Plan Your Academic Year Before it Plans You!
- Wendy Nicholls
- Jun 21
- 3 min read
The academic year doesn't ask your permission. It arrives already full. Teaching allocation, committee dates, marking deadlines, the module that needs rewriting, the review you agreed to last spring and forgot about. By the time you sit down to think about what you want from the year, the diary has filled itself.
You meet September as a list of things other people need from you.
This is a free, one-hour workshop to do the opposite. To look at the year ahead and decide, before it decides for you, what you actually want it to hold.
Why this, and why now
Most planning advice for academics is really time management in disguise. Block your calendar, protect your mornings, learn to say no. And whilst this can be useful, up to a point, it treats the problem as a skills gap, as though you'd be fine if you were only a bit more organised (cue a collective sigh).
You're not disorganised, and you don't need better time management skills. Rather, you're carrying a load that was designed to exceed what fits. The University and College Union found the average academic works around two days a week beyond their contracted hours. So, it really isn't you, it is just the job as currently built.
Last year is your evidence base
You're a person with substantial research skills. You already know that the best predictor of what happens next is usually what happened before. We're going to apply that to your own working life.
We'll look back at the year you've just finished and analyse the data. What were the high points, at work and outside it? What did you mean to do last summer that you never got to? What kept filling your weeks that you'd stopped even noticing? And what did the year quietly cost you, without you ever deciding to pay it?
This represents the most honest information you have about how you actually work, what actually sustains you, and what slips off the sides when you're stretched. Most of us never look. We start each year with fresh intentions and the same conditions, and then wonder why it runs the same way again.
What you'll leave with
By the end of the hour you'll have a loose, honest plan for the year that starts from what matters to you rather than from what landed in your inbox.
You'll also have noticed a few things about last year that you hadn't named before. That will inform aspects that change how the next year goes.
Who this is for
Academics and researchers who can't quite keep going the way they have been, but haven't worked out what to do instead. You're still functional. You're good at your job. You're just aware that the current pace doesn't have many more years in it, and that nobody is going to hand you the time to think about it.
This is that time.
The details
When (all times are in BST):
Where: Zoom
Length: One hour
Hi, I am Wendy.
I work with academics to help them build sustainable careers so they can progress with autonomy, intellectual challenge and impact.
Packages start from £499.
With me you can expect to achieve:
A comprehensive mapping of where you are now, and where you want to be.
Clarity on what matters to you both professionally and personally.
Practical tools to set work boundaries that actually stick in academic environments.
Strategies to protect your wellbeing while still delivering quality work.
Emotional support and understanding.
Confidence to make decisions to support your future personal and professional life.
Book a chat in my diary, it is free for a 30 minute conversation to find out if working with me can help you take the next steps in your academic life. https://tidycal.com/drwendynicholls/letschat
Thank you for reading my article.
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