PhD writing advice and morning routines
Who doesn’t love some good productive morning routine content? In this blogpost, I will explore what I think this has to do with PhD advice. PhD students helping one another online or even PhD student influencers are all over my social media and while observing them, I have found that have much in common with healthy or productive routine videos online. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure of mine to watch these to relax, “day in the life” videos and so on. And, of course, those are even more interesting when there’s a cool productive morning or evening routine involved.
Only because it looks like a productive routine doesn’t mean it actually works
But I do know, from watching some of these creators, such as Faye Bate—whom I like, and whose recommendations are at least evidence-based—regularly over a long period of time, that what appears to be routines are often things they haven’t actually done over an extended period of time. Faye Bate, thankfully, is often very explicit about doing something for the first time. Still, let’s be honest: these videos come off as though these were daily habits whose promised results were verified over a long period of time. And they are probably more often than not deliberately engineered to come off that way.
As someone who has been interested in morning routines and similar things for a long time, I feel like I’ve managed, after years, to establish a quite stable routine and actually stick with it. I’ve adapted it over time (and regular small adaptations are necessary), but certain elements are now automated for me that other people struggle with with (such as meditating, doing yoga or doing my physiotherapy exercises almost daily). These things come easy to me now because they have become automated for me but are hard for others who haven’t automated them yet (or for whom it may simply not be worth the significant amount of effort over a long time to do so). For me, these things that are emblematic of aspirational routines for many have truly become automatic (thanks to my obsession with such things), which I guess is the definition of having successfully established a routine. So I feel I can speak from experience here. I also happen to have established a somewhat regular writing routine, though I find that exactly how those writing sessions are done really isn’t all that regular.
Take advice from people who have actually achieved what you want to achieve
So back to my actual point: with many of these creators, you see them presenting something as their “morning routine” when they’ve only done it for a week. That’s not a routine. They don’t know if it will work long term. They don’t know if it will bring the long-term benefits they claim. Of course, they can cite studies to support certain elements, but many of these influencer videos are misleading because they make it appear as if this were their everyday routine, even though they may have done it only once to film the video. As such, they can’t actually speak to the challenges encountered in truly setting something up as a routine or how they have overcome these challenges. Because they haven’t.
And that’s where, in my opinion, they share something in common with many PhD advice influencers. I don’t want to make too many broad generalizations and do people injustice (importantly, I’m not claiming that they’re deliberately trying to mislead anybody) but from my anecdotal observations, most people dealing out writing or PhD advice online or in consulting are either PhD students themselves (with arguably limited bigger picture experience, even though they describe their present lived reality) or they are consultants who have left academia. And while those may have had more experience in the field, they don’t actually work in academia anymore, so their lived experience is slowly losing relevance.
This is not to say that I don’t value their experience but who hasn’t experienced senior professors dealing out advice like “just focus on your thesis” and “if you manage to write an excellent thesis, you don’t need to worry about anything else”. This may have been true during their time but doesn’t reflect the reality of the current academic job market. For instance, I think that advice by Karen Kelsky will not go out of date because she did have a long enough career in academia and her information on the academic job market is probably as up-to-date as ever before because she has direct access to job politics through her consulting clients. But other academic coaches or people teaching academic writing are not in academia anymore and become ever more distant to this reality, e.g. Cathy Mazak whose previous work Astrid and I appreciate a lot but whose podcast has become an infomercial about her courses or discusses her alt-ac life (relevant and interesting surely but not what I’m looking for).
Many academic writing coaches (or people who teach academic writing courses on the side every once in a while, as this is common at some universities such as Graz) “only” finished their PhD and left research afterwards. That, of course, gives them some relevant experience to teach absolute novices but if they haven’t had a career as a prolific academic writer with lots of experience publishing in top academic journals, they’re probably not in a position to teach you those things.
I don’t say this to be mean but you need to think about this conundrum at least once before you put your future life prospects into the hands of such an advisor: If they finished their PhD and then found an alt-ac job (which I’m not saying is a bad thing), they may not have relevant experience on how to stay or become relevant in academia. How to truly become a successful academic (after all, you don’t know if they barely passed their PhD).
Of course, that does not mean you automatically need to subscribe to the often unfair ways in which academia operates. But at the same time, if you want to have any chance at success whatsoever, it may simply be that you will have to follow the mainstream somehow. As much as I appreciated the spirit back at my PhD institution to rebel against commercial publishing, that left me without training on how to get published in those top-ranking Anglophone journals and the articles I wrote for grassroots journals originating from the Germanophone spehere do not get cited, ever (don’t even get me started on student/early career journals or conference proceedings).
I now feel like I lost a lot of time that will be hard to make up for. Studies clearly show that the first five years after your first publication set the conditions for your success after (for basically your whole life!). In short: publish early in the best journal of your field, ideally with a prominent co-author and have a prestigious institution as your affiliation. These studies based on science may not transfer to the Humanities but do you really want to risk your future career trying a different way? In any case, looking at the CVs of successful or promising scholars in my field, I can see that there is at least some positive correlation with those factors, especially in a more traditional field like history of science. The Digital Humanities are more critical of such superficial (and arguably very unfair) factors and may not find them enough to worship someone. But having them certainly will not hurt either.
And, in case you wanted to know, there’s also a Matthew effect in grant funding. However, thankfully, this has more to do with mindset than privilege: those who have had success in this grueling business (of applying for a million grants only to get one) don’t stop trying. Whereas those who weren’t successful (even if it was just a near miss) tend to stop trying, thus having less chances of being successful in the future.
Of course, statistics don’t matter for personal circumstances but do you really want to knowingly risk stacking the odds against you? In any case, when it comes to academic writing advice, I personally have found that work by those who managed to become successful professors was simply much more helpful (see our posts on Joshua Schimel, Wendy Belcher or Paul Silvia; even Cathy Mazak and Karen Kelsky still fall under this category somehow).
You need to learn from people who are where you want to be and who already did what you want to achieve. Yet these people, unfortunately, usually have little time to spend on academic writing advice.
I also have to point out that this applies more to academic writing advice than career advice: there are many dedicated career coaches (like the above mentioned Karen Kelsky or Ute Riedler whom I can personally recommend) who offer valuable advice and who are extremely well informed precisely because all they do is coach people to succeed in the academic job market.
Use your discernment here. The point I am trying to make is: don’t trust the well-meaning advice from people who lack relevant background.
Don’t mistake peer-to-peer support for expert advice
Peer to peer support is great and I don’t want to bash PhD influencers. I think they serve an important support function and I guess, Astrid and I fell under this category ourselves in the past. But I’d still advise you to take their advice with a grain of salt, precisely because I have the experience of having been in this role myself and having the opportunity to now look back on my past PhD student self with many more years of experience under my belt. Let me elaborate.
During my PhD, I tried many things and probably shared them, telling people what a great idea they were—when in fact they weren’t. For example, I followed the advice to use the first hours of the day (the time when you’re most focused) for deep focus reading. That’s what people recommended and I still agree on the part that is grounded in respecting your biorhythm. It took me a very long time, probably until after my PhD, to realize that this time is not good for me to read. I’m too creative then. If I read, I go off on tangents, get stuck in footnotes, and lose track of what I was actually trying to accomplish. It’s not a productive way for me to absorb the literature. Often, I wouldn’t even remember what the literature said. I’d have been very creative and gotten stuck on something interesting but not relevant.
Nowadays, partly thanks to AI tools, I use Listening.com to listen to articles while I do something else, like biking to work. That makes it much easier to keep up with the literature. For example, if I’m going to a reading group and didn’t have time to read the text, I can listen to roughly one article during the bike ride. That’s very practical and highly recommended that you try if it works for you. It really works for me.
I also used to make very detailed excerpts in multiple stages, which cost me a lot of time. I’ve since optimized this by speaking a quick reflection on the article into my phone and storing it in the AI app. Every once in a while, I transfer it into a document, print it out, and read through it again. That’s much more effective for me when doing a literature review. I’m less stuck on exactly what the author said, which used to be a problem when I read everything on paper.
For very important literature, I still sometimes read it on paper. Often I’ll combine approaches: read it, listen to it, and then listen to it again. I now tend to read quickly but revisit important texts multiple times. Each time I look at them differently, especially at different stages of the research. For me, it’s better to read fast but repeatedly, and then slow down when certain passages require more attention.
All in all, I now have a very different approach to absorbing literature, and I’m glad these AI-powered tools exist because they’ve improved that process significantly.
During my PhD, I would probably have told people I had a great system—even though, looking back, none of it worked. I sometimes followed routines for months, so technically they were routines, but they didn’t actually lead to successful academic writing. I simply didn’t understand how the process worked.
I do think this might be different at Ivy League universities. I’ve heard from colleagues who taught there that they’re surprised by how third-semester students can produce papers that are almost publishable. At other universities, especially those that don’t explicitly teach these skills, that’s much rarer. Maybe it’s selection bias… maybe those students already knew how to do these things before entering uni. Or maybe it’s the way they’re taught. I don’t know.
Conclusions
PhD students who are stuck and trying to figure things out may present their approaches in a very self-assured way—like influencers presenting a “trusted” morning routine they’ve only done once. I’m not accusing anyone. I just recognize myself in that pattern. I tried things, talked about them confidently, and didn’t actually get results. Not that I was totally unsuccessful, I’m still here after all, but still.
I think it’s such a loss that there isn’t more academic writing advice from senior scholars who have been prolific writers for years and must have learned things along the way that make them so effective. Yet I haven’t been able to find that much beyond the books I have already discussed there (and they often focus on the how of writing rather than how to make that good writing even more efficient, which is simply what you need to be a prolific writer). Maybe it just comes down to privilege, plus a Matthew effect on top of it (already knowing how to write essays well, getting into Oxford, profiting from Ivy League prestige, getting a research professor post where you have a lot of time and resources to get your writing done, etc). The detailed “writing routines” one finds all over the internet are from fiction writers, and those can be quite idiosyncratic. I also find that fiction and academic writing aren’t really that comparable in their processes, which is why I’m grateful to people like Joshua Schimel for their tailored advice.
I sometimes watch vlogs because I find it motivating to see people doing something similar to me. There are some historians, which is nice. But on YouTube, most of them are PhD students. It’s not that I don’t trust them. I just know how I was back then, so I take their strategies with a grain of salt. I’d love detailed writing productivity content from Anthony Grafton.
Honestly, this feels like one of those resources that, because it doesn’t exist, we should create ourselves. But I don’t really have the time. If you would be interested in this, that would be very interesting for us to know. I’ve written a lot about my academic writing project, and I feel like it’s some of the best content I’ve produced for this blog. But I don’t get much response, so I don’t know whether anyone is reading it or benefiting from it.
If you are interested, or if you know any resources that might be what I’m looking for, I’d really appreciate it if you let me know. Also, this got much longer than I initially hoped, so thanks for reading until the end.
Best,
Sarah
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Lang (February 22, 2026). PhD writing advice and morning routines. Epigrammetry. Retrieved March 15, 2026 from https://doi.org/10.58079/15qtq
