Co-Working for Knowledge Workers

by Robyn Byrd

I'm firmly lodged in my third "stall" phase of writing the dissertation. First I stalled on the proposal; then I passed the defense after 6 months of rescheduling. Next I stalled on Chapter 2; but I pushed through that (plus an introduction) this summer by going on a distant, week-long retreat. With four chapters and all revisions remaining after a full year of being ABD...I need a plan. One that doesn't involved driving 900 miles away from everything.

How can I recreate that distraction free, work-friendly environment I found so far away? I didn't hide in the woods to work like Thoreau or Nietzsche, even though I was bunking at a house in the idyllic Catskills. Every day I drove to the nearest tiny town to work at a bookstore with a coffee shop, where many locals sat at large tables with reading lamps, and worked on writing, telecommuting, or whatever they needed to do. It was THE THING to get me working. I am hoping I can recreate this atmosphere through local co-working.

There are a few options for co-working, depending on where you live and how much cash you can spare.

Co-Work Office Spaces:

It sounds funny to pay to work, but you can and should do just that if you can afford it. Co-working office spaces provide everything you need: wi-fi, coffee, water, desk space, printers, pens, and so on. All you need to bring is a laptop! Some of these spaces are more collegiate than others. People arrive at set times and keep each other accountable, and even have the water cooler banter you'd expect in the corporate world. Other spaces are more quiet and people keep to themselves.

25N Coworking in Geneva, IL
photo courtesy 25N Coworking

Personally I would like to find a collegiate space where I can report on my days off as if it's a second job. Because technically, it is my second job, and I'm slacking pretty hard at it.

Visit co-work spaces near you to check out the culture and environment before signing up. (I'm doing that this month.) This can start as low as about $100 per month, which is a pittance if it means your dissertation is getting written. (Note the passive voice there after my months of stalling... what I mean to say is you are writing your dissertation.) Many co-working spaces also offer higher cost plans that include perqs like assigned desks and lockers for your books.

The only caveat I anticipate about these spaces is that I might not fit in. Dissertation writing is a weird thing!

Public Library Work Spaces:

"Public" is the key word here. The public library is an excellent place to work that offers many of the conveniences and tools of the university library -- but it gets you away from the university! Working in THAT building, the school's library, can be just as distracting and psychologically disadvantageous as working from home. Changing it up by using a space that is still conducive to knowledge work, yet is less familiar and full of people doing different sorts of things, can help you work.

Treat it like an appointment! Some libraries have dedicated study rooms that you can reserve for a couple of hours at no cost. Make a date of reserving one on your thesis work days. You'll have access to everything you need, and you can even search for a library with a coffee shop attached or nearby. The only cost associated with this is the commute, and you'll have to bring everything with you every time.

I have used public libraries this way ever since I started grad school, because the university library had lost its draw for me by then. They are very comfortable and welcoming.

A public library's shared work space, Naperville, IL

Monthly Meet-Ups:

Meeting once a month may not sound like much, but scheduling and hosting a meet-up of busy people probably can't happen more often than that. Though, if you think about it -- meeting once a month for a few dedicated hours means tens of hours of writing over a year! You could use these to get through a chapter's worth of work, if not more.

Several of my colleagues host informal meet-ups in their homes or in seminar rooms on campus. They keep each other accountable and share an enormous task that they all understand (the latter, you can't get from a co-work space).

If you are a student or a local to NIU, this office hosts a monthly meet-up in the Founders Memorial Library called Write Place, Write Time, on the second Thursday of every month from 6-9pm. This group is ONLY for thesis and dissertation writers (or those writing proposals for such), so again, you are in good company if you attend. Having others working alongside you on the same kinds of tasks keeps you focused and activates that inner spectator who will tell you to "get back to work!"

The Magical Coffee Shop:

The indispensable coffee bar at Inquiring Minds Bookstore
(The bookstore that saved me! In Saugerties, NY)

It's a long-shot, but if you can find a coffee shop that tolerates working loiterers, isn't too loud, and has enough work space for you, you've found magic! Coffee shops were the first modern co-work spaces in the early 2000s when the dot-com bubble created thousands of telecommuters and office-less entrepreneurs. While that bubble has burst, many coffee shop owners still expect to see a good amount of labor happening at their tables. By my calculations though, I think it might be the same cost (and a surer thing) to rent a space at a co-working office. Those lattes are expensive, and loud people can ruin all your plans.

Good Luck!

If you are a person who has an awesome home-office situation that works for you, that is great. Or if you can work anywhere without feeling distracted, that's cool too! But for many of us, we need to remove ourselves from the dirty floors, dirty dishes, and hungry kids, or from the over-familiarity of the university office and library, in order to focus. I wish I could have brought that perfect bookstore home from the Catskills with me, but I couldn't. So I need to recreate a work space that uses the power of other people's work and the effects of a consistent but impersonal environment. I don't know how else to get things done. I hope you can find what works for your work too!

Approaching the End

In composing your thesis or dissertation, you naturally move back and forth through all five phases of the writing process.  (For more on engaging each stage of that process, see this post from March 2017.)  In this entry, we revisit this theme but with an emphasis on the eventual product—your final monograph—and some tips and thoughts on one of its important components: the end.

The End First

No matter how many chapters it has, your thesis or dissertation is like any piece of writing in that it presents to the reader three broad parts: an introduction, a body, a conclusion.  In the Thesis Office, we generally suggest that you compose these parts in following order: chapters of the body first, conclusion next, introduction last.  Still, we acknowledge that during the long project you’ll likely need to veer slightly from this overall plan.  If you find yourself stuck on a certain chapter or part, you should move on to another that you can more actively and productively make progress on.  If you find yourself adequately ready to draft introductory material, so be it.

Yet consider the advantages of drafting your ending very early on—long before you start to tackle the introduction and even before you draft one or more chapters of the body.  Components of a successful final chapter include a brief summary of your key findings, a restatement of your conclusion(s), an assertion of your work’s significance, an acknowledgment of its shortcomings, and recommendations for related future research.  When you wrote your proposal, you likely envisioned how your project would address such concerns.  You may be able to draft a concluding chapter that tentatively covers them while—or shortly after—you complete necessary readings, lab experiments, interviews, field work, and/or data analysis.  Drafting an ending first can provide a firm foundation on which to build the rest of your document, particularly its beginning. 

The End in Reach…

As you head toward your finish line, keep in mind that, in the final analysis, no piece of writing is ever fully realized.  “Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,” said poet Alexander Pope back in the 18th century, “Thinks what ne’er was, nor is, nor e’er shall be.”  Granted, in the Thesis Office, where we generally work with writers in the final stages of document preparation, we do stress the need to adhere to the Grad School’s guidelines for formatting a thesis or dissertation at NIU.  Your finished document must be consistent and accurate in terms of form.  But we certainly recognize that any piece of writing varies in presentation of content.  So should you.  Ways to express ideas in writing are infinite.  In finalizing your overall written statement, try not to let the best be the enemy of the good.

The Writer’s End

On a related note, consider the various meanings behind the end to a piece of writing.  More than just the happy moment when you can confidently type “The End,” it can refer to the purpose you bring to the overall task.  Pope, the poet mentioned above, had this meaning in mind in these further lines in his versified “An Essay on Criticism”:

          In ev’ry work regard the writer’s end,
          Since none can compass more than they intend;
          And if the means be just, the conduct true,
          Applause, in spite of trivial faults, is due.

Thoughts worth keeping on board as you realize—and approach—your writing’s end.

Incidentally, in another sense this post is this blog writer’s end.  My assistantship in the Thesis Office ends on July 31.  Another graduate assistant will take my place in August and work with Carolyn and Robyn.  Best of luck to all, at any and all stages of your projects!

Fred Stark
Doctoral Candidate in English

Writing Outside: Healthy Now and for the Long Haul

Composing al fresco, Shabbona Lake State Park

In our last post, we shared several helpful ways to overcome the terror of the blank page and fill it with words.  Here we offer a somewhat related tip: often you can effectively recharge your writing by taking it outside.

Outside?

Absolutely.  In the fresh air, under natural light.  Preferably somewhere relatively open so that walls don’t separate you from the expanse of your natural surroundings.  At nearly any stage of the thesis or dissertation, you can benefit from spending quality time in open-air settings that are suitable for relaxing but also walking, running, and cycling.  You may question the idea of bringing anything related to your project to such locales.  Yet this approach can often be just what you and your writing need, especially during times your progress slows down or your energy runs low.

Why?

Introducing your writing to outdoor settings can restore its vigor and rebalance your approach to it.  The thesis or dissertation tends to keep you indoors and narrowly focused for long stretches.  Granted, most of the work requires a lot of desk time.  But too much of that can dull your body, mind, and ultimately your writing.  Although there are many ways to take breaks, spending time outside can be especially rejuvenating.  “In the woods, is perpetual youth.”  Ralph Waldo Emerson offered that statement in his 1836 essay Nature as a way of introducing perhaps his most celebrated image dealing with the individual and the outdoors: “Standing on the bare ground,—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space,—all mean egotism vanishes.  I become a transparent eye-ball; I am nothing; I see all.”  Fanciful interpretations aside, Emerson’s idea hints at what you and your project can gain through outdoor excursions.  Certainly there is much to see and appreciate in nature.  But getting out in it can also help you see and appreciate your growing text more clearly.

How?

Among the many approaches to taking writing outside, the following are useful for immediate gain as well as long-term success:

Meditation on the Move.  Here you explore your thoughts about your writing (or anything else) while traversing outdoor surroundings on foot or bicycle.  This approach is particularly helpful during drafting and revising stages, that is, while you’re building and/or rearranging ideas.  As noted in a previous blog post, the term for this approach comes from writer and long-distance-running enthusiast Joe Henderson.  Fundamental to it is the principle that time spent thinking and moving is more important than mere distance covered: thus, aiming to get outside for 1 to 2 hours is better than aiming to complete a certain number of laps or miles.  As you meditate on the move, it also helps to note beings and objects in the distance, such as birds on branches, fish under water (often quite visible in certain sections of the Kish south of the NIU campus), clumps of faraway trees, or clouds on the horizon.  In addition to helping you stretch your mind, such distance viewing can give a welcome break to your eyes, which already spend plenty of time narrowly focused on words, pages, and screens.

Outdoor Journaling.  During a walk, run, or ride, stopping to make notes in a journal can be a very rewarding practice.  A journal allows you to put down ideas on the spot that might not come back to you when you later return to your indoor writing.  Out in nature, a pen and a pad of paper can reassert their handiness as writing tools.  Natural light can reengage your interest in your handwriting as well as the thoughts you express in it.  Of course, instead of such quaint holdovers from yesteryear, you could bring along an electronic writing gizmo.  But since you’re going outside partly to break away from routine, why not also temporarily disengage from such devices?  When you get down to it, working with writing on a screen outdoors, no matter how much you move in or out of the shade or adjust brightness settings, tends to be cumbersome and is often counterproductive.
 
Write by Windows.  Luckily, even while still working indoors, you’re generally never too far from nature.  Thus, obviously the quickest way to engage your writing with the outside world is to move to a nearby window and open it.  (Yes, even in cold weather.)  Simply composing by an open window can remarkably restore connections with your broader surroundings and thus ultimately also help revivify your writing.  It can also encourage you to venture further afield and take up some of the tips detailed above.

Wishing you continued success with your project as we head into the summer, perhaps the best season for taking your writing outside!

Fear of the Blank Page

We've all been there. In fact, I was there until about three seconds ago.

No matter what kind of writing we do, whether we're consummate wordsmiths or grammar-phobic mathematicians, the blank page is, as one Modernist writer called it, "The face of fear." While we meet many other faces of fear along the way to completing a thesis or dissertation (procrastination, stalled research, critical advisors...), simply getting started causes its own unique terror. But there are several simple ways to overcome this phenomenon.

How to Vanquish the Blank Page

 1.  Put some words on it. This is the simplest way you can lessen the starkness of a white screen.  Something about empty white space instills fear in us, and of course it hurts our eyes too. Really: simply type out a working title. Format a table of contents or dash off an acknowledgements page. Or paste in your bibliography and begin to edit it.  Any of these little tasks not only fill the page with quite a bit of text, but it will get you comfortable with sitting with THAT document. (You know the one.)

2. Use a blue blocker, especially after sunset. Reducing the blue light in your life is good for your overall health, but it also decreases the whiteness (read: scariness!) of the screen. You can buy a physical screen blocker or download an app.

3. Trust that every little step leads to the next one.  You don't have to begin at the beginning! When I began the draft of my dissertation prospectus (so we're talking draft and prospectus... not even the real deal), I was terrified. So, I started with the low-hanging fruit. Did I know how to write a contextual history of the topic I'd barely begun to research? No. Did I even know what methodology I would use? No. So, I began by pasting in my bibliography, cleaning it up, and formatting it. I learned from that exercise which sources were most important to me. Then I was able to write a methodology (i.e. which literary texts I would research and using which sources).  Once I did that, I was homed in on a topic, and better suited to write the introductory paragraphs of the proposal.  And, if I had had to write a literature review, I wouldn't have been able to do that until I'd read everything for the rest of the proposal. Every simple task teaches you something that helps with the harder tasks.

4. Type up your notes. You've already written or typed out ideas, observations, and reactions as you read or researched. Paste those ideas into an outline. The outline can be loose! Whenever you write a first draft, it's just a draft. You can make it pretty later.  Seeing all your thoughts in one place, and connecting them with the tissue of a paper-structure (however tentative it may be) gives you a framework for imagining your paper. 

5. Actually use your imagination. True story: When writing up prospective chapter outlines in my proposal, I asked my advisor, "So, I just imagine the chapter I hope to have written and describe it? Like I'm describing the best chapter I can imagine?" Yes, she said.  Use your right brain to power through those crippling left brain moments. At some point you have to make your imaginary dissertation into reality (and edit the unicorns out of Chapter 2...), but visualizing it helps make it happen. 

These are the tricks I'm currently using to make my dissertation happen.  What frightens you about writing? And how do you find ways to overcome the fear of getting started?

Staying in Love with Your Thesis or Dissertation

Exams passed, proposal approved, and you happily move forward with your writing project.  The growing relationship between you and your significant document draws on several forces, not least passion and devotion.  For some writers, these forces never waver and may even increase over time.  Yet other writers can face weary stretches due to a fading of that initial spark.  How does it happen?  How can writers stay enthralled with their thesis or dissertation?  This post mainly goes out to those of you who ponder such questions.  But it also offers helpful bits even to those convinced from the outset that they will blissfully go the distance—and those thrilled to be nearing their project’s final stages.    

Prime Factors Behind Burnout

Waning enthusiasm over the course of such a long undertaking can result from many things.  You deal with certain matters beyond your control, such as outside commitments to work or family, schedules of your committee, or availability of resources for research, experiments, or data analysis.  But most important are your own contributing thoughts and emotions, internal matters that can press acutely but that you can likely address more readily.  Such as:

Doubts about your progress.  Uncertainties about the development of your lengthy document can crop up during writing slumps and delays.  You may also harbor doubts while waiting for feedback on chapters from your readers—or, after receiving feedback, while acting on requests for changes or revisions, major and minor. 

Concerns that what you’re doing is trivial.  Such concerns partner with the so-called imposter syndrome.  They may cause you to reconsider the theory or methodology you’re applying to your endeavor.  You may ponder tweaking your approach, revisiting your proposal, or even stripping away at the foundations of the entire affair.

Temptations to pull the plug.  These can accompany outbursts like “I’m sick and tired of this whole thing.”  Probably not the exact words of any contemporary American grad student, and most likely not always true about all parts of the undertaking.  For example, in the case of my dissertation, the literary texts I’m writing about are, to me, endlessly fascinating and enjoyable.  But let’s face it: even re-examining stuff you like can eventually become draining.  Outside the context of language and literary research, important supporting tasks like tabulating results, running statistical tests, or transcribing interviews can each get tedious.  Any project requiring long stretches of deep thought, creativity, intense focus, and adherence to standards and guidelines inevitably leads to exhaustion.

Some Solutions

OK, so what to do about all this?  Among the many possible courses of action, the following three seem eminently achievable:

Revisit work that brought you to your project.  Look back at previous studies or research relevant to your current doings—or at things not directly related to them.  This experience may help remind you of what drew you to your project in the first place or point out approaches to it you may not have considered yet.

Talk about your project.  Although your ultimate aim is to arrange your ideas in writing, talking them over with others can help you maintain momentum and flow, rediscover what excites you about your project, and see what others find interesting in it.  The first person to turn to is your director, who knows your project well but is still one step removed from the composition process and, therefore, able to rekindle your sense of its strengths and significance.  Certainly you can also approach your committee readers for similar feedback.  Friends and family members can be good sounding boards, even if they’ve already heard a lot from you about your various compositional ups and downs.  Also consider the benefits of sharing your project’s aims with new acquaintances in your department, across campus, and at academic conferences.  I recently traveled to a large national conference, where I presented a portion of my dissertation research, attended several panels on topics relevant to it, and took in few that were distantly related.  The trip was a brief but helpful break from the writing.  It gave me welcome chances to meet and talk about what I’m doing with grad students and faculty from other institutions.  I came back refreshed and reenergized.    

Take regular breaks.  Needed diversions from your largely indoor endeavor should be regular and clearly distinguished from your main tasks at hand.  Getting outside, especially now that the weather is turning sunnier and warmer, can do wonders for your writing, thinking, and overall enthusiasm for your project.  Such sessions of “meditation on the move,” a term writer and runner Joe Henderson has applied to recreational long-distance running, will be explored in a future post on taking your writing outside.  Look for it in the coming weeks.  Until then, happy writing!     

Meditation on the Move, Southwest of the NIU Campus

Writing Happens Step by Step, Day by Day

“So…how’s that writing coming along?”  It seems the longer you’re engaged in your project, the more often this question—or one like it—finds a way into conversations with colleagues, friends, and family.  For insights on writing progress and occasional writing delays, below we share a few sources of wisdom from a little beyond the well-traveled paths.
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“Avoidant Syndrome”?
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Writers sometimes hit snags.  Perhaps you find yourself lingering over getting a part of your project started—or, even after starting on it, getting stuck and staying that way for a noticeable while.  Are you avoiding pressing tasks at hand?  Maybe.  But not all writing delays simply boil down to avoidance.  Writing can slow or come to a stop due to multiple factors, some beyond the writer’s control.  Yet if you experience a lengthy writing block that feels closely bound to thoughts of dodging criticism or rejection of your work, perhaps you’re flirting with what some call The Avoidant Syndrome.

I’m adapting the above terms and ideas, by the way, not so much from experience as from information about writing stoppage found on the detailed Website of A.R.T.S. Anonymous, an organization I hadn’t heard of until very recently.  As you might guess from their name, they’re a support group for creative people modeled on organizations that guide members as they follow a twelve-step program to recovery—the acronym in their name stands for Artists Recovering through the Twelve Steps.  OK, quick disclaimer.  My aim here is not to promote or question A.R.T.S. Anonymous (or any similar twelve-step programs).  Instead, I want to point out some of the principles that inform the way this support group treats the creative process and creative blocks, which share a few things in common with the writing process and writing blocks.  These principles can be of some use to anyone working toward completing a thesis or dissertation, perhaps the longest and most vexing writing project a grad student may ever face.
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Useful Insights
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Process, Not Product:  A.R.T.S. Anonymous outlines a path toward creative success in their list of Twelve Talents for a Good Life.  Item 11 in the list stresses that the creative process itself—rather than the product eventually created—is the artist’s (or writer’s) most valuable reward.  Useful for writers of all stripes, this principle is especially helpful for writers in the final composing phases of a master’s or doctoral program.  One of the biggest reasons such writers sometimes experience stoppages may be that the aimed-for product is so highly esteemed.  The thesis or dissertation is a mark of academic distinction that propels its author (you) through the beginning stages of the post-degree career.  It’s hard not to contemplate that weighty fact as you work on your project.  But heeding the principle of process over product healthily encourages you to defer such reflection until the most appropriate moments, which likely come after, not before, the process of writing the whole thing is complete.  

Setting Goals: In guidelines they provide for their initial meetings, A.R.T.S. Anonymous suggests that participating creators draw up a simple plan of tasks with projected completion dates.  The list they have in mind should be structured something like this:
Task 1 ______________  To be completed by ______________
Task 2 _____________    To be completed by ______________, etc.
Such a scheme is commonsensical and calls to mind the project-based angle on completing the thesis or dissertation, which this blog touched on last November in a review of the book Writing the Dissertation: A Systematic Approach.  Yet two bits of advice stand out in the A.R.T.S. Anonymous view on goal-setting: (1) you do need to jot down a projected completion date, but then (2) you shouldn’t feel pressure to complete the tasks in the order you list them or on the exact date you set.  At first glance, these tips seem contradictory, but they mesh with their process-over-product principle.  The essential message of A.R.T.S. Anonymous, once again, is that you must constantly engage in your creative endeavor.  Process is primary.  Time taken and final product are secondary concerns.  It’s a message that can certainly be of help to some of you in the thick of writing a thesis or dissertation. 

Daily Five Minutes:  A.R.T.S. Anonymous calls this 5 Alive, and it’s fundamental to their program.  The idea behind this potentially transforming practice is simple: devote five full minutes each day to your project.  Consider how just five minutes per day gradually adds up: after one week, you’ve put in 35 minutes, and after one month, nearly 2 1/2 hours.  Yet surely that short daily session can easily turn into a longer one, leading to more productive weeks and months.  And that’s the idea.  If you commit to a firm but manageable daily schedule, you’ll not only stay productive but often find yourself exceeding original expectations for your progress.  Writers sometimes employ similar schemes for individual composing sessions.  For example, the ten-minute freewrite: put pen to paper or hands on keyboard and write anything and everything that comes to mind, nonstop, for ten minutes.  No matter how unrefined or choppy, the text you compose in a freewriting session nearly always yields a phrase, sentence, group of thoughts, or some combination of these that you can build on as you work toward shaping your ideas in writing.  And last December, this blog detailed ways to organize a chunk of writing into four 25-minute sessions, a so-called Pomodoro.  But setting aside five solid minutes each day to your project is by far the simplest and most achievable benchmark we’ve come across.
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Routine is Key
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In summary, several ideas from A.R.T.S. Anonymous deserve consideration as you keep your writing going.  Most important is to make time for focused engagement with the writing process every day.  One last bit of related wisdom, which eloquently stresses some of the points raised above, especially the importance of daily writing: a short but powerful piece penned by detective and mystery novelist Walter Mosley, which appeared in The New York Times.  Happy Daily Writing!


Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

Engaging with the Writing Process

Over the past few weeks, several advanced grad students have contacted us in the Thesis Office to check on requirements and deadlines they need to meet now that they’ve passed exams and are moving on to the thesis or dissertation.  Congratulations to all who’ve reached that point!  Heading toward completion naturally entails reengagements with the writing process, a process that involves five stages: prewriting, drafting, revising, editing, and proofreading.  Each stage deals with important but discrete sets of activities, and it’s worthwhile reviewing them.  Noting how writers move back and forth between the stages can help you set goals and prioritize tasks as you work on the different parts of your project.

Stages of the Writing Process

Prewriting:  Many activities before (and even after) you sit down with pen and paper or face keyboard and screen are parts of prewriting.  Prewriting is likely one of the longest stages of a thesis or dissertation project.  Ideas for your project likely begin to form as you take courses, complete other program requirements, and prepare for your qualifying exam(s).  For some writers, ideas have been forming over a period of many years.  As you turn to the writing project itself, prewriting involves focused idea-generating activities like listing, clustering, freewriting, and outlining.  

Drafting:  Composing with a plan.  The word plan distinguishes drafting from activities that belong to the stage before or after it.  When you’re producing text from a plan based on outlines, notes, or texts you generated while prewriting, you’re drafting.  If instead you’re staring at a blank page and don’t quite know how to move forward, you’re still in the prior stage and need to engage in prewriting activities until you can form a plan for your draft.  On the other hand, if you’ve drafted a considerable amount of planned text and feel it’s time to make changes to it, you’re progressing to the next stage.

Revising:  Literally, looking back at an accomplished draft.  But more than just looking back, revising involves rethinking and changing the “big picture” of what you’ve drafted: reorganizing sentences or paragraphs, deleting passages, or adding new content.

Editing:  Making changes to textual details.  The phrase textual details anchors the answer to the question “What’s the difference between revising and editing?”  But in truth, revising and editing often overlap.  The nature of the changes you’re making helps distinguish the two stages.  If you’re reordering sections of a draft, adding substantial amounts of text to it, or cutting out large portions, you’re still involved in revising.  If instead you’re more concerned with word choices or word forms, fact checking, and confirming that your in-text citations match your end references, you’re editing.
 
Proofreading:  The final stage.  Proof is a publishing term for a nearly-finished piece that needs final checking before going to the printer and out for public viewing.  Final checking involves careful, methodical, line-by-line reading and correcting of textual mistakes to ensure accurate punctuation, spelling, and formatting throughout the document.

Embrace Each Stage: Advice for All Seasons

As you progress through your project, a sound piece of broad advice to take on board: embrace each stage of the writing process in nearly equal measure.  Prewriting is needed to get you started in the right direction, and drafting is essential.  But revising, editing, and proofreading are also vital to a successful finished product and deserve plenty of attention and care.  If you seek help or guidance during any of these stages, but particularly with prewriting and drafting, remember that the University Writing Center is a fantastic resource.  If you have questions or concerns with revising, editing, or proofreading, be sure to contact us here in the Thesis Office.

Good luck in all stages, happy spring break, happy writing!     

Time Management for the Worst Procrastinators

Photo by Emilie Ogez on Flickr

Time management is not something I am good at.  I'm good at staring out the window, doodling plans and lists, and doing every other project except the one I need to finish by May 2018. I get a lot done (a doctoral student and a mother has to), but it isn't easy.  And it doesn't often happen through careful planning, but through sheer will!

So as I worked through grad school, my early teaching career, and now the beginning of the dissertation... I realized I need to get my act together. Just like writing a paper without an outline stopped working, so did living a day without an outline. But no loose planning in a bullet journal or motivational mantra on a bulletin board could help this daydreaming procrastinator. Any wiggle room would ruin me. So, desperate for a method, I focused on the smallest unit of time that could be put to excellent work, coupled with a proven system for fighting the distraction of other projects -- the Pomodoro.

What is it?

What the heck is a Pomodoro? It's a tomato. But more on that later.

The Pomodoro work method is based upon research that shows we can most successfully work in something like 25 minute bursts.  This is enough time to get into a groove without wearing out our eyes or our carpal tunnels, and it's enough time to produce a substantial work chunk, say, to grade three long papers or to write a page. It's also a short enough time that we can completely ignore everyone else in the universe and they'll be just fine until we get back from our little Pomodoro planet. Close tabs, log out, hide phone -- blast off!

Photo by Luca Mascaro on Flickr

So why not make it half an hour? Because that 5 minutes at the end gives you a chance to look up from the screen (recommended by doctors, brain doctors, and opticians alike), and move around a bit.  Then you dive back into another 25 minutes or work. Four of these productivity bursts makes for almost two hours of work, only slightly (and restoratively) interrupted.  Four timer sessions = a "Pomodoro."  Say it out loud: "I just did a Pomodoro!"  Get up and take a long break.  Exercise, pet the cat, feed your starving kids, whatever. You earned it!  Then, you can choose to do more Pomodoros or call it.

The method is named as such because the original timer, designed by Francesco Cirillo, is shaped like a tomato. Imagine one of those egg timers that looks like an egg. Now it's a tomato. Tada!

Pomodoro praxis

I began the method with a stack of grading last spring, and it worked like a charm. It is absolutely flawless for clerical tasks like grading, organizing notes and sources, making tables, etc.  Although, I had to practice and get comfortable with it before I could really write in a flow state a la Pomodoro. You may have to work with it awhile until you can do real "knowledge work" on a timer.  But now that is an easy habit for me.

As important as the timer is the minimization of distraction. CLOSE THE TABS!  Nothing bad will happen.  Some online timers can even do it for you.  Half the point of this thing is work-life balance. This is the part where you have to let life slide -- it's only 25 minutes.

I do not use the actual physical tomato, but I may start.  Instead I use one of many online timers specifically geared towards the technique.  You can of course use any timer that goes to at least 25 minutes (but for obvious reasons, don't use your phone!).

I have used some great Pomodoros online. There are dozens if you search:

Tomato Timer
https://tomato-timer.com/
A super simple platform with start and stop key commands (or mouse buttons) and no frills. My favorite.

Tomatoid
https://www.tomatoid.com/
A tricked out timer that lets you create an account and track projects and time spent.

The Real Pomodoro Tomato Timer
https://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/store/ars/item/76859/Tomato-Timer/136868
The "real deal" tomato is available from many sellers, but some are mightily over-priced. I think I will get mine from The Animal Rescue Site, so my $12.95 feeds a dog or some other fuzzy guy

One more thing about TIME

Ok, I am a mother, a grad student, a teacher, a "life-partner" if you will, and a gigging musician. I know a thing or two about not having enough time (one of those things will require another blog post). So let me tell you something that we hear all the time in this office, and that I have had to turn into a Pomodoro-complementary mantra:

You do not find time.  You MAKE time.

There is no extra time anywhere waiting to be found. And if you happen to stumble upon some, you will not even realize you have found it because you will be caught up in it, looking at the TV or just resting with your loved ones.

Extra time has to be made. The only way to do this is to shorten the length of time spent doing other tasks (i.e. non-dissertation tasks and clerical dissertation tasks) so that you grow the time you have to think and write and be healthy and whole. Get efficient. Make extra time for yourself and your family, and for your knowledge work.

So, some parting questions for you:

What work can you let slide in the name of making time?  Instead of thinking of it as letting something slide, can you think of it as producing something precious -- the time you need?  

What work could you do more efficiently or delegate to a partner or child?

What unproductive time-suckers can you give up completely? We all need some. But maybe you could make time by reducing them?

What could you work on being less perfectionist about? Good tasks are done tasks! (And a good dissertation is a done dissertation.)

More on all this in a later post.  Happy tomato-timing and time-making!

Stop Reading and Start Writing: Good Advice?

The Passion of Creation, 1892, by Leonid Pasternak (1862-1945).

This entry is dedicated to those of you working on the dissertation proposal as well as to those who’ve cleared that hurdle.  At bottom it also calls out to thesis and dissertation writers in STEM and related fields.

Slouching towards Proposal’s End

It was rough, putting my dissertation proposal together.  Winter merged into early spring as I ran ideas past my director and formed my committee, taught two sections of English 203, and completed an internship on campus.  All the while I was steadily tracking down books and articles and even a few dissertations related to my research, reading them extensively and intensively, rereading notes and papers from courses I took last year and several years before that, compiling a colossal bibliography, staring into space, making notes and plans in my head and on paper and screen, thinking ideas aloud during long walks and bike rides, and trying to explain what my dissertation would be like to colleagues, friends, and family members whose quizzical grimaces, doubting frowns, and muffled guffaws in response to my ramblings linger on in bittersweet memories of that drawn-out span of time.  The best part of it, of course, was when the actual writing happened.  Once I finally entered the “zone” and was drafting and revising my proposal in earnest, things moved ever more smoothly and swiftly.
   
Sound familiar?  Most likely you can offer up an account like the one above about your progress on your proposal (or, for that matter, your progress on just about any major writing project).  Plenty of similar accounts on the proposal can be found on relevant blogs like The Thesis Whisperer (a particularly popular blog, which we here at Project Thesis recommend).  Such accounts tend to convey the idea that accomplishing the proposal is like completing the dissertation in miniature. It’s a big project but not as big as the main event.  It’s simply another engagement with the writing process. Many predictably advise that in order to complete it you must eventually do two very important and rather obvious things: stop reading and start writing.  But, in the cold light of second thought, to what extent is that bit of advice helpful?
   
Stop reading?  

It’ll never happen.  No matter how many times others tell you to stop reading and start writing, no matter how many times you say this to yourself, those words and the message behind them won’t dissuade you from naturally turning from your writing, at some point, to read something else. Perhaps it’s a secondary source like another research article that may shed more light on your project.  Perhaps it’s a book chapter you read two months ago that now seems to deserve another look.  Perhaps it’s a primary source, a text or study you’re analyzing and have read countless times before but now feel compelled to return to once more.  Turning to readings such as these when you need to be writing is often branded taboo.  Consider, however, that in some cases this judgment may a bit too drastic.  Recall the writer in the picture at the top of this page.  He’s clearly engaged in the writing process but isn’t putting words down.  He appears to be working out an idea in his head.  What should he do next?  Continue thinking with his eyes closed?  Draft whatever comes to mind?  Why not turn to some of the notes or books by his side?

Reading through a Writing Delay

Sometimes during the writing process writers get stuck in the drafting or revising stages and need to find a way back in.  Temporarily revisiting the pre-writing stage at such times can be a constructive move.  Among the various strategies for pre-writing, there is certainly a place for reading or rereading old or new sources.  Yet when you do turn to reading or rereading such materials to reactivate the writing you need to do, heed these tips:

• Set suitable reading parameters
For example, if you’re proposing a dissertation on popular songs during the American Civil War,
clearly you should stick to sources within the boundaries of this topic area and avoid irrelevant
readings about, say, Modern Art.

• Read and write in tandem
Reading broadly and deeply is a fundamental component of your project, but, naturally, you do need to write in order to complete it.  However, instead of thinking you should be either reading or writing, accept that, as you progress, both reading and writing can overlap.

No matter what your field is, embracing reading while working through each stage of the writing process is an idea worth considering.  Certainly, however, the nature and scope of the reading involved will vary from one field to the next.

A Call to Writers in STEM and Related Fields

Incidentally, if you happen to be working on a thesis or dissertation in the sciences, technology, engineering, mathematics, or related fields, we’d be interested in hearing from you about your experiences with your project proposal (or hearing about your project as a whole).  What important differences in process or approach do you notice between your own work and what you read about here (and elsewhere)?  We invite you to drop ideas in the comment box below.