Meet the Author: Dr. Kate Henry

One thing almost every writer is concerned about is their productivity. Are they writing enough? How can they maximize their writing time? And what do they do when conventional productivity advice just… doesn’t help?

Dr. Kate Henry is here to provide us with some insight!

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​Dr. Kate Henry is a Productivity Coach who guides academic and creative writers to develop actionable and achievable productivity and time management practices so they can achieve short-term and long-term goals without feeling overwhelmed. She is the host of the podcast Honing In and the author of the newsletter Tending with Dr. Kate Henry. You can find her on Instagram and LinkedIn.

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You can find her book Tend to It here (affiliate link*).

How did you come to write Tend to It? Who's it for? What's it about?

I started writing this after I graduated from my PhD, and I had been researching and writing about productivity for two years before I graduated in 2020. So, I already had all of this writing in blog posts and ideas and exercises and experiments that I had run.

After I finished the dissertation, I was really hankering to do another writing project, as you might be able to relate to. So I started writing this book, writing Tend to It after that. I had already been creating writing for my online audience for a while.

This felt like a natural next step, to create a document or a book, a workbook that they could then work with and utilize. I created it thinking about my audience.

At that time, in 2021, when I was writing, this was and still is, a lot of academics. A lot of folks who are working on long-term, complex writing projects, and who want to find a way to do it that is more sustainable, that is more considerate of what living with chronic illness is like and how that affects our productivity approaches.

I really enjoyed doing short-form writing for blog posts, so it was nice to start there and then rework and revamp those into the format of a book.

What draws you to a blog post format, and how did that translate into the book?

I had always, and I know you'll get this too, done the medium-form or longer-form writing when I was in academia. Writing something like a blog post or newsletter that's less than 1,000 words was so satisfying.

To just say, “Here's my introduction, here's the information you need to know, the citations, the background, the history, here's my experiment that I did, and here's how that translates into actions that you can take and like exercises you can try.”

That template was a really nice smaller container for me to just perform an offer, one real thing at a time. And that was really satisfying. I could be like, “I've done a good job at writing this blog post with a tangible takeaway.” It doesn't have to be like an entire literature review of a particular topic.

I find that really yummy, and I still do really enjoy that even when I'm writing a newsletter that involves doing research or something. Knowing that it will be a short amount of writing just gives me some permission to be playful and be curious.

For writing this book, when I published this, I had had over two years of weekly blogging plus newsletters. I had so much content to work with. So I thought with this book, with Tend to It, to really focus on a few key themes, like habit formation, goal-setting, time management, focus. These main topics that I was supporting folks and coaching and seeing there was need around.

I reviewed the writing that I had done to select the exercises I found would fit together in this new format within the book. And it was fun. Many of the exercises that I teach in the book are greatest hits, they're things that I'm routinely talking to folks about or teaching.

So it's very satisfying that the tools that I created for myself when I was writing my dissertation found their way into this book. There are still things that I'm using now that feel really rewarding, I guess.

There are many things that aren't in the book. There are only 21 exercises and topics that I focused on out of the hundreds that I could have chosen, right? There was something about creating this book and thinking about what I would include.

And I thought about creating a second version of this, and what that might look like, how the chapters would be different, and what new exercises I would include. Something that was great for Tend to It was that I wasn't 100% starting from scratch. I was starting with things I had already been thinking of and researching and remediating them for this new format.

You have an MFA, you have a PhD. How did coming from an academic background inform your writing practice for this book and the work that you do outside of academia?

My MFA is in poetry, and I feel like that really has given me permission in the writing I do now, as a researcher and an author, to be creative with metaphors and the connections that I see.

It influences my word choice and the narrative style of writing that I do, which I have heard from folks that they enjoy. My personal story and vibes are in the writing that I do. So that is very helpful.

My PhD, as you know, is rhetoric and composition, which we love. The thing that drove me to study productivity while I was still in the PhD is my fascination with the discourse around productivity and how that circulates, and how that's marketed, and how it is sold, and how it makes promises that are not accessible to everyone.

As a rhetorician, I'm really fascinated with untangling that and making the hidden stuff really much more obvious for folks so they have more agency and can make more mindful and intentional decisions around the productivity tools they want to use or not use.

That informs my writing, but I have had to take a step back and not bring in the rhetorical terms, or talk about this in terms of rhetorical education or something like that. Folks are like, “Yeah, sure, whatever. I'm not as interested in that.”

But I feel like my framework for approaching research and writing about productivity is certainly informed by my academic training in analysis of discourse circulation, for example. But I've had to really change the way that I communicate that. I think the narrative approach, the creating exercises approach, has been really helpful for me.

It's always interesting to try to translate academic work. How do I translate this so that it reaches the people that it's going to help?

I do really want this to be tangible and applicable for folks. The folks who read my work are truly across fields. Many folks are in academia, but they are not in rhetoric or in an English department, right?

So I want the lessons that I'm teaching to be more generally accessible to folks. And I also want things to be, and this is really key to all of my work, but certainly in Tend to It, for everything to be something that an individual starts with where they are at now and develops a toolkit that will help them thrive.

Instead of, and this is a critique I have of a lot of productivity literature, immediately trying to fit themselves into something that is presented as one-size-fits-all or the “best” approach to something.

My approach, with all of my work, is like, let us start, initially, with where you are at right now, and what your energy and time and physical and mental experiences really are, and then we will construct something that will be accessible for you.

I love hearing that focus of starting where you are, not with this person who wrote this book, who probably has a whole support staff. Everybody's context looks different.

Thank you. Yeah, I think it's something I try to remind folks. We're trending in the direction we want to be moving. That does not have to be, for example, writing every day, which I can't do.

I'm a productivity researcher and coach and I hate time blocking. I don't want to time-block my writing. But there are other ways to approach that. If it's not 10 minutes every day, maybe it's 50 minutes one day a week and that's cool.

What was your publishing experience like for this book?

I self-published my book, which I'm happy about. It was exciting to read your recent interview with Amelia Hruby, because of her commitment to independent publishing and my interest in public scholarship and also my interest in getting this book out soon.

For my self-publishing experience, I utilized Ingram Spark. I hired someone to do the layout on the inside and to design the outside, which was amazing. I'm so pleased with the way it looks, and I'm so happy. I hired a graphic designer to do that.

I hired two different folks to read and edit and give me feedback while I was writing it, both in terms of proofing, but also in terms of, is this accessible for everyone? Are there any things that you are missing here, that I'm missing here? That was really valuable for me in the editing stage.

I didn't do a huge amount of marketing for the book. I did have social media, you know. At this stage in 2021, I had newsletter marketing. But I'm always still so pleased. Every couple of weeks I get an email and it's like, someone bought your book. Someone bought your book.

When I first published it, there were hundreds of sales, but it feels really good that I'm like, “Wow, it's been four years, people are still buying this book.” You know? That feels really lovely and nice to have that happen.

How does this book fit into your ecosystem for your business?

It's important to me as a service provider to make things available for free and for low cost. I have my podcast and my newsletter. There are things that I will always share for free, and then the book feels like something that I'm not making a ton of money from selling, but I do like that it is a next step that folks can utilize.

It’s more of an actual guide. You have a project you want to complete, this book will walk you through that process for less than 20 bucks. So I like that it is often folks who are like, “I've been on your newsletter for a while. I like your style. I'm going to buy your book, and then I'm going to use the book.” And the way the book is set up, you can use it over and over to guide you through working on projects.

When I work with clients, I have a really hands-on coaching package or coaching offering, and I send them a copy of my book. We don't necessarily have to engage with the book, but it's something for me to point folks towards if they want to develop things out further with certain exercises.

Talking to you right now is getting me excited about what the next title would be, Still Tending or whatever. There are additional exercises that I've been creating, video lessons that I always use in my workshops for universities.

There are new frameworks that I've created that I think could function well, if not in a book, in a zine or something that is tangible, that folks could take with them and utilize, and to get something like that.

Right now my my book is like a lovely next step for folks who enjoy my free content and want to to engage with that.

What does your writing practice look like right now? What are you working on?

Finally, five years after finishing my dissertation, I'm working on writing a book proposal and manuscript about my academic research in the rhetoric program. That is fun, but it's also new for me, because there's more memoir writing involved.

As a trained academic writer, it's very hard to take off the “I can prove the analysis. This is my main point.” It's been hard to let go and be like, “Kate, you just have to record a voice memo. You can’t do the analysis right now.”

I'm enjoying working on that and don't have an immediate deadline, but I have been easing into it. I would like to have more of a structured writing process for it. The thing that's most helpful for me has been setting really specific writing prompts for myself, even if it's just one hour that I'm isolating to work on that. It's at the very early stages.

Something about how I choose to approach all of my work is that I don't want there to be urgency or a scarcity mindset around this, so I will give it the breathing room it requires.

And then the other writing that I do, I write a newsletter every two weeks. I'm always impressed by folks who are like, “I write my newsletter on Mondays, and I just write it and I send it,” whereas for me, writing a newsletter is something that I'm picking at over many weeks.

I often will have a few going at the same time. Ideas are coming up for those. I feel like I'm constantly working on my short-form writing. It’s less of a batch at one set time and more returning to it throughout the week.

How do you find time and space for writing your newsletter, working on the book, working with clients? Where does writing live amid everything you have going on?

I like to take more of a rhythm than a routine approach to my days. I'm a bullet journaler, so I will write in my bullet journal, you know, today I have to work on whatever. Write the scene or something like that.

At the end of every week, I start scheduling the next one. I will make sure that I have enough buffer space in my day to work on that, and if not, then I will shift it to another day. I have enough spaciousness in my week as a business owner that I can isolate some time.

Then the rhythm approach will come in. When I'm looking at my schedule, I do get a lot of satisfaction from checking something off a to-do list. I like that because sometimes I will get things done more quickly than others.

Sometimes I will be like, “I'm spending two pomodoros on this” or other times, it will be “As soon as I write a page, I'm done.” Those different approaches can be motivating for me in that they're not necessarily tied to the amount of time.

I also schedule co-working with folks. That is something that is really helpful for me. I have general co-working that I run, but I will sometimes schedule with a pal. I respond very well to external accountability. That might be something where they're like, “I'm working on my tenure materials,” and I'll be like, “I'm writing my book,” and then we do it together.

I function really well for writing when there's enough buffer space that I can choose to do it, and if there's added accountability, even better for me to hyper-focus in a short amount of time.

If you were going to offer a piece of advice to a writer, what would that be?

I would encourage folks to get curious about when they procrastinate. I find that when we're procrastinating, we might be dealing with an aversive task. Tasks can be aversive for many reasons.

We're just saying, “Write your book,” and that's not specific enough, or it's ambiguous, or we don't feel personally motivated. There are many reasons something might be aversive.

Get curious around whether we're procrastinating strategically. For example, “I don't truly need to do this now. I'm going to schedule it for later,” and that's a mindful, intentional decision. There are times when we're like, “This feels yucky and I feel uncomfortable and I'm annoyed and mad, and I don't want to do it.” That is a time when I would look up aversive tasks.

I have some writing about them, but get curious about the issue with the procrastination and see if you need increased clarity or increased motivation, or tying it to a goal or a value, or whatever it is that can increase that interest.

Procrastination is so sticky. We get so ashamed about it and it can completely derail your whole writing practice. That’s such a concrete approach to handling it!

This is my whole approach to coaching. I'm sure you have a similar approach as well, where it's like, when something is not working, that does not mean someone's doing something wrong.

That is just excellent data for us to say this one approach is not working. Let's try this other thing. When something doesn't work, I try to encourage clients to be like, “No, this is great. Now we know we're not going to do that. Let's try another way in.”

We're learning and developing practices that can be sustainable and support folks. It's not through trying to force a round peg in a square hole.

It's like me trying to force my dog to let me clip her nails when she's like, “No, I don't want to.” I'm not going to force it. Maybe I could force it, but it's going to be a terrible experience for everyone involved.

What's the best book that you've read recently?

I recently read The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig (affiliate link*). I’ve not read any of this author’s other books, but I am a romantasy lover, and if you like romantasy, I see this book as using an interesting trope and storyline and characters.

As romantasy lovers, there are repeated tropes we see over and over and over, and this one was doing some really interesting, novel things. I really hope it gets made into a show, and I can’t wait until the second book of the duology comes out.

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

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Kate's advice to writers is so powerful. Start where you are. Experiment with what works—and treat failure like data, not a problem. When things feel sticky, take a step back and think about whether you need a break or a different approach.

Perhaps most importantly, your approach to writing productivity gets to be yours! It doesn't have to look like anyone else's, and that's the beauty of it.

What else did you take away from this interview?