I’m not someone who sets resolutions in a new year. I’ve found that I rarely achieve resolutions and often feel guilty and unaccomplished upon reflecting on that failure. Instead, I like to set themes and intentions for the year to come. For my research work this year, my intention is to tackle the book project that has long been on the back burner behind many articles.
When I first finished graduate school, I spent time learning about the book publishing process and thinking through whether I wanted my dissertation to become a book or a series of articles. I went to panels with book editors (they were incredibly helpful!!), talked through the dilemma with mentors, asked friends who had made a decision how they came to their choice, and talked to my new colleagues about what would be best for my tenure track journey. Based on the intel, I ended up pursuing a tenure plan focused on articles with the promise to myself that the book would be a post-tenure project. Over the years, the book has come to the front burner a few times as I have worked on the book proposal as a way to envision the pieces of the book and the broader argument, new data analysis that I’m integrating throughout the empirical chapters, and rough first drafts of some chapters to take a stab at what I want the chapters to look like. But the bulk of my research time has been focused on articles to make sure I’m meeting my goals for tenure.
This year marks the first time that I’m close enough to my tenure goals to think about my post-tenure research pipeline. (This is both scary and exciting.) Soooo…I have declared 2024 to be “the year of the book.” The challenge is that I still have a number of articles at various points in my research pipeline. That work is not coming to a stop partially because some articles are still in the review process and partially because they include a number of collaborative projects that need to keep moving forward. The point of declaring 2024 “the year of the book” is to make sure that the book stays at the top of my to do list. To make sure that even when I need to turn my attention to an article, it is with the intention of turning back to the book.
To accomplish this, I’m splitting my months into 2 weeks for the book and 2 weeks for articles. Which weeks are allowed to vary depending on if I’m ready to turn away from what I’m working on or whether something comes up that needs to be dealt with immediately, but 2 weeks of every month WILL be for the book! It’s a simple way to prioritize the work that I want to accomplish and an effective way to make sure that work is a priority.
So here’s to the year of the book!
practical phd 