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How to Be a Happy Academic
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How to Be a Happy Academic
A Guide to Being Effective in Research, Writing and Teaching

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April 2018 | 240 pages | SAGE Publications Ltd

Want to be an effective, successful and happy academic?  This book helps you hone your skills, showcase your strengths, and manage all the professional aspects of academic life.  With their focus on life-long learning and positive reflection, Alex and Bailey encourage you to focus on your own behaviours and personal challenges and help you to find real world solutions to your problems or concerns.

 

Weaving inspirational stories, the best of research and theory, along with pragmatic advice from successful academics, this book provides step-by-step guidance and simple tools to help you better meet the demands of modern academia, including:

  • Optimising your effectiveness, priorities & strategy
  • Workflow & managing workload
  • Interpersonal relationships, and how to influence
  • Developing your writing, presenting and teaching skills
  • Getting your work/life balance right.

Clear, practical and refreshingly positive this book inspires you to build the career you want in academia.


 
Introduction
Why is this Book Needed

 
Get the Most from this Book

 
Doing the Right Things Right: The Success Pyramid and The Core

 
Language and Terminology Issues

 
Theoretical Basis and Features

 
 
Chapter 1: Academic Knowledge Work as Extreme Knowledge Work
What is Academic Knowledge Work?

 
The Nature of Academic Knowledge Work

 
The Challenge of 'Extreme Knowledge Work' for Academic Workers

 
 
Section One: Choosing the Right Academic Work: The Success Pyramid
 
Chapter 2: Values in Academic Work
Values and Identity in Academic Work and Workers

 
Exploring Your Values

 
Values and Integrity

 
Reactions to Value Conflicts in Academic Workplaces

 
First Steps to Workable Strain: Increase Your Values Literacy

 
 
Chapter 3: Success and Its Indicators
What Success Looks Like in Academic Work

 
Success Is Not Equal (Especially Around Gender)

 
Success Is About Work and Life

 
Success and Quality Are Different

 
Is Success Subjective or Objective?

 
Approaching Success in Academic Knowledge Work: Occluded Games and Genres

 
Success Indicators and The Success Pyramid

 
Success Indicators over Academic Careers

 
Challenges in Selecting Success Indicators

 
 
Chapter 4: Doing the Right Things I: Effectiveness, Priorities, and Strategy
Priorities: The Key to Effectiveness

 
What Is Strategy?

 
Common Challenges with Good Strategy

 
 
Chapter 5: Doing the Right Things II: Goals, Tasks and Time
Time in Academic Work

 
Goals in Academic Work

 
Common Challenges when Goal Setting

 
Tasks in Academic Work

 
Handling Tasks

 
Common Challenges with Tasks

 
 
Section Two: Developing The Core
 
Chapter 6: Creativity: Adding the Vital Spark
Being and Staying Creative or ‘The Battle for Creativity’

 
Threats to Creativity

 
 
Chapter 7: Human Work and Self-Work
The Scope and Nature of Human Work

 
What Affects Human Work?

 
Human Work Done Well: First Steps

 
Relationships in Academic Work

 
Building Relational Networks

 
Feedback

 
Teams and Working Groups

 
Conflict

 
Human Work, Self-Work: A Journey Without End

 
 
Chapter 8: Learning: Success, Failure and the Growth Mindset
Mindsets in Academic Work

 
Learning for Growing: What and Why

 
Failure: Necessary and Useful

 
Successful Failure: A Six-Step Approach

 
 
Chapter 9: Influence: Persuasion and Connection
Rhetoric: The Basis for Better Influence

 
Invention: Arguments, audience, and success

 
Arrangement, style, and delivery: Connection and identification

 
Memory: Practised, effortless spontaneity

 
Above all: Be self-aware, but be yourself

 
 
Chapter 10: Write Anything Better
The Vulnerability of Writing in Academic Work

 
Different Types of Writing in Academic Work

 
The Quality-Prevalence Paradox of Academic Writing

 
The Limitations of Trick, Tips and Social Media

 
Genre: A Different Approach to Academic Writing

 
 
Chapter 11: Developing Better Habits and Systems
Everyday Tasks: Marginal and Fundamental Gains

 
Taming Everyday Tasks

 
Other Systems, Routines, and Habits

 
 
Section Three: Bringing It All Together
 
Chapter 12: Projections, Introspections, and Reflections on Academic Work
Thinking Forward: The Future of Academic Work

 
Thinking Inwardly: Reading Your Own Reactions

 
Thinking On: What We Learned Writing this Book

 

Supplements

Effective Academic website
Visit Alex and Bailey's website The Effective Successful Happy Academic for information about their workshops and publications.

Sample Materials & Chapters

Chapter 3: Success and its indicators


For instructors

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