Stop treating your great ideas like neglected houseplants
You’ve got a brilliant idea—maybe even five. But nothing’s happening. I’m talking about the ground-breaking research centre, the important article, or the amazing life-changing impact project.
Let’s be honest: those ideas are worth NOWT if they stay in your head. Implementation is what creates success. It’s the most successful people who implement. Everyone has good ideas! Most just sit around thinking about them and don’t implement them. Or maybe even complaining about the “rigged” grant system, the avalanche of admin, or telling themselves “I’m-just-too-busy”. Meanwhile, other academics keep landing grants, writing books, and building theirprofiles. So you watch from the sidelines feeling overworked and flustered, secretly wondering why your own ideas never see the light of day. It’s time to face the music.
Stop treating your great ideas like neglected houseplants. Water them, feed them, wipe down the leaves every now and again, and watch them grow. Here’s how:
Learn how to create the habit of small daily actions – Little and often. Carve out time every day—even just 15 minutes, to write or move along your research project. Implementation doesn’t happen in big, sweeping gestures. It’s the small, consistent steps that get you across the finish line.
Understand how to implement a simple time management system – it doesn’t have to be fancy, but you need something to keep track of stuff you’ve agreed to do. The systems I recommend include time blocks, saying “no”, email boundaries and bigger, loftier goal setting.
Use my goal-setting techniques to make progress – Replace your someday-maybe wish list with actual goal-setting intentions. You’ll be amazed at the momentum that follows. If you missed my end of year webinar, you can watch it here (and there’s so much more in my membership The Sisterhood).
Find a supportive community to write with – This helps with writing accountability and also facing the music together – with like-minded peers, it feels less scary (In my coaching membership, we meet monthly for academic writing groups and a few times a year for writing retreats).
If you can master these steps, your schedule will finally fit around your goals instead of being an excuse for why you didn’t do it. You’ll actually watch your papers start coming out of the other end of the research pipeline and the grant submission getting ticked off the to-do list. Best of all, the confidence that comes with knowing that you can do this will permeate every area of your career, and it becomes easy to advocate for yourself and enjoy your job.
Pick one to try today and start shifting the narrative for 2025!
