Now that Halloween is over, it hasn’t taken long for me to eat all of the left-over chocolate-covered raisins that the trick-or-treaters rejected in favor of Snickers.
Having all of these tidy little packages of candy in my house once again reminds me of the dangers of home. It’s just tempting fate to stay in your house along with Halloween candy.
It’s also tempting fate to try to write your dissertation at home sweet home.
If you insist on writing at home, write as soon as you get up, just you, your cup of coffee and your computer, but no email.
Where home sweet home often doesn’t work is if you’ve been teaching all morning, and you come home in the early afternoon with the hope of getting some writing done. Then what happens? I know that a select few of you are as disciplined as tigers. You rush in from work or teaching, sit down, bite off a chunk of research, and write ferociously for four hours and produce many pages.
But most people, coming home in the early or late afternoon from work, feel they’ve done their work for the day. If this is you, the couch and TV are likely more compelling than the dissertation.
If you want to write at home, but you can’t start a writing session first thing each day, one of my dissertation coaching clients has two great ideas:
1. Unplug your internet
2. Don’t immediately change out of your professional clothes when you get home from work
Unplugging your internet may sound severe, but eliminating temptation is smart.
And why stay in your uncomfortable work clothes after you get home? If you promise yourself that all you have to do is sit down and work for 45 minutes in those uncomfortable work clothes before changing, you may very well have rescued an otherwise doomed writing session. Isn’t getting started the hardest part?
Good luck!
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
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