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 [...]
Archive for the ‘family’ Category
Reset Your Frenzied Focus—Awestruck by Christmas Beauty and a Good Book
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 on January 4, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
What was I thinking?
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 on December 17, 2011 | 2 Comments »
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 [...]
A Bad Commute and Your Writing
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 on December 11, 2011 | 2 Comments »
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 [...]
The cost of keeping score in a relationship
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 on October 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
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.” [...]
Trying to Write? Put a Door between You and Your Kids
Posted in academic, accountability, boundaries, children, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, productivity, self-sabotage, writing, tagged assuming control, dissertation writing, juggling writing and children, producing text, productivity, setting boundaries on August 5, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
In a recent blog, I sang the praises of writing whenever you are taking a plane somewhere. The quiet, distraction-free atmosphere makes flying perfect for writing, or so it seems to me. I heard from a dissenting reader. She said, “I’d love to be able to devote myself to writing while on a plane, but [...]
Mom’s in Maine – Marking Boundaries for Space to Write
Posted in boundaries, children, choice, commitment, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, perseverance, planning, reasons for not writing, strategies, time management, writing, writing schedule, tagged assuming control, dissertation writing, juggling writing and children, Maine, making space for writing, producing text, productivity, setting boundaries, summer writing, work identity on July 22, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Are your children home on vacation from school? And you’re trying to keep an eye on your children, as well as make headway on your writing project? How’s that working for you? During the school year, most academics teach and try to write. Both teaching and writing are critical for an academic’s success and are [...]
Hard Choices: What finishing the dissertation requires of you and what it can give you
Posted in academic, accountability, advisor, choice, determination, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, family, finishing the dissertation, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, resilience, self-discipline, setbacks, writing, tagged dissertation, dissertation advisor, dissertation coach, grit, hard choices, juggling dissertation with work and family, Memorial Day, mental toughness, writing on May 25, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I have coached many people who write dissertations while juggling the demands of family life. It’s difficult to juggle the daily demands, but to give up a holiday with one’s family is a particularly hard choice to make. As the Memorial Day holiday approaches here in the U.S., I am thinking back to a Memorial Day weekend [...]
Full time job? And trying to write a dissertation, too?
Posted in academic, boundaries, commitment, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, family, mental toughness, motivation, planning, restart writing, self-sabotage, time management, writing, writing schedule, tagged dissertation, dissertation coach, full-time jobs, juggling dissertation with work and family, scheduling dissertation time, writing on May 21, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
A few months ago a person who had finished her course work for her Ph.D., but had not done much toward her dissertation, wrote to say that as someone who worked full-time away from home, she couldn’t fathom how she could add writing her dissertation to the mix of not only working full-time, but also being [...]
