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Archive for July, 2011

Five Steps to Re-start a Stalled Project

Posted in academic, accountability, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, fears, finishing the dissertation, following through, getting started, inertia, mental toughness, momentum, perseverance, planning, procrastination, productivity, re-group, re-start, regret, regrouping, restart writing, self-discipline, setbacks, showing up, staying in the moment, take charge, using your strengths, writing schedule, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

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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How Can a Dissertation Boot Camp Be like Flying?

Posted in accountability, boot camp, commitment, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, getting started, productivity, tagged , , , , , , on July 29, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Do you think if only I had nothing to distract me, nothing else to do but write, no choice but to write… then I’d write?

How about flying somewhere?

Whenever a dissertation coaching client tells me she’s flying somewhere—on a vacation or a business trip or to see her mom—I sit up a little straighter.

This is great, I say to myself.

While I wonder about the destination, my burning question is, “What will you do on the plane?”

The part leading up to flying isn’t fun. I’ll give you that, but flying gives you the opportunity to unplug, to see only what is immediately in front of you, and to feel almost invisible.

You have the great opportunity of bringing onboard only what you can work with for a specific amount of time.

It’s unlikely that anyone will bother you. You plan for no distractions.

You really could get something done in this nice chunk of time, when there’s nothing else to do but write.

Sort of like Dissertation Boot Camp? Or not?

Increasingly, universities are offering boot camps for graduate students to write their dissertations. Does the boot camp at your university give you the invisibility, no-distraction feel of a 4-hour flight?

In the past I’ve praised on-campus boot camps which have presentations or speakers, but I’ve been told by my clients that often the presentations aren’t all that helpful, even a waste of time.

I’ve heard about less than scintillating presentations or advertised programs being scuttled with last-minute stand-ins offering off-the-cuff remarks.

If a boot camp or a dissertation workshop has become a place where there’s a speaker who talks vaguely about writing rather than a place for writing, the organizers may want to re-think what they’re offering.

The dissertators that I talk with would like to add some input: Could boot camps advertise who will be speaking and the topic and length of the talk? Could ABD’s be asked in advance for questions on a topic so that the speaker will gear the talk toward what the audience needs?

Most of all, dissertators crave a place where they can write without interruption, a super-controlled environment: No chatting, no rustling about, no crackly bags or candy wrappers, no noise from a hallway or a bad AC. A place for writers to write that allows them to let go of internal obstacles and the myriad distractions in their usual writing settings.

I pattern the virtual Boot Camp that I offer on the features my clients tell me that they most appreciate about the workshops/boot camps they’ve attended. When they register for my Dissertation Boot Camp, dissertators know they are committing to do serious, sustained daily writing and that they will be accountable for doing what they say they will do.

The dissertator provides commitment, and I provide accountability. For example, I ask the boot camp client for a daily email after each writing session, outlining how the day’s goal was met and specifics on the next day’s goal.

Commitment/Accountability at some on-campus boot camps involve a charge of some kind or at least a deposit (like the one you give at a rental house to cover property damage). At some boot camps, the deposit check is shredded if the dissertator attends each writing session. Showing up is essential, and shredding a deposit check certainly underscores the importance of showing up.

A boot camp or dissertation workshop at its best provides an unplugged, quiet setting, conducive to a dissertator’s producing text. And the option of attending presentations that are worth the dissertator’s time.

What has been your experience with boot camps? What would make a boot camp really worth your while?

Here’s to producing text!

Nancy

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

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Mom’s in Maine – Marking Boundaries for Space to Write

Posted in balancing dissertation with work and family, boundaries, children, choice, commitment, determination, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, family, perseverance, planning, reasons for not writing, strategies, time management, writers' retreat, writing, writing schedule, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on July 22, 2011 | 2 Comments »

Are your children home on vacation from school?  And you’re trying to keep an eye on your children, as well as make headway on your writing project?

How’s that working for you?

During the school year, most academics teach and try to write.  Both teaching and writing are critical for an academic’s success and are important parts of the academic’s identity.  The plan is that once summer comes, the writing takes priority.

But no matter how carefully and hopefully they have planned, more than one of my dissertation and writing clients say that once summer comes, they lose their work identity.

It’s difficult to deal with the reality of summer. You go into summer with those unspoken hopes and expectations that you’ll make significant progress toward your writing goals. Then before long you realize that it isn’t going to be the way you think it’s supposed to be.

You had thought that with no papers to grade or classes to prepare for that you’d have long, quiet afternoons, or at least a couple of hours a day with no interruptions, when you could read and, more importantly, write.

And the writing is not happening.

It’s emotionally stressful, enough so that you may find yourself waking in the night and having trouble turning off your mind and getting back to sleep.

And even though you want to be writing, you get such comments from other parents as, “Oh, you’re not working this summer?”  Grrr…if only I could work, you think.

You need to write, and not only during those 15 minutes when you can hide in the bathroom or duck downstairs to the basement.

For years, I juggled teaching during the school year with being at home during the summer.

My fantasy was to have a summer cottage in Maine where I could go to write in the summer. 

I was never going to have a real cottage for writing, but I needed to make a space for writing—a cottage, if you will—inside my house.

My kids were old enough to be on their own in the house for an hour or two, and so I put a sign on my office door that read “Mom is in Maine.”

My kids thought it was great, or at least some of the time they thought it was o.k. And my “Mom is in Maine” sign wasn’t as forbidding as the “Keep Out” sign that they occasionally used on their bedroom doors.

For the most part, my sign worked. I had to keep an ear open for any sort of hubbub, or alternately, when it was too quiet.  But I made sure that my kids knew that this was not a one-time event, and that I expected everybody to work with me on this.

At least my daughter gave me her stamp of approval, including drawing pictures of light houses for me.

It wasn’t a solution, but it helped.

A client told me that she, too, had to be creative in order to write at home.  The door to her home office is framed in clear glass. Her preschool-aged children would routinely outrun the family au pair and bolt for the office door, where they would peer through the glass in an attempt to see their mother. To block their view, their mother put black curtains over the glass. Kids are smart, and so they weren’t completely deceived.  Occasionally, she would still hear their little voices, outside her door, saying, “I think she’s in there.”

All of these attempts to find a space and time to write remind me of a client’s great a-ha moment:  “I found I could not write my dissertation at the dining room table.”

Have you decided that you can’t write your dissertation at the dining room table?  Where do you go?  How do you juggle writing and taking care of your kids?

I’d love to hear from you.

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC

Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach

www.smarttipsforwriters.com

www.dissertationbootcamp.net

www.nancywhichard.com

nancy @ nancywhichard.com

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Vive la France!

Posted in dissertation coach, tagged , , on July 14, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Happy Bastille Day to my French friends and coaching clients. 

Vive la France!

Nancy

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

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What’s mental toughness got to do with it?

Posted in basketball, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, fears, mental toughness, motivation, perseverance, self-discipline, Steve Nash, take charge, zest, tagged , , , , on July 3, 2011 | Leave a Comment »

Many readers of Successful Writing Tips are looking for help with motivation.  And they also are interested in what mental toughness has to do with motivation.

As a dissertation writer, you may often find yourself in chaos, frustrated, with no easy way out.  You’re not alone.  Many other writers find themselves in a similar predicament.

A good way through such frustration is to rely on your mental toughness, your perseverance, and your determination.

Several years ago when I first wrote in this blog about mental toughness, I focused on Steve Nash, the NBA basketball player. Nash epitomizes mental toughness. A relatively small man in an aggressively physical sport, he has decided that he won’t let the rough play and attempts to intimidate bother him.  He remains unflappable.  I am sure that he likes the salary that comes with his job, but I don’t think a salary alone can give him the obvious zest and love for the game that he displays year after year.

 

 

I’m learning a lot about motivation and self-regulation from a class I’m taking from Heidi Grant Halvorson, PhD, a terrific teacher and also an expert in the study of goals and the science of motivation.

Mental toughness, like willpower and other forms of self-regulation, takes practice and grows stronger with use.  It can also be exhausted.  Halvorson says that you can “catch” mental toughness and self-control by thinking about or observing a person who has it in abundance.

Rather than feeling fearless and being motivated in part by their mental toughness, many ABD’s tell me that what motivates them is fear, particularly fear of failure.

If you don’t feel mentally tough now, can you imagine yourself becoming mentally tough as you write your dissertation?  I’d love to hear what you think.

In a future post I’ll write about two amazing people who exhibit incredible motivation, perseverance, and all-around mental toughness. I think you will be inspired by them as I am.

To my friends, family, and coaching clients in the U.S., Happy Fourth of July! 

I’m spending the holiday with some members of my family.  To those of you who I won’t see at this time, I hope to catch up with you soon. 

Warmly, 

Nancy 

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

 

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