Abstract
This chapter presents descriptions and reflections from a group of academic writers who worked in Friday sprints to maintain their productivity, wellbeing, and connection during the COVID-19 years. Using Joan Tronto's Ethics of Care as an analytic framework, we analyse our reflections on the importance of this weekly Shut Up & Write! (SUAW) sprint community to promote mindfulness, self-compassion, and good habits, dedicating focused time and exercising agency as women academic writers seeking wellbeing and productivity in a time of global crisis. The sprints were academic identity work - we teach, research, and serve, and write about our teaching, research, and service. The sprints were a place of community in the neoliberalised workday in Australian higher education, where teaching, administration, and meetings conspire to expand to take up all of the time and headspace we have. For us, the writing sprints were both a practice of self-care and of resistance.