January 15, 2012 by Nancy Whichard
A giant construction project disrupts the lives and the commute of many people who use the Washington DC (or Capital) Beltway and the business routes between the Beltway and the Dulles International Airport.
This same construction project also raises hope among many travelers that one day they can take the metro the full 30 miles or so from downtown Washington, D.C. to Dulles Airport for an international flight. In addition, the beltway will have “hot lanes” which will allow people willing to pay a hefty toll to drive in the faster lanes and to escape the punishing daily gridlock.
The construction is on a huge scale—where nothing looks like it used to, no trees line the roads, exits from the beltway are changed, intersecting concrete roads start and stop abruptly, bridges are gone, new bridges emerge in an unexpected place, and everywhere there are train tracks.
While many people might think this project is without parallel, to me it suggests another kind of herculean project, particularly those of the mind and will.
If you are writing a dissertation or another seemingly endless writing project, you see the resemblance.
As the costs mount for the Dulles Airport metro, municipalities and individuals dispute the wisdom of continuing to build all 23 miles of subway to the airport. The different authorities involved have wrangled over whether the subway should be above ground or below ground and which municipalities should contribute more money and less money. Similarly, the personal and financial costs involved in writing a dissertation may seem to you as if you’ll never get out from under them. And you wonder how completing the dissertation could be worth the huge burden you have taken on.
Not unlike the way you wrangle with texts and structure, trying to trace ideas through various pathways in your brain, returning day after day to an uncomfortable task that demands almost more than you can do, the workers in the beltway/Dulles metro construction zone labor on crazy flyover bridges high in the sky over what will be eight lanes of the DC Beltway.
The workers labor at road level, between lanes of traffic, on cranes, and on concrete piers. Below ground workers construct enormous tunnels.
Just like the worker in the construction zone, for you to return each day to a challenging, messy dissertation requires you to draw on your mental toughness and willpower. It takes grit to show up each day to work on a grueling writing project, with no end in sight, knowing that only occasionally will you find joy in the doing. What you know is that you have to keep your wits about you. And what you can count on is that you will find joy in having stuck with the project to its end.
Beyond the Beltway and the Tysons Corner area of Virginia where several new metro stations are being built, the work gradually slows. This is not yet the construction zone, but the plan is in place. Huge piles of stacked materials are staged for future work. The plan anticipates that the metro construction will reach this point and keep going.
The staged materials are evidence that a plan is in place. If workers show up each day and do their exhausting, demanding tasks, according to the plan, the job will proceed toward its end point, that is, its destination — Dulles International Airport.
What is more inspiring than anticipating what it will be like when this seemingly endless writing project is finished? What you anticipate feeling after you have traveled the long road to the Ph.D. is what the people committed to building the Metrorail to Dulles and the hot lanes on the beltway anticipate feeling when they see a completed project.
Today, I drove toward Dulles Airport, the final destination for the Metro. As the iconic Dulles Main Terminal with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the background came into view, I felt some of that same excitement that finishing huge writing projects brings forth—that transcendent feeling of completion and a new beginning.
And that transcendent feeling of completion and new beginning is what I wish for you in this New Year of big writing projects.
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in commitment, courage, deadline, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, finishing the dissertation, focus, following through, goals, mental toughness, momentum, perseverance, planning, productivity, self-discipline, showing up, staying in the moment, time, Uncategorized, using your strengths, writing, dissertation | Tagged concentration, D.C. Beltway, dealing with chaos of writing, dissertation coaching, Dulles Corridor Metrorail Project, finish the dissertation, focus, follow your plan, getting motivated, grit, Interstate 495 (Capital Beltway), mental toughness, plan your writing, reaching writing goals, willpower, writing a dissertation | 2 Comments »
January 4, 2012 by Nancy Whichard
The New Year at its most powerful is a time for reflection and a time to think about where you want to put your focus. The holidays are often jam-packed with travel, planning, buying, eating, interacting, negotiating, and not much quiet time. The first week of the New Year may reveal that it’s harder to focus than you had thought it was.
On the first coaching day of the New Year among those dissertation coaching clients who showed up as expected, I also had a client show up unexpectedly—she had forgotten that she wanted to start a week later. On subsequent days the schedules of a couple more clients unexpectedly conflicted with their coaching calls. The first day or so of starting a new schedule or returning to a routine after a busy holiday can make for a bumpy ride and a feeling of loss of control.
While my holiday began with the usual hurry-hurry pace, by Christmas Day I had moved into the best part of the holiday–the familiar gift exchanges, special meals, and the less familiar travel to a new home of a loved one.
The most different part of my Christmas holiday was going with my whole family to Manhattan on Christmas Monday. The crowds both at Macy’s at Herald Square and at Rockefeller Center skating rink and Christmas tree were enormous, but fun, jolly, and relaxed. We joined the cold-night sauntering of the crowds down Fifth Avenue, oohing and ahhing over the window displays at Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman and the light shows and illuminations on the tall buildings.
Celebrating the holiday with my family and also with this huge, unhurried crowd of friendly strangers heavily bundled against the night’s cold was not only relaxing, but it was also a way to reset my frequently frenzied focus. I could concentrate on what was there to be seen and to be experienced. I lost myself in the moment, enjoying the city at its most beautiful.
Having those few hours not only to be unplugged, but also to feel transported and intensely engaged in a sensory, beautiful experience gave me the pause I needed to come back to my work with a desire to improve my level of focus and concentration.
To help me sharpen my focus in this New Year, I’m giving myself time each day to pause. I’m setting aside an hour each day where I have the choice on where to place my focus.
I also realize how much I need to have experiences of beauty and wonder in my life. Reading has always given me those kinds of experiences, but increasingly my reading is for my work or has chosen by someone else. Recently I happened to read Téa Obreht wonderful novel The Tiger’s Wife, which created a world that beckoned me to re-engage for days and weeks to unravel webs of images and secrets and relationships.
Knowing that I’m better in many ways–focus, concentration, motivation– if I’m reading a novel that engages me and asks something of me, I’m also giving myself permission to spend some time looking for such novel to read each month—one that engages me and could very likely leave me awestruck
What do you need to have in your life in this New Year? Do you also need something that will boost your focus and concentration in 2012? I’d love to hear what you think.
All good wishes to you for 2012,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, focus, getting started, memories, mental toughness, momentum, motivation, planning, using your strengths, write more easily, You Tube | Tagged Christmas lights, concentration, decorations, dissertation coaching, focus, motivation, New York City, plan, schedule, stress, Téa Obreht, The Tiger’s Wife | Leave a Comment »
December 17, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
Did you think you had much of your shopping done for the holidays, but now you can’t find key presents? Are you wondering where that stocking- stuffer stuff is? In the multiple piles of boxes that you have around your bedroom and basement? Did you really buy them…or maybe not?
Did you schedule your holiday gathering for your extended family during the busiest week of December? How can you walk around the usual family dynamics at these gatherings and not get testy?
And now there are last-minute meetings or final conferences at school? And, of course, you haven’t finished your grades.
What will help this week go a little better?
1) Make sure you have all commitments (meetings, conferences, deadlines) written down in your calendar—and make sure your calendar is accessible. Too often the big things don’t go into your calendar because you know you won’t forget those, but then as you look back over your week you don’t see that you spent two hours in a meeting and three hours in conferences, and you wonder what the heck did I do with all of my time?
2) What is your 24-hour goal? Write your 24-hour goal at the top of the schedule for each day. Twenty-four hour goals are the small but important goals that you set for yourself to take action on during a 24-hour period of time. These are the non-scheduled tasks and goals that you are committed to do. One 24-hour goal may be that you will work with edits for an article or you will edit a paragraph of the dissertation chapter. Look at your calendar for the bits of open time and claim those bits of time for your 24-hour goal.
3) Don’t burden yourself with thoughts of the impossible. Block visions of the must-do lists of all that you have to do over the next three months. It sounds silly, but too often you allow yourself to think that you have to do all these things now. Then you open yourself to feeling that you are ineffective and slacking off when you’re really doing so much.
4) Don’t compare your house and relationships and work to others. Do you have the idea that there’s this perfect person who has the clean, uncluttered house, and of course it’s beautifully decorated for the holiday? The perfect person also has a spouse/partner who jumps in and cleans. The perfect one didn’t put off grading and so she isn’t sweating because now her grades are due and she is behind.
When you are overwhelmed, do you think, “Oh, so and so has it all together. Why can’t I?” At those moments, you need that inner best friend to sneer at you and say, “Really? Really?” If you need help in dispelling the image of the perfect person, then imagine her at her worst moment. Image her screaming at her child. Not so perfect, right?
5) Avoid conflicts that come up too often at family gatherings. Avoiding those conflicts takes time and planning. If you’re the only one who brought wrapping paper and you’re in the back room wrapping gifts, how will you react when someone asks you if you’ve had a busy week? And someone will ask you that. And you know someone will ask how you’re doing on your dissertation. Plan ahead. Are you the only academic? Or the only person struggling with a dissertation? Have a Chinese wall between you and the folks who think that what you do is odd. Of course, you could wear a shirt that says, “Don’t ask me about my dissertation.” But if you don’t want to be quite so obvious, then have an if/then plan in place: If she says “x“, then I will do “y.” And what is “y”? Bite your tongue, smile, walk out of the room. And keep wrapping those presents. Yes, you did have a busy week.
And at the end of the week, acknowledge yourself for keeping your 24-hour goals, for imagining the mythical perfect person at her worst moment, and for smiling and simultaneously biting your tongue.
Put your feet up and be grateful that the marathon week is over.
Relax and enjoy your holiday.
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in academic, anxiety, demands, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, goals, planning, re-group, realistic goals, relationships, teaching, time management, writing, writing schedule | Tagged calendar, daily goals during holiday, dissertation, end of semester overwhelm, family conflict, holiday stress, insensitive relative, perfect person, plan, schedule | 2 Comments »
December 11, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
If your goal is to work on your dissertation or your article, what gets in your way and eats up your time and energy?
Every writer can find a million more important things to do, such as watching all the episodes of the first season of Downton Abbey in one day.
But what else derails your writing plans?
Kids? Family? A job? Check, check, check.
If the derailers were just kids-family-job, you could still most likely find a bit time to write. But there’s something else that is a wretched waste of time and energy, and it’s a frequent, even daily occurrence over which you have little control . . . your commute!
If you have a bad commute, you have my sympathies.
A bad commute has an intensely harmful influence on your quality of life and also on your making headway in your writing. Not only does a bad commute increase your anxiety, but it can turn you into someone you’d rather not know. I bet you’ve seen that side of yourself when you’re stuck in traffic.
It affects your mood and even your cognitive performance. And those negative effects are long-lasting, affecting your ability to follow through on plans to write and your ability to focus.
Please take a minute and let me know if your commute is an issue for you, and how it affects your writing. How do you work around the stress of a bad commute and make headway on your writing?
Hoping you’re sprinting past the barriers and writing,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in anxiety, distractions, family, focus, following through, getting started, mental toughness, perseverance, planning, re-group, re-start, reasons for not writing, resilience, self-discipline, setbacks, using your strengths, write more easily, writing schedule, writing, dissertation | Tagged coaching, commute, dissertation, Downton Abbey, Rush hour traffic, writing | 2 Comments »
November 8, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
Is there a writer who isn’t lured and waylaid by the distractions of the internet and email?
Is there a writer who hasn’t written about those same distractions?
How about you? How well did you do today? Did you stay on task and reach your writing goal for the day? Or did procrastination and Facebook win out?
My dissertation coaching clients are trying to use the Nothing Alternative—that is, during the time they’ve set aside to write, they write… or do nothing. They tell me, though, that the Nothing Alternative strains their willpower. They do better if they remove the temptation of the internet.
Several clients are using SelfControl software or the Anti-Social app to lock them out of the internet. This week I heard about another program—Freedom.
The client who told me about Freedom said that even though he has used it successfully, he frequently has to talk himself into setting it up. And why would he resist a successful strategy? Because once he has it up and running, he will have robbed himself of his excuses not to write. It’s write or do nothing.
My client is in good company.
Writer Nora Ephron says that every morning she spends several hours “failing to make a transition” from reading the morning newspaper to working and being productive. To help to fight her urge to procrastinate, she sets up Freedom on her computer to lock out the internet.
Seth Godin, the master marketer, blogger, and author, is also a fan of Freedom. He compares using Freedom “with being cornered with nowhere to turn.” And the advantage of being cornered, he says, is “that it leaves you . . . unable to stall or avoid the real work.”
Novelist Zadie Smith speaks knowingly of the lure of the internet. She says, “When I am using the Internet, I am addicted. I’m not able to concentrate on anything else.” To give herself time to write, she uses Freedom, but she still has to put her phone (on which she can get email) “in another part of the house, it’s pathetic. Like a drug addict. I put it in a cupboard so that I can write for five hours.”
My clients ask the same questions that Smith asks, “Is it me alone? Am I making it up? Does nobody feel this way?”
Writing is hard work, and most of us yearn for distraction, especially something as mindless as the internet and email. Lock it all up—give yourself some freedom!
Happy Writing!
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in accountability, boundaries, commitment, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, email, focus, getting started, Internet, mental toughness, perseverance, planning, procrastination, productivity, resources, self-deception, self-discipline, self-sabotage, take charge, trusting yourself | Tagged Anti-Social app, dissertation coach, distractions, Freedom, mental toughness, Nora Ephron, nothing alternative, self-control, self-regulation, SelfControl software, Seth Godin, willpower, writing, Zadie Smith | Leave a Comment »
October 11, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
Mental toughness, self-control, willpower, grit— I turn again to these compelling strengths. Why? Because distractions, especially electronic distractions, complicate the writer’s life. The struggle for self-control over distractions takes up more and more of your mental space.
What can you use to free your mental space in order to concentrate on your writing? What can help you maintain self-control, be mentally tough, and not overwhelm your willpower?
You know all too well that willpower often just isn’t enough to get you started on your writing and also keep you off of Facebook.
In the book Willpower, co-authors Roy Baumeister and John Tierney argue that what they call precommitment can protect you from the uncertainties of willpower. For instance, if you have set a specific time for writing, and you practice starting at that same time for a couple of weeks, you will have less need to depend on willpower to save the day.
The so-called Nothing Alternative is such a precommitment. When you use the Nothing Alternative, not only do you decide ahead of time that at a certain time of day, you will sit down and write, but you also decide ahead of time that you will do nothing but write.
My dissertation coaching clients have responded positively to the Nothing Alternative and have some great suggestions for implementing it. Two of my coaching clients are especially enthusiastic about the Anti-Social app and the SelfControl program.
1) Anti-Social
If you routinely get email that you think you need to respond to throughout the time you have set aside to write, you may find it harder and harder to write and even give up the writing altogether in order to answer the emails.
The Anti-Social application for macs allows you to shut off the social part of the internet and email while you are working on your computer. You can “be anti-social” for any amount of time.
To turn off Anti-Social, you have to restart your computer and according to my client, you “feel crappy if you restart your computer just to get into email.”
Precommitting to this program for a certain amount of time helps you to conserve willpower for emergencies.
2) SelfControl
Another way to implement the Nothing Alternative is to use the SelfControl software.
This free software asks you to list the internet pages that you want to block, such as email, Facebook, specific online newspapers, and a few pages that you most often visit. It’s your choice.
If you need the internet for research, you can still visit Google or other specific pages that you need.
Once you set the timer, for that specific length of time, you cannot get into anything that you have blocked, even if you turn off the computer. My client says, “If you feel less motivated during that time, you can stare into space for a
minute, but you can’t get onto Facebook, so you might as well work.”
Using such programs helps you stay committed to your writing and lets you conserve your willpower.
I would love to hear what your strategies are for conserving willpower and for using willpower effectively.
Happy Writing!
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in accountability, boundaries, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, following through, getting started, Internet, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, planning, self-discipline, self-sabotage, staying in the moment, strategies, time management, write more easily | Tagged Anti-Social app, dissertation coach, distractions, John Tierney, mental toughness, Roy Baumeister, self-control, self-regulation, SelfControl software, willpower, writing | 1 Comment »
October 1, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
A Saturday alone is a gift.
My husband is gone for the weekend, and I am writing.
As a reward to writing first, I promised myself a bit of email-inbox decluttering.
To see if I should read it or delete it, I clicked on Gretchen Rubin’s “5 Mistakes I Continue To Make in My Marriage.”
Of course, since I make mistakes in my marriage, I can’t help being curious. While the title sounds like something that would be in a magazine at the grocery check-out, the author—Gretchen Rubin— writes engagingly about the application of positive psychology studies and theories to her own life.
If you feel that the demands of writing and working or teaching coupled with your tightly scheduled life create problems for your relationships and family life, you’ll appreciate hearing which mistakes Rubin addresses and some changes she has resolved to make. I’m particularly struck by her #4 mistake that she continues to make in her marriage.
That mistake is Score-keeping.
She says that she keeps score—herself vs. her husband.
And she always believes that she is overly generous in her contributions to the house and family, while, of course, she finds her husband lacking.
Her score-keeping doesn’t account for overestimating her own contribution.
Rubin quotes University of Virginia psychology professor, Jonathan Haidt, who writes in The Happiness Hypothesis that “when husbands and wives estimate the percentage of housework each does, their estimates total more than 120 percent.”
How about you? Do you engage in score-keeping and start to get that testy, cranky feeling about all that you’re doing?
As you engage in score-keeping and struggle with the feelings that arise, you’re using energy and willpower that could go toward your writing. And you’re doing damage to your relationships. Score-keeping is costly.
Keeping your relationship on an even keel is difficult when you’re engaged in an intense and time-consuming writing project. It’s easy to fall into unconscious over-claiming (that is, unconsciously overestimating what you have done versus another person’s contribution) when you feel yourself sucked into yet another time-consuming task.
If you want to be productive during a scheduled writing session, decide ahead of time what you will do if score-keeping raises its ugly head. Planning can help you avoid that emotional drain.
What costly mistakes do you find yourself making in your relationships?
Take care of your relationships, and conserve your willpower.
Keep writing,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in academic, boundaries, cleaning, decluttering, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, finishing the dissertation, happiness, housecleaning | Tagged dissertation coaching, dissertation writing, email decluttering, family life, Gretchen Rubin, Jonathan Haidt, relationships, reward for writing, score-keeping, unconscious over-claiming, writers | Leave a Comment »
September 28, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
What could help you have an easier time starting to write and sticking with the writing?
In the new book Willpower, psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and New York Times science writer John Tierney present research that willpower is limited, in part because you use the same resource for so many different things.
Since you can’t be certain that you’ll have willpower whenever you might finally take the notion to write, writers, in particular, need to conserve willpower wherever possible.
If you have engaged in making decisions all day, in one area after another, you may have depleted your reserve of willpower and suffer from “decision fatigue.”
The authors support the view that having a writing habit helps you avoid the decision fatigue. If you have a habit in place, you won’t rely solely on willpower to motivate you to write.
Baumeister and Tierney call this a “precommitment.” Precommitment is the use of a strategy or plan to protect you from procrastination and impulsive behavior.
And you know where impulsive behavior takes you—to email, to the refrigerator, to the TV.
Raymond Chandler, who created detective Philip Marlowe and wrote detective novels and film scripts, such as The Big Sleep, 
devoted four hours each day to writing, or, as he says, if he didn’t write, then he could do nothing.
And he meant nothing.
Advising other writers how to produce writing, Chandler says, that during the daily four hours for writing, a writer “doesn’t have to write, . . . He can look out the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor, but he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks.”
Chandler says that during the scheduled four hours each day there are “two very simple rules, a. you don’t have to write. b. you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.”
Baumeister and Tierney call this particular precommitment the “Nothing Alternative.” You write or you do nothing.
My dissertation coaching clients have given me some great suggestions for implementing the “Nothing Alternative.” When email, Google, and Facebook beckon, how do you follow through on your intention to write?
Here’s to precommitment!
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in accountability, boundaries, commitment, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, finishing the dissertation, following through, getting started, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, planning, productivity, resilience, restart writing, self-discipline, self-sabotage, showing up, using your strengths, writing schedule | Tagged decision fatigue, dissertation coach, John Tierney, nothing alternative, plan for writing, precommitment, Roy Baumeister, schedule, setting boundaries | Leave a Comment »
September 25, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
When did you first hear of “decision fatigue”?
Perhaps, like me, it was when the New York Times Magazine published an article on decision fatigue and you started getting emails from your friends and family with links to that article. In fact, you probably received many links, and maybe the term “decision fatigue” has even become part of your vocabulary.
That article in the New York Times is a chapter from a newly published book 
Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (September 2011), co-authored by psychologist Roy F. Baumeister and New York Times science writer John Tierney.
Decision fatigue, or “ego depletion,” to use the original term coined by Baumeister, comes from Baumeister’s research on willpower and motivation.
His research has long been influential, particularly his findings that willpower, like a muscle, can become fatigued. And because willpower can become fatigued, you can’t count on it always to be available. But, like a muscle, willpower can be strengthened with practice.
Writers struggle with their willpower far beyond what you might think, particularly since you may have already depleted your reserve of willpower before you even decide to write.
Baumeister has found that we usually spend about four hours a day struggling with temptation and trying to engage our willpower.
So when you finally get around to writing, what have you got? Nothing? There’s a lot of nothing going around.
As a writer, how much do you depend on your willpower? If your willpower deserts you, what are your options?
What can you do to have a reserve of willpower available to you when you most need it?
I’d love to hear from you.
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com
Posted in commitment, demands, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, finishing the dissertation, following through, getting started, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, planning, productivity, re-start, resilience, self-discipline, self-sabotage, using your strengths, write more easily | Tagged decision fatigue, dissertation, dissertation coaching, ego depletion, John Tierney, mental toughness, Roy F. Baumeister, self-discpline, willpower, writing | 2 Comments »
September 20, 2011 by Nancy Whichard
You have a long-term goal—say, writing a dissertation or a book. And the going gets tough. This is one huge project.
It’s a long haul—it may mean months or years of coming back to that same project.
It’s been going on for quite a while. Have you stuck with it? Have you kept coming back to the work, day after day?
What would you say has kept you coming back? What do you think makes the difference in finishing or not finishing?
Intelligence? Maybe.
Feeling engaged by your topic? Possibly.
Sense of community or a good relationship with your advisor? Both would be helpful.
Being motivated by someone or something or finding motivation? Motivation is always a bonus.
How about perseverance? Yes! Or mental toughness? Yes! If you have perseverance or mental toughness, the odds are that you’ll meet your goal.
To capture the crucial role that tenacity and doggedness play in your achieving a tough, very long, long-term goal, University of Pennsylvania psychologist Angela Duckworth uses the word grit.
Duckworth says that grit is related to willpower, self-control, and resilience, but it is a greater predictor of success than any of those other resources.
To some people, the word grit sounds like being chained to a task, maybe being held hostage. But Duckworth describes it as a passion for long-term goals. She says that grit sustains you; it’s a sustaining passion for a long time.
If you have little kids, you’ve seen grit in action—when a toddler is determined to walk or a little kid is focused on skate-boarding or roller-skating or coming in first in a contest.
Duckworth has done research about many aspects of grit, including students who won spelling bees.
She says that grit is not necessarily the number of hours devoted to a project. Rather, she sees it as a person identifying their weakness or what they don’t know and then concentrating on that. She says that grit enables you to be in an uncomfortable place for some part of your day, working extremely hard, and then being able to come back the next day and do it all over again and again.
But wait—don’t pull your hair out or start shrieking. Think again of the child falling off of her skate board or bike or roller skates and getting up and going at it again, only to fall again.
There’s a willingness to fail, knowing that with failure comes–yep, you got it– success.
You probably wouldn’t be surprised to learn that Duckworth says that grit is a key and necessary ingredient for high achievement in any field.
The word grit has an old-fashioned ring to it. When you say the word grit, do you squint? And maybe feel the urge to look off into the sunset?
In fact, Duckworth says that when she was studying what it was that distinguished successful people, and what it was that kept them going, beyond talent, beyond intellect, she used the word grit because of the movie True Grit, but not after the John- Wayne hero. Instead, she says, the movie is really about a young Arkansas girl who pursues an impossible goal and after an impossibly long time, she eventually succeeds and reaches her goal.
In the most recent version of the film, Hailee Steinfeld plays that girl—the girl that personifies grit for Duckworth.
To see if you are “extremely gritty” or “not at all gritty” or somewhere in the middle, check out Duckworth’s Grit Scale.
The good news is that you can increase the amount of grit that you have. What matters most is not your ability or intelligence. It helps to change the way you look at your work and to look most keenly at what you are bringing to the task. Ramp up your consistency and follow through on what you say you are going to do, each day, each week.
The more you exercise grit, the more grit you will have.
How gritty are you? What ways have you found that help you to increase your grit or perseverance? I’d love to hear from you.
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.smarttipsforwriters.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.nancywhichard.com
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Posted in accountability, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, finishing the dissertation, following through, goals, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, resilience, self-discipline, showing up, success, using your strengths | Tagged dissertation, dissertation coaching, grit, Hailee Steinfeld, long-term goals, mental toughness, perseverance, resilience, True Grit | Leave a Comment »
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