September 2, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
If you’re writing a dissertation, what words would make you the happiest to hear?
Ben Shott, in Schott’s Vocab, asks his New York Times readers what are the happiest words in the English language. He suggests something like “I Do” or “The doctor can see you immediately.”
That led me to wonder what are the happiest words for a dissertation writer.
How about:
–Brilliant!
–Let’s just skip the last two chapters. You’ve written enough.
–Great Dissertation. We’d like to offer you a tenure track position.
–No revisions are necessary.
What words would you like to hear?
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net/
www.usingyourstrengths.com/
Posted in Happier, advisor, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, finishing the dissertation, happiness, joy | Tagged Schott’s Vocab, happiest words in the English language, happiest words for a dissertation writer, Schott, writing a dissertation | Leave a Comment »
August 29, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
Have you heard of a “showrunner”?
Writers in the TV industry are now expected also to manage—or to have the skills and strengths that would allow them to manage.
According to John Wells, Writers Guild of America West president and writer/producer of E.R., Third Watch, and West Wing, it is virtually impossible to be just a writer anymore in television.
Instead of “head writer,” the path for the writer is to control the material and make decisions, thus be a “showrunner.”
What are your responsibilities? Writing a dissertation? Yep, and a whole lot more. You can multi-task, right? It’s time to think about how you are managing your career, and managing your career starts with managing the dissertation. How will you close the project?
To deliver the dissertation:
1. Use the process and mindset of a showrunner/ Project Manager.
2. Exercise the strengths and skills of a showrunner/ Project Manager.
What strengths do you think an effective showrunner/ Project Manager has?
Consider these:
1. Leadership
2. Judgment and critical thinking
3. Self-control/self-discipline
4. Diligence and perseverance
5. Creativity and ingenuity
What happens if you look at your dissertation project through the lens of leadership?
A showrunner/Project Manager has the job of providing leadership in these areas:
1. Planning
2. Scheduling
3. Organizing and holding to a timeline
4. Collaborating with team members
5. Working with superiors/bosses
6. Managing a budget
7. Closing the project
How can you encourage and motivate yourself to get things done? How can you organize tasks to make following through more of a given?
Along with writing content, make sure you are managing your project:
– Closing the project depends on planning, scheduling, and organizing.
–Exercise your strength of working with others. Don’t hide out to avoid all personal contact with advisors or others who can help you in the process.
– Consider the costs.
You may not be managing a $26-million-dollar TV budget, but consider what it costs you not to make and meet a schedule.
Writing a dissertation is a great time to practice the strength of leadership. How are you running your show?
I’d love to hear from you
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in acting as if, coaching, deadline, discipline, dissertation advisors, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, finishing the dissertation, following through, goals, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, planning, self-discipline, showing up, structures, take charge, time, time management, top strengths, using your strengths, writing schedule | Tagged time management, plan, use your strengths, dissertation writer, showrunner, project manager, schedule, organize, leadership | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
Posted in Smart Tips, You Tube, accountability, boot camp, coaching, demands, discipline, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, following through, getting started, planning, re-group, regrouping, restart writing, time management | Tagged time management, dissertation, Youtube, prioritize, big rocks metaphor | Leave a Comment »
August 15, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
August can be a time of scrambling
A friend who was taking her family on a trip to Europe was rushing to get everything done. She said, “All I have to do is just get to the plane.” I know what she means—what a wonderful feeling it is to settle in and stare into space, awaiting take-off (as long as you haven’t left a child at home, of course! But that’s a different movie.).
For most of us, our looming deadline isn’t making the plane to Europe, but there is that sense of finality or urgency at fitting in everything we need to do over the next few weeks or days.
Maybe you’re moving, reinventing yourself, starting a new job (or going back to your same teaching job). What minutiae swirl in your head as you try to focus on the chapter you’re writing?
1. Put the Big Rocks in first.
A wonderful client reminded me this week of the time management story about the rocks and a jar. Have you heard it? Stephen Covey in his book First Things First describes a time management speaker using a jar and rocks as props for a talk. The speaker asks the group how many rocks do they think he can get in the jar. After the guesses are made, he proceeds to put the large rocks into the jar. He asks if the jar is full. The group answers that it is full, but of course, it isn’t. The speaker proceeds to add small rocks, gravel, and water
The point is that if he hadn’t put the big rocks into the jar first, then all the gravel and little rocks would have filled it and there wouldn’t have been room for the big rocks.
Our take-away is that we should make a list of the large things we need to do, our big rocks—a big project, family time, exercise…– and then plan so that the big rocks are done first.
What is your gravel? That stuff can fill up your time. What are your big rocks?
2. What are your 3 priorities today?
Each day brings its own crisis, but you can still have three priorities that get attention, even as you deal with the crisis of the day.
It’s hard to mentally hold on to all the things you need to do at this time of year, but if you write down the 3 most important things you must do today and put the time when you will do each of those things, you will feel a great deal of anxiety drain away. Try it! The 3 priorities may be the same thing as your Big Rocks, but they might not be.
How can you make sure that your Big Rocks do make your list of today’s 3 priorities? Practice. Tell yourself that your dissertation isn’t some Big Rock that’s part of an interesting illustration. It’s a big deal that you have to address every day in a practical manner—it’s one of each day’s 3 Priorities.
3. Make plans for following through.
I’ve found that I must have visual reminders of how my day is planned to unfold and what I will get done no matter what—my 3 priorities– or I’ll forget. I use large, colored sticky papers for my schedule and highlight my 3 priorities. I stick my schedule in a couple of different places. I need to be able to remind myself that one of my priorities is coming up, so that I don’t self-sabotage by staying too long on something easy and blow right through the time slotted for a priority. Written reminders are key.
4. Where do you have control?
As you think about all of the moving parts of your life—whatever comes next for you, your advisor, your department chair, the students, your feelings—the most difficult part may be controlling yourself. How do you want to frame the current chaos so that you can look at it in a positive way? What do you want to tell yourself?
The time you have available to write may seem limited, but whatever time you have now is under your control. You can choose to write in the 30 minutes or 1 hour that you’ve set for your dissertation or your journal article, or you can let the time slip away, while you run in circles.
Can you make your Big Rocks into your 3 priorities for today? Make sure your diss is definitely getting a spot on your priority list and has a chunk of dedicated time in your schedule.
How about grabbing some big rocks and inscribing them? Maybe put them where you can see them on your desk?
I’d love to hear from you.
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in accountability, coaching, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, following through, mental toughness, planning, self-deception, self-sabotage, showing up, structures, take charge, time management | Tagged time management, dissertation, summer writing, distractions, self-sabotage, prioritize, late summer chaos, where you have control, Big Rocks | 1 Comment »
August 11, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
Motivation is in short supply.
We know that motivation is a force that causes us to move toward a goal we’ve set. Reason, physical urge, and self-discipline are part of that force.
For many writers, motivation is difficult to find, to come by, to pin down.
Recently I received an email about an upcoming teleconference— Ellen Britt, an Internet Marketing Mentor, was offering a teleconference titled “The Big Why.” The subtitle was “Why Having a Bigger Purpose behind Your Business Matters.”
Having a purpose behind your work –feeling passionate about your work — is the key to productivity and well-being. That sounds great, but is it possible . . . for someone writing a dissertation? Is that a pie I’m seeing in that sky? What has to change in order that you feel passionate about your work?
Daniel Pink writes in Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us that human beings are “purpose seekers.” While making money is a huge motivation, Pink declares that an “equally powerful source of energy “ is the “purpose motive.”
According to Dan Pink , people in the work force are motivated far less by an extrinsic reward, such as money, than they are by the opportunity to do what they feel passionate about. They’ll volunteer their time to in order to feel they’re doing something meaningful.
Pink says that the 21st Century work place can’t function on the rules and systems from the past. The new system must be based on work being done because it matters. To be productive, people need autonomy, mastery, and purpose.
Writing a dissertation seems as if it would be about autonomy and mastery and purpose.
But something doesn’t match up here.
Aren’t writers looking for the “big why”? Aren’t they supposed to be building expertise in their field? Aren’t they left to themselves to be autonomous? If so, shouldn’t they feel better about their process and their writing than they do?
For many ABD’s who contact me, the motivation seems based on fear—fear of failure or fear of what others will think.
The writing is something that has to be done. It’s a process made up of one deadline after another, and the deadlines become the motivating force.
What motivates you?
How would you like it to be?
How can you get motivated?
I’d love to hear from you.
Until next time,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in academic, coaching, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, finishing the dissertation, getting started, mental toughness, motivation, productivity, self-discipline, writing | Tagged autonomy, Dan Pink, getting motivated, mastery, purpose | Leave a Comment »
August 5, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
“There’s a certain amount of humility that comes with being 30 years old and a graduate student. The stipend is paltry, the housing less than prime,” writes Hinda Mandell.
Like many graduate students, Hinda knows where to find cheap or, better yet, free food. The best place to shop free is at her parents’ home, she says.
Resourceful, you bet! And it sounds like she has parents who give her the support she needs, but hold the guilt.
Graduate students not only know where to find free food, but they also come home for unconditional food. And parents are doing what they can do best– providing for good relationships with you, their studious offspring, for years into the future by stocking the larder with your favorite food and then claiming, “Oh, we’ll never eat all of this. Take whatever you want.”
No questions asked, no reference to your dissertation, no recriminations, no comparisons to someone else’s son or daughter who finished the dissertation so quickly (as opposed to you know who).
Most parents of ABD’s want you to write your dissertation and get it behind you, and they also want you to keep coming home. Did you think that the fridge or cabinets just happened to hold items that you particularly like?
So pack the food, take it back to your apartment, and write.
Until next time,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in academic, children, coaching, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, family, relationships | Tagged support, parents, food, ABD's, graduate students | Leave a Comment »
July 25, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
How would your productivity change if you looked at writing as if it were your real job?
Ann Patchett, an award-winning author, has done her best to avoid writing.
Her novel Bel Canto, has won both the PEN/Faulkner Award and England’s Orange Prize and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has a number of best-selling books and prizes to her credit. Nevertheless, she resists writing, putting all sorts of distractions in her path.
In the Washington Post (12/10/2009), Ann Patchett writes, “Writing is an endless confrontation with my own lack of talent and intelligence.” Otherwise, if she were “as smart and talented” as she ought to be, she says, she would have finished the book she is working on by now.
Yes, she procrastinates. She will do about anything rather than write. If she is struggling with a troubling section, she is happy to rush off to Costco with her mother.
But things changed for her as a result of a dinner party where she talked with musician Edgar Meyer. Like Patchett with her writing, Meyer found himself bogged down with his music composing. But Meyer had made an amazing discovery: “He put a notebook by the door of his studio and kept a careful record of the number of hours he actually sat down to work. The startling conclusion of this experiment was that the more hours he spent working on compositions, the more music he actually composed.” Imagine that!
She jabs at herself, wondering how she hadn’t realized that “by giving my art the same amount of time and attention that I gave to, say, meal preparation, my art might be more likely to flourish.”
For years, Patchett had no particular routine to her writing. She would write now and then, whenever she found time. Somehow that hit-or-miss approach had allowed her to get a manuscript out the door. But as years went by, she found that writing without a schedule became increasingly difficult.
She says now that she had always known that people in other jobs, such as her husband, would leave early in the morning for work, regular as rain! To put herself on a schedule –and have “a real work day”– would “require not just a change of scheduling but also a change of mind.”
Writers, such as Ann Patchett, as well as my own dissertation coaching clients, say frequently how hard writing is. Writers put all sorts of distractions in their paths to avoid the tedium and the dead ends and the uncertainties of writing.
But writers do have choices.
–Be straightforward and honest about what you’re doing.
–Say no to distractions rather than embracing them.
–Stop sabotaging yourself.
What if you didn’t readily volunteer to be the one to wait for the plumber or the air conditioner repair person? What if you didn’t run out in the middle of the day for a couple of items from the grocery store, just because we can?
What would a work day look like if you acted like writing was your real job?
Until next time,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in coaching, commitment, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, procrastination, productivity, reasons for not writing, self-deception, self-sabotage, take charge, writing habit, writing schedule, writing, dissertation | Tagged eliminating distractions, Ann Patchett, writing as a job | Leave a Comment »
July 19, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
You’ve made a big deadline? Hurray for you!
If you’ve sent off a revised draft of a chapter or major chunk of your dissertation to your advisor or you’ve finished multiple revisions of an article and sent it off to a journal, pat yourself on the back, think about what comes next….
And then take some time off. It could be two days or a week, but give yourself time to regenerate and restore your depleted resources.
Go swimming. Read a novel. Spend time with a friend or your partner.
Afraid that you will hide out when it’s time to get back into action? Then put a few things in place to help you get back o.k.
Here are four tips to help you make an easier reentry:
1. Mark your calendars for the day and the time you will be back at work. Make the start time as important as a departure time would be for you if you had a flight scheduled that day. Plan to do your laundry or check your email much earlier or much, much later, but not at the time you are restarting your writing.
2. Clarify the first steps. Determine some specifics on what to do that first day back at work. Why bother to set a date to start, if you sabotage yourself by having no plan?
3. Learn from the past. If you are a bit monkey-brained as you think about planning your first steps after you return, free-write now for five minutes about what you have learned from the work you’ve just completed, learning that you will put into play for the next section or chapter or writing project.
4. Put your plans where you can’t miss them. Situate the plans to be the first things you see when you turn on your computer or print them out so they’re physically in the middle of your clean desk.
You deserve a guilt-free break. Mark your calendars and publicize the day and time you’ll be back at work. Put your plans for your first steps after you return in plain sight. A small price for a guilt-free break!
I would love to hear how you make a break part of your writing process.
Until next time,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
Posted in Happier, dissertation advisors, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, getting started, goals, happiness, joy, life, planning, procrastination, re-group, re-start, resilience, restart writing, restarting, self-care, self-sabotage, time management, write more easily, writing breaks, writing schedule, writing, dissertation | Tagged vacation, life balance, break from writing, reentry, down time from writing, return from a break, limit breaks, write restart time on calendar, make plans for restarting, r and r | Leave a Comment »
July 11, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
Are you worried about losing your momentum while you’re on vacation? But does working on your dissertation while vacationing seem depressing?
Actually, writing while you’re on vacation may be easier and more pleasant than you think.
Vacation will make you feel happier and livelier. Since it’s easier to write when you’re happy, you may be surprised at how normal and uncomplicated it is to take a peek now and then at your dissertation while you’re on vacation.
Here are 5 tips to help you maintain your writing momentum and still enjoy your vacation.
1. Plan ahead before leaving home. Have a list of modest writing tasks that you can do on vacation.
2. Make use of small chunks of time. You can’t find one quiet hour each day away from the family while vacationing? Then claim 25 minutes every day or two for your writing.
3. Use the different location and break in your routine to your advantage. Writing in a hotel room or on a balcony looking toward the mountains is not your usual ho-hum, one-more-day- at- the- library approach. Get up while others are still snoozing and write for a bit. Take a legal pad and a pen and walk to a bench in a quiet area.
4. Balance is possible. Approach each day well rested, exercise, eat well, and give yourself permission to see that your writing project is part of your life, not your whole life.
5. Anticipate the unexpected. Your marvelous brain can spontaneously give you ideas, right out of the blue. Dissertation coaching clients tell me of breakthroughs they have had when they were on vacation or when they have changed their routine. Jogging, swimming, staring into space—you never know when an idea might hit!
Now that’s a great vacation.
All good wishes,
Nancy
P.S. There’s an added bonus to working 25 minutes on your dissertation every day or two while you’re on vacation: Restarting your daily writing habit when you get home will be much easier.
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
Posted in Happier, coaching, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, family, habit, happiness, momentum, re-start, reflection, restart writing, time, time management, write more easily, writing habit, writing schedule | Tagged Maintain writing momentum, vacation, 25-minute writing sessions, restart daily writing habit, life balance, modest tasks, minimum goals | Leave a Comment »
July 1, 2010 by Nancy Whichard
If you are celebrating Canada Day, all good wishes! Are you going to Parliament Hill to see the fireworks and maybe catch sight of Queen Elizabeth? It sounds like a spectacular event.
Happy day to all of my Canadian dissertation coaching clients and friends and to all of you who read my blog across wonderful Canada!
My best to you,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
Posted in dissertation coach, dissertation writing, fun, happiness, zest | Tagged Canada Day, fireworks, celebrate | Leave a Comment »
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