Celebrating 10 years of Throwntogetherness with the 100th post!

Uncanny but true — Throwntogetherness is ten years old this month, and this is my 100th post! Wow, what a ride. I started out this blog within a few weeks of my first permanent, post-PhD academic job as a 34 year old. I had three kids, one was only 6 months old. I had two publications and maybe 3 or 4 citations. I had alot of confidence in my ability to write and to teach, but not how to manage all the other stuff around parenting and academic work.

I’m now 44 years old, an associate professor with a decade more experience, an extra kid who is now 5, and a kid who has moved out to university. It seems I have 70 or so publications with more than 1000 citations. I still have some confidence in my ability to write and to teach (in some ways more and in other ways less), and still don’t really know how to manage all the other stuff — but I’ve got better at it (until I crash).

My all time views for the blog are more than 44K, and I have 453 subscribers. I post much less than I used to, but get more ongoing engagement with the content. My most popular post of all time is my review of Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, called “The invisible gender of deep work”. My most popular release (ie most views on the day of release) was “My new normal: reducing decision fatigue with four kids and fulltime work.” My most popular series is “Writing a book proposal”. My most popular categories are “For Grad Students” and “Working in Academia”. My most popular tags are “getting stuff done” and “deep work” (no doubt skewed by the 5900 views of the Newport review).

The most rewarding part of doing this blog is to connect with people from all over the world (159 countries) — 12,912 views from the US, but NZ not doing too badly per capita at 9,993. I also love having the ability to use the blog to share advice more directly — when someone asks for advice I can just direct them to the blog rather than write a long email response. It also gives me somewhere to store all those little talks I give that might not ever become papers but still represent some thought and effort.

I’d love to hear further from you — what are your favourite posts and why? What kinds of posts should I do that are new? What kinds of post should I keep going with? Should I keep going at all?