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Building an effective writing habit

In this post I’m going to address three key issues that get in the way of building an effective writing habit. I’m going to call out these three gremlins: Inspiration Perfection Permission Firstly, the Inspiration Gremlin I was lucky enough to teach about Romantic poets and writers, and one of their lasting legacies was a belief – now filtered into popular culture – that inspiration is key to any artistic activity. However, if you wait for the muse to arrive before you write, you might be waiting a while – especially if you [...]

By |2022-07-26T12:34:49+01:00July 4th, 2022|Academic Life, General, Productivity, Writing|0 Comments
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Shaping your job to fit you

These are my favourite shoes.  I’ve had them for a while, and yes, I can see that they’re tatty.  They are so comfortable, so much so, that I’ve worn them through.  They weren’t always this way though.  They were inflexible when I first got them, they rubbed, and they were too tight around the widest part of my foot. Yet I wore them in until eventually they fitted, and they fitted well.  Why am I telling you about my shoes?  Because my shoe is a metaphor for a job.  Some of us at the moment might be contemplating going [...]

By |2022-06-21T17:10:53+01:00May 9th, 2022|Academic Life, Careers, General|0 Comments
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Refocussing: Goals and resolutions

A lot of us try to set goals and resolutions for change. However, it can be really tough to get these to stick. Höchli et al (2019) suggests this is because often these goals are often broad and abstract, requiring sustained behavioural change. In this blog I’m curious about setting and adhering to goals and resolutions and I’m going to explore some ideas and research to help navigate through this.  Firstly, in order to stick a goal has to matter to us.  Neale et al (2011) explain this by distinguishing between our values, our beliefs and our attitudes, using the metaphor of the [...]

By |2023-06-28T17:42:38+01:00January 28th, 2022|General, Personal development, Productivity, Wellbeing|0 Comments
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Focusing on your values as a pathway to success

What are values?   Our values are absolutely key to who we are.  Values are deeply embedded ideas about how things should work, what matters, and as such they shape the decisions that we make and our behaviours.  Take for example my bugbear about selfish drivers.  I get irate about selfishness in general as I have a deep-seated expectation that social interaction should be based on people respecting each other.  I feel that consideration for each other is a kind of glue that keeps us all knitted together and functional as a society.  If someone cuts me up whilst driving, for [...]

By |2022-01-28T11:08:01+00:00January 28th, 2022|General, Personal development, Wellbeing|0 Comments
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It’s OK not to be OK, whatever the time of year

‘Tis the season when we are bombarded by messages of jollity – ‘Merry’ Christmas, ‘Happy’ New Year, Tidings of ‘Joy’, and we are surrounded by imagery of fun, laughter, festivity, friendship and family. But what about if you’re not feeling jolly? What if you are far from being anywhere in the realms of joy and happiness? What then? Truth is, this time of year can be even more difficult than any other. You might be grieving, you might be unwell, you might be having relationship problems or be separated from loved ones by thousands of miles, you might be [...]

By |2021-12-16T15:41:20+00:00December 15th, 2021|General, Wellbeing|0 Comments
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Giving ourselves permission to rest

As I write this blog, we are in the run up to the Winter break at Universities.  I wanted to focus on this break particularly, because many of us have a manic autumn term, and the break is our chance to rest and recuperate.  Except, actually, it becomes a time to cram in all those other things we just didn’t manage to fit in during the term.  Vitae’s ‘Impact of COVID-19 on Researchers’ survey (Feb-Mar 2021) showed that 58% of those surveyed found it impossible to do the research they had planned during COVID, and so now, many of [...]

By |2024-01-22T12:10:58+00:00December 10th, 2021|Academic Life, General, Personal development, Wellbeing|0 Comments
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Welcome to our blog

Well this is new..... Hello and welcome to the Research Coach blog. It’s always been on the ‘to do’ list to start blogging, but it’s one of those things that never quite got prioritised, mostly because it’s rather terrifying! However, we are constantly talking with our coachees about the importance of pushing outside of the comfort zone (there’s a preview for a future post theme), so here we go. We’ll be using this space to post about topics that are important to us and our clients. We will be sharing tips, tools, resources, insights and ideas. We’ll be drawing [...]

By |2021-10-22T13:20:06+01:00October 21st, 2021|General|0 Comments
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