Your Career

Now is the time to start planning how to make the most of the academic-year break

Summer is both an academic’s best friend and biggest challenge. Freed from routines and obligations in early May, summer beckons, promising you long days of productivity sitting at a desk and typing away, not so much thinking as recording the words that a muse is whispering in your ears. Things rarely work out that way, of course. By August there is a mad rush to have something to show for your “time off,” soon interrupted by the coming demands of the fall semester.

If you want to have a productive summer, you need to know what you want to work on first and then start writing early. Make those decisions as the spring semester ends. The key is to have something to show for May and June. Do not count on making up for those months later on. And when it is time to take a break, make sure you take one. But also set a time for that break to end.

Continue reading: “Planning a Productive Summer,” by Noah Shusterman

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What we’re reading

Here’s more on career issues and trends from around the web. See something we should include? Let me know.

• An update in the Harvard Business Review on “how people are really using Gen AI” on the job and in life.
• In The Wall Street Journal, a “playbook” on how to manage Gen Z employees who are now outnumbering baby boomers in the work force.
• The latest Work Friend column in The New York Times dives into the touchy question, “Do dogs belong at work?”