book review: inner workout by taylor elyse morrison

if you’ve been around the thrive phd universe for a minute, you know that i started this whole business because i felt left out of so many conversations and spaces in grad school. my body, my brain, my community - we all needed a LOT of care to get through the dissertation process. in the best cases, people understood that my chronic illness, and my brain that tended toward anxiety, had different needs and they left me space to care for myself. but in the worst cases, my yoga practice was viewed as a luxury, my time in therapy an indulgence, and my boundaries around work one of many signs that i didn’t have what it took to be a “serious academic”.

luckily for me, one of the things that the aforementioned therapy sessions helped with was putting these comments into context, and giving me the permission and skills i needed to do my work, but also live my life and take care of myself. and luckily for a lot of us, the conversation has moved on in the years since i was actively dissertating, and self care has become more openly discussed. but with that increased discussion has also come a whole host of other complications: increased commodification; privileging white, affluent, able-bodied voices; a culture of victim blaming that places the onus making time for and practicing care exclusively on the individual, among others.

but even more luckily for all of us, a new book has come out that made huge strides in creating an actionable, inclusive set of tools for approaching self care in a holistic, multifaceted way. inner workout: strengthening self-care practices for healing body, soul, and mind by taylor elyse morrison is part assessment (you know i love an assessment!), part toolkit, part context for understanding how and why you might have arrived at your specific relationship to self care. taylor is the founder of inner workout, which has created an ecosystem of seminars, meditations, trainings, and tools to help people develop easy, sustainable self care routines, and you can see the breadth and depth of her experience in every page of the book. beyond her impressive CV, i appreciated that taylor wrote this book from the perspective of someone actively caring for themselves, and not doing it perfectly all of the time, or maybe even most of the time. the book is not a gospel from a self care god, speaking to you from high atop the mountain. taylor writes this book as a fellow traveler, maybe a few steps ahead of you on the path, but moving backwards and forwards all the time, as we all are. the difference is refreshing.

the book guides you through the context of self care as a theoretical framework used by many cultures, at many points of history - including so many normally left out of the conversation, like indigenous cultures and religious spaces. and then you take the “take care” assessment. your relationship to self care is measured in terms of five “dimensions”, each with corresponding subdimensions that map elements like relationship to your physical body, and your your connection to community and larger purpose. i love how the assessment is meant to be repeated (taylor recommends seasonally) - it feels like less of a scorecard and more of a self portrait. and because i’m a show and not tell girl, here is the snapshot of my results as of march 2023:

the image has text that says “Your Snapshot: here’s a visualization of how you’re currently relating to self-care. the size of the circle is relative to your positive relationship with that dimension.” there are five circles of various sizes and colors, listed here in descending order of size: bliss, mental and emotional, wisdom, energetic, physical.

the book continues to detail each dimension and sub dimension, with personal stories, exercises to deepen your understanding, playlist suggestions, and more. you can read it straight through (like me, highlighting like every single page) or flip through it as you need.

after taking my assessment and reading the book, i felt inspired to engage with my physical dimension more frequently. not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, and probably relatable for scholars everywhere, i spend a LOT of time in my head, and the relative disconnection i feel to my physical body is a something that i am continually working on (and probably always will be!) the book felt like a compassionate way into that relationship, and not like another thing to add to my already long list of things to do. i’m not instantly more embodied, but i can say that i have been inviting myself back into my body more often in the last week, and that’s not nothing!!

this book is definitely for you if you’re looking for some support for your self care that feels personalized, inclusive, and written with overlapping systems of inequality and privilege as the foundation, not a footnote. if you’re looking for a book about self care written by a Black woman who lives her ambition and values her care, this book is definitely for you. i read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, and do a lot of work with self care every day so take it from me that this feels different: more actionable, more approachable, more inclusive, and more fun.

(i’m not being paid to write this review - i bought the book with my own money and wrote this of my own free will - it was just a really good book that i felt like you should know about!!)

a review of Tend to It: a Holistic Guide to Intentional Productivity by Kate Litterer, PhD

i read a lot of books about productivity - it’s a hazard in my line of work. in most cases, i read through them, looking at the references to see what the author is using as a framework, maybe make a few notes. a few i’ll write up in my community or mention to a client.

it’s been a while since i wanted to buy a book and use it myself, start to finish. Tend to It: A Holistic Guide to Intentional Productivity by Dr. Kate Litterer now sits on my desk, a gentle and powerful tool to help me think about my own practices. it feels like a flexible framework - one that invites me to start from my own experience and build, rather than to take what i know about myself and my work and shove it into a system built for maximum output.

tend to it “reimagines productivity through the lens of slow and intentional living” - an approach that Dr. Litterer has built and shares around the world, through her awesome instagram, blog, and coaching practice. this approach really appeals to me - i have seen firsthand the damage that one-size-fits-all, publish or perish, write no matter what advice does to people who cannot or do not want to meet those bars. i love that this book consciously calls out the roots of productivity culture in white supremacy, ableism, and capitalism, and draws attention to the ways in which we’re all called to work well beyond the limits of our bodies, minds, and boundaries in order to do more, just to keep up.

the book has five main chapters on topics like focusing with intention and setting boundaries, tons of citations and places to do further research, and my favorite part, 21 exercises to do in order to start to apply some of the techniques and tools described. i especially like that the book is flexible enough to support bouncing around, but cohesive enough so that you can work through it step by step as well. the book would be super useful for anyone who is working on a big project, or things you can’t finish in a day or two - so grad students, but also beyond! the book also doesn’t have any specific tools or systems you need to use or buy in order to make the most of it - i love that i don’t have to download any apps or get any new complicated workbooks or planners in order to start working with these tools.

i have a chronic illness, and one of the reasons i started writing and coaching about productivity was because there were so many spaces and voices talking about how to be more efficient, produce more, write more, and so few that were pausing and asking “why" and “do you have the resources to do that sustainably” and “why do you want to do this”. this is the book i needed in my PhD program, and it is a book that serves me well now as a small business owner who still tends towards the overwork, underrest model. i am happy to have a tool and framework to help me move forward with intention, and not just as fast as i can, and i’m so happy it exists so that everyone can benefit from it too!

explaining academic writing: a review of Dr. Jo VanEvery's Short Guides

i was completely unprepared to do academic writing of any kind.

i was MONTHS into my PhD before anyone even asked me what i was thinking of doing in terms of publishing. no one ever told me about how to scout journals, what to expect in a peer review, or how to decide what kinds of things to publish when.

i wish that i had Dr. Jo VanEvery’s short guides then. i’m so grateful you can have them now.

i first learned of Dr. VanEvery’s work when we crossed paths in a community for self-employed PhDs. she runs an amazing, generative salon of sorts for writers. like me, her work takes different forms, from coaching to community writing spaces, and her short guides are an outgrowth of that important work.

the four short guides are, well, short - but in a good way; you don’t have to take all day to read one and get something useful out of it. they’re practical and full of time-tested strategies and information to help demystify some of the most confusing and insider-only areas of academia. I can’t describe the topics any more elegantly than the author herself:

The Scholarly Writing Process

Scholarly writing involves both using writing to articulate your own ideas and get clarity on what contributions you could make, and writing things that will communicate those contributions to other scholars (and perhaps those beyond academe). Getting stuck is a normal part of the writing process, even for experienced writers. My aim in publishing this Short Guide is to help you generate new writing projects, keep your writing projects moving forward, and ensure that your writing process results in publications. Designed so you can refer to it whenever you get stuck, this Short Guide breaks down the scholarly writing process into stages and provides both a description of that stage and writing prompts to help you get unstuck.

Finding Time for Scholarly Writing

Finding Time for your Scholarly Writing addresses the problem of juggling writing alongside your other responsibilities. I identify three kinds of time: full days, longish sessions, and short snatches. In this Short Guide, I explain what kinds of writing you can do in each, and suggest ways of combining the three to ensure that you make the best use of the time available at different points in the academic year.

Scholarly Publishing

In Scholarly Publishing, I focus on the big picture of publishing for scholarly audiences. After discussing the purpose of publishing for scholarly readers and what is meant by making a contribution to the advancement of knowledge, I look in detail at the main types of scholarly publication: books, peer reviewed journal articles, and various types of work-in-progress publishing (conference papers, working papers, etc) to help you decide which type of publication will best suit your purposes. The concluding chapter discusses how you can improve discoverability of your publications. Each chapter has questions to help you apply the information to your own situation.

Peer Review

This Short Guide provides an overview of what peer review is and why it’s important, along with practical advice for both authors and reviewers. Guided by the principle that peer review supports academic writing, topics include the emotional work involved in writing and receiving reviews, and advice on finding time to review. 

for grad students, i think the last two short guides, Scholarly Publishing and Peer Review, are particularly useful. especially if there are holes in what your department has or hasn’t given you training around, these guides are in some ways a replacement for the seminar or advisor taking you aside and letting you see how the wheels turn.

if you’ve ever wondered how and when to approach a publisher, how to vet a journal, the differences between publishing an article and a piece in an edited collection, well, there are answers here for you in Scholarly Publishing. the advice is broad enough to be useful for people in many different disciplines (although most pertinent to those in the humanities and social sciences, where there are more distinctions between types of publications) without being prescriptive. in addition to information to help demystify the process, there are really productive reflection questions sprinkled throughout to give you a framework to think about what ideas could or should live where.

my favorite part of the Peer Review short guide is that it begins from the premise that soliciting, receiving, and responding to criticism about your work is an emotional as well as intellectual process. like the other short guides, it contains a masterful balance of useful, clear explanations of terms and processes, and reflection spaces for you to unpack the process and support yourself. especially as more and more junior colleagues are being asked to participate in the peer review process, the view and how-tos from both author and editor are invaluable in understanding how the process works beyond just your comments, given or written.

all four of the short guides are also concluded with meticulous reference and further reading sections. i found myself bookmarking all kinds of sources for myself, and i do this professionally - so i can scarcely imagine how useful these resources will be to those just starting out on the journey of academic writing.

if you’re looking to learn more about the books, listen to a sample, or pick them up for yourself, you can do here - i recommend them highly to anyone who just wants to know how the process works, and how best to support themselves within it.

**I received these books as review copies, but all my opinions here are my own and in no way compensated. I just think these are really help for grad students!!

Book Review - Air & Light & Time & Space

No one ever taught me how to write a dissertation. The last formal writing instruction I received was as an undergraduate, and as so many of us have learned the hard way, a 15 page term paper is a completely different proposition than a dissertation. 

Dr. Helen Sword interviewed a hundred different successful academics about their writing habits, and then opened up the survey to a wide community of academics at all stages to get a wide range of perspectives. I appreciated her data-driven approach; the book is a mix of her cogent, insightful writing drawing themes and commonalities out of successful approaches, and individual author profiles. Many other books espousing a "way" to write as an academic feel anecdotal -- and while there is a lot of merit in sharing how things work for you, or how things have worked for you and all the people who subscribe to your method, it is still a trial and error proposition. 

If you're looking for Air & Light & Time & Space to lay out a step-by-step, data proven, fool-proof plan to become a productive, happy, academic writer, you're in the wrong place. But that is exactly what I appreciated about Sword's work. She instead identifies four key habits of the writers: Behavioral, Artisanal, Social, and Emotional, and showcases the diversity of successful practices in each area. Imagined as the foundation of a house, she stresses that different combinations of strengths can all produce productive writers. This model is generous enough to account for people who don't, won't, or can't write everyday, or who always work alone, or never work alone, or hate writing, or love writing. Rather than outlining a perfect system, she enumerates the elements that make a successful system. The difference produces a book that feels inclusive, rather than guilt-provoking. 

Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write

By Helen Sword

She provides a self-assessment quiz on her website to see how you stack up in each area: http://writersdiet.com/base.php . I recommend it taking it - the results are illuminating, and they're helpfully ranked in terms of frequency, just in case you want to see how common, or rare, you are! And I recommend the book, because it empowers you to build a writing routine and set of habits to support writing as it fits in your life, offering options rather than enforcing rules. 

For me, I'm working on writing more consistently (on regular days, if not every day!) and taking steps to build up my artisanal skills on my own writing (even editors have to learn how to self-edit!) And I'll be using this with my clients, to identify not how far they are away from an #AcWri ideal, but what methods resonate and appeal.