All good wishes to my readers, coaching clients, and many friends both here at home and around the world for a very happy and productive 2010.
My best to you,
Nancy
Archive for December, 2009
Happy New Year!
Posted in happiness, New Year's Resolution, productivity, tagged Happy New Year! on December 31, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Be of Good Cheer on a Snowy Writing Day: 10 Tips for Holiday Eating
Posted in email, family, fun, happiness, joy, laugh, writing, writing breaks, tagged poking fun at holiday eating, snow days and goofy emails, snow days and writing on December 19, 2009 | 3 Comments »
Here on the East Coast of the U.S., it is snowing and snowing and blowing. There’s no sign of snow removal on my cul-de-sac, so it’s time to write. How about you? I hope you’re having a good writing day.
It’s also a time for goofy emails. A relative who can always make me laugh sent me the following 10 Tips for Holiday Eating.
1. Avoid carrot sticks. Anyone who puts carrots on a holiday buffet table knows nothing of the Holiday spirit. In fact, if you see carrots, leave immediately. Go next door, where they’re serving rum balls.
2. Drink as much eggnog as you can. And quickly. It’s rare. You cannot find it any other time of year but now. So drink up! Who cares that it has 10,000 calories in every sip? It’s not as if you’re going to turn into an eggnog-alcoholic or something. It’s a treat. Enjoy it. Have one for me. Have two. It’s later than you think. It’s Christmas!
3. If something comes with gravy, use it. That’s the whole point of gravy. Gravy does not stand alone. Pour it on. Make a volcano out of your mashed potatoes. Fill it with gravy. Eat the volcano. Repeat.
4. As for mashed potatoes, always ask if they’re made with skim milk or whole milk. If it’s skim, pass. Why bother? It’s like buying a sports car with an automatic transmission.
5. Do not have a snack before going to a party in an effort to control your eating. The whole point of going to a Holiday party is to eat other people’s food for free. Lots of it. Hello?
6. Under no circumstances should you exercise between now and New Year’s. You can do that in January when you have nothing else to do. This is the time for long naps, which you’ll need after circling the buffet table while carrying a twelve-pound plate of food and that vat of eggnog.
7. If you come across something really good at a buffet table, like frosted Christmas cookies in the shape and size of Santa, position yourself near them and don’t budge. Have as many as you can before becoming the center of attention. They’re like a beautiful pair of shoes. If you leave them behind, you’re never going to see them again.
8. Same for pies… Apple, Pumpkin, Mincemeat. Have a slice of each. Or if you don’t like mincemeat, have two apples and one pumpkin. Always have three. When else do you get to have more than one dessert? Columbus Day?
9. Did someone mention fruitcake? Granted, it’s loaded with the mandatory celebratory calories, but avoid it at all cost. I mean, have some standards.
10. One final tip: If you don’t feel terrible when you leave the party or get up from the table, you haven’t been paying attention. Re-read tips; start over, but hurry, January is just around the corner.
Have a great holiday season!
And if today is a snow day for you, make it also a great writing day.
Smile and write.
Cheers,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
7 Tips to Increase Writing Productivity Before the Holidays
Posted in academic, accountability, anxiety, boundaries, coaching, commitment, deadline, demands, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, getting started, goals, planning, productivity, realistic goals, showing up, start writing, time management, writing breaks, tagged hiring a dissertation coach, meeting a deadline, taking responsibility for your writing, writing productivity on December 14, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Trying to finish a dissertation draft or an article or a chunk of writing before the holidays?
Also trying to keep on top of your daily job or finish your grading?
And don’t even mention that you have kids.
Did you mention that you’re sleep-challenged?
And struggling with the real need to eat sweets just to cope?
Remember this:
You can be productive in your writing during the next couple of weeks.
1. Deadlines can boost your productivity. Deadlines can help you become efficient in your writing. An efficient writer focuses on the essential, does not go down rabbit holes, and writes to the point. Surprise yourself with what you can accomplish. And you will know that you’re finished (for now) with your draft/article/bit of writing because the deadline has arrived.
2. Choose your carrot—plan the reward. You most likely have holiday plans coming up. Make sure that your holiday plans include something you’re really looking forward to doing. At the end of each writing session, remind yourself of the reward you’ll have, just as soon as you make this deadline. Choose your carrot and wave it in front of your nose.
3. Control your anxiety by being responsible. Do what you said you are going to do.
4. Don’t even think about starting to write until you have slowed everything down inside your head and in your chest. To corral yourself into starting to write, first sit quietly at your desk. Push aside the non-essentials and the distractions.
5. Watch out for the sugar demons. Years ago when I wrote my master’s thesis, I’d keep a box of vanilla wafers nearby to help me get started on most writing sessions. Today I’d try to make better choices.
6. Commit to today’s writing session. As you start each writing session, focus on the goals for that one session. Commit to efficiency, to reasonable breaks during the session, and to accomplishing specific goals for today.
7. When the daily session ends, give yourself a cheer and leave that session with gratitude and gladness. Be glad you’re done for the day and be grateful for your day’s accomplishment.
You can be productive even during this time of the year if you have a reasonable deadline, you take responsibility for meeting it, and you keep in mind the reward that will follow.
Hiring a dissertation coach helps you take responsibility for your work. Give it some thought, o.k.?
Cheers,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
Writing: Choosing the uncertain act of baking French canelés or choosing to go down a cul-de-sac
Posted in courage, curiosity, determination, dissertation coach, reflection, start writing, writing, You Tube, tagged connection between reading and writing, courage to write, the reading life, the urge to write, the writing life on December 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What calls us to write? Feeling moved by an activity, an idea, a sentence, a word, a sunset, a dessert, and feeling compelled to explore it more deeply by writing about it?
Writing is like baking or eating a French dessert, a rich, consuming experience, a bit treacherous, full of uncertainty. A friend had made her favorite dessert– canelés –and, “to make things even better,” she was going to share it with me. Having never heard of canelés, I googled the word and what appeared was a wonderful blog with and a post about canelés, complete with a lovely picture of the small golden cakes. The writer wrote about the history of the dessert and her own memories of eating them in Paris and then her hassles with getting the temperature right in her oven when she baked them herself.
The sensual, lively post honored the special dessert and the writer’s experience in making it. In addition, it was a gift to me, the reader, second only to the delicious gift of canelés from my friend.
In the book The Uncommon Reader, the titular reader is the Queen of England who by happenstance begins to read voraciously late in life and to her surprise and delight, finds that reading changes her life.
Chasing her corgis near Windsor Castle, she comes upon a mobile library, and being the polite queen, she borrows a book. One book leads to another, and eventually she wondrously finds that she would rather read than do anything else.
From her reading, she starts to understand and take note of how others feel and live. She records observations in her notebook, something that raises concerns and suspicions among her staff. One of her advisors, an elderly man prone to not bathing, thought that writing might be preferable to reading because “in his experience writing seldom got done. It was a cul-de-sac.” He thought that she would then neither read nor write, a state he and the Queen’s people thought best fit the Queen.
People tending the Queen attributed her loss of attention to things ceremonial to a mental decline, so unusual it was for a Queen to read, to have interests, particularly interests that few others shared, and strangest of all, to write.
While reading took her to a wonderful new place in her life, only if she were to write a book would she feel her life complete. She gathered a determined courage in order to announce to others that her next step would be to write something significant.
The charming, fanciful book is a critique of a somewhat shallow group of leaders, but it is also a salute to the power of reading and writing.
The Queen in this story had never envisioned herself as a serious reader, no more than she imagined that she would become a writer. The portrait of this Queen shows someone bravely going down an uncertain road.
To write takes a willingness to do whatever is necessary in order to write.
Writing has its own special rewards and makes its own special demands. It needs tending, care, and a complex love.
It may be hard to call yourself a writer, or even to think of yourself as a writer when you struggle to make time for it or fit it into small crevices of your day. But sooner or later, you will honor what you do in those few, quiet moments each day and say, maybe just to yourself, “I’m a writer.” You are many things, but you most definitely are a writer and that identity was hard-won.
Write bravely!
Nancy
P.S. In honor of the Queen’s corgis, here’s a funny little film shared with me by a friend celebrating her own birthday.
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coachwww.nancywhichard.com
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
Boot Camp for Writers Will Motivate You and Boost Your Productivity
Posted in academic, accountability, coaching, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, momentum, motivation, productivity, writing, writing habit, tagged Boot Camp for Writers, dissertation boot camp, writers' retreat, writing habit, writing routine on December 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
What do you envision that would help you produce more text and jumpstart your motivation?
What about creating your own writer’s retreat?
Consider how a Boot Camp for Writers would get you back on track with your dissertation or your book or article and give a huge boost to your productivity.
If you have been a frequent reader of this blog, you know that Boot Camp is one of the services I offer writers who want to push aside distractions and excuses and write.
It came about from my seeing the cottages that many published writers had built for themselves just for the purpose of writing. I also dreamed of going to one of the writer’s retreats I often heard and read about.
To help me make headway on major writing projects, I fashioned my own kind of writer’s retreat, and it worked for me. How about you? Do you want to create your own writer’s retreat and form a daily writing habit?
If you want to make progress on your book, article, or dissertation, Boot Camp very likely may be what you’ve been looking for.
Boot Camp typically runs for two weeks. I help with the planning and daily accountability. At the end of the two-week Boot Camp, we usually continue the coaching so that you maintain the writing habit that Boot Camp gives you and to help you continue to be the productive writer that you want to be.
A recent client had this to say about Boot Camp:
I was really paralyzed with my dissertation, and to be frank, did not expect that anything would change. I just wanted to know myself that I had tried everything I could think of to get going again.
I was ecstatic when I started writing again just in the first few days of boot camp. I gradually became more confident when at the end of each day I had more material added to the chapter.
Interested? I’d love to hear from you.
All good wishes,
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net