Not too long ago, when my adult son mentioned how busy his work and life have become, my husband was reminded of an annual planning session he had attended at which a facilitator presented a workshop on how to organize your time. As my husband drew a diagram from that workshop, I realized that he [...]
Archive for the ‘focus’ Category
How to Meet Your Writing Goals
Posted in academic, accountability, advisor, children, choice, deadline, demands, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, email, exercise, family, finishing the dissertation, focus, getting started, goals, grading, habit, perfectionism, perseverance, planning, productivity, reasons for not writing, relationships, research, restart writing, restarting, self-care, showing up, strategies, success, take charge, time management, time theft, writing schedule, writing to a deadline, writing, dissertation, tagged dissertation coach, dissertation writing, make time to write, meeting a deadline, meeting goals, planning to write, planning writing session, protect your time, schedule, showing up, Stephen Covey, time management, what's important in your writing life on April 23, 2012 | Leave a Comment »
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 »
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 [...]
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 [...]
Gain priceless productivity with a 20-minute nap
Posted in academic, boot camp, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, focus, productivity, self-care, writing, writing breaks, tagged BBC World News, dissertation, focus, nap, National Sleep Foundation, productivity, self-care, self-discipline, sleep, writing on June 26, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Getting more sleep is high on the Wish List, if not the To-Do list, of most dissertation writers. And so it is with me. I always mean to go to bed earlier than I do, and I have all sorts of reasons for what keeps me up, some good, others not so much. As I [...]
Cut through writing in chaos
Posted in accountability, deadline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, focus, getting started, mental toughness, momentum, planning, productivity, realistic goals, take stock, tagged clear goals, concrete approach, dissertation coaching, make a plan, marker, thesis, track the argument, vacation, Writers Resources, writing, writing in chaos on June 10, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Dissertation writers tell me they often find themselves writing in chaos. It’s not clear to them where they’re headed or how long it’s going to take to get wherever it is they’re going. Occasionally a cultural ritual, like the summer vacation, is a marker that writers use to cut through the chaos. The vacation can [...]
Bonjour Mars! What do you really, really want to have written by the end of March?
Posted in anxiety, boundaries, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, focus, goals, self-care, strategies, structures, write more easily, tagged Lizard Brain, Research, results first, thesis, Writer, Writers Resources, writing, Writing Exercises, writing vs research on March 1, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
March is a long month – 4 ½ weeks. And for some people, there’s a week of Spring Vacation thrown in! Whoopy! What kind of plan for writing do you want for March? Days you are going to work, the amount of time you will work, or how much you will get done? Results [...]
To focus on your writing, get a cat
Posted in advice, boundaries, coaching, commitment, courage, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, distractions, flow, focus, mental toughness, self-discipline, start writing, take charge, trusting yourself, write more easily, tagged cat's effect on a writer, focus, Murial Spark, Publishing, trusting the process, writer's self-discipline, writing on November 21, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Can’t concentrate? Having trouble getting into flow with your writing? Get a cat! Advice to writers can come from the most interesting places. An unexpected, but most entertaining source of advice is A Far Cry from Kensington, a novel by British writer Muriel Spark. A Far Cry takes place in 1954 London. Mrs. Hawkins, the narrator, has a job in publishing. And yes, [...]
