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Assess Your Dissertation Writing Habits and Make Some Changes: Time for Spring Cleaning

Posted in academic, accountability, choice, cleaning, coaching, courage, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, finishing the dissertation, following through, getting started, habit, housecleaning, mental toughness, perseverance, practice writing, productivity, re-group, re-start, regrouping, restart writing, restarting, self-deception, self-sabotage, showing up, start writing, take charge, take stock, time, time management, time theft, write more easily, writing, writing schedule, tagged , , , , , , , , , on March 24, 2010| Leave a Comment »

Change is happening in the Washington DC area, not just in Congress, but here in my backyard.  Spring is here.  Tulips are pushing their way above ground.   The trees are dropping all sorts of little colored pellets on my deck and front walk. 

The first days of Spring are a great time to assess your writing habits and consider how they are working for you or against you.  It’s an opportune time for you to consider where change in your writing process might help you. 

Time to clean house.

You’ve probably been down this road before, deciding to make a change but not putting any muscle into that decision.  However, there are positive strategies that can achieve lasting results.

Most of these involve capitalizing on the power of habit. 

In December 2008, I wrote a post in this space called “Make Getting Started on Your Writing Easier: Top 5 Reasons to Develop a No-Kidding, No-Fooling Daily Writing Habit.”

If you were fighting the dissertation battle then, 15 months ago, you may have read my “top 5 reasons for developing a solid, robust, no-kidding daily writing habit.”  And perhaps you would have made changes at that time.  Then these last 15 months might have been different.  Maybe you wouldn’t have continued to sabotage yourself and expend energy resisting writing rather than putting your energy into writing.  

What if you stopped making excuses now?  How about committing to  writing every day, even if only fifteen minutes a day?  Before you back away and begin again with the excuses, consider how writing every day, preferably at a scheduled time and maybe first thing in your day, would increase your productivity and, most importantly, would have you writing. 

Where do you need to exert control and spend your energy? What can you do to help yourself be mentally tough?  I’d love to hear from you. 

Enjoy the season.  How about a change?

Best to you,

Nancy

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

www.nancywhichard.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net
www.usingyourstrengths.com

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Have You Practiced Your Dissertation Writing Yet Today?

Posted in coaching, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, getting started, habit, perseverance, practice writing, restart writing, Smart Tips, start writing, tagged , , , , on September 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I have had the same piano tuner for years.  Each time he comes for the yearly tuning, he grumbles that he really should come twice a year but, nevertheless, my Yamaha, he proudly says, continues to hold its tune.  When he finishes, he triumphantly plays several measures and then grandly declares, “Your piano is now ready for your morning practice.”

When I urge my dissertation coaching clients to write daily, I often think of my piano tuner’s charming call to daily piano practice.

I encourage my clients to establish a writing habit, one that you do routinely as if it were any other kind of job, and to look at it as a practice that you do each day.  Recently a dissertation coaching client said, “I’ve found it useful to take your idea of a ‘writing practice (or daily writing habit)’ and think about it quite literally as a practice, that is, like practicing an instrument.  Thinking about writing in this way has helped me to release my perfectionist tendencies a bit, allowing me to see my mistakes as small things that will improve the more I ‘practice.’”

My dissertation coaching client has put into “practice” exactly what I had hoped she would, adopting a perspective that I think would help most writers. 

When you revise, you can work at  making better word choices or fixing problems, but during most writing sessions, the goal should be to follow a thought, expand an idea, and keep the writing going. For now, produce text. Everything is fixable later on.

Practicing your writing is like practicing the piano.  Put in the time each day, and before long, you’ll start to see (hear) the difference. 

Have you had your morning practice yet today?

Nancy

P.S.  Are you attempting to tame your perfectionist inner critic? You can change your way of thinking by changing your perspective.  I’d love to hear from you.

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

www.nancywhichard.com
www.smarttipsforwriters.com

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Make Getting Started on Your Writing Easier: Top 5 Reasons to Develop a No-Kidding, No-Fooling Daily Writing Habit

Posted in accountability, commitment, determination, discipline, dissertation coach, dissertation writing, distractions, getting started, isolated, isolation, mental toughness, momentum, procrastination, research, self-deception, self-sabotage, Smart Tips, take charge, time management, tagged , , , , , on December 29, 2008| 1 Comment »

What if writing each day on your dissertation was a habit?  What would you gain from that?

Do you know the power of habit?

Here are the top 5 reasons for developing a solid, robust, no-kidding daily writing habit:

1.  You would not lose time and energy fighting the internal battles of whether you would write today.

2.  Your writing would come easily to mind at random moments during the day, giving you the opportunity to have new ideas and to make new connections.

3.  You wouldn’t have to find time to write—the time would be there, available, ready-made, dedicated to your work.

4.  You would replace distraction and self-deception with a solid, reliable writing habit.

5.  You would be writing on your dissertation every day.

Too often when ABD’s are isolated, working alone and with little accountability to anyone, a daily writing habit is far from reality.

Just as often, newly minted PhD’s working in their first appointment have lost the writing momentum they once had and are now procrastinating on their own writing.  They think they have no time for their research projects, or they’re making up excuses not to write.  They may distract and even deceive themselves to keep from writing.

I’m putting together some strategies that should put a habit in place that will give you the muscle you need to push distractions and self-deceptions aside and start a new day in your writing life.

Many writers who have been part of dissertation boot camps have high praise for the results and give their experience rave reviews.

If you’re interested in a virtual boot camp, you might want to check out my website at www.nancywhichard.com or sign up for my free e-newsletter.  I have an article on boot camps in the next issue that will go out right away.  Sign up at www.nancywhichard.com.

I’d love to hear from you if you have some ideas or strategies that can help make writing each day a habit or if you’re interested in gaining an intense, daily writing habit.

Best wishes,

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

www.nancywhichard.com

 

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