Faculty friends, it's time to get moving.
Even if you're happy now, you should make daily, small efforts to make leaving academia easier.
Why?
If you plan your exit and later decide to leave, you'll have a much smoother time of making the transition.
If you plan your exit and stay put, your work (and life overall) will be better.
Unfortunately, many of us spend too much time overthinking the whole thing and become paralyzed to the point of doing nothing.
But making your exit doesn't have to be complicated.
Your exit strategy only has two parts:
1. Building a diverse professional network
2. Writing online about your expertise
Doing these two things, in small steps over time, will bring opportunities to you that you would not otherwise have.
If you're really strapped for time (and I know you are), you can make meaningful progress on each of these things in only 20 minutes per day.
Here's how:
Task 1: Craft your LinkedIn profile to attract the right audience.
Your LinkedIn profile has the potential to be a huge asset for you as you transition away from your university. It usually comes up first or second in a Google search and is where you can find most people in business, nonprofit, and government.
Take about an hour on this step.
Go through your profile (open an account if you haven't already--it's fast and easy) and make sure that your picture is clear and that you're smiling.
Next, write your headline to reflect the search terms you want people to find you for. So if your headline says 'Assistant Professor of Psychology', this won't help you because you're not looking for a faculty position. Change it to emphasize your specific area of expertise: 'Expert in Adolescent Behavioral Health', for example.
Finally, re-write your introduction section to include specific information about what you do and why your audience should care. If you're a researcher, explain your research and how your research skills can apply in other settings. If you teach, do the same thing--explain how your teaching activities translate outside of a university setting.
Task 2: Spend 20 minutes, 3 times/week, engaging and posting on LinkedIn
Now that your profile is ready to go, you'll need to carve out time to make thoughtful comments on others' posts and create posts of your own. Note that you will usually spend more time commenting than you will posting.
If you're brand new to LinkedIn, I recommend setting a timer for 15 minutes and going through your feed and providing 2-5 comments that add to the conversation. Comments like 'I agree' are not going to help you or the poster. So if the poster shared an article, read the article and then provide your expert insights in the comments section.
Commenting on others' comments is also a great way to connect with others. Some of my closest relationships have developed out of adding to conversations in the comments section.
After this 15-minute session, spend about 5 minutes, 2-5 times per week, writing posts related to your expertise. Expect very little engagement at first. Don't overthink this--just write it up and hit publish. You'll learn over time what kinds of posts are most helpful for your network.
Task 3: Spend 20 minutes, 2 times/week making content to post online
The other two days can be spent writing short articles for your intended audience. These articles can be posted on Medium, Twitter, or LinkedIn, along with your personal blog if you have one (don't stress about starting a blog yet).
Keep these articles in the neighborhood of 250-300 words and write in a conversational tone. Try to publish at least one a week. The idea here is that when someone finds you online through a Google search, they are finding evidence of how you think and what you are generally like.
If you are an artist, it's probably better to use your 20 minutes to show your work in whatever way makes most sense for you. YouTube and Instagram may be a better outlet for communicating with your audience than writing.
Whether you stay in academia or not, the 20 minutes a day that you spend growing your network and online presence will pay off.
Ginger Lockhart, PhD is a former tenured professor and creator of QuantFish, a statistics education platform, and QuantFish R&D, a research and consultancy service. She does this alongside her husband and three young kids from a little farm in the West Virginia countryside.
Connect with Ginger on Linkedin.