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Posts Tagged ‘procrastination’

A caller asked if I had ever coached someone who had become stalled on a house renovation project.  My answer was no, but what came to mind was how similar all big projects are.   How difficult it can be to keep going.  How crushing the project can become. 

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Let’s say it was you who started the renovation project. You envisioned the changes you were going to make. You put together a plan to accomplish those changes.

And you took on this project in part because of what you wanted to prove to yourself.

Following through on such a commitment takes courage and resilience.  I’ve seen someone with these qualities accomplish an amazing home renovation project.  He almost single-handedly built a large room onto their house. He’s an accomplished man, but he’s not a carpenter, nor is he an architect. Nevertheless, over many months, the structure came together, and it’s a lovely addition to their home.

Completing such a project must be more than satisfying.  I would guess that the end feeling would be relief coupled with enormous joy in the accomplishment.

But if the renovation project, just like a stalled dissertation, is yours and if you’re stuck, re-starting takes courage and a willingness to look with new eyes at what this project will require from you.

Here are the five steps to help you restart:

1.  You need a plan, the more detailed the better.  A plan, with specific details, will guide you, and it will also be a way of keeping track.  It’s easier to keep going when you can check off items on a list or a plan.

2.  Make realistic, manageable goals each and every day or work session. Short-term goals and next steps keep you focused on the present.  And that’s where you have to work.

3.  When you accomplish the day’s goal, stop for the day—it may be counterproductive to push yourself beyond a reasonable stopping point.  Stopping when you’ve reached a realistic goal gives you the strength to come back another day.  If you go beyond the realistic goal, you start to risk burn-out or exhaustion. Exhaustion makes it much harder to return to the project.

4.  After you quit for the day, acknowledge yourself for the courage it took to come back to the project yet another day and to do what you said you were going to do.  Big Gold Stars!

5.  Draw on that feeling of renewed courage and the surge of joy to start your work another day.

Embarrassment, discouragement, and shame are likely to accompany getting stuck on something as open and visible as a home renovation or building project. Having one’s failure on public display can be brutal.  But the dread of being found out when a failure isn’t so visible, as in being stalled on a dissertation, is also brutally hard to bear. 

Life’s too short to live in dread or shame. You have a choice. I say get started on that detailed plan, plot your first step, and then take it.

Are you stalled on a dissertation, or have you been stalled?  What is your next step?  I’d love to hear from you.

All good wishes to you,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC

Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
http://www.smarttipsforwriters.com
http://www.dissertationbootcamp.net
http://www.nancywhichard.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com

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Writing My Thesis

Image by Trinesh Champaneri via Flickr

Perfectionism gives you a perfect excuse never to write.

Perfectionism not only slows productivity, but it also makes sure that your dissertation will never meet your expectations.

 
Put up with the messiness of writing

You have to go through the stage of writing “abominably repetitive, colloquial sentences,” as a dissertation client once described the early stages of writing a draft.  Abominable sentences in early drafts are part of the writing process.

 

Go for content

The perfectionist spends time crafting beautiful sentences but runs into trouble developing ideas.

Focus on putting into the early draft that content that you have rolling around in your brain, and give much less thought to form.  That exquisite prose you have read in the finished dissertations of others or in the articles written by your advisor came about through multiple revisions.

If you spend your valuable time crafting lovely sentences in an early draft, you will kick yourself later when you ruthlessly have to strike those same sentences because they add nothing important. Buckle down and write.


Share your work before it’s ready

Commit to a specific time when you will send a section to a colleague. Then pat yourself on the back for bringing a dose of reality into your dissertation process, and say, “This isn’t great, but it is what it is.”    Ask for feedback, if you can, or just get the boost to continue writing that sharing your work will give you.  It will move things along for you far more than if you keep struggling alone, trying your hardest to perfect an early draft. 

Face up to the perfectionism that has hamstrung you. 

Do you need some help in gathering your courage?   Do you need accountability to make a change?  Drop me an email.  I’d love to hear from you.

The best is yet to come.

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
http://www.nancywhichard.com
http://www.smarttipsforwriters.com
nancy @ nancywhichard.com

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Are you the person in the cartoon who in setting a date for a committee meeting says, “How about never?  Would that work for you?”  Is that the attitude you have toward your dissertation?

When you have a big project—whether it’s writing a dissertation or a book or planning a big event—do you throw all of your energy and time into resisting the work? 

You resist by putting the hard, anxiety-producing work second and putting the most ordinary task first, and letting it drag on.  Or you may do something that does not need to be done right away, such as editing an announcement or a committee report or writing a letter of recommendation.

When you’ve finished that straightforward, undemanding but time-consuming task, you then think that you should celebrate because you finished something.  And of course after you celebrate, you don’t feel like diving right back into another project, the hard job, the work that you’ve been avoiding.

You’re never going to make headway on the important work by putting it second or by saying to yourself “How about never?” 

You’ll never make progress until you surrender to it. 

Just give yourself over to it—no holding back.  If you don’t let your big project take precedence, it will never get done.

And never means never.  Will that work for you?

Procrastination is the topic in my upcoming e-newsletter “Smart Tips.” I’m also offering a special bonus that you could use.  Go to www.nancywhichard.com to register. 

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC.

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An ABD student wrote to me about her advisor’s generous rewriting of the dissertation text.  According to the student, the advisor doesn’t change the thought, only the language.  

The ABD student recognizes that the advisor’s writing is superior to her own, Her question is if the advisor has rewritten a lot of the language of the dissertation, is the ABD student’s dissertation still her own? And is this a common happenstance?
 
I agree that this advisor is amazingly generous and that the student is incredibly lucky to have such a responsive advisor.  I’ve had many clients who complain that their advisors mark up their drafts with little more than where to put commas.

The two or so clients whose advisors did some rewriting were glad to have the rewritten text.  In fact, when, down the road, one of those clients started to feel lost, I suggested that he go back and read what his advisor had written.  There was much to be learned in the advisor’s writing.  Not the least of which was the confidence in the student and the interest in the student’s topic that the rewriting suggested.

As might be expected, my clients also weren’t sure if they could use the text written by the advisors as their own, and so one of them bravely asked.  The advisor said yes. (I think the advisor assumed his language would be adopted.) If this is your problem, please ask the advisor if you can use the language as written.
 
If your advisor replaces your language with hers, I can see that you might feel your revision process is truncated.  It might even raise questions in your mind about how you can learn to write if your process is limited in this way. As for how you can best learn to write academic discourse, you can learn by writing and rewriting and rewriting again—at the request of your advisor—but the down side might be that you would feel anxious and uncertain in trying to interpret what the advisor actually wanted you to do. 

Another way to improve your skill as an academic writer would be to follow the model offered to you by your advisor.  Analyze her discourse—her use of words, her sentence structure, the argument.  Put your text side by side with hers and look for the specific differences.

The dissertation is more about learning than it is about producing a completely original work or an amazing contribution to your field. 

Some of my clients have procrastinated submitting early drafts to the advisor because they know they can’t write as well as the advisor.  Well, duh! Advisors are tenured, published, and have been through this writing and rewriting and editing process umpteen times.  Their use of language shows what they’ve learned. 

If you would rather your advisor give you more open-ended questions, such as “What do you mean here?” you can always ask for that kind of response.  If you have a good relationship, she will most likely give you what you ask for.  It will take a lot of courage to say that you’d prefer to use your own language, but if it’s important to you, speak up.

I would be curious why an advisor might be so generous as to rewrite part of the student’s text.  It would be interesting to have a discussion with the advisor about her style of responding to writing.  I’ll bet she’s trying to give you something that no one ever gave her — specific examples on how a certain sentence/idea/paragraph could be better stated.

Readers, if you have a thought you’d like to share on this topic, I’d be delighted to hear from you. 

In addition, if you are one of those people who procrastinate on sending a draft to your advisor because the draft isn’t perfect, I’d like to hear about that, too.  Procrastination is the #1 problem among dissertation writers.
 
Last month, in my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” I wrote on “Has Procrastination Got a Hold on You?”

In the coming issue of “Smart Tips” I follow up with “What’s It Going to Take to Become a Recovering Procrastinator?”

If you haven’t registered for the newsletter, please go to my website at www.nancywhichard.com and sign up. I’m sending the new issue of “Smart Tips” out within a few days.

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S. The next issue of my e-newsletter “Smart Tips” will not only feature an article on procrastination, but will also offer you a new bonus that you won’t want to miss.  Sign up at www.nancywhichard.com.

 
Copyright 2008 by Nancy Whichard and NWCoaching.
All Rights Reserved. This blog may not be reproduced in
whole or in part in any form without attribution to Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC

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Even though you may have a stated intention of working on your dissertation and making steady progress, you do everything and anything to sabotage yourself.  Could this be you?

If  this sounds familiar, read on.

A dissertation client is having great trouble moving forward.  Every week when we talk, there’s been another obstacle which has kept her from meeting the weekly goal. 

What gets in her way is that she discounts all of the success she’s had that got her to where she is now.  From what she has told me, I know that for ten years she has been moving ahead in her academic life, but she routinely discounts any academic accomplishment or even the stamina that it’s taken for her to keep on this difficult path. 

She’s doing all-or-nothing thinking. 

Because she doesn’t have her PhD, none of the work along the way matters.  She made it through her qualifying papers, made it through 3 or 4 years of courses, got her master’s, and all the time has continued to work in a demanding job.

But none of it matters. 

She understands intellectually how a person can dismiss past success, but she thinks she doesn’t dismiss it because she intellectually understands how a person could do this.  But she does it. 

She continues to distort her experience.

Without acknowledging how hard she’s worked and how that work has brought success, she makes it incredibly difficult to make steady progress toward her PhD.

Giving yourself credit for each success, no matter how small, helps you gain momentum and ultimately move into flow.  If you distort your experience, you very likely will make procrastination the usual approach to your daily work. With procrastination your first response, you waste time and energy. 

Your work is hard enough without handicapping yourself. 

How about making a list of your successes?  Want to share them?  I’d love to hear what you conveniently forget about yourself.

To your best!

Nancy
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

P.S. Read more about procrastination in my newsletter Smart Tips. Go to www.nancywhichard.com to sign up.

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You’ve been working hard on your dissertation this summer, honing your process, becoming surer of your argument, and thinking about the end. And the end is definitely in sight.  Yay!!

A couple of clients who have just gone through an unexpectedly bumpy patch right toward the end of their work made a suggestion to pass on.  They said, “Keep your eye out for complacency!”

When your work seems to be coming together, complacency can creep in, sabotaging your momentum. 

The complacency gremlin will encourage you to take a couple of mornings off or to start later than usual.  It will egg you on, pushing you to open a couple of emails and then a couple more. 

You’ve worked hard to put structures in place to support you.  Don’t let them slip and slide and let you down.

3 Strategies to Block Complacency:

1.  Most writers eventually come around to thinking that mornings are when they do their best writing.  If you have found success during the morning hours, be absolutely faithful to your morning routine now.  No excuses.

2.  Do not open your email before you begin to work—go to your document, open it, and jump in.  Don’t read even one email before you’ve put in your time writing.

3.  Watch for the urge to take a break when the writing is going well.  When you’re feeling in flow or starting to feel productive, don’t take a break.  See complacency for what it is—self-sabotage.  And dissertation sabotage can happen at any time.
 
One client says that when she starts to feel complacency creeping in, she tells herself, “Don’t even think about breaking.  Work for an hour, and then we’ll talk about it.”

Sounds like that might work! Be vigilant; be tough.

Have you felt complacency sneaking up on you?  I’d love to hear how you’ve handled it.

I also hope you’ve subscribed to my newsletter.  If you haven’t already done so, sign up for Smart Tips at www.nancywhichard.com.

Until next time,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, PhD, PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
nancy@nancywhichard.com

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This morning as I was reading a paragraph here and there in Newsweek, I swear I saw the words “put off finishing his dissertation” rise off the page in 3-inch-tall block letters, or so it seemed. 

Procrastinating on one’s dissertation isn’t unusual, but to get your name in Newsweek because what you’re doing to procrastinate is so important is unusual.
 
The person in question, theology graduate student Alastair Haines, says he has joined the Wiki Bible Project (http://www.newsweek.com/id/141516) as a way to put off finishing his dissertation. 

The 22 project contributors are creating “an original open content translation of the Bible’s source texts,” which number about 30,000.  It sounds like exciting work to have a hand in translating texts that have ruled the lives of so many people over the centuries, as well as to be part of such a controversial undertaking.  Some biblical scholars say the project could produce an “inaccurate, bias-filled mess.”  What theology graduate student wouldn’t want to go toe-to-toe with biblical scholars?

“Working on the Wiki Bible Project as a way to put off finishing a dissertation” has to get this week’s award for best excuse for Procrastinating on My Dissertation. 

When most of us procrastinate, we aren’t having nearly as much fun as this Wiki contributor.  Most ABD’s that I know would gladly clean toilets instead of writing their diss. And we certainly don’t get our names in Newsweek for what we’re doing instead of writing.

If you’re going to procrastinate on writing your diss, then make what you do instead be the most fun you could possibly imagine. 
 
Even though I am not writing a dissertation, I still allow time-wasting, boring tasks assume such grandiose proportions that they consume whatever discretionary time I had for writing.
 
I recently discovered a novel way to procrastinate.  I’ve started cleaning the walls of my upstairs hallway, but the incentive is what I use as the cleaner. Recently a cabinetmaker told me about magic eraser cleaning pads.  You can clean your walls with the help of a magic sponge and some water. Who would have guessed? So now I sabotage my plans to write by using the amazing eraser sponge to clean that wall, which, not coincidentally, is directly across the hall from where I should be writing at my computer.

I’ve heard many people rationalize and say that when they’re procrastinating they’re actually doing valuable work and that they aren’t wasting time.  I’m skeptical.  I know how easy it is to get carried away. In fact, I’m a case in point.  I’ve gone beyond cleaning that one wall.  I’m starting to move down the stairway now– there are lots of marks on that stairway wall. I’m too engaged in this project to see it just as a bit of cleaning.  I know myself too well and self-regulation is not a top strength. The task that had been something to do during a writing break has taken on a life of its own. 

I need to regroup!

How do you procrastinate?  I’d love to hear from recovering procrastinators.  What do you do to keep on track with your dissertation?

Write today–

Nancy

nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

 

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If you’re like me, you don’t have uninterrupted time for writing.

Maybe you work full time in a demanding job or work two demanding part-time jobs or you take care of your children.

And when you get to the point when you do have time to write, you’re exhausted.  Just brain dead.

And that, of course, is the problem.  Waiting until we think we have time to write.

I work with writers from all over the world, and whether the client is in Germany or Norway or Seattle, Washington, a common problem for all, myself included, is that we procrastinate.

I can’t count the times that dissertation clients and other writers have told me that they do their best writing first thing in the morning. And I can’t tell you how many times clients have told me how they let early morning time get away from them.

 Let me tell you about two people for whom writing is an important part of their jobs.

Both people procrastinate—neither is perfect.

Both have others depending on them.  Their writing matters.

One person, whom I’ll call Tom, procrastinates until it hurts—hurts him and hurts those around him.

He lets the writing back up until at times he hides out and avoids others. Or other times, he will become very engrossed in a new project, in which writing plays a smaller role.  The new project is always important and interesting.  But when the writing does not get done, there are major repercussions for himself and those around him.

The second person, whom I’ll call Tom, too, or Tom 2, is clearly anxious about the writing he needs to do.  Like Tom the first, Tom 2 is a good writer, but he also lets the writing stack up.  He has many responsibilities in his job and at home.  But somewhere along the way, Tom 2 learned to prioritize.  He learned to do the most urgent and important work early on, maybe not first, because he, too (he is Tom 2, you know), procrastinates.  But not only is he well aware that he is procrastinating, but he also feels deeply that others matter.  If he’s holding up other people, it’s obvious how bad he feels.  He often apologizes

But he doesn’t walk away from the work entirely. 

You can almost see him getting up the courage and motivation (my grandmother would say he was “getting up steam”) to jump in.

He often goes to quiet places during the days he’s not required to be at work in order to make the needed commitment to the writing and to make a stab at the work

I think Tom 2 has little by little trained himself to be productive and to write even when it makes him anxious.  Being aware of his priorities gives him strength and helps him focus.   He gives himself a little slack, and then he makes a right turn directly into the messy storm of writing.

I learn a lot by watching other writers.  Writing matters and others matter.

If you learn from observing other writers (and from your own experiences), I’d love to hear from you.

And I’d love to send you a copy of my fr*ee e-newsletter.  Go to my website (www.nwcoaching.com) and sign up for my Smart Tips.

Until next time!
Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
nancy@mentorcoach.com
www.nwcoaching.com
 

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When you’re going nowhere fast on your dissertation, it’s time to try something different.

In a blog post a few months ago I asked what bold action you would take for the sake of your writing (“What Bold Step Would You Take to Gain 2 Good Writing Days?”).  In today’s blog I want to share with you the story of someone bravely stepping out of the things-as-usual routine that had left her mired, stuck, and exhausted. 

For the past several months she had been feeling awful because she wasn’t meeting deadlines and she wasn’t able to move forward on her dissertation.

It was time to try something different.

She took a week off, found a good deal on a hotel about an hour away from her house, and packed up her dissertation notes and drafts. She had no expectation that during the week of vacation she would do any work on the diss. If she made progress, that would be lovely, but she was not going to consider herself a failure if she did nothing. 

Once in her hotel room, she spread her dissertation materials all over the entire room.  She sorted things into piles.  She could touch everything, look at it, and think about it.

Unlike her feelings about her diss over the past few months, she wasn’t anxious; she didn’t feel sick to her stomach.

As she told me later, she said to her diss spread over every surface in the room, “I’m just going to look at you.  You’re completely benign.  You’re not going to ruin my vacation.  I’m just going to be present with you.” 

When she got up the next day, she was curious about the different parts of her diss spread around the room, and she began reading, and making notes. She felt as if she were involved in an exciting little adventure

She stayed in the hotel for a few days.   Each morning, she felt very positive and looked forward to the day, wondering what she would accomplish.  She worked through the day, not even thinking about food until evening.

At week’s end, when it was time to pack everything up and leave, she was sad, but the experience had helped her to look more clearly at her project. 

It is a big project, she said, but it was all sitting there in that room.  There was nothing overwhelming about it.

The exciting adventure had helped her reframe her perspective.  Today she is choosing to view the diss as a manageable situation.  Her plan is to keep her vacation vibe going and to bring it into her space for writing in her house.

How about you? What brave investment are you willing to make for the sake of your writing?

I’d love to hear from you.

And I’d love to send you a copy of my fr*ee e-newsletter.  Go to my website (www.nwcoaching.com) and sign up for my Smart Tips.

Until next time!

Nancy

Your Dissertation Coach
nancy@mentorcoach.com
www.nwcoaching.com

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When my writing starts to come together, I am relieved, but I’m also anxious about what comes next. 

My first response to those feelings of relief and a fluttering of anxiety almost always is to flee and to eat. 

Be grateful if you don’t feel these urges.  Or pat yourself on the back if once you would have responded similarly, but you’ve now put in place better ways of coping.

It’s an ongoing struggle for me to hold at bay the twin urges for flight and food at such moments.
 
Here are 3 strategies I’ve found to be helpful for those times:

1) When I feel that flutter of anxiety, I take a slight flight.  If my Lizard Brain thinks that I’m in danger, as ridiculous as the idea that following through or achieving success might be dangerous, then it wants me to flee.  If I let my body have just a slight flight, I can ease my nerves.  You’d be surprised at the ease that can be gained from merely walking to the window. The resident Lizard Brain is soothed.

2)  While taking that slight flight, I also count to 19.  Counting slows my breathing and focuses me.  Plus, the counting reinforces the notion that this is only a slight flight, and I’ll return to my chair when I reach 19.

3) Since the urge to eat is just a variation on the urge to flee, I also delay eating by taking the slight flight and counting to 19. Putting off eating as an antidote to anxiety is crucial, as is the need to keep cookies and Fun-Sized Snickers and other such stuff out of my sight (and out of my house). 

It’s important for me not to use food to dull the anxiety.

Escaping or eating to feel better temporarily is self-sabotaging.  It gets me off track.  It’s a time thief.  And it makes me question my abilities and strengths. 

What my writing requires from me is perseverance, sticking with it when it’s going well or not so well.  And it’s my job to call on my character strengths and to leverage those strengths to make it easier to persevere. 

What does it take to be successful in my writing?
Perseverance, discipline, determination, mental toughness, and, most of all, courage.

How about you? What will it take for you to be successful?

I’d love to hear from you about this. 

And I’d love to send you a copy of my fr*ee e-newsletter.  Go to my website (www.nwcoaching.com) and sign up for my Smart Tips.

Until next time!

Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
nancy@mentorcoach.com

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