From Lonely Academic to Energised Writer

Co-written with Assoc. Prof. Julien Cayla

For the past 20 years, I've worked alone at home. I'm the original work-from-home/digital nomad worker. The lifestyle is great, and it allows me to travel and live abroad, even with kids, because... the internet. I work in coffee shops, in co-working spaces, in my home office and generally anywhere I please.

But as we ALL now know, thanks to work-from-home regulations around COVID, it can be really hard to work alone. It's hard to get going, it's hard to stay going, it's hard to stop, hard to have a life and know when to say no, it's hard to meet deadlines while you're at your cousin's wedding because, you know... the internet.

And nobody knows as well as academics how hard it really is.

There are no group or team meetings on most days, no supervisor checking in to see that you're getting on with your work. It's literally just you and the computer. Possibly a plant or a cat. It’s lonely.

So how do we motivate ourselves to work? How do we find the energy to not only get started, but to keep going? How do we get excited, how do we pick ourselves up when we've received gut wrenching emails or when we've just read scathing student feedback? There is no one we can talk to. So what can help us muster enough energy to tackle the hardest thing of all: WRITING?

What we need is emotional energy.

What is emotional energy?

Emotional energy is the feeling of excitement, confidence, and enthusiasm that you experience at a football stadium, concert, or religious gathering. Visitors to megachurches, for example, speak of a "rush" - an emotional and spiritual energy that emanates from Sunday worship. Football fans also experience pleasant bursts of positive and shared emotion at their gatherings.

In sociology, it has been shown that emotional energy occurs when some important conditions are met: the shared presence of participants in the same space, barriers that exclude outsiders, a mutual focus of attention, and a shared mood. For example, consider how football games manage to generate great levels of energy through the co-presence of people cheering, singing, and dancing together. Context characteristics are key in creating emotional energy.

How do we create emotional energy for academics?

One way to generate emotional energy is to work with others. Both Julien and I have seen the benefits of doing so in the respective writing communities we lead. During the pandemic, my writing group for women in academia met weekly for two years. The core group of women participants met every week on Zoom to write together. And now, even though I have stepped down from leading the group, it still lives on 2.5 years later.

Julien's real-life "Shut Up and Write" sessions in Singapore give him and the participants the motivation to write, which, although a solitary act, need not be isolating. By writing together in one place, you create a barrier for outsiders who may be doing something else. Even if all the participants are working on different projects, they all have a similar focus of attention. And if this focus is not interrupted (e.g., by a phone call during the writing session), such an event can create a positive shared mood that will keep you energised for the rest of the day.

You do not necessarily need a group to generate emotional energy. Emotional energy can also come from physical activity, from taking breaks, or from learning something new. But a group ritual has a powerful effect in generating a high level of emotional energy.

Emotional energy and the academic writer

In this day and age when academics face so many challenges, it seems important to talk about emotional energy. There is the challenge of loneliness and working in isolation. There are also the challenges of the review process, which sometimes takes years. Time pressure, long hours and the temporary nature of academic contracts: the list of challenges for academics is long and growing. In a climate of increasing pressure, it has become more difficult for academics to find peace and well-being. There is even evidence that 15-20% of academics suffer from burnout.

Group writing sessions will never solve all these problems. But they are one of the many ways academics can mobilise the power of the collective to generate more emotional energy for themselves.

As part of our efforts to form writing groups, Julien Cayla and I are organising a 12-week workshop to write together and share tips on academic writing. Attend to improve your mood and energy, to feel emotionally buoyant to engage with your manuscript, and to learn a few productivity frameworks along the way. The discussions and exchanges with others will inspire you to write and move your manuscript forward!