How to Be a Happy Academic

A positive and practical guide that shows you how to succeed in academia, helping you hone your skills in teaching and research as well as building softer skills like interpersonal development.

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.

  Autorentext
  Alex Clark, PhD, is Associate Vice President (Research) at the University of Alberta, and World Economic Forum Young Global Leader. He fulfils leadership roles with a number of national research funding bodies across Canada. He regularly writes on academic career development, growth, and leadership, and has led workshops all over the world for a decade for researchers from all career stages on academic effectiveness, writing, and research skills. He speaks nationally and internationally to young scientists from across disciplines on academic career issues, including skills, teamwork, and mentorship. Alex's research has been published in some of the world's most influential journals, including: The Lancet, British Medical Journal, Journal of American College of Cardiology, and Social Science & Medicine. Bailey Sousa, PMP, is the Director of the International Institute for Qualitative Methodology (IIQM) based at the University of Alberta, an entrepreneur, and workplace effectiveness advocate. Bailey has worked as a team leader managing complex projects for over a decade in a variety of entrepreneurial ventures and roles in corporate, social enterprise, and academic settings. Her current role enables her to connect and connect with academics internationally, giving her a global perspective on effectiveness and the challenges faced universally. Bailey's interests and contributions relate to workplace and academic effectiveness, leadership, and teamwork in complex settings; she facilitates workshops all over the word in this area. In 2015, she was also recognized as one of Edmonton's Avenue Magazine's 'Top 40 Under 40' for her contributions in her work and to her city.

  Inhalt

  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