else can help your Hackademic writing ? Click here to find out!

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.

LOVE WHAT YOU’RE WRITING. Jesse often tells his students when they’re working on class projects that if they’re not having fun, they’re doing something wrong. This doesn’t mean that every moment of the process will be fun, but it does mean that the overall trend should be to have the work be fun-inducing not pain-inducing. Countless studies have been done that show how much more we remember when learning is fun. When something is painful, we try to forget it as quickly as possible. Thus, if you love your project, you will learn more from the process and your learning will illuminate the page, improving the quantity and quality of your writing.

For more information on becoming a Hackademic , click here !

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.

KEEP SCORE. Writing is not a contest; however, as much as we’d like to say, “academic publishing is not a contest,” we can’t. There are winners and losers in academic publishing, so it makes sense to start keeping score. How many writing projects have you finished? Where has your work appeared? How many people have read it? How many times have you been cited? How many copies of your book have you sold? You can’t get to any of these larger questions without starting first with a more foundational one like, “How many words have I produced today?” So to start with, create a spreadsheet or just jot your daily word count onto a calendar. You can make yourself even more accountable by tweeting the numbers. The number of words is meaningless, really, except in the way that it inspires you to keep making more. We think this tips can also help you academic work as well.