How many people signed their holiday card to you by wishing you a joyful, peaceful and productive year?
When you read the word productive, did you wince, thinking that they had somehow emphasized it?
Regret and shame can do quite a number on you, making you want to slink behind the couch because you’re sure everyone knows how little progress you made on your dissertation in 2008.
Have you said to yourself that something has to change?
On the second day of January, one of my Dissertation Boot Camp clients told me that she had made a New Year’s Resolution that never again would she have her thesis hanging over her head during a holiday.
The holiday season now ending was the last time she would experience the guilt she felt as she worked on her thesis when she wanted to spend time with her family and alternately worried about her work when she was having family time.
She has committed to daily writing over the next two weeks in order to get a good start toward finishing her degree by July.
If she sticks with her plan of daily writing for two weeks, she will be well on her way to having a habit in place, a habit that replaces her resistance to writing.
If you want to be productive in 2009 but something has to change first, then make a sacrifice for the sake of you.
Do whatever you need to do, get whatever help you need, in order to show up to write each and every day for one to two weeks.
Working with someone—a buddy or a coach—adds accountability and will strengthen the habit.
Once you have a habit in place, you will be amazed at the change you see in yourself. Give it a try!
If change is what you want more of this year, then make it soon!
Happy New Year and here’s to a change in writing habits!
Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
www.nancywhichard.com