Dr Sherrie Lee | Category: Learning

Career development and educator identity beyond academia – reflective professional journey in higher education

Professional Development, Professional Identity, and Being Recognised as an Educator Beyond Academia

6 May 20267 May 2026adminLeave a comment

“Don’t become a teacher,” said my parents, who were only ever teachers.

I listened to them at first, quite happy not to follow in the footsteps of parents who spent hours preparing lessons, marking assignments, and managing never‑ending administrative tasks. Yet I also chose to major in English Language and Literature, subjects that were unmistakably associated with teaching.

After experimenting with roles in content writing and arts management, which neither paid well nor offered strong career prospects, I ate a sizeable slice of humble pie and tried relief teaching at my former high school. I enjoyed engaging with students and even lesson preparation, but I was not prepared to commit to the bonded years required after teacher training in Singapore. So I did what felt like the next best thing at the time: I became CELTA‑certified and taught English overseas.

Fast forward to the present, in my current role as a Career Consultant at a university in New Zealand, and I had almost forgotten about those early roles and decisions. Partly due to embarrassment about short‑lived career experiments, and partly because they felt distant and irrelevant.

Yet, through reflection, they have become anything but.

In an earlier blog post, I explored how my 25‑year journey across roles, sectors, and countries only made sense in hindsight. At the time, those moves felt messy, uncertain, and at times like a series of compromises. Looking back now, I see a consistent career thread of learning facilitation, people development, and cross‑cultural brokering that underpinned what once felt like disconnected choices.

More recently, making a career pivot from government to higher education heightened my awareness of the need to gain formal recognition of my skills and professional practice in this new context. That realisation prompted me to apply for Associate Fellowship (AFHEA) with Advance HE.

The Advance HE Fellowship scheme offers globally recognised professional recognition for educational practice in higher education. Associate Fellowship recognises staff with focused or limited teaching responsibilities and validates expertise in supporting learning, evidenced through professional values, core knowledge, and effective practice.

Achieving Associate Fellowship has become a meaningful moment in my career journey, not only for the recognition it confers, but because it helped me make sense of what I have been doing across different contexts and periods of time.

Navigating Career Pivots and Professional Identity in Higher Education

In my work with international professionals navigating career change, I often hear fragmented career stories. “I used to be this, then I moved countries, then I pivoted.” Roles change, systems change, and over time it becomes harder to articulate a coherent professional identity.

I experienced a similar disconnection when my government role was made redundant after years of building expertise across projects and enjoying hard‑earned success. I had already pivoted from academia into the public sector. Did I really have to pivot again? When I eventually moved into higher education, I found myself asking: What career story am I telling now?

Associate Fellowship offered a way to answer that question – through a framework I could use to tell that story more clearly.

Professional Staff as Educators: Teaching Beyond Academic Roles

Much of the discourse around teaching and learning in universities still centres on academic roles. Yet many of students’ most formative learning experiences happen outside lecture theatres and formal curricula.

When I look back, my educator identity has been shaped across very different teaching contexts, each with distinct learner needs and purposes.

I began as a CELTA‑trained English teacher in China, teaching academic English to students preparing for entry into Australian and UK universities. That work was fundamentally about transition. It involved supporting students to develop not just language proficiency, but confidence, academic literacies, and cultural readiness for unfamiliar higher education systems. Teaching language was never just about grammar. It was about meaning‑making, belonging, and bridging worlds. I vividly recall organising English Corners and analysing English‑language films to unpack cultural idioms and assumptions.

I later returned to Singapore to work as a conflict management trainer, and subsequently as a polytechnic lecturer, teaching in a multi‑ethnic context with a strong emphasis on vocational application. My core subject area was business communication, including report writing, oral presentations, job applications, and cross‑cultural communication. I also taught corporate communications and events management, often partnering with businesses across the tourism and heritage sectors to deliver real industry projects. Learning was tightly linked to employability and practical outcomes, requiring constant translation of theory into action.

Today, I work at a university in Aotearoa New Zealand as a career consultant, where employability is a central outcome of my professional practice. I design and facilitate career preparation workshops, support reflective and peer‑based learning, and help students connect their learning, identities, and strengths to future work possibilities. I am particularly proud of developing workshops using the VIA character strengths framework, as self‑awareness is the starting point for authentic career decision‑making, job applications, and networking.

Across all these contexts, while the learners, content, and systems differed, common themes emerge in my work. I design learning for transition. I facilitate reflection. I support people to navigate uncertainty with greater clarity and agency.

This broader understanding of teaching aligns closely with Eleanor Hodgson’s Times Higher Education article, Professional services staff, you’re educators, too. By focusing on educational practice rather than job title, the Advance HE Professional Standards Framework creates space for professional staff roles like mine to be recognised clearly and legitimately as educational.

Personally, the framework has helped me connect the dots across my career. It gives me a shared language to articulate a teaching identity that has evolved across countries, sectors, and roles, without requiring me to be narrowly defined as a traditional academic. It also reconnects me to my PhD research on international students’ informal learning and peer brokering practices, where learning exists on a continuum from transactional to deeply relational.

Professional Development as Identity Work

Applying for Associate Fellowship was not simply an exercise in documenting activities. It required me to articulate a teaching philosophy, evidence learner impact, and engage in structured reflection on my practice. Peer observations and written narratives became mirrors, revealing how my pedagogical choices were shaped as much by learner needs as by my own beliefs about learning.

The application process was also a deliberate investment in professional development, a topic I explored in my blog post about my international career journey. For international professionals, professional development is rarely just about skill acquisition. It is about sense‑making, coherence, and continuity in systems where progression pathways are often opaque.

Across different national contexts, I have had to take responsibility for designing my own professional development. This involved identifying formal and informal learning opportunities, engaging in communities of practice, creating reflective spaces, and seeking credentials that validate professional standards and competence.

The Fellowship process brought this into sharp focus. It forced me to slow down, to examine not just what I do, but why I do it, and to demonstrate how learning actually happens in my workshops. In many ways, it brought me back to the fundamentals of teaching and career practice: reflective inquiry.

Portfolio Careers, Global Recognition, and Evolving Educator Identities

Viewing my career through a portfolio lens has reshaped how I understand professional identity. What once felt fragmented now looks cumulative. Teaching, research, public sector roles, training, and career development have been layered experiences that expanded my capacity to support learners navigating complexity and change.

Does Associate Fellowship mean I now rest firmly in a single educator identity?

Not quite.

It strengthens my ownership of being an educator, but I hold multiple identities. If migration, career setbacks, and career pivots have taught me anything, it is to value what I have built while holding those identities lightly. When my sense of self was anchored too tightly to a particular role or occupational label, restructuring and redundancy felt like devastating blows to my sense of worth. Over time, I have come to appreciate that changes in jobs and direction do not derail a career. Instead, they cultivate different capabilities within me.

What Associate Fellowship adds is not rigidity, but language. It provides a coherent framework to articulate educational practice across roles, institutions, and national contexts. For international professionals especially, this matters. Credentials need to travel. They need to be recognisable, legible, and meaningful across countries, systems, and sectors where professional experience is often reassessed or retranslated.

Advance HE Fellowship is underpinned by the Professional Standards Framework, a shared global reference point for excellence in teaching and learning in higher education. While rooted in education, the values and practices it articulates extend well beyond classrooms. They speak to how people learn, develop, reflect, and grow within complex systems.

For someone whose career has spanned Singapore and New Zealand, this global recognisability is not incidental. It offers continuity in a career shaped by mobility, change, and adaptation. It allows me to articulate my professional identity in a way that is coherent across borders, without being restricted to a single role or occupational pathway.

The feedback from the assessment panel affirmed this alignment in ways that felt deeply validating:

“Your application was very strong and clearly addressed both the Professional Standards Framework and the University values of Akoranga and Manaakitanga in the area of career consultancy, which would inspire professionals supporting learning in higher education. Your teaching philosophy was well articulated and strongly aligned with your practice, and the supporting letters provided clear recognition of your impact and contribution. Wishing you all the best in your continued professional journey!”

Receiving this feedback was more than a moment of affirmation. It reinforced that the educator identity I had been practising across different contexts was both visible and valued, even when it did not fall neatly within traditional academic boundaries.

For professional staff in higher education, particularly those who have crossed borders and sectors, frameworks like the Professional Standards Framework can provide a language to articulate impact on students’ learning and development. They can help bring coherence to diverse experiences or illuminate capabilities you may not have seen as educational before.

For international professionals, professional development carries an additional imperative: credentials must travel. Advance HE Fellowship offers globally recognised articulation of educational practice that is legible beyond individual institutions or national contexts. For someone whose career spans Singapore and New Zealand, this matters. It provides a portable way of naming professional identity in environments where experience is often re‑evaluated or misunderstood.

Reflective Practice: Coming Full Circle

What stands out most about the Fellowship experience is how much I enjoy reflective practice, especially when it is often sidelined in the everyday busyness of targets, outputs, and deadlines.

I was first introduced to reflective practice during my Master of TESOL, which I completed part‑time while teaching at a polytechnic. Reflection assignments tied directly to teaching practice led to tangible improvements in my work. As a researcher, reflexivity underpinned my inquiry, requiring critical examination of how my beliefs, positioning, and shared cultural background influenced the research process.

Now, as a career practitioner, reflective practice involves evaluating client experiences, interrogating the systems we work within, and advocating for more equitable support. While reflective practice exists within team settings to varying degrees, this experience reminded me that I need to be more intentional at an individual level.

The Fellowship experience offered a glimpse of what reflective practice can achieve in terms of becoming more learner‑centred and improving outcomes. It has renewed my commitment to intentionally designing programmes that strengthen students’ career identities and employability resilience.

Attaining Fellowship does not mark a new chapter so much as a return. A return to reflective practice as the core of my work, and to an educator identity that has been evolving across unexpected twists and turns. It now sits comfortably alongside other professional identities, past, present, and future, within an international career journey I am still very much living.

About Dr Sherrie Lee

I am a career coach and educator working at the intersection of career development, cross‑cultural capability, and identity. I support globally mobile professionals and career changers to navigate career and leadership transitions across cultures.

With over 10 years’ experience in teaching, facilitation, coaching, and career development across Singapore and New Zealand, I bring a research‑informed, strengths‑based approach grounded in lived experience. I hold a PhD in Education, am an Associate Fellow of Advance HE, a Certified Career Services Provider™, and a Professional Member of the Career Development Association of New Zealand.

I am based in New Zealand and work with clients and organisations internationally.
Learn more at https://thediasporicacademic.com, connect with me on LinkedIn, or subscribe to my newsletter International Career Journey on Substack.

Cross-cultural / Higher Education / international education / international students / Internationalisation / Learning

The ethical challenges of global connectivity – A response to Fazal Rizvi

1 January 201910 March 2025adminLeave a comment

A personal response to the opening keynote by Fazal Rizvi – ‘Global connectivity and its ethical challenges in education’ at the 29th ISANA International Education Association Conference, 5 December 2018, Sydney Masonic Centre, NSW, Australia.

Professor Fazal Rizvi, a name synonymous with ‘cosmopolitan identities’ in international education (see his 2005 paper), presented to international education practitioners, a dilemma in our contemporary times. International education, a notion that implies openness, cooperation, and collaboration, operates in a world that is moving towards ethno-nationalist sentiments.

US President Donal Trump encapsulates such sentiments with his calls for US protectionism, and so do the political landscapes in other countries such as Turkey, Hungary, Italy, Brazil, France, and India. Even while the world is becoming ever more connected, anti-globalisation is gaining traction, revealing the tensions and limitations of so-called ‘global connectivity’. There is a deep-seated fear of the potential loss of national sovereignty in the face of job loss and migrant communities encroaching on the spaces of local populations. On the other hand, globalisation offers little tangible benefit for the every(wo)man, and can be argued to favour the transnational elite, i.e., those who have the resources to engage in, and reap the rewards of, global mobility. Viewed as such, globalisation is, in fact, anti-democratic.

Rizvi invites us to understand the concerns of those against globalisation, and question if the assumptions and charges are valid, and how such perspectives can be harmful and unproductive. He also considers the question if there is really a fundamental binary between globalisation and nationalism. Specifically for international education practitioners, how do we get our students to respond to these competing claims of internationalisation and patriotism. Do these go together in parallel, in dialectical fashion, or can they only exist in conflict?

Rizvi also reminds us that nationalist sentiments are driven by both facts and emotion, and so it is important to address both the politics of global connectivity and affect. International education posits a global village of sorts, but the world as a whole is not a community in any real or concrete sense. He stresses that people are inherently social beings who wish to belong to a tangible and concrete community, and such desires undermine the abstract notions of globalisation.

Rizvi points out some facts of global connectivity:

Our economy has become dependant on global mobility as in tourism, trade, migration, and education.
Growing levels of intercultural exchange are seen in service economics.
Different cultures rub up against one another; ‘cosmopolitan’ cities become so because of tourists and international students.
Even if government policies appear to curb mobility, migrant populations will continue to increase as a result of complex individual choices.

The overriding sentiment towards these facts, however, is one of resentment. If globalisation used to represent some universal moral truth, then it is now up against those who demand specificity in their own moral truths (plural). While Rizvi proposed the concept of cosmopolitan thinking more than 10 years ago, he now recognises the need for new theories. He argues that cosmopolitanism and the associated images of corporations must be resisted as a universal value, but adopted as a way of engaging with everyday issues and conflicts.

Rizvi looks to education as the hope for such cosmopolitan thinking, in view of the failures of media which have become increasingly fractured, and of religion which appears to divide rather than bring people together. Education, and in particular, public education, has a crucial role to play in teaching people how to engage in ethical learning.

He puts forth the need for engaging in cosmopolitan thinking which views social identities as dynamic, and forces us to consider how we can live across differences. Students need to be taught how to be reflexive, that is, to be critically self-referential. We ask questions about why and how we do things, and learn how to work through contradictions. And before we can ask of our students to do so, we ourselves, need to be ethically reflexive practitioners in international education.

What I have summarised above is Rizvi’s call to arms for international education practitioners to recognise the competing forces of globalisation and protectionism, and to actively – reflexively – work against unproductive outcomes. Both intellectually and in practice, I am inspired to take up an ethical response to the current state of affairs. But before I can take on the giants of globalisation and protectionism, I want to respond to a nagging and troubling aspect of international education that is seldom discussed. My troubling thought can be summed up quasi-rhetorically – What is international about international education?

To paraphrase Betty Leask (2009), the presence of international students alone does not internationalise education, or foster intercultural interactions and understanding. To push the point further, using the term ‘international’ or ‘internationalise’ has the grammatical effect of modifying the nature of the noun that follows, but the meaning and significance of ‘international’ is lost in the everyday concerns, both petty and grand, of those who fall under the purview of ‘international education’. The overriding concern for education providers and student consumers alike is ‘return on investment’ (see Altbach & Knight, 2007).

As part of the system of global connectivity, international education is far more valued as a commodity than an opportunity for engaging meaningfully with cultural and social differences. In other words, international education itself is implicated in the unproductive forces of globalisation. Spending three days at the 2018 ISANA conference in Sydney , I observed well-meaning practitioners showcasing ‘best practices’ of meeting the linguistic and cultural needs and demands of students, but rarely highlighting any challenges related to interactions between international students and the host community. Walking around downtown Sydney, one of the leading Australian cities for international students, I saw rows and rows of East Asian shops (food, services, goods) patronised predominantly by East Asians, suggesting to me that at least this group of international students (who form the majority) can remain comfortably in their familiar spaces, without having to entertain the possibility of intercultural engagement.

I have only painted a broad stroke of what can be considered un-international in international education. Addressing learning and living needs, and helping international students adapt to new surroundings, are important responsibilities to be fulfilled by education providers. Often, national grouping of students are helpful (at least initially) to reduce the sense of isolation, and facilitate more efficient communication. However, beyond providing services and opening up ethnic-friendly spaces, there is also a need to proactively bring together different nationalities, including that of the host nation, to engage in conversation, let alone debate, about being ‘international’ and engaging in ‘post-cosmopolitan thinking’. Where there are international gatherings, at least in my own international student experience, they very rarely go beyond differences safe enough to chat over pizza and juice.

There seems to be an ongoing inertia or reluctance to challenge commonly held narratives of internationals (a common nominalisation for international students which is ironically divisive) who haven’t got enough English to save themselves, and need rescuing from their own deficits. My own research has attempted to thwart the deficit narratives by examining how co-ethnic/national interactions enhance informal academic learning through ‘peer brokers’ who are able to translate and interpret the Western/English demands of university curriculum in linguistically and culturally responsive ways. Through such brokering practices, students experience agency in their academic pursuits.

While one of my conclusions is to encourage sociolinguistically compatible interactions for enhancing student agency, another important implication of my research is the role of brokers who straddle two different cultural worlds. How might such individuals be viewed or view themselves as the missing link in intercultural engagement and difficult conversations about living ‘internationally’? Perhaps brokers who can switch between worldviews are potential bridge builders between the ‘internationals’ and ‘others’ / ‘sojourners’ and ‘hosts’, and eventually lead to alternative vocabulary we can use to describe those in and around international education.

If I were to take on that kind of a brokering role, I would start with difficult conversations. To consider how international education can rise up to the challenges globalisation and protectionism, we must firstly reckon with the ironies of, and tensions in, the global industry international education has become. We have to re-consider how ‘English language’ and ‘Western thought’ are both selling points and selling out in becoming global. And this is just the beginning of my ethical response.

Learning / Phd

Supervision conversations

11 May 201610 March 2025Sherrie LeeLeave a comment

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I had a supervision meeting today and I came out of it feeling encouraged and refocused. It was not simply a matter of kind words or specific directions. It was the way the conversations among my two supervisors and myself allowed one another to express, respond and reflect.

I usually audio record the meeting and listen to the recording as I write up the meeting notes. In the past, I would summarise what was said and wrote it in the third person, but lately, I’ve been writing it as a conversation and using the first person instead. Although it takes a longer time to represent the meeting in this manner, I derive great satisfaction from doing so.

Firstly, by replaying the meeting in my ears and mind, I recapture those aha moments, and pin down the triggers that caused particular responses. While the point might be, say, to focus on a particular research method, the conversation points that led to that are just as illuminating. By representing the exchange as a conversation, I am able to track my thought processes, and have a better appreciation of the advice given.

Secondly, the thought processes that are captured in this conversation format are unique to this particular meeting. I may have considered some of these points I made in my researcher journal or in conversations with others, but the way my ideas and my supervisors’ responses are woven together do not appear anywhere else. Had this meeting not taken place, I would not have certain conclusions or convictions about aspects of my research.

Finally, the ability to track my thought processes through roughly transcribed conversations, and the uniqueness of these conversations, contribute to my ongoing thinking about my research. This, to me, is invaluable for helping me shape my thesis writing. Perhaps it’s a bit strange to think of supervision meetings as reference material but I am certain that the things I have captured in conversation will inform the writing on methodology and analysis.

Making time for supervision conversations is important to me. Not just a meeting to report facts and receive advice, but a space for genuine dialogue and and gentle persuasion.

Cross-cultural / Education / Internationalisation / Learning

Being international

28 December 201510 March 2025Sherrie LeeLeave a comment

The international student experience is a complex one. What factors contribute to making it a meaningful one? Institutional policies and academic support are important, but so are personal attitudes and intercultural perceptions of both students and the host society.

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My PhD research is on international tertiary students, focusing on students from non-Western backgrounds. In the case of New Zealand, most of these students would be Asian – Chinese, South Korean, Indian. My interest in international students stems from my previous study of English language learners. I was interested in their challenges in acquiring and using the English language, and their shifting identities in the process of language learning. In the course of preparing the research proposal in the past year, however, those research interests led to other concerns. My focus of my PhD research is on international students’ informal learning practices, investigating how they engage with their peers to help them in their academic learning.

In between having successfully defended my research proposal, and preparing for data collection, I’m now examining more closely the debates surrounding international students in higher education, or more commonly termed, the internationalisation of higher education, especially in New Zealand. The debates range from macro views of politics and policies, to micro issues of academic support, but are all interrelated. Three articles caught my attention for pointing out essential conditions for successful internationalisation – for both the university/country and the students.

Anderson’s (2015) overview of the higher education scene in Canada, which shares similarities with the scene in New Zealand, highlights the challenges of teaching and supporting increasing numbers of international students who use English as a second or additional language (I use the terminology EAL – English as an Additional Language). Anderson raises the tension between recruiting international students as a source of much needed income, and the university’s social and educational responsibilities to students. It is the latter issue that is often debated – should international students meet minimally acceptable standards of language proficiency (and really, culturally appropriate behaviours and attitudes in the classroom and beyond), or should universities provide ample opportunities and support for students to learn the ways of the academy and increase their chances of success? Or a third, and in my opinion, a rather radical option – “establish more flexible and additive relationships with foreign students coming from non-Western academic traditions instead of expecting them to unilaterally morph into the conventions and practices of their new academic communities and discourses” (Anderson, 2015, pp. 176-177). Citing various research and offering specific examples, Anderson calls for more comprehensive and targeted academic support for international students and concludes that positive student experiences ultimately translates into better reputations for universities.

While the Canadian approach appears to favour student-centred and culturally appropriate support, Jiang (2010) points out New Zealand’s “lack of intercultural policies and strategies” to respond to demographic changes in international student populations. This is not to say that universities do nothing to address international students’ academic needs, but the lack of a culture of internationalisation at the policy-making level affects funding and staffing for timely and specific support. Jiang talks about the importance of developing intercultural or international relationships. She does not discuss what it means to be intercultural, but highlights the various levels at which ‘international’ operates on (i.e. political and educational levels). In fact, none of the readings I discuss here probe deeply into what it means to be intercultural (see Byram’s (1997) Intercultural Communicative Competence (ICC) model for an in-depth exploration) – but all call for greater facilitation of students’ acculturation to the host environment.

While Anderson (2015) offers an academic perspective, and Jiang (2010) a policy one, Butcher (2010) seems to suggest that societal attitudes and genuine hospitality are key to ensuring positive experiences for international students. Butcher compares different cohorts of international students in New Zealand – those from the Colombo Plan era during the 1950s and 60s and international students today. The scholars from the past were Asia’s elites; they developed close ties with New Zealanders, and vast amounts of goodwill exist between New Zealand and the Asian countries. Today’s students, in contrast, are no longer “unique or rare, [rather], their dominance in New Zealand cities is starkly evident, to the extent they have been referred to as … a ‘cultural invasion'”(Butcher, 2010, p. 12). Noting emphatically that Asia is New Zealand’s future, Butcher concludes that it is in New Zealand’s interest to invest in and cultivate networks with Asian students. The nature of new intercultural relationships require initiative on the part of the host, as evidenced in the warm reception given by New Zealand communities to the Colombo Plan students. Will friendships blossom between today’s international students and their hosts?

I’m not sure if Butcher (2010) is optimistic of a change in attitude, that is, to view Asian students as important bridges to New Zealand’s future, rather than an economic resource for present needs. As an international student in New Zealand, I personally identify with Butcher’s vision for rich intercultural relationships. I also believe that these relationships are multifaceted, complex, and take time to develop and nurture.

I recognise and believe in the potential New Zealand has in terms of creating a unique and valuable international experience for students. While fresh air and beautiful landscapes have always been New Zealand’s selling points, a more important experience takes place between people – people who welcome each other into their lives. The reality of intercultural friendships is never straightforward but that doesn’t mean they should be ignored. I hope my research will uncover some of the complexities of the international student experience and start new dialogues – intercultural ones.

References

Anderson, T. (2015). Seeking internationalization: The state of Canadian higher education. Canadian Journal of Higher Education, 45(4), 166–187.

Butcher, A. (2010). International students and New Zealand’s future. Journal of International Education in Business, 1(1), 9–26.

Byram, M. (1997). Teaching and assessing intercultural communicative competence. Clevedon, United Kingdom: Multilingual Matters.

Jiang, X. (2010). A probe into the internationalisation of higher education in the New Zealand context. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42(8), 881–897. doi:10.1111/j.1469-5812.2009.00547.x

Academic Writing / Learning / Research

Productivity Moment by Moment

25 March 201510 March 2025Sherrie LeeLeave a comment

It has become clear to me that pursuing full-time academic or research work revolves around writing. There’s thinking, reading, musing, but writing is the central activity that binds all the activities of scholarship and knowledge finding and creation into a visible, searchable, reflect-able artifact.

To be able to understand my writing and reading patterns, and to track the work I have been doing and need to do in the next steps, I have created a writing/reading log. It is an excel spreadsheet (I use Google Sheets) with columns for date, time, activity and comments. I was skeptical that I could keep up with a mundane task as this but after a few days into logging, I can see the benefits.

First, it helps me to track how long I spend on various tasks. By logging the start and end time of a particular activity, I can see how long I have taken to write a few paragraphs, or clarify a thought. With this log, I realise that it can take all of two hours to write three paragraphs, and part of me wants to shorten that time, but the other part of me is thinking that I need to allocate that time in order to think and write.

Second, with the comments column, I write down what follow-up work I need to do, for example, extend the argument or find more references. These comments are important so that I don’t forget what I need to do when I start the next writing activity. Previously, I used to spend time figuring out what I had thought about the previous night before I could carry on.

Thirdly, this log helps me track my overall progress and serves as an encouragement to keep on writing and reading! It also helps with planning what to do and when do do it in order to meet deadlines.

With a busy household of three school going children, I welcome tools to increase my productivity but more importantly, to help me improve my writing habits. This blog post, for example, will be logged as an activity so that I can track how often I blog and how long it takes me to write.

Seize the day! Tomorrow may throw you a curve ball but take each available moment and make it count. Having a log will help you count that moment!