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Archive for August, 2008

August, for many people writing dissertations, is the month of if-not-now-when?

Other responsibilities are on the horizon, but what can you do to make use of the time August offers you?  If you use the time you have now, you’ll very likely be controlling the space where you will be working and living later on.

1.  How to take control over your time and space —
How does your location affect how well you work?  Tom has the chance to talk with scholars who could give him the job he’s been dreaming about.  To prepare for this conversation, he has several papers written by those scholars.  Unfortunately, he has been doing more dreaming than reading.  The problem is that he’s sitting on the small balcony of his apartment, half-reading, half-daydreaming.  If there is anything you have control over, it’s where you are doing your work.  Go to the library.

2.  How to control the power others have over your time —
Draw boundaries.  Boundaries are a mental image to help you hold at bay those people who would use you. Drawing boundaries can make all of those people outside the boundary a bit fuzzy to you.  You just can’t see out there.  Inside the boundaries, you have space to expand and to grow.  Imagine yourself moving above and beyond the current situation. 

3.  This is the time to do your most important work.  Make sure that what you are doing will move you closer to your goal.

Eliminate distractions, draw boundaries, and focus on your work!  Write while there is time.

Have a great week!

Until next time,

Nancy
Your International Dissertation Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com

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Dissertation writers, professional writers and editors, bloggers–we all fight the good fight against email.

Seth Godin, famous marketing blogger, asks, “Do you spend your day responding and reacting to incoming all day… until the list is empty? “  He says that unlike the days when he could sort his mail in minutes the “old-fashioned way,” he ( and the rest of us, too) can now easily  “spend the whole day hitting ‘reply’.” Oddly, when we’re done, we feel we’ve taken care of important work.  He calls that the “Inbox Culture.”

Have you reached a breaking point with email?  A client says that she would open her messages every morning and before she knew it, an hour of her most productive writing time would be gone.  Sound familiar?

And even worse—after she had closed her email she had trouble focusing on her writing because she would still be distracted by the “the messages and the work attached to those messages.”

As a way to fight email and the so-called inbox culture, she is trying to write for at least four hours before even glancing at the names of people who have sent her messages.  In addition, she says she won’t read the emails until an hour each evening.

So far, so good, she says—and as a bonus, she moves through the email much faster, quickly responding when necessary and otherwise deleting.

How about you?  Have you known for a long time that email is sucking the life out of you?

Robbing you of peak writing time?  Robbing you of productivity?

Time’s a-wasting.  How about a pact?  Stuff your email into one hour a night—is it a deal?

I’d love to hear from you.  Let me know how one-hour-a-night emailing works for you.

And if you haven’t already done so, stop by www.nancywhichard.com to sign up for Smart Tips.

No time like the present–

Nancy

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

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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

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