Jo VanEvery
Hello, Christine, welcome. It’s really nice to see you. And I thought I would start by just saying that you and I met many, many years ago on this great internet thing in a group. We were both in this group that was called The Creative Haven, which was really about like decluttering and organising your space. Jennifer Hoffman, who ran it, had a thing called Office Spa Day, which was really good. And yeah, and that was like a long time ago, because I looked up when I was preparing for this, and Jen started doing her current thing, which is called The Americans of Conscience Checklist, in 2016 which is 10 years ago, so…

Christine W
Wow. That’s perspective.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. So, like, we must have… That… We must have met, like, 15 years… I mean, the other thing is, I moved across an ocean since then as well. I’ll be in England this time for 10 years this May, so…

Christine W
Has it been that long?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
I remember you moving. That also doesn’t seem that long.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, it’ll be 10 years ago in May. And yeah, so it was a while ago, and one of the things I’ve realised over time is that the way Jen, like, the things I learned from her, which were mainly, like, we were mainly talking about… I mean, my desk is neat. It has been neat ever since. Like, whatever it was she did, it worked, in a kind of long term way, because I used to be a kind of, like, geomorphological waves of clutter on my desk, as was my father. And…

Jo VanEvery
But the things I learned from her were super influential on how I do the things I do now, which aren’t focused on that at all. They’re focused on helping people find time for writing. And, I mean, that’s mainly it, and the, like, things associated with that. So it’s like more around time, than around space. But you know, the Meeting With Your Writing, which I’m now in my 14th year of running, was directly based on the model for the Office Spa Day, but sort of modified. And the Planning Classes I run, which I’ve been doing, I don’t know how long, not quite that long, but almost also started out modelled on planning things she did, and… And she was out like she sort of said “I was diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD”, and like, we weren’t really talking about it as these are techniques that work for neurodivergent people. It was just, like, that’s a fact about her, or whatever. But I figured the things that I learned from her and then fed into this. I then had clients who did have ADHD diagnoses saying, “You know that your model is super ADHD friendly? And you should be more open about that in your marketing”. And I’m like, “Okay.” – and, and what I’ve realised since then is like, I have people who have ADHD, I have people who are dyspraxic, dyslexic, autistic, and all of whom have academic careers. So anybody listening, who is thinking about that, it’s like, yes, it’s possible. It’s not easy, but [it is possible.] Right?

Christine W
Mm. Right.

Jo VanEvery
And, and just these ways of working that I kind of, that kind of grew out of what we did together seemed to be really helpful. So the thing that I felt was most influential, I think, was probably the idea of self compassion and the idea of experimenting with things, I suppose, was maybe… but I could probably come up with a longer list. But anyway, yeah, so there was just like, it just felt really important.

Jo VanEvery
And the other thing that happened was she did build a community, and you and I are still in touch, and also in touch with other people we met there, and some of them I’ve even, I mean, one of our colleagues who lives in Spain, I’ve, I’ve been to stay with her on holiday, and…

Christine W
Oh, cool.

Jo VanEvery
You know? Like, so, you know, even 10-15 years later, however long it’s been, there’s like it was this community that kind of lasted. And one of the things I’ve been noticing about Meeting With Your Writing, which, you know, is mostly silent co-working – people are writing for an intro and an exit, but mostly people are just writing, but that has built a kind of community, and I’m noticing connections being made between people that have been coming to those things for a while. And and I’m really proud of that, like, I’m really glad that people are… Things that I’m doing are helping other people find the support they need, which is so fantastic.

Jo VanEvery
But anyway, you even then we’re doing some coaching, and coaching around ADHD and all that kind of thing. And so I just thought I’d invite you, and you and I could have a chat about some of those things and how that feeds into helping people with ADHD and maybe other forms of neurodivergence, with getting the stuff done that they want to get done. Which might be a better way to phrase it than “planning” which people have, you know, because we all love that word planning. [/sarcastic]

Christine W
Yeah, that word “planning”. [Laughter].

Jo VanEvery
And you and I both help people get done the things they want to get done.

Christine W
Yeah, because we understand, right? Because we’re… Yeah, we’re not immune to the struggles.

Jo VanEvery
Could you do a little introduction of who you are and what you do? And then we can get into more conversation.

Christine W
So okay, my name is Christine Weddle. I have a master’s degree in counselling as a background, I worked in counselling for eight years, and a large detour into totally unrelated things because I got I burned out, and I came back as a coach, because it’s so life giving. Yeah, it’s the it’s the current and the moving forward with your life, and more. It more includes teaching, which I loved, in counselling, when I could do that, the psycho Ed groups I used to do were so fun, the big blackboard, and I would get up there and write the things… That was, yeah, so so much joy. And it’s like, oh, look, this thing called coaching, yeah, in 2005. I’ve had my business a very long time, and it’s, it’s struggled as a part time business because of all the marketing. And so what it is that I do, I love to work with women who have ADHD, or who relate to ADHD, the symptoms of ADHD, which includes so many things. And what it is that I really want for those women are to have more… even to believe that they can have more ease and more joy in their days with ADHD when they have the right kind of tools, strategies and support, including you mentioned self compassion, I was also the two words that I remember from Jenn Hoffman that were, that stayed with me forever are compassion, self compassion, and you call it experimenting. I love the word curiosity. Because it’s the curiosity that we have that leads to the experiments.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah.

Christine W
They’re the more practical piece of it, the more action oriented. And also the word tiny, the word tiny, I think that you use that one or baby steps. So the… I’ve mostly worked with people individually. I began way a long time ago with people in person, because there wasn’t this thing that we used and met with people I had called it my floating office in the library or coffee houses, and delightfully helped those people in those ways. Sometimes went into people’s homes to help with decluttering or organising and offering some ideas about what might work. And I, more recently, I’ve been I’m strictly online right now, and I do individual coaching, and I will probably continue to do that. I love doing small groups, and I’m on the edge of developing a community. I would love to have something like you have for women with ADHD, and I haven’t developed that yet, but I as you describe that that is something that I so believe that we all need right now so much is this sense of not being alone and having a community where we feel like there are other people who understand and are working towards the same kinds of goals. And so those communities make such a difference to not, to not be alone, but to do that in community is even more powerful.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
So I love that you’ve done that for so many years, and that you see those women, you know, feeling like they’re at home, that they belong, that they’re they are comfortable being there. That just… That…. Wow, do we need that in our world right now. So that kind of space. I have also played around with doing some workshops. I just did a workshop in December. Not sure if I’ll do that again, because that was a little challenging, but it was, it was well received about, you know, the crazy holidays. And so I’m really, I’m really receptive to actually, in the process of doing some market discovery with what it is that women with ADHD are, are looking for, or want, what would be the most helpful? What kinds of services, what kinds of you know, things do they need? What kind of communities, what kind of groups? So I’m I’m really looking at that, and I’m excited about what I will find out.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, that’s cool. I’ve recently started doing a bit of small group coaching as well. I started with, you know, because my people are academics, I started with book, book writers, and that’s going really well. It’s been fun. Yeah. And I will say about that not feeling alone, like, so these so I do these Planning Classes, and I do them quarterly. And one time, a client that had been a coaching client, I encouraged her to come to one of the Planning Classes as well. And afterwards, she emailed me, and that was, like, one of the things she got out of, it wasn’t even just like, it was just, “Oh my goodness. It was so nice not to be alone with these struggles”, you know? And like, not even just necessarily the ADHD, because, like, not everybody in my groups, you know, they’re not all like… I’m not like… You’re focused on people whose brains work in this particular way, and I’m focused on people who have this particular kind of job and are struggling to manage all the things they need to do. And many of them also turn out to be neurodivergent in one type or another. But you know, they’re also just struggling with, you know, like, objectively unreasonable demands from their employers in terms of how much work. They’ve also got children. I mean, that particular woman, there was one time… It was like… So I do them [the Planning Classes] just before the quarter starts. So for the for the quarter starting in January. We do the class in December before Christmas. And I remember her saying, one year, this was a couple of years ago, and her kids were both under five at the time, and she said, “I don’t know how to plan when there’s so much uncertainty about how much time I’m going to have, because in my household, we had eight respiratory viruses in the last term!”

Christine W
Oh!

Jo VanEvery
…between her two kids. And then I think at one point, her husband was down.

Christine W
Oh, wow.

Jo VanEvery
Just in the second week, somebody was sick enough not to be able to go to nursery, or work or something. And that actually culminated after the class in which she told me that over the Christmas holidays she ended up in the hospital with one with the littlest one.

Christine W
Oh.

Jo VanEvery
You know?

Christine W
That becomes your life more than the other, [the] rest of your life is supposed to be.

Jo VanEvery
Exactly. But even without that coming… That’s kind of extreme, but even without that, it’s just like, oh yeah… You know? And so many of the people that I work with are dealing with, you know, their kids, you know, or teen kids, whatever, with mental health problems, with, you know all of that kind of stuff, or they’re dealing with divorces, or they’re dealing with their parents are sick or dying, or they’re, you know, like all of, all of the, all of the [things]… And then, you know, and then there’s everything else.

Christine W
Don’t even go there, Jo. [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
We’re not going to talk about that, but there is a lot of everything else, right now.

Christine W
Oh, gosh, there is indeed.

Jo VanEvery
And, and also, I think one of the things though, for the people with ADHD, is that several of the people that are in my community were diagnosed in adulthood…

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…and often, kind of because, like, their kids got diagnosed, and then the psychologist was like, you do know, these things run in families, and do want to do this, you know? And all of a sudden, and these are people with successful careers, and then all of a sudden they’re like, “Oh”, like, “Okay, that makes a lot of sense”. But I think it adds a layer, because…

Christine W
Yes it does.

Jo VanEvery
I’m sometimes saying to the people, you know, they’re just like, you know, it’s like, well, you’ve built up these habits and these habits of self- of how, of judging yourself based on 20, 30, 40, years of other people having said these very mean things to you.

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
So the self compassion part is, like, super important and super difficult.

Christine W
So, super difficult because it just, it doesn’t even sound right, or it’s like, that’s, it’s… unbelievable, is the word I’m looking for. Feels unbelievable because of all the contrary evidence, you know, in what has been spoken to you, or what the way you’ve come to believe you are.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
…Because it’s so repeated, you know, repeated, repeated, reuse it, yeah, yeah. “This is easy. Why can’t you just do that? Why…? Why is your room a mess? Why…?” I mean, I just, all the, like, yeah, “What is wrong with you? What…?” – it just… All the, all the icky things that have been said to us, or, yeah, “What are you stupid?” I mean, just, like, all the icky things that can be said to us.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. So, so one of the things about the word ‘planning’ is because I just think that however I learned about it from Jen and others, I feel like, for me, planning is a practice that I do regularly in order to pay attention to what I need and want to do, how much time I have available to do it, and to set priorities, and decide, you know, what to do. Or like maybe even… And it doesn’t have to look any particular way, but it just feels like something that helps me feel less overwhelmed with All The Things I could be doing. It helps, because sometimes I do have these really brilliant ideas, or they seem like brilliant ideas at, you know, I think the the, the the term sometimes used is ‘impulsivity’. But you know, just like you get this flash of inspiration and you’re like “What am I supposed to do now?”

Christine W
Well it’s like ‘impulsivity’ or is it, like, creativity? But that’s definitely a piece of it.

Jo VanEvery
We could call it all kinds of things, yeah. But sometimes, if we just kind of lean into that, like that energy is fantastic, you can get a lot done, except then you’re just like, “Oh, but then what about all these other things?” And, you know, whatever. And so the way that I’ve balanced that for myself is with planning and with being able to be like, “Okay, I really want to do this. But what does that [look like]…?” You know? It gives me a moment to pause and be like, “Well, what will that mean for everything else? And is it still important enough that these other things can go on the back burner?” Or like…

Christine W
Yeah. So that’s really… Let’s… Can we stop there?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, absolutely.

Christine W
Because that is so key, and that’s one of the things, when I was writing ideas and things that I thought were relevant, is this idea of a lot of people may have created that plan, but how are they following it? If they’re following it. I mean, are they even follow Do they even know where the plan is? You know, is it? Is it somewhere that it’s like, “Oops, yeah, I made that plan. But it’s so underneath those things, or, or it’s behind this other, you know, sub menu of…” wherever they’ve, you know, housed it, is it? Is it something that they even are referring to, and then, if they are referring to it, and that wonderful burst of inspiration, right? Whether impulsivity, creativity, whatever you want to call that, that lovely idea that’s so tempting to follow. How do you pause? Because that’s, like, being able to pause is… Many people don’t even have the awareness that they could pause, right? They’re just like, there they are, and the rest of the world has gone away. And then if you’re able to pause, how do you then look at the planner to say, to make that kind of assessment? Because this thing is generally, probably so much more fun than whatever is on the schedule. And so, that you named that so clearly, that you know the process that you go through. There are several pieces in there that are that are so key and important in in planning. So I’m, I’m grateful that you, you know those steps. The importance of being aware of those steps. Not only do you have a plan, do you even know where the plan is? How often do you refer to the plan, and then how do you go about pausing? Do you know how to pause? What is involved in pausing? What does that mean? And how can you, you know, creatively, be on the path that is the best for you, whether it’s following that, or whether it’s going back to the plan?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and, and, I mean, I don’t want listeners to think that I’m just some sort of magical person who is just pretending to have…

Christine W
Yeah you’ve been doing this since a long time ago.

Jo VanEvery
…because I’ve learned that, like I said, like, you know, Christine and I met, like, 15 years ago, and I used to be the kind of person whose desk was completely covered in papers. They weren’t even piles, right? And I used to tidy my desk when I was an academic. I used to tidy my desk at the end of every semester. And that was back when email was still kind of new, and we still had paper memos, and I would sometimes find stuff at the bottom of that thing, and I’m like, “Oh, I never got around to doing that. But hey, it’s too late now!”

Christine W
Right. “I’m not doing that one!”

Jo VanEvery
I guess… “Oh, well, nobody died.” I… My life… So that was kind of my system, and, and it’s taken me a really long time to get to a different kind of place, both with how tidy my desk is, and also with the planning. And it’s been with, you know, curiosity, and trying different things and using planners that other people have designed, and then modifying them to work better for me, and having… I was telling Christine earlier, I have an assistant now, and we meet regularly and talk about what’s kind of on the agenda and make sure, like between the two of us, that none of the big projects fall off, and and also, I’ve got somebody to talk to to make a decision about. And not everybody has that much control. I’m self employed, right? I have a certain amount of control over what I can do, but I do know where the plan is. It’s right next to me, hanging… I have, like, a little kind of, I’ve strung a piece of string from one corner of the room to the bookshelf next to me, and I have printed out my February plan and stuck on it with these little, tiny clothes pegs, which has my priorities for the month, and then a kind of tentative breakdown of which projects I’m going to work on in each week. And it’s taken me a long time to get to… I mean, when I made my February plan this year, I was looking at my January plan and I was ticking off, “Did I do these things?” And I was like, Oh, my goodness. I think this is probably the first time ever where every priority I set for January actually got done.

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
So not usually the case, like, usually, “Oh, this one didn’t get done. Is that still a priority for this month?” That kind of thing. But I just feel like that, one of the reasons people say, “Oh, I have ADHD, planning doesn’t work for me”, which a lot of people have said, right?

Christine W
Not the typical way of planning, for sure, doesn’t [work].

Jo VanEvery
But I think, I think it’s like, “What do you mean by planning?” So that’s why I say, like, for me, planning is really a practice, and I am not at all… And I learned from somebody else. I think it was Tara Swiger. She had this great way of putting it. She’s like, “The purpose of a plan is to inspire action.”

Christine W
Ooh.

Jo VanEvery
That’s so awesome, isn’t it? So it’s like…

Christine W
I have not heard that. I mean, that would be the best definition to guide us because, yes, because of our nervous system, you know the interest, novelty, challenge or urgency, and it and it’s it like calls us forth. And when we don’t have, as someone with ADHD, we don’t have those things, it’s like planning. It’s like… [Negative noise.] – There’s not any, there’s not any energy, there’s not necessarily any urgency, because you just like, Do The Thing… You just do the thing, and there’s no plan, and it’s all over the place, but you just keep doing the things… And you’re… Yeah, it’s…

Christine W
So it’s about inspiring action.

Christine W
“Inspiring action.”

Jo VanEvery
But the other thing is, if that’s the purpose of your plan, it’s actually neither here nor there, if you do everything you actually planned – as long as *making* the plan got you going in the direction you want to go. And then, and then, when you have one of those inspirational moments, or whatever, you have, you have the opportunity to be like: “Is that still the direction I want to be going in?” “Is, is this new thing taking me in that direction?” “Do I…?” – you know, like, you have a kind of model. But it’s really just about, like, you’re trying to generate forward movement, and it, you know, the goal of being a good planner, doesn’t, you know, like, there’s no award for, like, making a plan that you’ve done. Like, I mean, I’m really pleased. There is a kind of intrinsic reward that sometimes you make a plan and you get to the end of the month and you’re like, “Shit, I did everything on my plan!” – like, it feels really good. But I never, like… I don’t have a kind of negative feeling when I don’t. Like, I just sort of, am, like, “Oh, well, I must have over-estimated, or something came up, or…” you know? Like, because that’s the other thing, you know, like I said about when we were talking about the ‘feeling like everybody’s facing this’, you know? Like, the more things you’ve got going on in your life, the more stuff you can’t plan for. Like, there’s always stuff you can’t plan for; your kids get sick; you get sick. You know? That there’s some kind of, you know, fascist uprising in your town, like, you know what I mean? Like…

Christine W
Just a small thing like that! [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
Like, you still have to cook dinner and all the rest of it, but, you know, it’s okay if things go off the rails, when stuff happens, right? And, and feeling bad that you didn’t plan well enough for it, I don’t think helps. Like, that’s where the the self compassion part comes in…

Christine W
Yes, a lot.

Christine W
…a lot. I think that… You know? But then I guess the other thing, yeah, so then I guess the other thing is, I don’t really, I don’t really have… I find it harder to set milestones of where I’m going to be. I just am, like, on a direction. And I sometimes think… You know, so you were talking about… Repeat those four things again, because that’s really important. Everybody needs to hear those. The urgency… [etc.]

Christine W
I.N.C.U. Interest. Novelty. Challenge ([the] right size challenge).

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Christine W
And urgency. Or deadlines, you know, urgency, otherwise known as deadlines,

Jo VanEvery
Well, urgency, yeah. Or, or just… Yeah, “Somebody’s bleeding, so I’m going to do that…”

Christine W
Right, yeah, urgency, emergency.

Jo VanEvery
Well, this is why, apparently, a lot of emergency room doctors or medical professionals have ADHD because, like, that’s a good…

Christine W
They’re good, yeah, it’s a good fit.

Jo VanEvery
It’s a good fit, right? Like, but yeah. Like, so the interest, and I think the interest part is one of the reasons why so many of my academic clients are turning it – because the episode that I released in November, I was talking to Lee Skallerup Bessette about a book she co edited. There was a collection of kind of stories from academics and staff in higher education who have who are neurodivergent, one type or another, or have mental health challenges. There were a few people in it that were bipolar or, you know, ADHD, talking about, you know, their careers in higher education and how… And [for] some of those, it was really good, and [for] some of them it didn’t work out. And they… But one of the things is that it, as a career, academia seems to promise the ability to really have a lot of your time focused on stuff you’re really interested in, right? Like, you get to deep dive into this area that you’re really interested in. You get to, you know, engage with people in a classroom about this stuff, you know, like you’re talking to people all day about stuff that you’re really excited about, all that kind of thing. And that’s, that’s the sort of attraction. There are also some other problems with it. But I think that thing about interest being important is, is one of the reasons that we see all that. But, but, yeah. So, talk a bit about right size challenge.

Christine W
Oh yeah. I mean, because that’s… It’s interesting, [because] that one I’ve seen added more recently. [It] used to just be the interest, novelty, urgency, and then more recently, I’ve seen the challenge being added. And somebody, wisely, and one of the things I read, talked about ‘right size’. And it’s like, yeah. You can’t… Because otherwise, that’s… Challenge on one side, or another, is not going to work. So [if] you have a challenge that’s too big, that seems too much, that seems too great, it could be too easily overwhelming. I mean, there’s, you know… Yeah. It might be something you can break down and work with. And it’s possible to use those kinds of strategies of breaking down and finding the tiny steps in that. But it’s… So there’s that side. Is it…? Is it too big? But on the other side: is it challenging [enough]? It has to be challenging enough, which is why those with interest and challenge, like a lot of the admin stuff for ADHD, is so hard, the practical life details, eating, scheduling stuff, bank stuff, you know, all… It’s like, you know, unless we have an interest in some of those things, we just were like, “Ugh!” It’s just, it’s like, it’s like, pulling teeth. And so… It’s [that] the challenge is either not interesting enough, or it’s [that] the challenge is too… It’s like, we need to make the challenge bigger, or more interesting a challenge. So, yeah, there’s, it’s like, not enough versus too much on the challenge. But especially, you know, it’s very connected to the interest piece, which is why in some ways it’s an optional one, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, no… And it’s… But I think that’s also something really important for academics, you know, because they’re both interested, but also they, they, they are doing challenging things in a lot of their work, and then some of the things they really struggle with are the stuff that feels boring and pointless and… Right? Like some of the bureaucratic stuff, it’s just… And then it’s just really hard.

Christine W
The ‘ish’ stuff, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s hard to do. Though, I think some kinds of those little boring things, you can do the strategy that combines it with urgency too. Like, you can create urgency as a kind of challenge. So like, I know people like, I know parents that do a thing where they set a timer and say to their kids, “how many kids-“, “How many, how many of these toys can you get put away before the timer goes off?” Right? And I think you can, you can do that kind of thing for lots of grown up tasks.

Christine W
It works for adults too. Also to contain time, you know, to know what time it is, instead of, like, you know, ‘Now’, ‘Not Now’, kind of time, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But like, for some of those, like, really boring things, you can do it as a sort of, “How many of these can I tick off in the next 15 minutes?”

Christine W
Oh, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…sort of, and then that creates a challenge, right? Which makes it kind of exciting and gets you motivated.

Christine W
Yes, I time, yeah, time, challenges can really help. And using timers, I recommend visual timers, if at all possible. I used to… I remember, and this was so helpful back when we didn’t pay our bills online, or most of our bills online that you took that you had all the bills, and you had the chequebook, and you wrote them out, check by check. And I remember I would take my bills, and my chequebook, go to a coffee house, get the yummy coffee and a treat, and then sit with my bills and that that was like, “Ahhh”. I created this lovely kind of way. It made it more enjoyable. So you can add, you know, that can be a piece. Can it be more enjoyable somehow? Can you make it a little bit, you know, have a little more ease or delight to it? It’s like, “Yeah, I got my sugar, and I got my caffeine. Some dopamine too, though, in there.” So, you know, there’s that.

Jo VanEvery
I left, I left the house!

Christine W
Yeah, well, that too, yeah, it’s like, change of environment, which can also, you know, we need to keep fresh in our spaces and our minds and our… Yeah, to help ourselves, you know, just get up and move. All those little things.

Jo VanEvery
That’s and that’s the other thing. And the other reason why I think of planning as a practice I have to do all the time is because those things change. I was just talking to a client this morning who has ADHD, and she usually works at home. She’s working on a PhD, and she was saying, “I’ve just realised that for some reason, I can’t focus at home right now. But I went into the campus, I went into the university and worked in the office, and that worked really well”. And she’s like, you know, “I’m in.” It’s like an, and it’s, you know… Because it’s for PhD students, it’s kind of an open plan space. So she’s like, “But because if I’m working there, other people can see my screen, so I sort of feel like I need to be on my game.” She’s like, “Not that anybody actually looks at what I’m doing, or would say anything.”

Christine W
Oh! Like, it provides a kind of a kind of accountability, sort of, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? That if she’s, if she’s there, and working, that she probably has to have actual work up on the screen, and all that kind of stuff. But she also, like, while we were talking, realised that, you know, sometimes she works really well at home, right? And that’ll work really well for a while, and then all of a sudden, for no apparent reason, it just stops working. And…

Christine W
Yes, yes, it needs to be… It’s like, we really do need to reboot, refresh our minds and our bodies. But I mean, both, either way, sometimes it can be just we need to move our body, but yeah, when it becomes too… It’s like, we need it to be a little bit new, a little bit novel, to help us stay engaged. It’s like, “Okay, it’s time for a new…” It’s like, “Oh, yeah!” And then it’s like… It wakes our brains up so that we can work well.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. And also, I think that’s the same with like, are you working on your computer? Are you working on paper? And sometimes having to go back and forth between those things, like for writing, or working with your data, or whatever it is that academics might be doing. And I think one of the difficult things about some of the required things is depending where you live, like certainly in Britain, I think almost all the universities now require all the work to be submitted electronically, and require you to mark it like in the electronic thing, because it goes through the plagiarism checker thing, and it does… Right? And so…

Christine W
Oh, gosh.

Jo VanEvery
I know. So it used to be like, you know, 30 years ago, when I was still an academic, it’s like, you had this stack of paper and then, you know, but now, it’s kind of, you know? I mean, I did have one client in Canada who, when she was diagnosed, she has some very severe migraines.

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And so she got accommodations for that. And one of the accommodations was that somebody would print out all the essays for her to mark, and she could mark them on paper. But she had that as an accommodation.

Christine W
Wow. That’s wonderful that she was able to get that.

Jo VanEvery
She… It was wonderful she was able to get that. And I mean, the kind of migraine she has is very severe.

Christine W
Oh my goodness, I’m so sorry to hear that.

Jo VanEvery
You know? Like it was, yeah, so, yeah, it was just… But I think what… There’s a lot of places where it feels like people have fewer choices about some of those things, and about changing and making it new, and making it, you know, that kind of thing that it… That can be really limiting, I think.

Christine W
Yeah, it… Yes, yeah, and, and, you know, there’s privilege that goes along with this. Or depending on where you live, if there’s, you know, four feet of snow, you’re probably not likely to go somewhere, that you may be contained in your house for a minute, or whatever it is… That you rely on somebody else to transport you, or… I mean, all the kinds of things that might come into play, sometimes even just changing the direction of where you work, you know? So it, we know, when we come back to as far as just moving the space, it can be something as simple as, “Okay, okay. What about looking at these cool things over here? What if I change it so that I’m facing up?” I mean, it really, it can be, it’s our brain is just looking for just a little refreshment. You know, it can be not a whole meal change, but just a little snack change in the way that can refresh us.

Jo VanEvery
Right. So maybe those kind of, like… Also taking, like… [It’s] really the value of taking little mini breaks, getting up and doing something else, right? So, like, putting on a three minute pop song and dancing around your office like a goon.

Christine W
Especially good one. Especially good one. The more goon the better.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah, right? Or just, you know, getting up and stretching, or… I use a sit / stand desk now, like I have a- where, my thing is sitting. It can move up here [gestures], and I can just stand up. So I do, I do that.

Christine W
How much…? I’m curious, how often do you change?

Jo VanEvery
I don’t, I don’t know. It varies. It’s kind of, you know, sometimes I’m sitting in the chair and I’m like, “Oh, I feel a little bit uncomfortable.” Like, “Well, I could stand up.” And then when I’m standing, like, standing is tiring. It took a long time to get used to working standing up, because you’re using different muscles in your legs, and you have to… You know? But, but yeah. And some days I’m more tired than others, so then sometimes I’m standing and it’s like, “Oh no, I’m tired now. I need to sit down.” So sometimes I go up and down a lot, and sometimes not. I know other people that have started doing that because of, say, back pain issues, and whatever, where they actually set a timer for kind of 45 minutes just to keep…

Christine W
Oh, and they alternate…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. And they alternate.

Christine W
Yeah. I was just curious, what…? If it was… How…? So, thank you for offering both of those possibilities.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. So, yeah, it’s just, you know, I do a bit of both. But yeah, so I think… So… So: urgent- urgency, novelty, challenge, and-

Christine W
Is there anything else hmm? Just novelty, challenge… Interest. Novelty. Challenge. Urgency.

Jo VanEvery
Interest. Novelty. Challenge. Urgency. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So, urgency is the one I think a lot of people, that I know, kind of, I think a lot of people over rely on.

Christine W
Rely on, yes.

Jo VanEvery
For, like, for the… So they… So, like, some people end up with like, “Oh, well, I’ll commit to these things, because then I have a deadline. I can’t write until I have a deadline.” Blah, blah, blah. And one of the issues with that is, it’s hard for really big things.

Christine W
To, to sustain it, right.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, it’s hard… Like, like having a deadline for producing a book.

Christine W
Oh shit. [Laughter.]

Jo VanEvery
I’ll mention… But one of the sorts of things that my people do, doesn’t actually create a lot of urgency.

Christine W
Correct, correct, correct.

Jo VanEvery
You know? It’s a bit like the right size challenge. I think you need the right size, you need the right size deadline, right?

Christine W
Ma’am, yes, yeah. That’s… No, that’s good. That’s, yeah, that’s a, it’s a great, humorous example, yeah, like, you know, got to get it done. It’s like, there’s almost zero, especially with a brain that’s working with, you know, Now and Not Now, time, that, that’s like, that’s not now… And so nothing’s gonna happen. It’s just like… Yeah, you know. And back to the “What are the tiny steps? What are the tiny steps? What about the introduction? What about…?” I mean, really, any way into it. I mean, that… Yeah. How to get started is a whole, whole big, whole nother topic. Yeah, how to get started…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but also that, like, you can’t rely on urgency for things that are too big.

Jo VanEvery
No, correct.

Jo VanEvery
Because you can’t write a book a week before the deadline. You might be able to write a conference paper on the plane on the way to the conference.

Christine W
Oh, gosh, yeah, right, but yeah, a book, not many people have done that, really. Maybe a booklet.

Jo VanEvery
You can’t write a book, and, or, or a PhD dissertation or whatever. But even some of the things that we think of as shorter in academia, like journal articles, I mean, it’s still 10,000 words of pretty serious, right? It.. Like, so then, so, then what ends up, what ends up, so you get in a kind of spiral of of all the negative self talk,

Christine W
Ooh, yeah. And also an amped up nervous system. It you have a nervous system that doesn’t ever feel like it can relax because it’s constantly under deadline. I mean, it’s… Yeah, it’s really meant to be… Urgency is not meant to be 24/7, because that that’s going to burn out our nervous systems. And, and, you know, and a lot can get done. You can get a lot done, a lot done, a lot done. You got adrenaline, you’re going, you’re going, you’re going, but inevitably, mind, body or spirits, going to call a stop, and you’re going to end up seriously ill, burned out, or somehow not able to continue in that way. So yeah, it is not meant to be an… Urgency is not meant to be a 24/7 ‘only rely on me’, ideally interest novelty or right size challenge to use those more, and the urgency more for smaller chunks of it during the day. You know, setting a timer for this little chunk, this little chunk. I’m going to work on this thing for a half hour. I’m going to do those kinds of things. It’s much more effective to use that kind of urgency for.

Jo VanEvery
Right. Other stuff… So the bounded using bounded time helps make a slightly longer period into now, I think that’s how that works. So like, the way that the Office Spa Day or Meeting With Your Writing, or any of that kind of thing works is like, “Okay, we have 90 minutes, (or we have two hours), so it’s long enough to get something done, without it being so urgent that you’re all hyped up on adrenaline. But it also has an end point that is close enough to not put it into the Not Now space.”

Christine W
Yes. Yes, and…

Jo VanEvery
Is that how that works?

Christine W
Yes, yes. And, and also, because that, that period of time is different for different people. Some people want to have, like, a three hour block. Some people want to have half hour block and reset the timer, or maybe do a quick stretch break and set it for another half hour. Whatever. It’s really important to play around with what kinds of blocks of time work well for you, right?

Jo VanEvery
And that might be different for different things. And like we said before, it might be one thing, one time and one thing and another. One of the things I’ve thought about is this, you know that a lot of people like, really, like, there’s the too much intensity where you’re gonna do yourself harm because you’ve got too much cortisol, adrenaline stuff going on, but there is a level of intensity that just feels really good for working, right? And it like, it feels good, and that gives it enough of, I don’t know, that, I don’t know if it’s interest, urgency, something, like, some combination of those things, to make it motivating, to work that way, and that it can be like that for like, thinking tasks, like, you know, whatever. And so one of the things that I… But I think there definitely is a ‘too much’. It’s not where all the other people have told you it is, but it’s too much for yourself. That’s going to lead to the burnout, right? And there’s also a ‘too little’, right? Like we’re not trying to smooth everything out, and make it all, you know, like, that might work for other people, but it probably doesn’t work for your ADHD brain, like, you need the sort of spikes of intensity. So, like, there’s a thing somehow about managing that. Like, I need some intense focus on things. I need to, you know, there’s certain things that work really well if I have that intense [focus], so, like, I need to protect some time and space for that, but also recognise that you’re going to need, you can’t work like that all the time. Like, [you] can’t do 40 hours a week like that, certainly, and that you need to also, like, you need to recover. But also probably, you know, if you know you’re going to have one of those periods, you need to make sure the stuff that comes before it is not draining too much of your energy, so that you actually have the capacity. Am I making sense here?

Christine W
Oh, yeah, you’re making tonnes of sense. And actually, as I’m thinking of a couple of different things. Yes, I agree with you that, that we, we need those little sparks of intensity, and deep thinking, and really being into it, and that isn’t sustainable. I completely agree with you. It reminds me of a post. I follow a guy named Tyler Mitchell on LinkedIn who writes about ADHD late diagnosed, and he’s a brilliant writer, and image maker, and his posts have helped me so much. But he had a, one that was recent, that he talked about in very, you know, what you’re describing, that he had been… Well, actually a little bit different. He had been sitting. He had this thing to do. He sat down. Got everything ready. He was ready to go. Couldn’t do it for the life of it, just like his brain would not cooperate, would not cooperate, it just, he just sat there. He, you know, gave it some time, and he was not able to engage with it. And he… So this will be, [it’ll] work in a couple different ways, so bear with me. So he has learned to… He had a whole bunch of sticky notes of all the tiny little things that need to be taken care of that maybe would take five or 10 minutes. And he thought, “Well, I’m not making any progress here. Let me just, you know, look at my life, put it into a list, eventually. And he took his list and, just like, picked two or three things that he could do in 15 or 20 minutes, and it got, it created some momentum for him, because it, there was a sense of accomplishment, and brain… It’s kind of like [Cheering noise]. It got the brain going, and started up, that, you know, that was kind of cranky about the [other] thing, and then he was more able to do the thing, you know, to do what he wanted to work on. And I bring that up, because that can be used for initiating, but it can also be used for when we’ve worked so long, and so intently to – a break, could be a real break, like stepping away doing some stretches, but it can also be like shifting, that our brain does not have to work that darn hard, and just take care of, like, “Okay, let me just take care of this bill”, or, “Let me just do that little…” – you know, little things that feel like they’re, they’re very small steps and can be done in five or 10 minutes. It’s… It provides a break, because it’s a very different kind of thinking.

Christine W
And I… But the other thing is, I find, like, if I have a meeting that goes to almost five o’clock, I can’t just, like, I find it hard to just turn the computer off right after, like, I end up going and doing just a little bit of futzing around with email or some little but, like, those kind of little things, right? Like, I’m not going to get into another whole big project at that point, but I need some kind of a wind down activity, right?

Jo VanEvery
Oh, me too, and all and all kinds of things. But yes to that.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, it’s a kind of… Yeah, you’ve got all that… [Gestures towards head.] You’re just like, ‘sparky, sparky, sparky’. And it’s like, “Okay, I need to slow it down. I can’t just bring it to a halt.” And I think it’s, you know, we’re thinking about how… And that might be a way to do some of those little things that you find hard. Right, right? Like, the bill paying, or like, whatever, but like some of those really dull maintenance tasks that we all have to do, but that aren’t that interesting in and of themselves, sometimes can work really well if we plan to do them as that kind of like warm up or wind down, right? Like, my, my partner, who I swear to God, has ADHD, like, but he has just developed, over his lifetime, some really good coping strategies. But he, he’s recently been like, “Oh, I’ve been finding it works really well to just do…”, like, because when he’s working at home, you know, like, while the kettle is boiling and I’m making coffee, I will just do some of the washing up the dishes. Like, he’ll just wash some dishes while he’s waiting for the kettle to boil, right? Because he’s standing there anyway, and it would be boring just watching the kettle boil, right? So he’s like, “Oh, look, there’s… I’ll just do some dishes, like, while I’m waiting for the kettle to boil”, or, “while I’m waiting for the coffee to become coffee after you pour hot water on it” Right? Like, it takes two or three minutes before it’s [ready].

Christine W
Oh, I, yeah, the about the dishes, because, man, I go back and forth with them. I actually, I had left some dishes for probably a couple days, and it was like, getting to be… It’s like, it’s kind of gross now. So and I, I did the timer thing, but I did it while… No, I didn’t do the [timer thing]. I have done that too. I listen… I found a podcast that I wanted to listen to, which turned out to be fabulous, and I listened to the podcast while I was doing those dishes. I do not know why this has never occurred to me before. I’ve always just tortured myself, stood at the sink. [thinking] “I’ve gotta do these dishes”. And it’s like… It… No… Like, no wonder I keep leaving dishes in the sink! But the podcast was, like, such a fix, because I could focus on the podcast while I just did the mundane thing. It’s like…

Jo VanEvery
Did doing the dishes make it easier for you to focus on the podcast?

Jo VanEvery
Maybe so! Because I… Yeah. I don’t know. But it works so well together. I just discovered you would think that as long as I’ve known about this, you know, we keep learning about ourselves and what works. And I’m just was amazed it took me this long to find how well that worked.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Well, but also I think, like, for some people, just like focusing, just like and not doing anything…

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like, how many…? How many women, diagnosed or otherwise, say they can’t just watch TV and do nothing with their hands, right? And they, they knit or crochet or something,

Christine W
Right. People do something. Right

Jo VanEvery
Right? And it’s just, like, you know? It’s like, it’s like, a you know? It’s just, you know? My partner calls it ‘productive fidgeting’. Knitting is productive fidgeting.

Christine W
I love that word: productive fidget. That’s wonderful.

Jo VanEvery
But you know, it’s sort of like, you know, it’s like… And I remember having a conversation with my daughter when she was sort of 18, or something. We would be driving to, at that time, it was like a six hour drive to visit my parents, and so as soon as she could drive, we would share the driving.

Christine W
Nice.

Jo VanEvery
But it involves the 401, outside of Toronto. I don’t know if you know that highway, but it’s got like, about 12 lanes. Like, seriously, it is the…

Christine W
Oh my gosh. That’s as bad as Dallas, or worse? Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
No, it’s bad. It’s it’s probably worse. Like, there’s sort of six main lanes, and then there’s like, three or four collector lanes, so, like, but the exits off the main ones are, like, every three of the other ones, you know, so there’s kind of anyway, and that’s in each direction, right? Like, it’s, it’s really madness. But for me, if I’m driving in, like, a situation where I really need to focus, I absolutely have to turn the radio off and tell people not to talk to me, so that I can just focus on it. And one of the things she said was, she says, I know this doesn’t work for you, mom, but I actually can focus better if I have the radio on.

Christine W
Interesting.

Jo VanEvery
And I saw somebody shared, like, a little meme or something. A little while ago, there was a similar thing where it’s like, “Yeah, I need the radio on to occupy the toddler in my brain, so that I can actually do the thing I need to do.” Right?

Christine W
That’s good, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I think…

Christine W
We’re different, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
There’s similarly a thing with, you know, some people find it hard to focus on, like, to really listen. Like, so some people will use podcasts, or the TV, or music as background noise to occupy the toddler in their brain so they can focus and do other things, right?

Christine W
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I think there’s also the alternate thing, where, when you really want to be paying attention to that auditory input, that that’s too much focus in one place, right, and that you need, like, the doing the dishes while you do it, or, you know, going for a run, or knitting or whatever, actually makes it easier to focus. And [for] different people, that combination works differently. So, somebody I follow on Bluesky today was talking about finding the perfect music to help her get writing, and then saying, you know, and so she was so excited because she got some writing done, but then she was like, “I don’t understand all you people that can write with no music”. And I can’t write with music. My partner has music on all the time in the background, right, to distract the toddler, so that he can focus.

Christine W
Yeah, I’m more… I align with you on this one, yeah, in both situations – the driving and the writing, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But I think that brings us back to that thing about curiosity, and experimenting with things…

Christine W
And compassion.

Jo VanEvery
And self compassion. But also learning self trust. This is where I’m getting, is like, sometimes, and sometimes, this is because of all of our past experiences, and all the terrible things people have said to us, and trying to avoid that, and the kind of rejection sensitivity stuff. And I get that, and it’s important. But there is a thing where sometimes, especially with those big things, right, like writing a book or whatever, that you just kind of have to trust that if you do things in a certain way, that you will end up where you want to go, like, even though you can’t get there quickly, right? That you’re on the road, and that you check in every once in a while to make sure you’re still on the road, and that the bridge hasn’t blown out, or something, ahead of you, but that you, kind of, just need to trust that you’re going to get there, once you’re on the road.

Christine W
Yeah, yes. I think this is not only self trust, but I think it goes back to what you mentioned earlier in here was this idea of noticing progress. That I think one of the reasons that we don’t trust, that, trust ourselves in those ways about this longer term thing, is because we’re not noticing, or paying attention at all to what we’ve already done. We’re focusing so hard on what we haven’t yet done, that it’s as if the the progress is underground. It’s like minus, instead of being above ground, it’s like a mine. It’s like, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’ve just, I’ve gotta be here. I’ve just still got this, and this, and this.” And it’s like, it’s like, you’re… There’s no acknowledgement, and it’s hard to have self trust, almost, because it’s like, it’s almost like it doesn’t exist. I mean, I’m, I know that’s it’s not, it’s a little bit too strong, but it’s so important to find ways to really look at the progress, and note it, even before you work. To go… It’s like, “Look where I got this little last piece of chunk done”, or, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, or, you know, note where it is on the timeline, or whatever you’ve developed, the structure for it, the plan, before you move into engaging with the rest of it, focusing on what’s not been done yet.

Jo VanEvery
And that is one of the things I’ve definitely kept from how Jen ran the Planning Classes in the Office Spa Day, in the things I do. So we start every Meeting With Your Writing [by], I just, I have a timer, and, like you say, visual timer, so I have sand timers.

Christine W
Oh, cool, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But I basically give people a minute to just write a big list of, like, “What have you been doing in the last week?” Right? And not even necessarily “What you’ve been writing”, but just like, “What’s been going on?” Like, “What have you been working on?” “What projects have you worked on?” It doesn’t even have to be done. “What projects have you worked on?” “What other kinds of things did you do?” “What’s been going on?”

Christine W
Yeah. Where’s your energy going?

Jo VanEvery
And then I get people to look at the list, and I tell them, I say, “Allow yourself to be pleased.”

Christine W
Ooh, that’s a beautiful sentence.

Jo VanEvery
Allow yourself to be pleased. And then, and then, I know that for some people, they’re going to find that hard, and partly because there’s something they wish they had done that they didn’t.

Christine W
Exactly, that.

Jo VanEvery
And so I also just often will say: “And and if there is something that you’re kind of frustrated about not being on your list, take a look at what’s there and acknowledge that there’s good reasons you didn’t get around to that.” Like, right? Like, none of us have been lying on the chaise longue eating Bon Bons, right? Like, that’s not why we didn’t get it.

Christine W
Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
Right. So we start there. And with the Planning Classes, similarly, I’m like, “Okay, before we plan next quarter, just look back at the last quarter and make some notes”, and I have some more specific prompts, because we’re looking at three months. And because [in] my planning classes, we can’t focus on everything they need to do. And so, you know, people come to me because, because they want to find more time for writing. They want to get more writing done. So I focus on the writing. And… But, I ask them questions, ike, you know, “What kinds of time did you find for writing?” Like, “Did you find only little short bits? Or did you have, like, a writing retreat at any time?” Or, “Did you do some of these, like, two hours a week things?” or whatever. Like: “What kinds of time? And how often did you find that time?” And then, “What projects did you work on? And where did they get [to]?” And then I get people to share one thing that they notice about all of that looking back, and it’s really common for at least one person in the group to say, “I’d completely forgotten that I submitted that piece back in two months ago.”

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like… Or, you know, like, if… Right? It’s just like, the noticing…

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
…because sometimes our perception of how much we’re doing, and how much we are, are actually doing, right? And I think a lot of that, it’s not so much to do with the ADHD. It’s to do with how our memories work.

Christine W
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
And I read a really, I’ve read a couple of really interesting things, one of which suggests that we can… So one of the things is that by noticing properly, what we’ve actually accomplished at the end of a session (because I do that too), at the end, I’m like, “Okay, what did you accomplish?” Right? Which I definitely also got from Jen, which is why I remember this thing that she’s… Because we were tidying desks. And I remember her always saying: “If part of your intention was to deal with that stack of paper on your desk, and sometimes there’s still going to be a stack, and, but a stack of paper is actually a bunch of individual things. And so every individual thing that you put away out of that stack, counts, even if there’s still some of the stack left there.” Right? And I think that, that translates almost exactly to like grading papers.

Christine W
Oh gosh.

Jo VanEvery
It’s like, it’s going to take a long time to grade all the papers for your class, and it’s not going to be done yet. But after every session, you can be like, “I got through this many.”

Christine W
Yes, yes, yeah. It’s like, breaking stuff down from what we accomplished, rather than breaking it down… Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
My thing is: “This is where my focus is going to be, and I’m just going to keep working on it for this much time, and then I’m going to notice how far I got”, because otherwise, afterwards, all you have as a memory is “I worked on that for 90 minutes and I didn’t finish”, and that just feels [bad]. Right?

Christine W
I think it’s so common, the way that we are, the usual before we learned any of these strategies, that’s where, what the common thing is, I worked… Why did I? “I worked on this for three hours and I didn’t get anything done.” Or, I mean, yeah, it’s almost like “I don’t have anything to show for it”. It’s like, when you actually did a whole bunch.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and you do have things to show for it, even though, like, yeah. Like, it’s still… Right? Or, you know, or… But then also, some of the stuff we do, like email, people get very upset about “There’s always email in my inbox”. It’s like, “Yeah, there’s always dirty laundry in your laundry hamper too”. Right? That’s not because there’s something wrong with you. It’s because of the nature of laundry, right? You do your laundry…

Christine W
And dishes, and life, and papers…

Jo VanEvery
And dishes, everything, right? Like you’ve just done the dishes, and then you had a glass of water, and now there’s a glass sitting on the counter. Or, you know, like… You know… You did laundry today. You got the laundry hampers empty. Absolutely. You did it all. You put it, you even put it away. Yay, go you! Then, of course, you take your clothes off before you go to bed, and you throw at least your underpants in the laundry hamper. You’re gonna wear the shirt again. You have thrown your underwear in the laundry hamper. And it’s just a thing that is… Like, it’s that there’s different kinds of [things]… Like, some things are projects, right, where you’re like, you know, when you’ve written the book, and you’ve sent it to your publisher, you’ve written the book, and it’s done, right? And you get to decide whether you ever write another book again. But, like, email? Sorry. Like, there’s… It… The whole thing is not…. The goal is not to get through it all. The goal is to just… Well… So I made that… If we’re making the analogy with laundry, the thing with laundry is not that your your laundry hamper never needs to be empty. The goal is that nobody has to go commando because there’s no clean underwear. So… [Laughter].

Christine W
That’s a great… I love that.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Christine W
Like, it’s so many things, yeah, I love that. That’s great.

Jo VanEvery
You know? So it’s like, yeah, like, whatever it is that you’ve not… You know, it’s one thing, if there’s a shirt you really want to wear, and it’s not clean, and so you can wear something else, and you’re a little bit sad, but it’s not [a big deal]… Right? And some of your emails [are] like that too, right? It’s like: “I wish I’d got back to them earlier…” or whatever, but not a big deal. And then there’s some things in there where it’s like, your underwear, and you really need to have clean underwear. So… [Laughter.]

Christine W
Yeah, it’s… It’s this idea of ‘good enough’. I love that so much. The idea of ‘good enough’, rather than, you know, says, What’s that? There’s a word, like, for that… Sat…?

Jo VanEvery
Oh! The Satisficers versus maximizers, right? I am, like, your number one fan satisficer, like, with shopping, with everything, and I think trying to maximise all the time. I mean, that’s… If that’s your tendency, if you’re a maximizer and you always want the best thing, and you end up… right? That’s, that’s a hard thing. I I find that, but that’s like, that’s going in a whole nother direction. But I think that’s, that’s one of the things like you say, is noticing. But I also, like… What’s your thought on habits? Because I’ve had people say as well that ADHD makes it really hard to develop habits.

Christine W
It does. [Laughter.] Yeah, it’s almost like a bad word, right? I mean, you know, so to speak, in quotes. It… Habits, yeah, well, yeah. So it throws me back immediately to the I.N.C.U, interest, novelty, challenge, urgency. So, habits. We… So as ADHD people, if we have zero structure, we you know, we flounder. If we have too much structure, we feel straight jacketed. We feel like we can’t breathe. We feel claustrophobic. There’s a happy medium for, for each of us, and that requires some kind of scaffolding. And habits are very much a part of that kind of scaffolding. And I think one of the things that people may not realise they probably do have habits that they’re not aware of, whether they’re positive habits, or negative habits, you know, that they do, you know? Habits to scroll when they, you know, are looking for a break, habits of reaching for the candy. You know, those are some bad ones, but that they, you know, do things the same way every every time they wake up, or they do the same things every time before they go to bed, or all those kinds of little habits. And, and they can be so, they can be so useful for somebody with ADHD, so that there’s more of life that becomes automated, but the more compli- complicated it is, or too perfect: the less likely it’s going to happen. And so to to match that kind of you know, ‘good enough, you know, not too much, not, not enough, but, but simple things can be really helpful as part of that scaffolding.

Christine W
And the other thing about habits is, you do the habit, it’s been successful. It’s working. And then often what happens is, after a period of time, it gets stale. It gets stale in some ways, depending on what the habit is. Or, it’s just like, “I don’t want to do that anymore”. There’s some resistance to it. And so it needs to be fresh and modified, changed a little. It’s… I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s just… I think the thing that really I’m struck by this with ADHD in our conversation is, you know, self compassion, curiosity, and the ability to, to let it be okay to change things to the degree that you can, that are not working, to be willing to tweak things, to allow support in as a way of, you know, perhaps making a change to… But that it’s a, it’s… I mean, I think sometimes everything is changing so quickly that we want to, like, just like, ‘make it all right’. We make the perfect plan, or the perfect schedule, and then we just want to hang on to it. And it’s… And it’s like, [it] becomes too rigid, and to be willing to allow there to be some structure with, you know, being okay, to be flexible about making it a little different on this day. But yeah… “I’m going to pick it up and to not be afraid”. It’s like, “Well, I didn’t do it for two days. Screw it. I’m going to throw it away.” It’s like, no, you go, like… You know, for me with my walking, I do it on most days, but not on every day. So I skip too many days. It’s… It becomes harder to go back. So I really, I know myself to go back because I love it. It feeds me, it nourishes me, makes me feel better. So that was long winded. I don’t even know if I answered your question, but those are my thoughts.

Jo VanEvery
No, but what you’re saying is that, 1) that habits, maybe habits, is a little bit like planning in that we need to loosen up a little bit by what we mean by it, yes, and also 2) that it’s always hard, like, for everybody to build new habits, but that they do provide, like, a certain kind of structure. And like, the thing about habit is when, when something becomes a habit, it’s kind of subconscious. So you’re saying, like, a lot of times, people will have habits, they just don’t know. You don’t notice them anymore, because it’s just like, “This is, this is how I get up in the morning and these kind of things happen”, right?

Christine W
It just becomes a part of you.

Jo VanEvery
It just becomes a part of you, and you only notice it when there’s something that sort of disrupts that.

Christine W
Right. Right.

Jo VanEvery
But you’re not… Yeah… But like, trying to establish, like, to set something into your subconscious is really hard, right? Like, when you have to think about it all the time, it’s like, “Oh, then I have to…” Then there’s all kinds of stuff around memory, and all kinds of other things, and then that’s one more thing, and it just becomes a bit overwhelming. But also, doing the same thing at the same time every day feels like antithetical to the interest and novelty thing.

Christine W
Yeah, often, yes, depending on what it is, yes.

Jo VanEvery
It just is like, like, “But that’s boring. Like, why would I want to do that?” And so I guess really the question is, like, how much of this is useful? So many of us have established a habit of brushing our teeth at certain times a day, right? Because, like, it’s good to do that. Or, you know, doing some sort of exercise, like going for a walk or whatever. But yeah, I think, I think that’s, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of part of it.

Christine W
And also support. The last thing about habits is to get to support yourself with the habit. You know, “What it is that I need? What kind of support do I need? What can I…? How can I give that to myself? Are there ways…? Can I set it up so that it’s easier, or more fun, more interesting? And to allow friends, or co-worker people to support you, and doing that, you know, whether you need a little cheering on, or remind you, or whatever there might be, you know, other ways can help support you.

Jo VanEvery
So one thing that happened with me was like, during all the pandemic lockdown stuff, we still had dogs then, which had to be walked a couple times a day. But I just developed this real anxiety about being out because they were big dogs, you know. And I just… So it ended up that my partner did almost all the dog walking. And also, like, we would just, we have a big back garden, and not everybody around us does. So I was like, I won’t take them to the park. I’ll leave that for the people that really need the park, and I’ll just run [them] around the back, you know, like, so we did, like, we would just play games in the back garden with the dogs instead. But what happened was, I ended up just getting out of the habit of leaving the house, and going for a walk, and so for, you know, for many years. So, like, it wasn’t until, like, probably two years ago, like, or three years, you know, it’s like 2023, or something, when I’m like, “Wait a second”, like, “I often go, like, three whole days without ever leaving the house at all, and, like, I’m not walking, I’m not doing any of that, and I really need to change that”. And so, I mean, one of the difficulties is, then, when you’re unfit, I live in an area called the Peak District, and it’s called that for a reason. So the town I live in, like, pretty much all the directions from my house are steep.

Christine W
Oh, Gosh.

Jo VanEvery
So there’s one direction I can go. It’s not flat, but it’s not steep, but the hill is more gentle. So I identified, “Okay, I can do this and go”, but I recognise that getting started to like, go and just walk up the road and back, felt really weird, and like I wasn’t taking the dogs and I was doing… Right? So to get started, I asked my partner to come with me.

Christine W
Oh, excellent!

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Christine W
What beautiful support.

Jo VanEvery
So I’m like, I just, sort of, said, like, “This is what I want to do. I don’t get enough exercise. I would like to start walking. I don’t know how fast I can go. I don’t know how [far]…” Right? “But this is what I want. Can I…? I want to do it at this time of day. Can you come with me so that I, you know, to make it easier for me to do?” And he agreed to do that. And we did that for a while, and then once I got started, I didn’t need him to come with me anymore.

Christine W
I love this so much.

Jo VanEvery
And then I could do… And but of course, I started doing that, I think probably in the spring or the summer. It was in the summer, so, you know, and I live fairly far north, so it was light until, you know, 10 o’clock at night.

Christine W
Wow.

Jo VanEvery
But of course, once you get into the winter, it is not.

Christine W
Ooh, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
It’s… The sun doesn’t even… I mean, it’s only just now still kind of light. It’s dusk light, like it’s after sunset, technically, at five o’clock, like it’s going to be another two or three weeks before the sun doesn’t set till after five o’clock.

Christine W
Gosh.

Jo VanEvery
Like, very, because we’re very far north, right? Like, England’s really far north.

Christine W
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But that means, in the winter, walking, going for a walk after work feels like that’s, you know…

Christine W
Oh, yeah, another obstacle.

Jo VanEvery
It’s dark by like, three or four. So, but I work for myself. So I’m… So the, that first autumn, I’m like, “Oh, I need to switch and go at lunchtime”. And now I realise I actually really like going at lunchtime. It’s like a nice break. I now take a proper break at lunchtime. I go for a walk, I have lunch, I sometimes even read a little bit of my book, and then go back to work, and I’m refreshed. And and having that exercise in the middle of the day is really helpful. But getting started, like you said, like, it was, it made me think of it, because you were like, “Well, if you want to start a new habit, like, what would support you? Like, do you have a friend? Do you have…?” Right? And just saying, like, “Can you come…?” Right? And you might not need that support for the whole time.

Christine W
Right, correct.

Jo VanEvery
But… Right? And I’ve certainly had people that come to Meeting With Your Writing, and then they stopped coming, and they’ve messaged me and said, “This has been really useful, but now that I’ve established the habit, I don’t think I need that. And if I don’t come to that, I can shift the time that I do it, to something that works better for me. I can do it on my own.” I’ve got other people that have been coming for like, 15 years and, well, I haven’t been doing it for quite 15 years. But you know what I mean? There’s people that have been coming for years, and years, and years, because they’re like, “This helps me keep the time, and I still need the help. And I’m good.” Right? “I’m just going to keep coming.” But for other people, they need it as a sort of like, “This is going to help me to get started, to get started, and then once I’m in the habit, I’m going to be able to maintain this on my own.” And then sometimes people think that, and they go away, and then they’re back, and they’re like, “I thought I can maintain on my own, and I can’t. So I’m back now, and I’m not leaving.”

Christine W
Yeah, I’m one of those. I have a business coach that I, that does, he calls them ‘work retreats’. They’re basically just co working, and they’re on predictable days in the morning. And I do so much better. And I’ve been showing up for those. And it provides structure. There’s, yeah, it’s, it works so beautifully.

Jo VanEvery
Well, and the body doubling, right? Like, that’s a good thing for a lot of people, just being somewhere and having somebody else, even if they’re not doing the same thing you’re doing, just having somebody else working, you know? And I think a lot of people have found they can do that with their kids, like, if they sit and do something, and their kids sitting and doing their homework next to them, they don’t have to be working together. They just… If they’re both working at the same time that it helps…

Christine W
Both parties, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know? So I think there’s like, there’s that, but even for other people, it might be like, “You don’t need it all the time, but you need it to get started”, or you need… You know? And like you say, like being open to the idea that things might change, and that there’s no – not only one, no one right way, that’s going to work for everybody, but also that whatever works for you isn’t going to work for you all the time, and it’s okay. That’s not because you picked the wrong thing, and it’s not because there’s something wrong with you, or that you’re incapable of doing this. It’s just…

Christine W
Exactly that, yes.

Jo VanEvery
That, you know, and I think especially for ADHD, part of it is that you’re wired for novelty, and therefore sometimes when you’ve been doing it the same way for a long time, it becomes boring, and so you need to change it up, right? And that means… You know, so I really like doing the same walk every day, but I know other people who, in order to keep going for a walk every day, need to go somewhere different every day, right? Like they need the, yeah, they need the novelty, and the interest, and all that kind of thing, and… But then I find interesting things in my everyday walk.

Christine W
Oh through the walk, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know, so before we moved here, when we were still living in Ontario, and we had that farm, and we had, like, 18 acres of woods on our property, when we first met, right? And so I used to take the dogs for a walk through the woods, and I went in the same route every day, all year, but I ended up like, observing so much about, like, did you know that the colour of the sky changes at different times of year? Like, even if it’s blue sky, like blue sky when it’s minus 20 Celsius is a very different blue, than blue sky when it’s like…

Christine W
You were the one who told me that about the winter sunsets and how much more vibrant they, how much more vibrant they are.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, like, the sky was, like, a different blue. But also, I started to be able to, like, identify like the leaves [in] spring, when leaves are first coming out, they’re a different colour than when they’re fully mature on the trees. So like, and like, and you’d start to notice that different kinds of trees start to leaf out at different times. And, and just because, like, you’re walking, and it’s not because you were necessarily really looking for it. You’re just going for a walk every day on the same route, and you’re seeing all the same things, but all of a sudden, because you’ve been looking at the same thing every day, you start to notice these really little differences. Like, it’s just really…

Christine W
I do that. I do do that on my walks also, and I love that part about walking in nature, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, you just see different things.

Jo VanEvery
But yeah, okay, we’ve talked for bloody ages. I have no idea if any of this is useful to anybody.

Christine W
I noticed, yeah, but it’s hard to stop.

Jo VanEvery
But, I think that there are some really key things that I’m just going to try and recap.

Jo VanEvery
So one is that if you have ADHD in particular, then you need to think about interest, novelty, challenge, but right size challenge, and urgency, and you need to not over rely on urgency, or trying to pretend that having a deadline three months out is going to create urgency, because it’s not.

Christine W
Perfect.

Jo VanEvery
So there’s that, and so thinking about those things is a really helpful way to think about how to get started, or how to how to plan things, or how to organise things. So that’s a really useful thing.

Jo VanEvery
And then the other really important thing is noticing what you’re accomplishing, and, and actually putting some, a little bit of effort into countering all the negative things you’ve heard about how you do stuff. Right? And not necessarily believing all that, right? And sort of looking for evidence that you do get stuff done, and whatever.

Jo VanEvery
And then I think the other thing is, and then that thing that I was saying about planning being about a way to notice, and be flexible. Right? That it’s a way to help you make decisions about what to work on, and also and to reduce your anxiety that you’re forgetting about something important. But also to give you an opportunity to adjust your plans according to stuff not going the way that you expected. And so, you know, you can’t control everything, but you can… Planning is a way to kind of control how you respond to whatever the heck is going on.

Jo VanEvery
And right now, as we’re recording this, there is a lot of uncertainty, and disruption for a lot of people, right, in their workplaces, and, you know, publicly in the towns they live in. And, and then, [that’s] just on top of the normal, sort of, stuff you can’t predict, like the weather, or people getting ill, or, you know, whatever goes on in your house. So, you know, it’s just a way to be able to, to not, yeah, to accept that that’s happening. But planning isn’t a way to kind of make all that go away. It’s a way to, it’s a ,it’s like a structure to help you figure out what you’re going to do when that happens.

Christine W
Yes, yes. I would like to add – especially [to] that last little bit – it’s… Planning is something that is meant to support you in what it is that you want to do. It’s not meant to be some bugaboo, some [bad], thing that…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. Go to jail.

Christine W
“You gotta just plan. Why aren’t you planning?” It’s, I know, it’s meant to be supportive so that you can get done the things that you want to get done.

Jo VanEvery
Because we all have things we want to get done, and being – feeling overwhelmed, and behind, and anxious all the time isn’t good for any of us.

Christine W
Oh gosh, yeah. Just comp[ensating] then just makes it all worse,

Jo VanEvery
It makes it all worse. And yeah, there’s enough going on. We don’t have to be mean to ourselves.

Christine W
Ideally. Yes.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it was really great to talk to you. Christine, I will put the information about your website and… Where can people…? So you have a website for… Your company’s called Light Spirit Coaching, right?

Christine W
Light Spirit Coaching is my the name of my website and the name of my business, and I am on LinkedIn. That’s probably my favourite one, but I’m also, because I’ve been on it for so long, despite meta, I do have a Facebook and on my Facebook page, I’m Light Spirit Coaching.

Jo VanEvery
Okay.

Christine W
And the same on Instagram, Light Spirit Coaching. And so, if you’re on more than one of those, pick your favourite, because for the most part, they’re all the same. I post the same things. Just depends on which platform you like the best.

Jo VanEvery
Okay, okay, that that’s good. So we will put all that in the show notes.

Christine W
Wonderful.

Jo VanEvery
So that if anybody wants to hear more from you, they can hear more from you. You do coaching for women with ADHD, and you’re doing individuals and groups. You’re in the… You do it online, but you’re in the Central Time Zone, so wherever my listeners are, some of them are. They’re all over the place, you know. But if you want to talk to Christine, you need to live somewhere that’s compatible with Central Time Zone, and…

Christine W
Or go follow me on social media.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but you can follow her on social media, because that’s…

Christine W
Email me, whatever. Any way to reach me.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and, yeah, and then I’m also going to share, because I just really, really want to say, like, I don’t think Jennifer’s going to listen to this, but Jennifer Hoffman was hugely influential on how I’ve managed to do this, and I wouldn’t be doing the things I’m doing in the way that I’m doing without her. And that’s also how I met Christine and some other amazing women that I am still in touch with. And I’m so grateful to her. But also, although she doesn’t do the thing that she did when we all met, so you cannot, you cannot have her assistance in going from somebody with a messy desk to somebody with a clean desk. She – She stopped doing that in order to do something even more kind of amazing, which is she created a thing called the Americans of Conscience checklist. And she has a whole team of volunteers, and they send out an email regularly with small political actions you can take easily. So if anybody listening is in the United States, or associated with the United States, and would like a way into doing some small political actions on a regular basis, I will also put the information about the Americans of Conscience checklist in the show notes, so that you can check that out, and see if it aligns with your values, and what you would like to do. But it is one of those things that I think the same, right, like, all that stuff about self compassion and taking really small steps is, is what she’s put into that. And so if you’re feeling like “I’d like to be doing more, but I have no idea where to start, and everything seems too big and overwhelming”, that might be one little place that you could start. And then once you get started, then you can decide whether you want to do more than that. But you know, so that I’m going to, I’m going to do that too, but it was great to talk to Christine. It was great to see you and…

Christine W
Oh my gosh. What a lovely conversation.

Jo VanEvery
And yeah, and we’ll keep in touch. We see each other on LinkedIn and things. So…

Christine W
Love that.

Jo VanEvery
That’ll be really good. Okay.

Christine W
Thanks so much. Jo.

Jo VanEvery
Thank you for listening.

[End of Transcript.]

Related Posts & Links:

Christine Weddle’s Light Spirit Coaching website

Beyond accountability: co-working as support

Do you struggle with planning?

Untangling your thoughts as you write

Pulling a thread from your tangled mess

Of Many Minds: An interview with Lee Skallerup Bessette

The post Interest, Novelty, Challenge, Urgency with Christine Weddle appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

[End of interview.]

Related Posts & Links

Emily’s website: FramingDevices.com

Emily’s newsletter (with free download!) Framing Devices Newsletter sign-up

Emily’s course: The Architecture of a Draft

How to Fast Draft Your Memoir by Rachael Herron

Ink In Your Veins Podcast by Rachael Herron

Is it perfectionism? Or impatience?

Untangling your thoughts as you write

Pulling a thread from your tangled mess

Motivation and accomplishment in your writing practice

Also mentioned:

• Stylish Academic Writing by Helen Sword
• The Book Proposal Book by Laura Portwood Stacer

The post Writing is a process of decision making with Emily Doucet appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

Writing is central to your scholarly work and identity. And yet, you struggle to find time and motivation to do it.

I argue that it is more effective to focus on the process of writing as a whole and establish an effective writing practice that enables you to pursue your curiosity, create knowledge, and communicate that knowledge through publications.

In this rather long post, I set out the fundamental principles that guide my work with academic writers. There are lots of links to other posts, both here in the Library and beyond, and I plan to update this post and the links regularly. I have also created internal links that enable you to jump between sections. Your browser’s back button should take you back to your previous location. Onwards!

Table of contents:

Writing as process and product
Academic writing is never finished
What is a writing practice?
What does that look like in practice?
The qualities of an effective writing practice
Support for establishing and maintaining an effective writing practice

Writing as process and product

Writing is a core activity for academics and scholars. The products of your writing are highly valued by other scholars, by others who benefit from your scholarly work, and by your employer (if you have an academic job). Perhaps more importantly, writing is a fundamental part of what it means to be you. You are a writer not only because you can point to things you have written (and published), but also because writing is how you process ideas and make them intelligible to yourself and others.

The term “writing” refers to both the process of translating the ideas in your head into words on a page, and to the products of that process. Writing-as-product is the public/published face of your writing. But, like an iceberg, one should not mistake the visible part for the whole…

Writing-as-process isn’t merely an act of transcription designed to produce writing-as-product. Writing is a cognitive process in which you develop and articulate your ideas. You may or may not think in words; writing converts thoughts into words. The thoughts in your head are not arranged in a linear narrative; writing organizes your thoughts into narrative. Writing is a complex activity at the core of your scholarly work.

Academic writing is never finished.

All academic writing projects are long term projects. Even if you only count from the point where you decided to write this particular article (which leaves off all the research, analysis, and writing you did to get to that decision point), it takes years to get from inception to publication. And new projects grow out of older projects in a way that makes identifying the beginning rather difficult.

The never-really-finished nature of scholarly writing becomes obvious when deciding whether a particular product is ready to submit. This decision involves determining whether the questions raised in the writing of it need to be incorporated into this writing product, or form the basis of another writing product.

The distinctions that underpin accusations of “recycling” your work or self-plagiarism, or that enable you to judge appropriate levels of self-citation are also indicative of the difficulty of distinguishing the borders of your writing. The terms “programme of research”, often used by funding agencies, and “research trajectory”, often used in promotion policies, capture this ongoing nature of the work. (My book, The Scholarly Writing Process, says more about this with questions and prompts to help you work with the never-finished character of scholarly writing.)

The never-really-finished nature of scholarly writing can affect both your motivation to engage in the process and your ability to send writing products out into the world. (The first 3 numbered points Daniel McCormack makes, lay this out really well.)

I suppose you could try to develop strategies that make your writing feel like a series of shorter term projects with milestones to help you feel like you are succeeding at regular points. But you could also

• Accept that academic writing involves working on long projects
• Figure out how to get better at managing your time and projects over long periods
• Find ways to motivate yourself that are not dependent on external validation of your success

What is a Writing Practice?

This is why I like to think of writing as a practice:

practice (noun): The habitual doing or carrying out of something; usual or customary action or performance (Oxford English Dictionary)

A writing practice may be somewhat analogous to a yoga practice or a spiritual practice. Or perhaps something like running, dance, or playing a musical instrument is a better analogy. You practice regularly. You could run or dance or play purely for the physical and mental benefits it gives you. But you might also prepare for specific events like a marathon or a performance.

You shouldn’t need to force yourself to write. Although there will always be aspects of the process that require more discipline, in general you want to write. Some days it will be harder to do than others. Establishing a new practice will be difficult, and it may take a while before you really acknowledge the benefits and enjoyment it brings. Trying new things within your practice may be difficult. But overall, it is something you want to do and benefit from. This applies to running, dance, music, and your writing.

Think of the articles, books, and so on as the performance or the race. You need to adapt your regular practice to ensure that you are doing all the things necessary to do well in that performance. There may be things you only do if you preparing for a performance/race/publication. These need to be incorporated into your writing practice if you want it to result in publications. And some of the things required for the publication/performance/race may be things that are tedious or unpleasant.

The fact that no one pays you to run/dance/play music and they do pay you to write (or you would like someone to) does not change this. The publications are not the only thing they are paying for. They are paying for the creation of knowledge, which is the whole iceberg – even if they only measure the visible part (the publications, the teaching, etc).

What might your practice look like?

Writing may be a core part of your academic work, but it is really difficult to make time to do it and to protect that time. This is largely because you do it alone and the timelines are long.

It can seem selfish to spend time on something for which you will not have an immediate output, when there are so many things needing your attention, especially during a busy teaching term. If you are not currently employed in an academic position that values both teaching and research, it can also be hard to devote time to an activity that is not part of your job, even if it is crucial to your identity or your career aspirations.

If writing is a priority for you, then you must allocate time in which to do it. The amount of time available will depend on your other activities and the relative importance of writing. You cannot wait for time to magically appear. There are 3 types of time available for writing. You may have to experiment to find a combination of short regular sessions, perhaps of different lengths, with longer intense sessions to ensure that your practice maintains momentum even if you rarely have longer periods of time to devote to it. If you are using the time that appears erratically in your days, you need to make sure you are really using it, even if it is small.

Your writing practice may involve writing on different devices, from your phone or a small paper notebook to a laptop or desktop computer. It may involve dictating rather than writing per se. And it will involve all the tasks that move your writing projects (and your broader programme of work) forward, even when they don’t look like writing. You will need to experiment with different things to see how they work and tweak things. It will never be perfect, and it will need to adapt to changes in your circumstances anyway.

What other people do may provide ideas for what you can try, but your practice will be uniquely yours. To evaluate your practice, look not to the practicalities, but to the qualities.

The qualities of an effective writing practice

The practicalities will look different for everyone but an effective writing practice will have all of these qualities:

• Provides a solid foundation for your intellectual/scholarly work
• Keeps your momentum going
• Adapts to changes in your context
• Builds your trust in your own judgement and your confidence
• Allows you the freedom to pursue your curiosity
• Enables you to submit things for publication
• Allows you to expand your range of outputs

I’m going to say a bit more about each of these elements, linking to other posts that go into more detail or address related issues. Skip to Support section.

Solid foundation

Your writing practice is a habit. It may take you some time and effort to get the habit established properly but, once established, it will be a normal part of your work-work balance. Your writing will feed your teaching, your publications, your collaborative relationships, your supervision of graduate students. You don’t need a reason to write. Ideas for projects, publications, and so on will emerge out of this regular writing practice. back to list

Keeps your momentum going

Because writing isn’t the only work you do, your practice will include strategies for overcoming inertia, getting into flow, and keeping momentum going. It will include ways of keeping in touch with your writing projects even when you don’t have much time to devote to them. It will also include ways of focusing intensely and doing deeper work in a healthy, sustainable way. You will be able to move between projects. And you will be able to take proper vacations, or stop writing when the pressure of your other work is too intense, without fear that you will not come back to it. back to list

Adapts to changes in your context

Your writing practice will probably look different during a busy teaching term than it does during the summer or when you are on sabbatical. As you grow and develop as a scholar and writer, your practice will also grow and develop. You will be able to adapt it to collaborative writing if necessary or desirable, and will adapt to different collaborators. When it is difficult or impossible to write the way you normally do for some reason, you will not stop writing but, rather, figure out how to write in this context. As you establish your habit of writing more solidly, you will use that as a foundation to extend your practice. back to list

Builds your trust in your own judgement and your confidence

Once established, your writing practice will provide evidence that you can trust the creative process and your own judgement. You will be less dependent on external validation and become more confident that you can do this job, that you have a contribution to make, and that you will write things that others will read and engage with. You will trust that your process will lead to the kinds of outputs that are valued in the processes that validate your work. (Or, alternatively, you will be more critical of those processes and the narrow range of work that they value because you are confident that you are doing good work.) back to list

Allows you the freedom to pursue your curiosity

Your writing practice will enable you to produce specific products (articles, books, conference papers, etc) but will also include writing for which you have no clear purpose (at the moment). You will write to think, perhaps sparked by something you’ve read or something someone said (in a formal or informal context). That writing may generate ideas for specific products but you will write anyway, even if you don’t know where it’s going. You will be okay with letting go of some of the possibilities even if you’ve spent considerable time working on them. back to list

Enables you to submit things for publication

Your writing practice will enable you to identify potential publications and engage in all of the tasks required to bring a clearly defined element of your ongoing programme to successful publication. Some of those tasks are less enjoyable or even tedious but they must count as “writing”. Your practice will have a suitable place for those tasks and will make it easier to motivate yourself to do them. back to list

Allows you to expand your range of outputs

Because publishing is about communication, you may need to write different kinds of things to meet your communicative goals. As your confidence grows and your practice becomes more established, your writing practice will be flexible enough to allow different kinds of outputs. You may be frustrated as you learn the conventions of a new genre but your practice will support you as you learn and adapt to the needs of these products. back to list

Support for establishing and maintaining a writing practice

Establishing and maintaining an effective practice is easier if you have support: at work (if you have an academic position), at home, and from support networks you create.

If you are employed as an academic in an academic institution, your colleagues should be supportive. Unfortunately this is not always the case. There is a culture of overwork and joking about there being no time for research and writing. Sometimes those who struggle to write will make snide comments to those who do write regularly, suggesting they are selfish, don’t care for students, or even that they don’t really spend that time writing. Do not contribute to this negative culture.

Make your writing practice visible to the extent possible. Put a sign on your door. Mark that time in your calendar. Be confident when you need to say that you are not available at a particular time because you are writing. Even small steps in this direction can subtly change the culture of your department and give others the confidence to do the same. Support colleagues when they reveal that they are nervous about doing the same. Defend them if they are attacked (even, or especially, “jokingly”).

Create a support network locally and more widely:

• Get together with colleagues to write in community.
• Get together with colleagues to talk about what you are writing and how your writing is going.

This group can be carefully selected and closed if that feels safer. It can be virtual, checking in via text message or social media when you start and finish a writing session. You could set up a Slack or Teams channel with your group.

You could also join the Academic Writing Studio. It includes A Meeting With Your Writing which provides 4 weekly virtual coworking sessions to choose from, guaranteeing you at least 90-minutes of writing time. The Studio also includes regular group coaching (Writing Clinics), and Planning Classes. Learn more about (and join) The Academic Writing Studio.

If you aren’t writing at all, you might start with The 15-Minute Writing Challenge, a short FREE email course that supports you in experimenting with using very short writing sessions. The Challenge will also be helpful if you feel like your longer sessions are not enough, but the only other time available tends to be in very short chunks.

My short guide, Finding Time for Your Scholarly Writing will help you figure out what kinds of time you have available and how to make good use of different kinds of writing time. The Scholarly Writing Process is a great companion as you write, reminding you of the nature of the particular stage you are in, and providing prompts and questions to help keep you writing from the initial incoherent thoughts that spark your curiosity, right through to submitting your full good draft for peer review.

Enjoy your writing!

Related Posts:

Why is academic writing so hard by Pat Thomson gives a different perspective on all the pieces that need to go together for successful academic writing.

The morality of writing “well” by Katherine Firth talks about what it’s worth getting worried about, what it’s not worth getting worried about, and when you might want to seek help.

Do you have a writing practice? by Katherine Firth has some good questions and further links.

A writing tip from the Minimum Viable Run project on Katherine Firth’s blog

An earlier version of this post was published on March 7, 2016. Updated August 24, 2017. Re-edited July 2023 and June 2025. Added to the Spotlight On: The Power of 15 Minutes August 2025. It has been substantially updated adding audio for all linked posts in January 2026.

The post You need a writing practice appeared first on Jo VanEvery.

When I saw that Rebecca Pope-Ruark and Lee Skallerup Bessette had a new book out that focused on the experience of neurodiversity and mental illness as faculty and staff in higher education, I knew I wanted to talk to them.

Lee and I have known each other for years so I reached out and set up this interview.

I don’t have a diagnosis but I strongly suspect a few things, and our conversation definitely bears the hallmarks of ADHD style. We go off on tangents and spiral back to previous points to develop them further. And really struggle to end the interview.

I’ve tried to edit out some of the verbal holding patterns while our brains and tongues catch up with each other without losing the style of our speech. There are also some spots where we interrupt and talk over each other, but they resolve into coherent stuff and we are pretty equally matched on the interrupting and how we deal with it.

I’ve tried to give the conversation some structure, and keep it connected to the book. We do veer off on occasion, but I think I’ve done a decent job of bringing it back.

There will probably be a whole other episode of outtakes on the topic of old school Twitter and how it helped a whole bunch of neurodivergent people connect and build networks and careers, before most of us even knew there were names for the ways our brains worked.

On to the interview …

[Start of transcript.]

Jo VanEvery
Lee has recently got a book come out with Rebecca. How do you pronounce her last name, though?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Rebecca Pope-Ruark.

Jo VanEvery
Okay. So the two of them have edited this book, which is mostly sort of personal essays by various neurodivergent faculty, staff, people in higher education who are working in higher education, not students, with varying kinds of brains. So you’ve called it: “Of Many Minds”, because we’re talking about, we don’t all have the same kind of brain when we’re in higher education. What’s that experience like? So you’ve… “Of Many Minds: Neurodiversity And Mental Health Among Faculty and Staff” is the title, and it’s published by John Hopkins [Press], and it’s out already. But yeah, so you’re saying that that didn’t… That came about because you, you met Rebecca, presumably, on Twitter.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, yes, and also, originally it was one of the co-editors was supposed to be Kelly Baker, who I’ve known for a really long time. She’s another OG Twitter person who I’ve been following. Our kids are about the same age as well, sort of thing. We’ve been through a tonne together, adjunct, advocacy, all of that kind of good stuff. And she was originally going to be co-editing this with Rebecca. And I saw the call for for proposals, the call for abstracts. And so I submitted, because I was like, this is exciting. And, you know, I knew Rebecca, again, from Twitter, but not as well as I knew Katie, right? Katie I knew, like, like, I said, og kind of Twitter, Twitter friend, and, um, and then, so [I] submitted, you know, my abstract was accepted. They’re really excited. And then Kelly had to pull out of the role of editor, right? Life happens, this… And I had just, you know, I have previously edited a book on my own on affective labour and alt-ac roles, so I know what’s involved in editing these kinds of essays and this kind of work, and I also know how hard it is. And so, speaking of awkward conversations, I just emailed Rebecca and said, “Hey, I think that this volume is really important. I think that it is going to make a difference, and I would […], and I know that Kelly has had to pull back from this project, and I am offering to co edit this book with you, if that suits you.” Right? And also, like, the super awkward, like, caveat, where it’s like, sometimes if you don’t know how you’re going to work with the person that you’re better off on your own. And “I totally understand if that’s how you’re going to do it. I still want to contribute. I just want to offer the, my help for being able to edit this book, because I know, because this is really meaning[ful]. I think this book is really meaningful. It is really meaningful for me personally, and I really want to help do it justice and help you in any way that I can.” And so that’s… And she’s like, after my long, rambling, awkward email, immediately responded, “Yes, let’s set up a time to meet and talk about it”, and we did. And so that’s how I ended up as co-editor of this, of this volume, which I’m, we’re both extraordinarily proud of, and just, you know, really thrilled to be able to do.

Jo VanEvery
I think, you know, it’s really good that you stepped up. And you know, Rebecca’s last book was about burnout, so presumably one of the things she learned through that is about accepting help. You were all like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
As long as it would be okay. I was like, “I don’t want her to burn out on this book.”

Jo VanEvery
This is hard work. So,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
If you wanna help, but she’s like, “Oh, fantastic. Yes, come.” And obviously, you know, that’s, you know, that’s really good. I just want to like, let’s, let’s… There’s so much in this book, and I don’t really… Like a lot of it is personal essays. And so I think you really do have to read it to kind of get the real sense of… It gives a really good sense of, like, the variety of things people are dealing with. And it does mix sort of things like ADHD and autism, and things like, you know, there’s a few contributors who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder or with other kinds of mental health conditions. And then, obviously, because of the way everybody gets treated when things like ADHD and autism, almost all those people have some sort of mental health thing going on anyway, and then the whole state of higher education at the moment is pretty much mental illness created for everybody. Like there’s no… There’s a good reason a lot of people are writing about burnout, which is, like unfortunate, but, you know, it’s really… The pressures right now are just terrible. So I think it’s nice, because it gives that kind of sense about how these things, like, you see a lot of commonalities and a lot of that kind of thing.

Jo VanEvery
The book, I like the structure. Like, I really like the structure. You’ve got the sort of three main things where you’ve organised them under, like: Coping and Masking, which is kind of, how do individuals manage when they’re like this. And then there’s the thing about the structures of H.E. and people kind of realising “This is not me, these things, this, this context, makes this really difficult.” And then the last section is about stigma, which is, again: I’m a sociologist. I’m familiar with the concept of stigma. You know, it’s, it can be kind of individualising, but I think the way that you’ve set it up means that it comes after the structures part. It’s like, it’s almost as if, like, this is how the structures part is experienced individually, is through this sense of stigma. And then you’ve kind of book-ended it with… So at the beginning, you’ve got a foreword, and an introduction, so a guest contributor, foreword, and then an introduction by the two of you. And then at the end, you’ve got this thing that just kind of like, it’s almost like the section is called “Other”, I can’t remember what it’s actually called…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Coda. I call it Coda. I hate when…

Jo VanEvery
There’s two things in the section called “Bonus Chapters”.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Oh yes, no, we did, yes, we did have the bonus chapter.

Jo VanEvery
Right? So it’s kind of like, “What do we do with these? They don’t fit under the three headings”, but they’re sort of a conclusion. And both of them are sort of a conclusion. One of them is kind of on just… Spoiler alert, but I think the spoilers are useful in this case. One is about the importance of accepting that you’re human and and, you know, the fact that you’ve used ‘neurodiversity’ rather than ‘neurodivergence’ in the title, I think, also signals that it this is just part of what it means to be human, that all of us, right, like, everybody’s brain works differently, and some of us there are, like, real, you know, serious, often disabling, ways that that happens. But there’s also just a lot of diversity, and many people struggle with mental illness, some people have chronic mental illness, but some people do struggle with mental illness due to circumstances or whatever. And this is just part of what it means to be human, and that we have to be sort of compassionate with ourselves.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then you finish up with this Coda about professionalism, but I want to go back to what you say in the intro, which is “Higher education is a trap for neurodivergent people.” Now I could read the longer quote I’ve highlighted. So this is on page three of the introduction.

Jo VanEvery
“If there is one thing that became clear to me while editing this collection, it is that higher education is a trap for neurodivergent people. It is not the only trap, but it is one of the more seductive. Structures that support flexibility, encourage and reward hyperfixations, provide clear guidelines and have some degree of tolerance for, let us call it quirkiness. The masking is seemingly easier, at least at first, and fuels a neurotypical view of ourselves. If can just do these things. I will be accepted in this space.”

Jo VanEvery
And then you say, “In reading these first person accounts of neurodiversity in the academy, the pattern of the trap that higher education set for all of us becomes clear. We were rewarded at various points of our academic journeys, and things often seen as weaknesses or detriments were celebrated, but slowly or all at once, the pressures of structural ableism, conformity and our own internalised ableism have caused us enough harm that our mental health has suffered..”

Jo VanEvery
And I just think that just sets it up so well. You know, it seems like this is an inviting place, right? There’s a lot of flexibility, but I’m also recalling other things I’ve learned outside of your volume, where a lot of times people aren’t diagnosed. You know, we’ve talked you were a late diagnosis, and some of that is generational, but even I’ve also seen parents talking about trying to get their kids diagnosed. And it’s like professionals refuse to diagnose people with ADHD or autism if they’re not struggling really badly, like if you’re managing, even if the managing is taking a real toll, you know, in the short or the long term, and it often does in the long term anyway, they just don’t, they don’t, even if parents want their kids to be diagnosed, the professionals will do it because they’re like, “Well, it doesn’t seem to be affecting [you]… You know, you’re getting good grades. You’re getting…” Right? Or you’re, you know, “You’re not disruptive, or not disruptive…”, or whatever it was, right? And, and so, you know, in a way, that’s part of what you’re talking about, is like we were rewarded for, you know, being able to, like hyperfixating to do really good work. But I think, you know, also often, you know, the other thing I see a lot in some of those little memes and things on social media is, you know, the kind of thing, “Oh, we never thought you were autistic.” And they’re like, “Well, of course you did, because, because you’ve been calling me weird my whole life.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? So like we’ve all been [told]… “They’re just really weird. They don’t, they aren’t…” Right? But then academia seemed like this place where the particular kind of weirdness was acceptable and it was okay.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So I don’t know if you want to say more about that and like, that sort of sense of what’s going on in and as a thread through some of these stories in this book. And what you hope this book does for people reading it in terms of, maybe, maybe it like, just bust that myth for people so they don’t, they can deal with it better.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I think, though, that, like, there is, I think, I think, I think the, I think the the promise of higher education will remain a trap, right? Just because it is like: “Study a thing that you are obsessed with for a long period of time”, and then, if you’re lucky, too, especially as a grad student, “We’re going to give you a class where you get to talk about the thing that you’re obsessed with to undergraduate students”, right? Like, “And they have to listen to you!” You know, like, there’s, there is so much about that. And I mean, it is to expand it to just even talking about, should students go to grad school anymore? Is there a career in the professoriate? There are, there is always going to be this, this, the certain class of students, neurodivergent or not, who are like, “No. I want to dig into this topic. I want to… Like, there is more to this.” I I – The life of the mind. Like, “I want to not be in a cubicle. I want to have the the the ability to, like, obsess over Beatles, obsess over medieval Portuguese history”, about whatever it is, right, whatever it is that has caught your attention and caught your, you know, for neurodivergence and hyperfocus. But like, just like, you know, there, there is a certain type of person who is attracted to academia, and that is a person who is, really wants to get deep and study something, right, and have that opportunity. And so, like, in that way, higher education is always going to be a trap for a lot of people. It’s just the results of that trap look differently, and one of them is for everyone, unemployment. But that’s a whole other podcast episode… But it’s… So I mean, there is this idea where you know, the opportunity to study, to hyperfixate, to sort of have a much more flexible schedule. This is all very attractive.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And and again, you can think about on the flip side of that, like I think the other question is: “How then, can, can regular jobs, whatever they may be, be more appropriate for neurodivergent people?” Right? Like you, you, happen to hear that like emergency room doctors all have ADHD, right? Like, because everything is always changing. Everything is like, is just like that, that hyper stimulus that, like people think ADHD, because we don’t make dopamine in our brains. Like you know, you can see certain, certain jobs, certain disciplines, are attractive to, again, undiagnosed people, right? It’s like, if they’re a doctor, they probably haven’t been diagnosed with it because, you know, they’re doing real well in school, obviously…

Jo VanEvery
And they’re not disruptive!

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Like, or they are in a good way, right? Like, there’s the good disruption and there’s the bad disruption.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
They’re not the ones, like, you know, throwing spit balls. They’re the ones in the front of the class going, “Oh, I know the answer.” That that’s the two, that’s the two ends, right? And we’re worried about the kid doing spit balls, but we’re not worried about the kid who always has the right answer. We just sort of roll their eyes at them and be like, okay, you know…

Jo VanEvery
Let somebody else have a turn.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Let somebody else have a turn. Let’s, you know…

Jo VanEvery
I think you and I, know [that], , we’ve been that person

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah and again. So there’s, you know, like, it’s for a certain kind of neurodiversity, always having, you know, I was weird because I was was a, was a geek, was a nerd, was a, was, you know, do we was the one in the front of the classroom will always have the answer. But, like you said, never got diagnosed, because that wasn’t a problem, right? It was, but it wasn’t a big problem, right? Like, and then, you know, to then go into, right, grad school where it’s like, “Oh yeah, no, like, getting good grades is a good thing”, right? Like, “And getting the right answer and, is a good thing, and it’s rewarded. And, you know, being good at writing tests of a certain kind is rewarded”, right? And again, not all neurodivergent people would be suited for grad school in terms of like, can you sit for three, four hour comprehensive exams? There are divergence where it’s like, “Nope, never mind. I’m out.” But then, you know, the kind that are attracted to academia, that’s, you know, the things that, as I said, are being asked of them to do are those things like, “Oh no, I’m good at that”, right? “Oh no, I don’t mind doing that. I can do that.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But, but then like, and this comes up later in my introductory chapter in it. And again, it’s another through line that was really striking to me, is the idea of that we all had, and it’s it is rooted in ableism, but it’s also rooted in sexism and and racism and all that kind of stuff. But there is this ideal of what a professor should be, right? And it’s old and white and male and slight, like, maybe a little quirky, but ultimately, right, like, they, you know, like, not, not so quirky that it’s, it’s, like, destructive, right? And, and so, like, there’s so that, like, like, that’s why I say it. Like, comes up against the clash of, there are lots of things that are really great, and I wouldn’t want to change about academia, right, about the grad school, about getting there, about, you know, and maybe, and maybe that’s why it’s like I was really good at it, so we shouldn’t change it, but, you know, but then again, like the structures of the institutions… We were on Brian Alexander show and asking about, like, what can higher education do to be more welcoming to neurodiverse folks? And less, like, you know…? And I said, like, “Institutions can’t do anything”. Right? “Institutions can’t do anything. It’s the people within the institutions”, right? “The institution is people, but people aren’t the institution.” Like, it’s this weird thing. And, I mean, you’re a sociologist, so you think more about [that], but, like, but you know what I mean? Like, it’s just really hard, because the the institution of higher education is what it is, and it is slow moving and slow changing, because that’s what it’s meant to be, right?

Jo VanEvery
I think that’s another thing about what you were saying about we got rewarded for, you know, being able to do these exams, or being able to, right, getting good grades, you know, because we knew all this stuff. And I think that, like this is another thing I think about, and I hadn’t really necessarily connected it with the neurodivergence piece, but there’s been a lot of writing and thinking and talking about the harms that grading has done recently, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And a lot of that, quite rightly, focuses on the people that get excluded by those systems, right? The people that don’t do well and get excluded because they can’t write the exams or do whatever.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But you know, as somebody who works as a coach with a lot of people that did do really well by that system, I also have a theory that it has harmed all of us as well.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah!

Jo VanEvery
Right? And precisely because of what you said, like that is part of this trap. It’s like, for a certain kind of neurodivergent brain, some of what was rewarded early on, like having the right answers, getting good grades, all that kind of stuff, you got rewarded. You got scholarships. Like you got rewarded with actual cash, sometimes, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah! And opportunities.

Jo VanEvery
And you got opportunities, and you got all these things. And one of the things that happens between doing a PhD and becoming like a regular academic, if you are so lucky as to be able to pursue that path, is that the reward system flips.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? That, that, you know, some of what got you there is absolutely, almost detrimental to your progress after that, because then it’s like, “Okay, now you’ve got the PhD, you have the stamp of approval as an independent researcher. We now need you to kind of be independent, and, you know, motivated and make your own decisions. And we’re no longer…” – you know, like, we have all these debates about the importance of, like, being able to retain seminars in the humanities and stuff for undergrads, because, you know, it’s important to be able to discuss these works in order to properly understand them. But then, you know, you’re an associate professor, and you’re trying to work on your book, and it’s like, who are you supposed to discuss this theoretical stuff you’re reading with, right? Like, all of a sudden it’s like, oh, you’re supposed to just be able to understand that on your own. Are you kidding me? Like… When are you supposed to have the time to figure that out? Right? But also, like, some of what comes out in this book is very definitely a kind of, like, you know, people were good at, like, “Okay, this is what good work is. I’m going to do a good job of my assigned task.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then the story… Spoilers, guys: some of these people get turned down for tenure or promotion despite, like, really glowing publication records, student evaluations, whatever, because they aren’t attending enough optional social functions. Or…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. That one is the one that I always talk about. That is the one that I always talk about where

Jo VanEvery
It’s kind of weird…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know, like, what does this have to do with my job? But that’s the thing that, for some people, is like, oh, that’s… You’re too quirky. You’re not friendly enough, or you’re not… Right? And…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
The other one that, the other one that I, that always sticks up, out for me, is that the at their annual review, somebody made a comment that they were rude because they passed by the open door of an office and didn’t stop to say hello, right?

Jo VanEvery
Oh god.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no. And then, and like it was, you know, it’s just this little vignette. And again, different parts will stand out to different people, obviously…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But like all of those little things where it was like, “I didn’t know that…” And that’s that’s part of the neurodiversity, social cues, hierarchies. That’s always been my downfall within higher education and a lot of people with ADHD. I’m not so sure about autism, but I know for sure, for ADHD, is we have trouble seeing hierarchies, like, and they don’t make sense to us.

Jo VanEvery
I think I’ve seen autistic people say: “It’s not that we don’t see them, it’s that they don’t make any sense to us, so we don’t think they’re important.”,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Well, yeah. And so like, I don’t… I would often not show the proper deference to the right people. You know, I’m interested in what you have to say, not the title that you happen to hold.

Jo VanEvery
I’m definitely like that too, yeah, and that really varies, like, what institutions care about, that and stuff. Yeah, there is a really good sort of contribution to this volume by somebody who changed institutions, and the new institution had a very different setup, and that really kind of threw her. She was really succeeding. She got recruited to the new place because of her success. And then she gets there, and it’s like, how does this place work? And why won’t you tell me how it works? And in the end, she leaves and goes somewhere else where she’s able to succeed because they’re able to [explain]… So I think like that, that’s one of the things. But I think there is that thing where, you know, the the way in which that trap gets set. So, to use the metaphor you use in that introduction is that it really depends where you are. And sometimes the trap is, you think, “Oh, the whole place is like [this], like, all of academia is like this”, and then you end up in a different institution, or a different department, or a different like… It’s just, and it’s like, “Oh, what? Wait a second. How is this not working this way? And, and why am I all of a sudden struggling?” And I think what was really like, interesting about the trap, thing that you set it up with is that then you, the coda basically comes down to saying, to kind of calling out professionalism as this kind of, you know, it’s almost, it’s almost like a cloak, an invisibility cloak, or something for for discrimination, right? It’s like a Get Out of Jail Free card for people to discriminate. And that, again, I’ve highlighted a piece that I just want to point out to people. A couple of bits on page, 172 and 174 so the first part is, and this is Lee’s words again in the book:

Jo VanEvery
“Professionalism is just our society’s acceptable way of saying ageism, sexism, racism, sizeism. And in the context of this collection, ableism being labelled unprofessional is not discrimination, even when we know it is”

Jo VanEvery
And I’m assuming ‘we’ here as those of us who get labelled that way. And a couple pages later, you say:

Jo VanEvery
“Professionalism has become the catch-all reason for dismissing and marginalising people who do good work outside our society’s norms, or could do good work if they were allowed to work in ways labelled unprofessional.”

Jo VanEvery
And I think that is just a really powerful way to kind of end this whole collection. And by highlighting it here, I just want to highlight it, because I think if you go into this book thinking of that, what you spot is really like, who is being…? Like, we know who’s being labelled unprofessional, because we’ve been in that category, but who is really being unprofessional? And this came up earlier today, actually. I was talking to a client, and, you know, she’s worried about… She’s a PhD student. Most of my clients are not, but she is. And she has ADHD. She’s a mature student, so she’s in her 50s. She was, like, kind of, talking through with me, kind of how to approach a meeting with her supervisor, right? So, like, I don’t help, I don’t supervise for PhD, like, she’s got a supervisor for that, but like, part of what I help her with is, like, navigating some of this, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yep.

Jo VanEvery
And so, you know, but she’s worried about, “Can I tell my supervisor this? Do I appear unprofessional? Do I appear…?” – The other word she used was ‘immature’. And I’m like, you know, yes, you’re 50 odd years old. You’ve grown up now. Like, I know exactly where that instinct to call it ‘immature’ comes from. Because, you know, we’ve been told that’s what we are since we were 12. Like 40 years of being told you’re immature. It’s kind of, you know, it sits in there really hard. But, but, you know, the fact is, you’re not immature. This is how your brain works. This is what you need. It’s not immature to ask for this. And what occurs to me is the people that are being unprofessional are like in that story about the person changing institutions, their new institution was really bad at being clear about rules, or at following the rules that had apparently been set down, because they had some sort of a norm about everybody being included and being all friendly and all this kind of thing, and it’s like, so what’s really unprofessional here? Is it unprofessional to not say hi when you walk past your corner – and I don’t remember if that was the same, same person – but is it unprofessional to tell people that we have these rules to govern our behaviour and then not apply them? Is it…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well,

Jo VanEvery
…unprofessional, right, to like, need accommodations to be able to do your work? Or is it unprofessional to ignore agreed [upon] – which has happened to my client, right – to ignore agreed [upon] accommodations?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. And I mean, that comes up in the book as well, right? Like the, I think the one who, and again, spoiler alert, about half, I think it’s about half of our contributors are no longer in higher education, right? They’ve left academia, right? You know, some have found a place where they are, you know, if not thriving, then it’ll be surviving. And one of the essays does really point that out in the story, that they ended up leaving academia. And the most frustrating part, and again, think of this from a neurodiverse, from, from the very, like, rules following autistic brain of like: “You have these rules. I follow these rules. I’ve done everything that you’ve asked me to do, and yet I’m being punished.” And then they’re just like, “This is untenable”, right? And it is. It stays completely untenable, and it’s… But, but it’s so exhausting to call that out and then fight it, that it’s like, why? You know, again, the idea of burnout, the idea of of all this kind of stuff, and so, yeah, so there is that, and it truly is… It’s like, which one of us is being unprofessional, me or you?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. Like, that’s on top of like, being punished for following the rules that you set out, I’m also, *I’m* the one being called unprofessional. Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. This is what I hope people really sit with, ultimately, and not just for neurodivergent [people]. And we’ve been asking people to do this for for a long time – and by ‘we’, I mean any sort of marginalised population – is, you know, we, we’ve heard it with issues around race, right? The way people dress, the way people style their hair, the way people, you know, talk. “That was unprofessional.”, right? And that’s why? No, no, we’re not, we’re not, with, it’s not because they’re, you know, not because they’re, they’re black or Hispanic or or Indian or anything like that. It’s just, it’s just like it doesn’t, or it doesn’t fit with the culture, right? It’s, it’s not professional. Same thing with same thing with gender, right? Expect… Being expected to conform to professionalism as it apply, as it has applied to men for however many, you know, years. “It’s unprofessional to wear your hair that way. It’s unprofessional.” I mean, there’s, there’s a whole, and I don’t, I don’t want to call it out, really, because I do, but like, the whole consulting about getting an academic job and what it means to be professional, and how to be professional and how to dress, right? I could even remember when I was on the job market. They’re like, “Don’t wear your wedding ring”, right? Like, all of these sorts of like… Because people will think you’re professional enough because you’re married, and you might have kids, and it’s like,

Jo VanEvery
How is that unprofessional? As opposed to a friend of mine who, you know, at a job interview very early in her career… I mean, she’s now a full professor and a, you know, gets a lot of grants, whatever. But one of her early… I remember her telling me and her sister, you know, this experience she had. But I mean, obviously, like whether she had her wedding ring on or not, she was heavily pregnant when she did this interview, so whatever. But got actually asked, not in an interview, because that would be illegal, it was in Canada. But in one of the informal parts, because there’s a lot of informal parts, people literally said to her, “What does your husband think of moving here? Like, if we hired you, what does your husband think of moving here?” – somehow that’s not considered unprofessional. Yeah. Excuse me?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. And again. So it’s all of this, like ideas of what professionalism is, and it is sort of, maybe not so much anymore, given the climate here in the United States, but for for a little for a window, that was the kind of last accept-, like I said, acceptable way to discriminate, was to say “You are unprofessional.” And then it was like, “Oh, okay, well, then that’s, that’s all right. Then if they’re unprofessional, then, like, of course you shouldn’t hire them”, or, “Of course they should be let go”, or, “Of course they should be put on…”, you know, what are those HR improvement plans? Or whatever it was, whatever those things are, “Of course they need to be put on one of those…”, right? You know, it’s, currently in my positionality. It particularly has expressed itself through, like, my neurodivergence. I mean, again, you’re an OD. You remember my whole bad female academic series?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And really, I didn’t go far enough. Like I revisited it, and I just published an essay about revisiting it, and of course, I didn’t have an ADHD diagnosis then.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Right? And so a lot of what I was talking about was, the, what I was coming up against was “unprofessionalism”. I was unprofessional because I had this undiagnosed condition, but also for being a woman, right? And also, I talked about class and that too,

Jo VanEvery
Well then you can’t really win, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Because, you know, like, I’ve had, I’ve known many women who, you know, it’s like, there is a sort of underlying expectation of kind of gendered ideas about what you should care about, and, yeah, some ways you lined up with that, right? You did care a lot about students, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…And teaching, and that was really important to you, and so you kind of lined up that way. But you know, for, you know, I, you know, I, I’ve had a few women clients who come up against, you know, issues with their colleagues and senior colleagues if they don’t care enough about teaching enough, and it doesn’t mean they’re bad teachers, but you know, when they very clearly prioritise their research career, right? It’s kind of considered, like, weird for them, right? Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Or set up boundaries around service.

Jo VanEvery
Or they set boundaries around… Yeah. Like, and I remember, you know, when I was a grad student back in the 90s, you know, remember, there were a lot of senior, older women academics, right, who’d around for a lot that just had a reputation for being eccentric, and they were kind of eccentric, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I developed this theory that for women of that generation, you know, who were probably, you know, in their 50s, in the 90s…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, and they’re academics. Almost all of them were single. If they weren’t single, they mostly didn’t have any kids. But also, they were all these, like, very kind of eccentric [women], right? And I think they probably cultivated eccentricity, so they didn’t get stuck with all the pastoral care, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Otherwise, how do you get any work done? If, if your male colleagues just, you know, assume that: “Well, if students have any real kind of need for, like, care and support, they can just go to the women in the department”, right? Like, “We don’t have to provide that”. And I think like the ways that you had to kind of twist yourself around that, whereas male academics, there was a whole department. One place I worked that basically agreed as a department never to assign one of their colleagues any undergraduate teaching, because his personality was not… Like, “He’s a big brain, and we really need him, because he does this amazing research”, and all that kind of thing. “And we can let him have post grads, like, we can let him have PhD students, because, you know, he’s a big brain, and that’s good for…”. Well, we cannot let him near undergrad students, because that’s just going to make more work for us, because he’s such a… Right? Like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, so he didn’t get… You know, like, sometimes these things kind of cancel each other out, right? It’s almost like, you know, some of us are allowed to be quirky, you know, take our time and actually just not do whole chunks of the job. Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, and that’s part of the trap too, right? You see the one exception, right? Where it’s just like, “Oh…”, but it’s like, you know, 1) is like, “Yes, he’s a, he’s a dude.” So that, you know, that, “Are you a dude? No, you’re not gonna get that probably.” But also 2) It’s just, like, just like, just being able to have, just the, right, like, research topic, or whatever it is, and, like, whatever is hot at that moment, or getting funded a lot at that moment. Or, like, you know, it’s again, that’s the trap. Like, you see this as like, “Oh, I, you know, I kind of relate to this weird, quirky professor,” and like, they’ve… And also, you know, we – I don’t know if it is gonna make it into the episode, but – we’re talking about how on early Twitter, it’s, it just so happened that everybody we tended to, like, gravitate towards and become friends with, and all of that, all of that, all ended up having a neurodivergent diagnosis. I mean, I think that, I think that there is a kind of recognition, even if it’s not like, “Oh, I think they have ADHD”. It’s like “Hmm they have very similar traits to me”…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
…and they’re very successful, and there’s something very empowering about that, because very often we haven’t seen those sorts of models, right? We haven’t seen people like us be successful in the ways that other people are successful, you know what I mean? And so that again, like going back to that roundabout way, back to that idea of it being a trap, is that you’re sort of like, “Oh, maybe this could be for me, because look…”, right? Like, I don’t… “I haven’t been diagnosed with it. They haven’t been diagnosed with it. But that’s like, I see… Like, I see you, right? I see those things.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And even being able to see how – and I remember this as well, where it was, like, for the first time, particularly in grad school with certain professors, it was like their brain seems to work the same way mine does, right, in terms of those, like quick flashes, the way ADHD does, and making those connections and everything like that… Where it’s like, if you’ve been the weird one your whole life, where everybody’s talking about, you know, hot dogs, and all of a sudden you’re just like, “…and the meaning of the universe”, and they’re like, “What are you talking about?” And it’s like, “Well, you were talking about hot dogs. And I started thinking about, like, how hot dogs are made. And then I thought about, like, the ethics of it. And then I started thinking about like, Ephesus, and then I got to like meaning of the universe.” – where it’s like, everybody’s like, “What the hell is wrong with you?” But then in grad school, when you, like, meet another person whose brain works that way, right? And again, you know, it’s hyper fixation, but it’s also being able to make those connections that nobody else makes.

Jo VanEvery
People don’t like the idea of, oh, you know, ADHD, or autism is a superpower, but there are some ways in which, you know, it is very disabling, for all the reasons that are in this book, right? Like,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, and all the reasons we talked about.

Jo VanEvery
On another hand, that divergent thinking, like… Right? Like, that whole divergent thinking, you know, it’s a blessing and it’s a curse, right? And so you know, when I’m helping people, and you’ve talked about this a little bit on your other podcast, and and I know you’ve probably struggled, but you know we’re talking, when you’re talking to people who, when you’re helping people write a book, right, like that ability to go from hot dogs to the meaning of the universe or whatever it is, right, like that connection, seeing all those connections, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…is like, really powerful for creating new knowledge, right? Like, that’s where new knowledge comes from, and the whole job of research is creating new knowledge

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Creating new knowledge. Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
That’s exactly what you’re doing, you know, you’re taking what’s there, and you’re like… And that’s the other thing about that shift from being a student to being an academic, is that you’re going from being able to kind of learn and repeat what other people have said, to being able to, like, create something new out of all of this, right? And to see, and a lot of it is about connection, right? Like it’s about, “Oh, here’s a connection people haven’t made before between these things”, or whatever, right? And so that that is really a… Neurodivergent people do have a real benefit in the sense that the way their brain works makes that part a lot easier, but then you have to kind of squeeze it into this linear model of an article with it, you know? And, and that’s not how your brain works, right? It doesn’t. It goes in these… And so being able to write it and…

Jo VanEvery
Side quests!

Jo VanEvery
Side quests. Right? All of that kind of thing… I’ve been using that, like, language of ‘side quests’, because it makes so much sense to so many people, right? It’s like, okay, which parts are the core thing and also, but also one of the real things I really love about a lot more people talking about these conditions from the experience of experience, rather than as kind of medics diagnosing something wrong with them, is, I really love the idea of ADHD as interest based or interest based attention, right? And so one of the things that happens, though, is when you get all that into line, right, you lose interest, right? Like it’s done now and I’ve lost interest, and now it doesn’t get published, or it doesn’t… Right? And it’s really hard to get it to go to the [publisher?]… So, like, so like, it’s a, it’s a kind of blessing and a curse thing. But there really is that blessing part, and that that’s really, like, exciting, that you get to do that, and you get to be around other people that do that, and that you get to sit there and have these kind of mad conversations.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Exactly. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You’re like, “Oh, but I read this thing. Do you think that’s…?” – you know? And you kind of have all that sparky, sparky kind of conversation. But then you need to kind of corral it into some other kind of form in order for it to kind of… And I think that’s the other thing about this book, is that you and Rebecca made a really conscious decision not to corral it into a particular kind of academic form, even though there is a bibliography and there are a lot of references in some of the things and whatever. But you kind of made a decision to be a bit freer about that form, apart from this [structure]… And then I, and I’m assuming that structure, I said at the beginning, that coping and masking structures, stigma, emerged from you trying to like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. That emerged organically, like, we knew we would have to create some sense making for it, and this is the one that made sense. We had another section, but we didn’t really have enough. And of course, just just because it doesn’t talk, just because it’s [about] masking, doesn’t mean it also doesn’t talk about, you know, obviously… But, but, like, these are the le grande, as we say in French, and and so like, we did have a section, but it only ended up having two, and it felt imbalanced. But so we can move, we could actually move them into other ones and and that, and that was, that was actually – and Rebecca talks about this in the podcast, and also in the introduction of the book – that’s one of the things that I brought to it, was that I really wanted to let the authors describe their experience in their own voice.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
So there’s one essay in particular that… And we did, we did this really cool… and I’m so happy about it, because I keep thinking about reviewer two as we talk about being let loose in the world where we’re no longer graded, except for this elusive reviewer two, who could make or break our careers, and gives us very confusing [feedback], even for, or even for neurotypical people, but for neurodiverse people, very confusing feedback on our work. We’re like, “What am I supposed to do with this?” So we did, because it’s the, because of the nature of the essays, we did a kind of internal, open peer review. And so Rebecca and I read, we gave a preliminary wave of feedback, and then everybody read everybody else’s essays and gave feedback on them. Because everybody was, you know, was attached to academia. Everybody was an academic, either currently or was an academic. So everybody… And everybody had their level of expertise with it. And so everybody got feedback from at least two of the other authors or contributors to the book, and then we sort of went through it and helped.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And again, the sensitivity to, you know, the sensitivity to… I have rejection sensitive dysmorphia, and so trying to take care of that where, like, everybody sort of understood that, but also everybody had their own way of giving feedback, right? And so just to be able to, then, like, help the authors translate that feedback into something positive and useful, right? And most of it was very positive and useful, but still doing it that way.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But there was one essay in particular that both, both of the peer reviewers and Rebecca were like, “This is really stilted. This is very… Like, it feels disjointed. It’s very abrupt. It’s very, you know, direct.” And they’re like, “Could you… Maybe…?” And I was like, “No.” Like, “What do you mean, ‘No’…?” And I’m like, “No, they’re not softening this.” And they’re like, “Well…” And I’m like, “They’re writing like an autistic person.” And I, and I said, “I recognise this style of writing, I recognise this style of thinking, I recognise this style of talking. I think for this particular… I think you should just let it be.” Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And, and, I mean, if you read, if you’ve read *my* essay about it, it’s written in a very ADHD way, right, which is very cyclical and circular and not ephemeral. I don’t remember the word I was looking for, but anyways… So it’s… And now that I’ve discovered, like I’ve discovered… I’ve really… I know how I want to write as somebody with ADHD. And then I also know how I’m supposed to write as an academic, but also so that I’m… “Am I understandable?” Right? Like, if I wrote purely about, about what, how I’m ADHD, [it] wouldn’t make sense to anybody. It would be completely alienating to the reader.

Jo VanEvery
Well and, yeah, but like, when you’re writing your first draft that, that’s how you get it out, and then… Right? And then it’s like, you know, and this is often what I say to other people, it’s like, it’s like, you need to [understand]… Other people aren’t necessarily going on the same journey you’re going on to understand this. So what helps other people? And you don’t necessarily want to assume those other people are very strictly linear thinkers. But, you know, like, it…

Speaker 1
They’re not inside your head. They didn’t make those seven steps.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And sometimes you go off on a tangent, and one of the tangents, I think that, you know, I’ve talked a lot about this because we’ve been, some of my clients are working on books, and we’re working on introductions, right? And it’s like, you know, the introduction to a book, and you know, how do you talk about, I think the the whole shift in terms of what a literature review is doing, when you’re a student, versus what a literature review is doing in a published article or book… And, and the thing that it’s doing in a published article or book is partly establishing that you have the authority to talk about this, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Mmhmm.

Jo VanEvery
You are… And… But the main thing it’s doing is kind of connecting what you’re doing in your piece, to what the reader is…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
The larger discourse, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Like you’re part of a conversation. It’s a very weird kind of conversation, but you’re kind of connecting it. But that one of my clients is really working on, like, “How little can I say?” Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I get it. I’ve done that too.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s not in a: “I don’t want to say anything” [kinda way]. But like, “How little do I want to say?” And what it’s made me realise is that, yes, sometimes when you lean too heavily into “I need to demonstrate that I really understand this literature.” What you’ve done is gone on a side quest with the book, and you’ve taken them away from introducing them to what you’re about to say. And so you’ve gone on a side quest of, “Here’s all this other stuff going on”.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And then you’re kind of coming back and like, “Here’s where I’m going.” And it’s really easy for them to miss the “Why was this relevant?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah!

Jo VanEvery
I think sometimes when you get those reviewer comments that are like, “I don’t understand. You haven’t done a very good job of this [insert feedback here]”, and you look at it, and you’re like, “I wasn’t even trying to do that.” Sometimes I think that’s why. It’s when *this* reader – like, we have to remember that reviewer, reviewer two is not usually setting out to be mean – sometimes they have, like, someone representative of your potential readership, right? Like, that’s what peer review kind of means, who, who got lost somewhere and thought, somehow [this feedback would help]… Now, sometimes they just are like, “The only way to talk about this topic is to do this, and you’re not doing this.” But sometimes there’s… The way you address it is not by doing the thing they wanted you to do, by being like, “how did this person get lost in my introduction? And how can I ensure nobody else goes down that path?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…because, because somehow I went on a side quest and then got really upset with what I did. And, and really, *I* led him there, and then just kind of left him in the woods with nothing, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, yeah. They were like, “I was really excited about him being able to talk about this, and then we didn’t talk about that.”

Jo VanEvery
Exactly.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So there is that thing where you’re just like, “Okay, I need to help people. You know, because they’re not having this exciting, you know, sparky, divergent thinking moment. They’re trying to follow an argument that I’m setting out here, and I’m trying to… Like, and the sparks are going to happen between what you wrote and other things they’ve read. Like, you’re not responsible for *their* sparks, right? So, but you gotta kind of get some of your sparks out of what you end up writing, which is, which is really hard, right? And, er…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
You know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, there’s also the… When you’re neurodivergent and you’ve, you’ve heard so much feedback around… Like there is an imposter syndrome too, attached to it, right, especially around: if you’re masking, if the mask comes off, of what is going to happen to me, like, and the compensating and all that kind of stuff, and so… Like, these big lit reviews are often me just further justifying, you know, that, that “I have a right to be here, and that I have a right to, like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
If you listen to, the podcast you’re referring to is it’s called All The Things ADHD. It’s myself and my co host, Amy Morrison, who’s tenured professor in Canada. And we always joke about her 500 reference article that she wrote about… And it and it’s an important article, and I recommend it to anybody, because it’s about disclosure. It’s about disclosure. It’s about diagnosis, it’s about seeking accommodation, and it’s about how, again, when we talk about the institution, how the institution is set up in such a way that it is punitive on someone. The system, the system is set up to really punish somebody for disclosure and for asking for accommodations and all of that. But the joke was (and it really wasn’t) is that, like, she had to, she has five, she’s made 500 references, and there’s like 250 articles in the ‘works cited’ for, like, not even a book, just an article, Jo. And again, it was, and that’s… She, she talks about that a lot. For her, what [her] writing process [is], is that she does get lost in the research, right? And those are her side quests, so much.

Jo VanEvery
Very clearly, hyperlexic, right? So she reads a lot. And really reads.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes.

Jo VanEvery
Right? In a way, which is not all autistic experience, but it’s definitely not uncommon. And, and, you know… And so, like, she kind of leans into… And, like, again, if you’re hyperlexic, like, academia seems like a fantastic place to be. Like, what about the rest…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Exactly.

Jo VanEvery
…that are like, “How do I get through this reading?” And like, I mean, we have another autistic friend who is absolutely not, and who is like, “I keep getting told to skim read, and I just can’t”, right? And so… But [it] also feels like “I need to have read everything, and it just takes a long time. And why does not- anybody…?” Right?

Jo VanEvery
So there’s like, these are both autistic experiences of academia, who, which are very different. But also, like, yeah, if you are able to absorb that much, and get down that rabbit hole of research, and then you’re just like, you know… But all of this stuff did influence my thinking. Because of this, like, blessing, you know, the the ability to see across, and make connections, and whatever, like, it came out of all of this. And it’s hard for anybody else to imagine how that happened. And I’m so glad that she’s able to do it so that the rest of us don’t have to. You have to publish this, so nobody else has to go down that particular rabbit hole. They can just kind of start with where you ended up, and go down their own rabbit hole. But like, exactly like, it’s also… But I think she also, I also remember from your podcast with her that she also realised at some point that even though she’s in a discipline that really values books, that she is not going to write one. Like that, that’s not her thing. That, that she can’t sustain the attention that long, right? And that… And also, every time, you know, when she’s trying to edit it, it’s just like, well, she ends up changing the whole thing. Because, you know,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, “Oh, I read something new, and now everything has changed.”

Jo VanEvery
Well, or just, like… So I had this conversation with my own kid right, who now has an ADHD diagnosis and has recently finished a degree. She went as a mature student, did a degree. Well, we were talking a couple summers ago about the way, because I write – and I suspect you might as well – I kind of blurt it all out onto the page, and then I edit it, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yep. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, I definitely start with free writing. And she’s like, “But Mom, I can’t do that.” I’m like, “Well, okay…”, so she, because she’s like, “Once I see it like that, I can’t imagine another way it could be.” And I think that’s probably what goes on with Amy too, right? Like, as soon as…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well. And I’m highly like that.

Jo VanEvery
She’s like, “Yeah.” So what she says is, like, she starts, she writes these incredibly detailed outlines, and then her first prose draft is very close to the final draft.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And, but she had a great analogy for it, which I’m going to share because… I’m sure people know it. So she said, “So it’s like the difference between playing Scrabble, and doing anagrams.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Ahh!

Jo VanEvery
She’s really awesome at Scrabble.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
She hates anagrams.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no, I [get that]. Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? Because an anagram is already a word. Scrabble is just a bunch of letters.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes. Yep, yeah, no, that’s a great analogy.

Jo VanEvery
It’s like, when you when you’ve written it all out in prose like that, then, well, that’s how it… Then, like… She can edit other people’s writing, but like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So for her, it’s like, it can’t look like prose till the end. And I have had another client, like, which – and this happened before we had that conversation, but I now realise that’s probably how her brain works, too – who, who wrote the first draft of an entire book in bullet points.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I mean…

Jo VanEvery
And then it was like, “Okay, I need to turn these bullet points into prose.” But it was bullet points all the way down to paragraph level, like it was an outline all the way down to paragraph level.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I can’t do that. You can’t do that…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
No, I can’t do that either.

Jo VanEvery
Like whatever, but that for her, that was what worked.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And I think that I like the Scrabble and anagram [analogy], because I think that that also really sums up the type of neurodivergence of, like, the, when you get to those boundaries. Right? Like, I think that it’s… And I think that this is also sort of, like, it’s a different way to frame ableism, and it’s a different way to frame neurodivergent and neurodiverse brains, is that it’s great that we have anagram brains and scrabble brains, but for some reason it’s just like: “Oh, you’re really good at anagrams, and we value that. But you’re good at Scrabble, and we don’t understand that.” You know what I mean? Like, there is this sort of unspoken standard where it’s like, “But I’m really good at Scrabble. Why, why aren’t they…?” Like, “No, no, you can’t do anagrams, though. So, like… Uh uh. [disapproval]” Right? And that’s the sort of, that’s the sort of world that we live in, right?

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, and I think that, like, and that, that gets down to, like, what is the really basic problem? I love a division of labour, and it’s like, somehow, in academia, we’ve ended up with this kind of thing where it’s like, “Well, everybody should be able to do [everything].” You know? And also this real, like, “You should be able to do it [by] yourself.” Like, in the, the way that some of the budget cuts are being like, “Oh, let’s cut a bunch of services staff.” And then it’s like, “Well, we’ve got these really bright people. Well, surely they can learn how to, like, fill in their own expense forms.” And it’s like…

Speaker 1
You’ve just, you’ve just brought up Amy’s bugaboo, right? Like, she’s like…

Jo VanEvery
I’m sorry. Like, that… No. That’s not…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right? And part of it as well is that academics have fed into that sometimes, because they sometimes denigrate the skills and abilities of the professional services staff, right? Like, it’s like: “Well, you know, you don’t, necessarily, you don’t have a PhD.” Like, it’s like, you know what? Like, you don’t need somebody with a PhD to be able to organise your events, right? Like, we’re asking PhD students and, and faculty to organise conferences instead of hiring professional events organisers. And like, sometimes they are good at that. But also it’s like, you know what…? Like, event organisers, like, never asked me to organise an event. I don’t even want to organise, like, like, you know, a holiday, like, you know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, it’s like, okay, we’re going to this place, but…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
But, then… If, if, for me as a grad student, I love that stuff, right? Because… But then was punished for it on the job market, because it’s like, “Well, you’re gonna have to do these things, but you’ve already done them, and so that won’t make you a good professor.” And so it’s like, there’s this, again, there’s all of these things where it’s like, “You need to learn how to do these things because it’s important, and it’s going to be part of the job.” But then when I go on the job market and say, I can do all of these things, they’re like, “Yeah, but where’s your second book?”

Jo VanEvery
Like… Exactly, right? It’s like, you can’t write a second book and organise a [conference]. Right? And…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And also, the thing about moving. Like, in one of my planning classes, somebody was like, “So I’m moving, and what is that going to mean about how much writing I can do?” And one of the other people who has moved a lot, she’s just like, “Every move is an article. Based on my own personal data: every time you move, that’s an article you didn’t write.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, sounds about right.

Jo VanEvery
Right? But we’re now in a situation where we’re asking people to do more and more temporary jobs, before they get anything where they can stay somewhere for several years, right? And so you’re based… And then in order to get the job where you can stay somewhere for several years, you’re being, like, asked to have published a lot of stuff, but it’s like, “But I had to move every year, like those, that’s three articles I didn’t publish, because I was moving.”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And I had to take on… And I had to take on contract writing work or instructional design work because I didn’t have enough money to make ends meet.

Jo VanEvery
Well, yeah, in a lot of situations, yeah, yeah. Like, it’s just bananas, right? But, yeah, I think, I think in terms of, like, the neurodiversity, it’s like, if we think about the concept of neurodiversity and the fact that, like human brain, like humans are really complex organisms, their brains are really complex. So it’s like, you know, there are certain things that get to a stage where we’re like, “We need to give this a name and call it something. How this works.” Right? But there’s also just a lot of variation anyway. And it’s like, instead of saying, “How do we make the most of this kind of group of people we have? To get, like, the collective… Like, we have this much work we need to do, as an institution, or a department, or whatever. And these are the different kinds of work, and these are the different kinds of things involved. And here are the kinds of people we have. And how can we make the best use of everybody’s talents to get all this done?” We end up saying “No, like, here’s this idea that everybody needs to be able to do, all of these things.” Right? And none of… Nobody’s ever going to succeed at that, and I… And it’s kind of really frustrating,

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Or, or “We’re only going to reward… We need all of this work done, but we’re only going to reward this one kind of work, and then everyone else is going to be contingent staff.” Right? All of that kind of stuff. And that’s the other one, where it’s like, everybody’s expected… Or it’s just like, you know, “We are going to hold up this one class of work that is done as being more valuable than all of this other work that has to happen in order for a university to run and to work.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. But even for that kind of work to happen. You know? So it ends up… You know, with some people, you know, it’s just like, well, why should you feel bad if you need the support of a developmental editor…?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…to be able to structure your kind of mad, diverse thoughts into some kind of structure? Like, why should you feel bad about that? If that’s not… You know, having somebody who can come in and help you figure out the structure, so that then you can do the rest of the steps… It’s still your work, right? And you know, what difference does it make if, like, you know, like, if finding the time you know, it’s like, you know, what if you can’t just ‘get on’, like, what if, you know, you need somebody to say, “This is a higher priority than that.”? [Or,] “It’s okay to give less time to this work, in order to make time for that work.”

Jo VanEvery
But so many in academia are unwilling, you know, because of their aversion to the idea of ‘management’, and being [controlled]… Like, it’s fine. You don’t want to work in some kind of terrible really, you know, particular kind of management structure. Or, you know, whatever “bad management is bad management”. But, you know, like, if you’re a head of department, like, why can’t you tell people “This is a higher priority than that.”? Like, instead of just being like, “Oh, you need to figure it out for yourself”, like, what, what’s, what’s the problem with [helping people prioritise]? Like, some people are bad at prioritising. Like, let’s help, let’s help them prioritise, right, in a way that can also take into account what their needs and desires are, right? Or… And their strengths. Like, like, I just don’t understand why.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
That’s just not how higher education is…

Jo VanEvery
No, I know, but it like, it…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I know.

Jo VanEvery
Like, it would be a really small tweak, right? And there are people out there actually who are doing that, right? Like, there are people who are taking up, you know, Head of Department roles or whatever, and they’re thinking, “Well, this is who I want to be in that role. I want to be supporting my colleagues in being able to do their best work.” Like, there’s loads of people going into, you know, Dean roles and everything with that, and sometimes, sort of, pressures from above are preventing them from doing that in the way that they want, because we’re all in these structures, which is why I’m really glad you had that whole [section in your book]

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. Scarcity mindset. Like we just have the scarcity mindset.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but, but there are a lot of people doing really good work. And that, and there are people who are able to kind of thrive with their… You know? And like… And it… I don’t know, like…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
I would just say, read the book. Like, just go out, read the book and start a conversation with your colleagues.

Jo VanEvery
But I think one of the things to come back is like that, in that section, in that coda, where you talk about professionalism, you directly address everybody. Like, whether you’re neurodiverse or not, if you want your workplace to be more like a good place for a diverse range of academics to work, right, then the one thing that you end up saying is “You really need to question every time the word ‘professionalism’ pops into your head.” Right? Like, that’s the one thing. Like, you really need to think about that. and question, “What do I mean by that?” And. “Is this, really, like, is this problem really a problem, or can I let [it go]?” – and that. that’s the one thing. And I… And you kind of address the people who are not being accused of it, but doing the accusing. But I think so often the internalised ableism is that you start accusing yourself. And so I guess, even if it’s you…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes, exactly.

Jo VanEvery
…and somebody else has accused you (And we can’t wait. We can’t change other people. I mean, we can try, but they have to do it on their own. But that doesn’t mean we have to wait for them to change before our work, [can start], right?) We can listen to that, and we don’t have to accept that they’re right. And we certainly don’t need to start accusing ourselves, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And I think when we start thinking, “But is it professional for me to do X or Y?” We need to pause, and just be like: “So what’s the real goal here? And what’s the likely risk and problem?”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
And: “Is there a way that my way of doing it can be okay? Like, [that] it’s okay for me to do it this way. It’s okay for me to…”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, or understanding that it’s like, like you said, if I’m thinking that “This is unprofessional”, is this because somebody has told me it is? Is it because I think it is? Is this because, like, I’m not following the guidelines of of, that have been, of quote, unquote “professionalism” that have been put forward by the institution, by my department, by my, by my centre, by my culture, by my supervisor? And then, and then you can, sort of, like you said, to be able to unpack that. Then you can kind of address, “Okay, here’s how, either I can do the work, or I can have a conversation about how I do the work, or…” You know, the, these kinds of things where it’s, you know, because, because it’s very easy… Again, this is the whole point of this book is to really, we don’t solve anything. And it was really funny when we were doing a lot of these things. So, like, “So what should we do [about it]?” And we’re, like, “I don’t know, dismantle ableism.”

Jo VanEvery
Or whatever.. Like, yeah…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah. I don’t know, like, but, but, but again, like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, the whole point is to have this, start this conversation. And I’m glad that that idea of professionalism resonated with you so much, and I hope it does with others too, because that’s the opening, that’s the conversation starter, that’s the way to start doing the work.

Jo VanEvery
That’s the being human part, right? With that being… I like how it’s paired with the “but we’re all human”. So there’s a kind of sense about that in that other bit, in that extra chapters, bonus chapters section, which is really a conclusion in which it’s also like we’re not robots, right? Like we are human. And so we have to have some grace. We have to extend some grace to people for being human. And and and that, and our understanding professionalism needs to do that.

Jo VanEvery
But I think, although you don’t solve anything, I think a lot, because a lot of these people are talking about a trajectory over several years, I think many of the essays in this book will give people ideas for things they might be able to try in their own context. So I think it will give… Although there is no… Because there never is one universal solution. Like, it would be lovely if we had a magic wand and could go, “Well, did you do THIS?” And it’ll be all fine, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
But like, you have to work out what works for you. But also, like seeing how other people have navigated these things often helps you see your own situation in a different way. It might give you ideas for things you might want to try. It might, and it might do that in a way where you’re like, “Oh my god, I could never do that.” – but then that sparks [something] right? Because of the divergent thinking. It’s like, “Oh, I could never do that.” But then that sparks: “Oh, but what if I did this instead?” Right? Like, so that…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
…it doesn’t have to be in your book. It kind of like, and I think the fact that you left them in many ways in the voice of the people as much as possible, and that you let them tell the stories in the way they wanted to tell them. Because many of them are messy, like, none of them are really clean about, “Well, it’s either a good or a bad.” Like, a lot of them are like, “Well, all of *this* stuff went really well. I was able to have *this* career for *this* long, and it was kind of mostly working. Like, there was *this* … blah, blah, blah” … And, like… I mean, there’s one where the the person is like, “You know, I’ve managed to…” This is a person that’s still in academia. I think who, you know, it’s really noticeable, because it’s like, “I’ve managed to find a way to have this career in a way where I still get to sleep 10 hours a night.” Like.. I remember that stuck out, right? Sleeps 10 hours a night, eats properly, doesn’t take work, takes all the weekends off and is still performing at a level where they got promoted to full professor in the institution where they are. And I think that’s nice too. You know, it’s like the book doesn’t say, “Oh, this is possible, if only you do everything right.” It’s more like “Sometimes you’re able to kind of navigate”, and that person, I mean, that same person – I’m pretty sure I’m remembering this correctly – did have a period in that trajectory where they actually called their mom and said, “Can you come and look after me so I can do my job”, right? They got from there, to: “I can now look after myself, including getting 10 hours of sleep a night, and do my job and succeed”, right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So it’s not like an easy, you know, whatever, and not everybody can call their mom, or wants to, but I think it does give that sense of the variety of paths this could take, and how sometimes there are opportunities. And I think that idea of being able to… Having an idea what those opportunities might look like, and having some language for being able to talk about, right, like that professionalism language. Like, being able to say: “Is this just being used as a way to…”

Lee Skallerup Bessette
As a cudgel.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, or to cover up discrimination, and make it look like an acceptable thing when it’s not. Or is this being used… And I think you know, is that really…? And, and it’s really easy to call some things unprofessional, and really hard to call other things unprofessional.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yes, yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, yeah, once you’ve seen that, you can be like, okay, maybe I can’t do anything about this now, but at least I can kind of distance myself from that as an objective descriptor of reality, and that might give me enough space to be able to figure out how to manage in this situation.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
So anyway, it was great to talk to you, and…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
It was really great to talk to you too.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, yeah. And I’m really glad that you’re doing this kind of work, because, you know, you’re not in a job where anybody requires you to do it. You’re doing it because…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
No.

Jo VanEvery
This is why I came into this in the first place.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
This is… I mean, this is what I say, is the – like on the… Again, it’s my ADHD brain. I need… I don’t have any projects going on right now, and I’m just like, going insane. I’m just like, “What, what is my next three projects? To go alongside my…” But the nice thing about being in the role that I’m in now, is because it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a tenure track position, it’s not a, you know, it’s in academia though – is that, like… I *can* pick and choose my projects. I can decide who I’m going to work with. I think that that’s really important for me right now, is, is… Again, and maybe this is the advice I can give to individuals. And I’ve had a I have a certain amount of privilege around this, but like, I choose who I’m gonna work with, right? Like, when I saw that it was Katie and Rebecca editing this book, I was like, I feel comfortable getting involved in this.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Right? And to step in and to say I’m willing to the sacrifice the time to co edit this. It, as you said, it wasn’t because I’m like, “Oh God, I have to do this in order to get tenure.” It was like, “No, because this is something that is of value to me. I want to work with these people. I want to work with these stories.” And, you know, again, “I want to create an environment that that everyone feels comfortable with these stories.” And so like I don’t work with anybody, now, on projects, that I don’t feel that I’m going to be not taken, taken care of, right? It’s like, I’m, I’m, you know, when there’s that desperation to publish, where… You, you know?

Jo VanEvery
I think setting that as something that is achievable for a lot of people, right? Like, I think it takes a while. Sometimes you have to, like, kiss a few frogs to meet your prince, right? So sometimes you work with people, you think they’re going to be okay, and they aren’t. And you learn more about what you need in those relationships and things. So there is a learning curve to that, right? But, you know, the whole thing is, people value academic freedom, but then they’re like, “But I don’t have choices about what I publish”, or whatever. It’s like, what the hell do you think academic freedom is? Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Like, you should be able to work on the projects that you really want to work on, and, and

Lee Skallerup Bessette
– with the people that you want to work with.

Jo VanEvery
Exactly.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And that, to me, is more important right now, to me…

Jo VanEvery
Absolutely.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
…is that, like, I will… Like, who, who…? How is this going to be peer reviewed? Who is doing the peer review? Who are the editors? You know, because, and because, even if it’s a topic that, like, I’m really… Like, I’d have to be so passionate about it to take a risk with the people who are, who are also, who are sort of editing it, or whatever. Because, like, I I’ve had too many experiences where writing has been, and research has been punitive, right, or struggles, or all that. I mean, you might… you coach, right? You know, all of these things. And so like, my, my way now, of of coping is, is really being picky about who I work with, and…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. And I think when you’re early in your career, it’s harder, because you don’t really know all that about yourself. And sometimes you aren’t… Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, and the other people! Right? Like…

Jo VanEvery
Yeah. But the… And the other people. But the other thing is that you should set that as a goal for yourself is that you’re trying to find the people you really like working with. You’re trying to like work as much as possible. And I think sometimes going in, people are really scared they’re not going to have enough projects to work on. And that, in my experience, of all the people I’ve worked with, is hardly ever the problem. People do not run out of things that they’re interested in, especially if you are neurodivergent, that doesn’t happen. You don’t [run out]. Right? There is always more things right? And so, it is ok…

Lee Skallerup Bessette
So much more..

Jo VanEvery
…to say no to projects. because while you could do them, they aren’t the thing you’re really passionate about, or the people you’d be working with would make it, like, that you would dread to work on it. Like, you just really want to think about, like, everything that’s going on, like this stuff is important to you. Like, centre that, and work out how to make… Because there’s parts of your job… It’s okay. Like, 100% of your job is never going to be super enjoyable, but there should be something that’s meaningful and enjoyable in this job, or it’s just not worth fighting all this stuff.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Right?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
And that’s true for any job.

Jo VanEvery
And it’s true for any job.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Academia or otherwise.

Jo VanEvery
Yeah, but like the idea that somehow you have to give up on the idea of liking any of it, that’s not right. You know?

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah, no.

Jo VanEvery
It’s better to kind of find your way gradually, gradually, to kind of build a bigger and bigger space where you’re all… You know? So that you get to the point, like you are, you know, 20 years in, where you’re like, “No, now I know I know what I need, and I know enough people that I trust, that I can be picky about projects. And even though I’m a little bit antsy right now because I don’t have three projects lined up, I know one will come up.” – and like trusting there will be more opportunities and that. And I think that’s one of the things I’ve said about ‘saying no’ before, which is, you know, a lot of, there’s a lot of advice about saying no to too much service [work] or whatever, but the thing people really struggle to say no to is too much research projects. And you do… Like, the thing that’s really hard to say no to, are projects that seem like they might be okay, but you don’t have enough time or energy to do it, or with somebody that you know it’s going to make it hard to do the way you want, or whatever it is. And you know, like you just really have to trust yourself that you can figure that stuff out, really.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Yeah.

Jo VanEvery
Anyway. Okay, so the book, again, is Of Many Minds by Lee Skallerup Bessette and Rebecca Pope-Ruark, and it’s published by John Hopkins. And it’s like, it’s, it’s a good it’s the kind of thing you should probably like put a request in with your library to get so that some of the people that you really feel wish understood you better, will might come across it in the in the library, and yeah, and it’s, I’m really glad you’ve done this work.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
All right. Well, thank you again, Jo, like this was, this was wonderful. And again, this project is near and dear to my heart. I will take every and any opportunity to go on a podcast or wherever and talk about it. So if anyone in the UK is interested in this, doing this as a reading group, or having Rebecca and I Zoom in to talk to your reading group or to talk to your group, we are really happy to do that.

Jo VanEvery
Okay.

Lee Skallerup Bessette
Well, thanks again, Jo,

Jo VanEvery
Thank you for listening!

[End of transcript.]

Related Posts, Podcasts & Books:

• Get your own copy: Of Many Minds now
• All The Things ADHD – Podcast
• Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal (book) – by Rebecca Pope-Ruark, PhD
• Lee featured on an episode of Rebecca’s podcast too: S5:E1 – the agile academic

Plus some of my posts from the Library:

• Creating A Satisfying Academic Career – Part 1
• Creating A Satisfying Academic Career – Part 2
• What an academic career looks like

This interview took place via Zoom on Sept 17 2025. Sent to newsletter subscribers Nov 14th 2025. It has been substantially edited, as mentioned in the introduction, for ease of reading/listening and reference.

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