Successful Writing Tips

Archive for the ‘take charge’ Category

How to Meet Your Writing Goals

Posted in academic, accountability, advisor, children, choice, deadline, demands, dissertation advisors, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, email, exercise, family, finishing the dissertation, focus, getting started, goals, grading, habit, perfectionism, perseverance, planning, productivity, reasons for not writing, relationships, research, restart writing, restarting, self-care, showing up, strategies, success, take charge, time management, time theft, writing schedule, writing to a deadline, writing, dissertation, tagged dissertation coach, dissertation writing, make time to write, meeting a deadline, meeting goals, planning to write, planning writing session, protect your time, schedule, showing up, Stephen Covey, time management, what's important in your writing life on April 23, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Time management matrix as described in Merrill and Covey 1994 book "First Things First," showing "quadrant two" items that are important but not urgent and so require greater attention for effective time management (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Not too long ago, when my adult son mentioned how busy his work and life have become,  my husband was reminded of an annual planning session he had attended at which a facilitator presented a workshop on how to organize your time. 

As my husband drew a diagram from that workshop, I realized that he was drawing time management guru Stephen Covey‘s famous matrix. 

 

Stephen Covey’s Matrix 

Stephen Covey groups the ways we spend our time into four quadrants:

 –1-important and urgent

–2-important and not urgent

–3-not important and urgent

–4-not important and not urgent

As my husband drew the diagram, he said, “The facilitator said you should attend immediately and with personal involvement to Quadrant I matters.” The facilitator’s words about urgent matters resonated with my husband because he always has more work than he can get done.  Everything is urgent.

 

Everything is urgent

In your life, as an academic, ABD, dissertator, professional writer—does that sound familiar? You’re grading papers, attending meetings, preparing classes or presentations, returning email, managing crises at home, and trying to keep up with all that keeps hitting you. As you rush frantically and lose sleep, you also try to engage in last-minute binge writing of your dissertation before the time you told your advisor you would be submitting your promised work.  

Not only had my husband remembered clearly what the facilitator said is assigned to Quadrant I– the urgent and important matters, but he also clearly remembered those matters in Quadrant IV.  The facilitator said that Quadrant IV contains matters that you could basically forget about or things headed for the “circular file.” In other contexts, Quadrant IV could include behaviors such as vegging out in front of the TV or hanging out at Facebook.

So that’s Quadrant I and IV.  What about Quadrant II?  Important but NOT urgent matters would go in Quadrant II. 

Not surprisingly, my husband said that had forgotten what the facilitator said specifically about Quadrants II.  That’s probably because my husband, like so many of us, has to focus on urgent matters. The stuff that never stops. 

 

What you need to meet your goals

What are the important matters contained in Quadrant II and why should we care?  Take a look at what matters are in Quadrant II:

–goal-setting

–planning

–building relationships

–exercising

–productivity

People who most often meet their goals do more planning, organizing, and anticipating. They work efficiently and productively, avoiding last-minute sprints in order to meet impending deadlines, and they honor goals of a healthy lifestyle and close relationships.

While you might be able to avoid some of the distractions and time-wasters of Quadrants III and IV, how do you ignore the unrelenting onslaught of urgent demands of Quadrant I so that you can spend more time with the important matters of Quadrant II?  

 

Controlling what’s urgent

Not everything is an emergency, and we can take steps to stay out-of-the-way of things that appear urgent. Whenever possible, avoid email, particularly before or during a writing session. Avoid such additions to your workload as more volunteering, carpooling, office projects when the work really isn’t your responsibility, and perfectionism that can lead to unwarranted revision and research on your writing project.

Let people know that you are turning off your email and phone during the time you are writing. That would be a bold, but empowering step, wouldn’t it?

 

10 tips that will move you closer to your writing goal

Here are more tips that will help you increase your focus on what is important and also help you move closer to your writing goal:

–Anticipate future demands and activities. Plan, plan, plan. 

–Make your schedule and stick to it.

–Plan do-able, timely deadlines which you meet.  Such a plan results in productivity.

–Prepare so that when you sit down to write, your subconscious has had time to work on the ideas.

–Include physical exercise in your life. (Check out previous blogs and upcoming blogs on the importance of exercise to your writing life.)

–Break out the outlines. If you don’t have an outline, make one. Have an outline in place to guide your writing session.

–Routinely, daily, go to a quiet place to write and to plan the next day’s writing.

–Set up an accountability factor. Ask your friends if you can mail them a chapter and then tell them when you will mail it.

–Email your coach with frequent updates on daily writing sessions.

–Keep an eye on productivity—it’s under your control.

It might be a small problem for you to push aside something seemingly urgent in order to plan and schedule writing sessions, but if you don’t do that, you’ll have the big problem of not producing text because you are running around as if your hair is on fire.

Your hair isn’t on fire.  Slow down, plan, and show up to write.

In the March issue of my newsletter Smart Tips for Writers, I wrote about Stephen Covey’s “Big Rocks” and how that strategy relates to your dissertation. Let me know if that issue never arrived in your inbox. If you aren’t signed up for my newsletter, you can take care of that at my website at www.nancywhichard.com.

I’d love to hear your ideas on urgent vs. important matters and how they impact your writing.

Best to 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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How Much Writing Did You Do Today? Track How You Are Spending Your Time

Posted in academic, accountability, boot camp, coaching, commitment, discipline, dissertation boot camp, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, getting started, mental toughness, planning, productivity, resources, self-discipline, Smart Tips, take charge, take stock, time, time management, tagged accountability, Doctorate, spend time on writing, Thelma and Louise, thesis, Time, track your time, use small chunks of time to write your dissertation, write your dissertation in the time available, Writer, writing on January 23, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Cover of Thelma & Louise

Perhaps what is true for one of my dissertation clients is also true for you.  She says that sometimes a day will pass, and she hasn’t done any writing.

How do you use your time?  How are you spending your time?

Do those two questions mean the same thing? It seems to me that we all use our time one way or another, but the word spending suggests the value of time and the limited nature of time.

I see in my mind’s eye Louise, in Thelma and Louise,  driving her Thunderbird convertible purposefully down the desert road, mentally calculating what she and Thelma need as she plots their getaway. Thelma is slumped in the passenger’s seat. “How much money do you have,” Louise asks. Thelma distractedly pulls a few bills from her billfold.

Just as Thelma starts to say $60, the wind rips a 20 dollar bill from the passive  Thelma, who aimlessly revises their resources downward to $40.

If you’re like Thelma and Louise, you need to plan ahead a bit more. It’s hard to find more time or money. As Louise says, “We’re going to need more.”

So how can you  determine how you are spending that valuable resource of time and where are you going to find more?

 One of my dissertation coaching clients is planning a course of action that you might also try. 

She has chosen to track how she is using her time each day. Specifically she is going to keep track of each block of 30 minutes in her day by recording her answers to the following:

1. Where am I going?

2. What am I doing?

3. How long does it take?

What are you doing that is so important?

She wants to determine how much of her time is already scheduled. Why does it seem that she is always going somewhere, rushing here or there? Why does the activity or the responsibility take so much time?

Where is the time that I am going to devote to my dissertation?

She will be able to see the chunks of time when she could be writing. She thinks she has time that is available for writing if only she looks closely at how she is living 30-minute segment of her day.

Then what?

That found time will then be scheduled for her dissertation work—written into her calendar– and she will show up for that scheduled writing. 

Try it yourself– Track how you are using your time. 

Use a legal pad or an appointment calendar. How many chunks of time do you have in any given day that you can lay claim to for writing?

Challenge yourself

Write your dissertation in the time you have available.

I’d love to hear from you. What free chunks of time can you find in your day once you actually look for them? Now what will it take to spend those chunks on writing?  Write your dissertation in the time that you have.

Let’s talk!

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC

Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach

http://www.dissertationbootcamp.net

http://www.usingyourstrengths.com

http://www.smarttipsforwriters.com

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To focus on your writing, get a cat

Posted in advice, boundaries, coaching, commitment, courage, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, distractions, flow, focus, mental toughness, self-discipline, start writing, take charge, trusting yourself, write more easily, tagged cat's effect on a writer, focus, Murial Spark, Publishing, trusting the process, writer's self-discipline, writing on November 21, 2010| 2 Comments »

Image by historic.brussels via Flickr

Can’t concentrate?  Having trouble getting into flow with your writing?  Get a cat!

Advice to writers can come from the most interesting places.  An unexpected, but most entertaining source of advice is A Far Cry from Kensington, a novel by British writer Muriel Spark. 

A Far Cry takes place in 1954 London.  Mrs. Hawkins, the narrator, has a job in publishing.  And yes, it is she who offers the acutely insightful advice that if you can’t concentrate, get a cat.

In a hilarious dinner party scene, Mrs. Hawkins is seated by a red-faced, watery-eyed Brigadier, who, in response to her question about his having had an interesting life, replies, “Could write a book.”  He hasn’t because he hasn’t been able to concentrate.  

Mrs. Hawkins tells him that to concentrate, “you need a cat”:

Alone with a cat in the room where you work . . . the cat will invariably get up on your desk and settle placidly under the desk lamp.  .  .  .  The cat will settle down and be serene, with a serenity that passes all understanding.  And the tranquility of the cat will gradually come to affect you sitting there at your desk, so that all the excitable qualities that impede your concentration compose themselves and give your mind back the self-command it has lost. 

Spark is saying in her engaging style that to regain the self-discipline and focus you need to write, let go of the negative, chattering voices in your mind and all of the endless responsibilities calling to you. 

Occasionally my dissertation coaching clients speak of the quieting influence of their pets.

Unfortunately, in Spark’s novel, the narrator informs us that  the Brigadier’s writing fails.  Mrs. Hawkins says,  “I had advised him only that a cat helps concentration, not that the cat writes the book for you.”

Mrs. Hawkins freely gives her wise advice to other would-be writers. She tells writers to have in mind a particular person who will be your reader.  

What you have to say will come out more spontaneously and honestly than if you are thinking of numerous readers.  Before starting . . .  rehearse in your mind what you are going to tell . . . . But don’t rehearse too much, the story will develop as you go along.

Working toward discovery and trusting a process –both in life and in writing– are strong themes in the book.

Life isn’t fair, of course, and trusting the process does not always lead to exemplary writing or to published works, as evidenced by the novel’s depiction of many questionable publishers and of less than stellar writers who do get published.

But we can take pleasure in Muriel Spark’s esteem for honest, hard-working writers, as well as her undisguised contempt for the undeserving who sometimes receive  their just rewards.

As a writer, have you found good or interesting advice from an unexpected source?  I would love to hear from you.

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach

www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com

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Make the paradigm shift: See yourself as a writer

Posted in academic, accountability, choice, commitment, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, following through, habit, mental toughness, perseverance, productivity, self-discipline, showing up, take charge, time management, writing schedule, writing, dissertation, tagged do what you say you’re going to do, finding time to do dissertation, seeing yourself as a writer, Teaching, writing on September 19, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Image by freizeitforum-aachen.de via Flickr

Are you one of the millions of instructors or professors back in the classroom this September?

Are you also trying to meet a writing goal?

So how are you doing?  Keeping all of the balls in the air?

Maybe you’re like some of my coaching clients who have returned to their fall teaching jobs and feel thrown back on their heels, staring at all that is facing them.

Are you trying to find time just to do the required stuff—preparing for class, grading, meeting with students? How do you fit in those unexpected duties?  More students in your classes than you had expected?  Maybe you have that student with the special problem that you feel compelled to take on.  Or the lab that wasn’t prepared. Or the team-teaching that seems to lack a team.

Or maybe you just forgot over the summer how hard it is to teach and to do anything else at all.

And what is the first thing that you let go?  We all know the secret word—Writing!

This year, how can you think of yourself as a writer?  Would that be a paradigm shift for you?  A whole new reality?

Here’s a challenge for you–Make this the year to see your day through the lens of you as a writer.

That doesn’t mean that you spend more time writing than doing anything else in your day.  Nor does it mean that you spend the same amount of time writing every day or (and I’ll go to hell for saying this) that you even write every day.

One client started her teaching year with a plan.

Even though she has a heavy teaching load, she plans to work on her dissertation early each morning. Her teaching day starts mid-morning, and so she will give the first 2 hours of her day to her writing.  She needs a goal, and that’s her goal.  She will also oversee how well she is doing to meet her goal, what she can do to manage that goal, and whether the goal needs to be tweaked.

Another of my writing clients might seem to you that time-wise she’s not focusing on her writing.  But she, too, has a plan.

She also has a heavy teaching schedule and a killer commute, plus a family.  She is at a different place in her career as an academic writer than my first client.  She has finished her dissertation and is transforming her research into journal articles.  She is doing her best to maintain the writing habits she learned while writing her dissertation.  She can’t write first thing because she has a young daughter to mother, a dog to walk, and that killer commute, but she also had all of that when she was writing her dissertation.   What she learned while she was writing her dissertation was to use small chunks of time for her writing.

She never turned up her nose at writing 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there during a day.  They add up!

While she sets as a goal smaller time units than my first client, she is a stickler for meeting her goal.  Some weeks she sets as a goal 2 hours for the week.  She also sets as goals some time for exercise, and, like me, she finds her mind turning to her writing as she exercises.  She anticipates getting in a fast 20- minutes of writing as soon as she finishes running or swimming or walking.

If you plan to write 2 hours each week,  surprise yourself by being amazingly productive during those two hours. My client is proof of what can be accomplished by that type of schedule.  She has had two articles accepted for publication this year.

If you teach, the demands on you are enormous, but put writing into your schedule.  It isn’t how much time, but how dedicated you are to keeping the time that you say you will write.

See yourself as a writer, and then be that writer.  Make that paradigm shift.

Do what you say you’re going to do.

All good wishes,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
[email protected]
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com

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