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Today I coached three PhD students and in two of the sessions we ended up talking about the exact same thing. Introductions. All three were in the end stages of their projects. All three were working with large amounts of text. And all three had reached that moment where you are trying to pull everything together into a clean, compelling opening that does justice to years of work. If you have ever stared at your introduction and thought, why is this so hard when I know my top

A recent Science|Business   article made a claim that will feel painfully familiar to many early-career researchers: fixed-term academic contracts discourage radical research . Honestly, that finding is not surprising. If you are working on a short-term contract, the incentives shaping your research choices are very clear, even if no one ever states them explicitly. You want a project you can finish within the contract. You want results you can show at the end of it. You wan

Perfectionism is not the productivity hack you think it is. In my work as a writing and career coach for academics in the humanities and social sciences, I see this pattern again and again: brilliant researchers who delay their writing for months (sometimes years) because it doesn't feel "ready enough." They say: "I just need to read one more thing." "This argument isn’t quite there yet." "Once I have a full day, I’ll really get into it." Behind these statements, more often t

Ever Paid a Coach to Help You in Academia? If you haven’t, you’re not alone. Many academics — from PhD students to full professors — believe they have to figure things out on their own. That includes questions about their dissertation, dealing with peer review, navigating job markets, or publishing under pressure. Even though we know senior scholars often have a whole team behind them (teaching assistants, research collaborators, editors, and more), many still feel that getti

Academic Writing Month  (AcWriMo) is in full swing in the EMERGE Co-Writing Community , and last week we held our November monthly planning session . This time, I opened the session to people who are not members yet, and it turned out to be a really meaningful and energising gathering. We had participants from Belgium, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Austria, and the UK. PhD students, postdocs, lecturers and early career researchers joined to take a moment to pause, reflect, and

Discover how professors, postdocs, and PhD students can protect writing time, reduce admin overload, and make real progress with online co-writing support. Academic work is not a task list. It is not something you can manage with a timer or a color-coded to-do board. Whether you are a PhD student , postdoc , or professor , you already know that academic writing demands long-term focus, months of sustained thinking, revising, and rewriting. Yet very few academics have ever lea

It always makes me smile: the Monday and Friday writing sessions  in my co-writing community are almost always the first ones to fill up. You’d think it would be the opposite. Monday has a heavy reputation. And by Friday, everyone’s tired. But over time, I’ve noticed a pattern that keeps repeating—and it says a lot about how academics approach their writing. The Psychology of Monday and Friday Monday often feels like a chance to get a head start. A way to set the tone for the

Last Monday, we held our monthly planning session in the EMERGE Co-Writing Community , and for many members, the timing couldn’t have...

A few weeks ago, I shared something on LinkedIn that surprised a few people — and honestly, I'm still thinking about it myself. The...

This blog is a space for researchers—especially PhD students, postdocs, and early-career academics—who are navigating the complex,...