AcWriMo: a new (to me!) kind of outline
i love an outline - i'm definitely on the record with that! but also it can be really hard to outline text that isn't written yet, especially if you're the kind of thinker and writer where those activities happen concurrently.
a community member (shout out to katie!) introduced me to this "inquiry based" outline and i'm obsessed! basically, the idea is that you start to structure your argument with the main questions that you have around your central argument, and you use those (and follow up!) questions to start to section out parts of the writing.
you can use the clickable and fillable outline here - a big thank you to Dr. Alan Kilma - his website is academicmuse.org but it looks like it's been dormant for a few years while he....writes fiction? cool!
what i love the most about this tool - and any variations you might experiment with yourself - is that your organize the writing around the questions that you're answering with your writing. so many of us will research and read and research and read until we've "answered" everything, but i have been trying for years and never gotten to the "everything answered" stage!! so this helps you start to see the structure earlier, or at least one possible structure, which in turn helps you put some boundaries around what you will and won't investigate during your research process.
AcWriMo: what i do while drafting / what i do in revising
there is a lot that goes unsaid and untaught in the world of academic writing. i feel that most advisors/supervisors/director of graduate studies/even some first year seminar leaders take the stance of "you should already know how to do this" or "i'm sure you've learned this before". as someone who works with writers all around the world at all kinds of universities in all sorts of disciplines: NOPE. it is much more rare that i meet someone who was given a comprehensive toolkit for academic writing than someone who was given nothing. so, if you are trying to figure it all out, you are definitely not alone!
academic writing is a collection of skills that in theory, have an order of operations:
read
draft
revise
submit
but there is also a LOT of flexibility within that - some people bounce between the first three stages frequently, some pass through them with relatively equal time spent in each, and some move through it differently depending on the project, or their own brain at the time.
one thing that i do find consistently though is that i work with writers who are, consciously or not, spending a lot of time drafting (ie, generating new words) and working with facets of their writing that would actually be more easily addressed in a revision stage. what do i mean? great question!
for example, you could be writing along and you start to really notice your transitions (or lack thereof). maybe an advisor gave you feedback on another draft about transitions, or you saw a twitter thread about them, or someone mentioned them in passing - but you're thinking about them in an early-ish draft stage. so you spend a lot of time learning about transitions (here's one of my favorite resources on them!) and you spend a whole day crafting the transitions for a section of your new chapter.
now, there's nothing wrong with that! sometimes it feels good to practice a skill or go deep on a new facet of your writing but also, you might have just spent a bunch of time creating the world's most beautiful transitions only to complete restructure that chapter in a few weeks, and have to redo them. it's not that you should NEVER work with your transitions, but rather that there are more and less efficient times to do so.
so here is a very rough, moderately personal list of what skills i tend to focus on in early draft phases, and what i tend to do in later revisions! feel free to take what works and leave the rest, but the aim here is to be explicit so you can check your own workflow and see if there's anything you want to experiment with!
things i do during drafting (mostly)
freewriting
rough restructuring (taking big chunks and rearranging them)
trying to figure out WHAT i'm trying to say
figuring out the scope of what does and does not belong in what piece i'm working on
things i do during revision (mostly)
checking on accuracy of quotations / facts / etc
argument (how strongly am i arguing something, what kinds of arguments, etc)
transitions
sentence structure
writing the introduction and conclusion
writing abstracts
checking for flow
most of us are not used to revising work even once, much less multiple times so that balance can feel really off if you're not used to it! but revision is where a bulk of the work to take a piece from "some thoughts about something" into "a cohesive argument" happens! and more people should talk about that.
AcWriMo: a river, not a bucket
a question that has come up a lot in my one one one sessions lately is how to get through all the reading. and how to make choices about what to read at what time. even more acutely, i’ve come to realize the pressure that having a "to read" pile at all can present.
there are two ways to approach a problem like "i have too much to read":
filter out the list to determine the best things to read
rearrange whatever you need to to just.....read it all, even if it increases as you keep going
and a lot of my own advice in this community is about the first suggestion - how to find and identify the most important things to read. and so we do that, and we reduce the pile a little bit, but what happens when everything there will probably be useful and you still can't read it all? but then i came across this blog post by oliver burkeman (of a very good, if a little heavy, productivity book called four thousand weeks) and this passage really resonated:
Unfortunately, most advice on productivity and time management takes the needle-in-a-haystack approach instead. It's about becoming more efficient and organised, or better at prioritising, with the implied promise that you might thereby eliminate or disregard enough of life's unimportant nonsense to make time for the meaningful stuff. To stretch a metaphor: it's about reducing the size of the haystack, to make it easier to focus on the needle.
There's definitely a role for such techniques; but in the end, the only way to deal with a too-many-needles problem is to confront the fact that it's insoluble – that you definitely won't be fitting everything in. (Of course some such problems, where just scraping a living feels impossible, demand political solutions too – a topic for another time.) It's not a question of rearranging your to-do list so as to make space for all your "big rocks", but of accepting that there are simply too many rocks to fit in the jar. You have to take a stab at deciding what matters most, among your various creative passions/life goals/responsibilities – and then do that, while acknowledging that you'll inevitably be neglecting many other things that matter too.
his reframe for this problem of "too many needles" (too many things, all important) is to think about your to read pile "like a river (a stream that flows past you, and from which you pluck a few choice items, here and there) instead of a bucket (which demands that you empty it)."
so many of us treat a LOT of things in academia (and life) like items in a bucket - we pick up articles and projects and tasks and ideas and put them in our bucket and then set about working very hard to make them all reality (empty the bucket). so instead of clearing our to read tags, the river approach suggests that we instead think about reading what feels most important, at the time, with the information we have. and then if the information changes, and we need to read something else, we do. you can apply this to projects in your pipeline, ideas for your chapter in your idea notebook, or even all the tasks you feel like you could or should be doing day to day. the goal is not to do all of them, and feel the ever mounting pressure when we can't because we cannot control time or space. the goal is to choose with the best information we have in the present, and not take on the guilt that comes with not being able to do everything - a genuinely impossible task.
AcWriMo: types of feedback
How to ask for feedback, different kinds that you can ask for, common tricky feedback styles and more! This coaching call from my community is all about how and why you might want to ask for feedback, and best practices for getting what you want! get the transcript here!
There are how many different types of editing? - a guest post by Dr. Bailey Lang
I’m Dr. Bailey Lang, founder of The Writing Desk. I provide writing and editing services for businesses, schools, and individuals, including graduate students. And today, I’m here to talk about why you might, or might not, want to work with an editor for your dissertation.
I’ve wanted to be an editor since I first learned editing was a real job. Still, it took a detour into corporate marketing and a Ph.D. program in rhetoric and writing studies before I decided to make that goal a reality.
What does an editor do?
An editor’s job is to help you, the writer, produce the best possible text. Editing takes a few common forms, ranging from complex and high-level suggestions to focusing on minor issues.
Developmental editing (sometimes called structural editing) involves taking a big-picture perspective: is everything organized logically? Is the structure sound, or will the entire thing come tumbling down at the slightest whiff of critique from a committee member or, worse, Reviewer Two?
A developmental editor’s bird’s-eye view of your article or dissertation helps you spot pitfalls before you stumble into them—something that’s notoriously difficult to do by yourself. (Even professional editors rely on editors when we write!) Early developmental editing can help you avoid significant rewrites, to say nothing of embarrassing conversations with your chair.
Then there’s line editing (sometimes called style or stylistic editing). During line editing, your editor reviews the draft to ensure your argument flows well and your language is consistent and clear.
Copy editing involves assessing your draft for accuracy, consistency, and correctness. A copy editor can, for example, ensure that your citations match your preferred style or the style dictated by a particular academic publisher.
Finally, there’s proofreading. Proofreading is usually the last stage of edits before a project goes to print and involves a final review for lingering typos and formatting issues.
It’s wise to start with developmental and line editing first, then move to copy editing and proofreading once the draft is close to complete. Here’s why: if you pay someone to proofread your manuscript and then realize your argument has a fatal flaw, you’ll wind up rewriting it—meaning you’ll need someone to proofread it again!
What does an editor not do?
There are a couple of things an editor shouldn’t do.
The first thing an editor shouldn’t do is write the content. That’s co-authorship! You are the writer, which means you’re responsible for writing. An editor can make suggestions, but rewriting material on your behalf is not an editor’s job. Avoiding co-authorship is especially critical for dissertation projects, where sole authorship is essential.
Second, an editor shouldn’t make you feel bad. The common imagination paints editors as stern-faced red pen-wielding grammar monsters—and although such people exist, I encourage you to avoid them!
An editor will point out issues, mistakes, and problems (that’s why you hire one, after all). However, a good editor will make you feel supported and empowered. A good editor is like a coach: we want you to succeed, and we’ll give you the tools and scaffolding you need to do so.
Do I really need an editor?
Hiring an editor is a personal decision, but I recommend considering it. Editing is an investment in your writing that can pay dividends in terms of time saved and stress reduced.
That said, hiring an editor is an investment—and I’m not so far removed from my grad school years that I’ve forgotten how lean they can be!
Many editors are willing to work with graduate students on a sliding scale or at a discounted rate. Some programs may have professional development funds to provide additional financial support.
Whether you want a full developmental edit or a final review before submitting a draft, working with an editor is a great way to improve your writing and build new skills.
If you’re interested in talking about editing (whether for a specific project or as a career option!), I’d love to chat.
flowmodoro: a timer variation for deep focus
so, i'm on the record in MANY places as being a big fan of the pomodoro method. but, the technique as written has a few drawbacks:
25 minutes can feel VERY short
sometimes you can and/or want to focus for a longer stretch of time
sometimes the break is too short!
and as it happens now, in 2022, i ran across this video on ye old social media.
the video is short (2ish minutes) but here's the gist of the flowmodoro technique - you don't count down the time to a break, but you count up the time you're focused.
so you sit down to work, start a timer running up (like a stopwatch)
once you lose focus (or notice that you lose focus) you pause the timer and see how long you worked
divide that total time by five - and that's the length of your break.
as you keep going, the focus time (usually) decreases, and then you take a longer break to get back to max capacity
i've been experimenting with it and i really like it! especially for deep focus tasks like writing - it's been helpful to work until i'm done, rather than to stop and start. i've also heard from a few clients with ADHD that this works really well IF you know what it looks and feels like when you're distracted and can catch yourself in it. but if you're looking to shake it up, give flowmodoro a try!
book review: inner workout by taylor elyse morrison
if you’ve been around the thrive phd universe for a minute, you know that i started this whole business because i felt left out of so many conversations and spaces in grad school. my body, my brain, my community - we all needed a LOT of care to get through the dissertation process. in the best cases, people understood that my chronic illness, and my brain that tended toward anxiety, had different needs and they left me space to care for myself. but in the worst cases, my yoga practice was viewed as a luxury, my time in therapy an indulgence, and my boundaries around work one of many signs that i didn’t have what it took to be a “serious academic”.
luckily for me, one of the things that the aforementioned therapy sessions helped with was putting these comments into context, and giving me the permission and skills i needed to do my work, but also live my life and take care of myself. and luckily for a lot of us, the conversation has moved on in the years since i was actively dissertating, and self care has become more openly discussed. but with that increased discussion has also come a whole host of other complications: increased commodification; privileging white, affluent, able-bodied voices; a culture of victim blaming that places the onus making time for and practicing care exclusively on the individual, among others.
but even more luckily for all of us, a new book has come out that made huge strides in creating an actionable, inclusive set of tools for approaching self care in a holistic, multifaceted way. inner workout: strengthening self-care practices for healing body, soul, and mind by taylor elyse morrison is part assessment (you know i love an assessment!), part toolkit, part context for understanding how and why you might have arrived at your specific relationship to self care. taylor is the founder of inner workout, which has created an ecosystem of seminars, meditations, trainings, and tools to help people develop easy, sustainable self care routines, and you can see the breadth and depth of her experience in every page of the book. beyond her impressive CV, i appreciated that taylor wrote this book from the perspective of someone actively caring for themselves, and not doing it perfectly all of the time, or maybe even most of the time. the book is not a gospel from a self care god, speaking to you from high atop the mountain. taylor writes this book as a fellow traveler, maybe a few steps ahead of you on the path, but moving backwards and forwards all the time, as we all are. the difference is refreshing.
the book guides you through the context of self care as a theoretical framework used by many cultures, at many points of history - including so many normally left out of the conversation, like indigenous cultures and religious spaces. and then you take the “take care” assessment. your relationship to self care is measured in terms of five “dimensions”, each with corresponding subdimensions that map elements like relationship to your physical body, and your your connection to community and larger purpose. i love how the assessment is meant to be repeated (taylor recommends seasonally) - it feels like less of a scorecard and more of a self portrait. and because i’m a show and not tell girl, here is the snapshot of my results as of march 2023:
the image has text that says “Your Snapshot: here’s a visualization of how you’re currently relating to self-care. the size of the circle is relative to your positive relationship with that dimension.” there are five circles of various sizes and colors, listed here in descending order of size: bliss, mental and emotional, wisdom, energetic, physical.
the book continues to detail each dimension and sub dimension, with personal stories, exercises to deepen your understanding, playlist suggestions, and more. you can read it straight through (like me, highlighting like every single page) or flip through it as you need.
after taking my assessment and reading the book, i felt inspired to engage with my physical dimension more frequently. not surprisingly to anyone who knows me, and probably relatable for scholars everywhere, i spend a LOT of time in my head, and the relative disconnection i feel to my physical body is a something that i am continually working on (and probably always will be!) the book felt like a compassionate way into that relationship, and not like another thing to add to my already long list of things to do. i’m not instantly more embodied, but i can say that i have been inviting myself back into my body more often in the last week, and that’s not nothing!!
this book is definitely for you if you’re looking for some support for your self care that feels personalized, inclusive, and written with overlapping systems of inequality and privilege as the foundation, not a footnote. if you’re looking for a book about self care written by a Black woman who lives her ambition and values her care, this book is definitely for you. i read a lot of books, listen to a lot of podcasts, and do a lot of work with self care every day so take it from me that this feels different: more actionable, more approachable, more inclusive, and more fun.
(i’m not being paid to write this review - i bought the book with my own money and wrote this of my own free will - it was just a really good book that i felt like you should know about!!)
be an agile academic
In my personal life, I spend a lot of time with a software engineer (my husband) as he worked with teams to build products. Although he has long since outstripped my meager technical programming knowledge and/or has been under a strict NDA, we don't often talk about the nitty gritty of his work. I can't help myself from asking questions, though, about how the teams function. And that's how I came to know Agile software development.
In the grand tradition of start-ups everywhere, I'll let you know that there is an official Agile development system (read more here) and you can hire official Agile experts to be on your team, or you can do what I did, which is Google a lot of things and borrow what works for you! There are, admittedly, a lot of differences between launching a software product and turning in a dissertation, but I've isolated a few key concepts that really challenged how I thought about my work and helped me build systems to move quickly and efficiently through the dissertation process.
A caveat: I've made every attempt to be universal here, but disciplinary (and sometimes departmental) differences abound. In my field (and in my department) the dissertation is a manuscript (or even longer) piece to be completed as a single author piece with the end goal of becoming a book manuscript as a next step, and I've written these from that perspective. But I hope that the principles I've highlighted here can be helpful even if you're working with co-authors, or producing a shorter series of articles, or some other type of capstone project that I can't even imagine.
WORK IN DISCRETE ITERATIONS
In Agile systems, one of the core ideas is that time is segmented into short (one to four week) chunks, and at the end of each one, a working product is produced. Rather than waiting until all the research is completed, or all the testing is done, iterative working patterns engages all those skills simultaneously, so that stakeholders (ie, people who are interested in the outcomes) can see progress regularly. For some teams, this looks like sprints, where the group decides on a set of objectives or deliverables for that timeframe, and then works backwards to plan out all the work necessary to get there.
How does this work as an academic? - Rather than saying "this year I want to write two chapters" or "This term, I want to do all the research for x and y topics", I set discrete, deliverable goals like:
In this month, I'm going to write the conference paper that will eventually become part of x chapter
In these two weeks, I'm going to draft the first section of this larger chapter
But lots of us set these kind of goals! The difference in iterative work flows is that I was engaged in all of the parts at once. Instead of refusing to move onto the drafting until the research was done, or waiting until the whole chapter was ready before sending it out for feedback, I tried to work in many directions at once. If I pulled an article to read for a specific section, I not only read it, but I took notes, and wrote (with varying degrees of formality) my thoughts and findings. When I was in the archives, I was also writing up my first impressions from the research, reading and writing actively at the same time. It might be just my brain, but switching up the type of task during the day kept me engaged, and seeing the word count increased, even if those actual words wouldn't make into the dissertation as such, helped me feel (and actually be) productive. But perhaps most importantly, whenever my stakeholders (ie, my advisor and committee) wanted an update, I had a ready to go summary of what I was working on, and something reasonably polished to share with them at a moment's notice.
SHORTEN THE FEEDBACK LOOP
In Agile systems, feedback is continuous. One of the most important tools for making sure the team stays on track during these intense sprints is the SCRUM or stand-up meeting. The idea is that a stand-up is a short (you're literally standing up, encouraging brevity) informal meeting where each member reports what they did yesterday, what they will do today, and any issues that are blocking their progress toward the ultimate goal. This lets managers keep on top of how each team member is performing, identify any problems quickly and efficiently, and promotes the idea that you're accountable for moving forward, every day. Rather than waiting for the end of a sprint, or heaven forbid, a quarter or whole project cycle, to evaluate how things are going, stand-ups make evaluation a daily occurrence.
How does this work as an academic? Well, the team for my dissertation writing was me, myself and I, and my cats might have become concerned if I stood up at my desk, discussing with myself how my work was going everyday. So, I started to build those simple questions into my "start of work ritual." I opened up a file and wrote down what I accomplished yesterday, what I wanted to do today, and what things were blocking me. Not only did the act of writing it down make me feel like I was moving forward, even if the progress was slow, it also gave me a low stakes way to confront my own procrastination. It takes some honesty but it's a real shock to have to write down "yesterday, I did not do a single shred of work on [whatever short term goal] because I spent the entire day researching for a prospective syllabus that isn't due for three months." I was (and remain) the queen of procrastinating productively, or working on things that ostensibly need to get done at some point but seem easier than whatever pressing thing that needs to be done now, and checking in daily made me see just how I was engaging in that particular behavior. But surprisingly, the most helpful thing was identifying my blocks. While a software development team might be blocked by a server outage, I was often blocked by more nebulous, abstract things like:
I don't know enough about x topic to write authoritatively about it.
I am not clear about what my advisor meant by y comment on the draft I'm revising
I have no idea if this idea is coming across the way I want it to
Writing the blocks down let me see what specifically wasn't working, and then let me take steps to remove the block. I could set aside some time for targeted research, schedule a meeting to discuss feedback, or send an early draft to a friend or writing group to check for clarity. Too often, I would get lost in the feeling of being stuck without ever identifying the specific problem, and writing down the block as specifically as I can helped to work through that on a daily basis, rather than waiting until a big milestone had passed.
TEST DRIVEN DESIGN
In Agile systems, test driven design is a tool to buttress against over-design. Before you write a line of code for the actual product or feature, you write a test (or sequence of tests) that the code must pass in order to be considered complete. You then write code to specifically pass that test, and only when the code passes the test do you consider the product or feature complete. By working backwards from the test, you ensure that you aren't adding extra features, writing unnecessary code or straying too far from the objective of that specific feature.
How does this work as an academic? Before I started to write any piece of my dissertation, I tried to be as specific as I could about what that piece needed to do argumentatively. Like many people, I was often focused on the content of a specific section - what sources does this need to cover? What ideas am I introducing? Shifting to a model where I was focused on the argument, I instead would plan out what work I needed that section to do. For example:
This paragraph needs to link Foucault's theory with my argument about cat videos.
This section needs to historicize how zoo exhibits incorporated natural elements.
This chapter needs to advance my argument about surveillance forward in time to a digital space.
By focusing on the work that the argument did (notice the active verbs like link and advance) rather than the content, I built myself a failsafe against overwriting, and a "test" to run when doing the each round of editing, not just the first. It was easy to do a first look of a paragraph and say, yeah, that met the goal, but after three rounds of edits and feedback, it was so helpful to be able to look back and say this paragraph needs to link these two ideas and cut away any excess writing that did not fit that function. Not all of us have linear brains, but writing out linear "tests" can help to streamline writing and clarify your argument. Cut out those extra three sentences, decide if they need to go in a footnote, or just put them in a document called "extra ideas" because you never know when you'll need them again.
BE ADAPTIVE, NOT PREDICTIVE
In Agile systems, being adaptive is a core value that underpins so many of the actual day to day practices. To be adaptive is to be responsive to changing demands, team needs, unexpected challenges, and exciting breakthroughs. Predictive management styles often have very established outcomes, proven processes, and rock-solid expectations for what the end product must do or accomplish. As Wikipedia so succinctly puts it:
Adaptive methods focus on adapting quickly to changing realities. When the needs of a project change, an adaptive team changes as well. An adaptive team has difficulty describing exactly what will happen in the future. The further away a date is, the more vague an adaptive method is about what will happen on that date. An adaptive team cannot report exactly what tasks they will do next week, but only which features they plan for next month. When asked about a release six months from now, an adaptive team might be able to report only the mission statement for the release, or a statement of expected value vs. cost.
How does this work for an academic? Despite my very concerted efforts to make writing my dissertation a completely transparent, predictable, and scheduled work effort, it changed every day. I found new sources that changed or challenged my argument, I had other responsibilities pop up that took precedence over writing, I got sick, my committee had major revisions for a chapter, or my funding changed. When I gave myself the freedom to shift my timeline, adjust to new realities, or follow promising leads, I became a better writer. Having milestones like sprint goals ensured that I never got too far off track, and checking in every day gave me structure even when things were shifting, but Agile showed me that I could let the project evolve all while staying in control. I could fall down the rabbit hole of learning that led me to getting a PhD in the first place all while staying focused on producing the product that would eventually get me out, degree in hand.
It isn't a perfect fit, but using some Agile principles helped make the monstrous task more manageable. I remember thinking the day after I turned in my prospectus that I didn't even know how to start. Should I open up some Word Doc and call it dissertation? Do all the research first, then all the writing, then the editing? When should I share drafts? Should I just take a stress nap? Looking at other project management styles, even if they were far from my own use case, helped me see that there were a lot of ways to get started and build tools and systems that served me, my working style, and ultimately, the work itself.
all i have is freewriting
i'm a big fan of freewriting - you only have to watch one or two coaching calls to know that i really believe in practicing writing, even if it's messy, stream of consciousness, little bits of flotsam that you store in folders in your Scrivner or Notion or Evernote or notebooks. but, sometimes that means you end up with tons and tons and tons of informal writing, and it can feel really overwhelming.
and so, here follows some of my best tips and strategies for transitioning from freewriting into something a little more formal"
try a side by side rewrite. one of the most frustrating thing for me is trying to edit freewriting into something more formal, so what i usually end up doing is having a blank document on one side, and the freewriting on the other, and i rewrite the freewrite into something more formal. it feels more like translation that revision, and that helps unblock me a little.
try a dictation-type translation. when i'm working to get things into actual sentences, i often speak more formally than i write in that draft 0 pass. so sometimes i will turn on voice - to - text (lots of different ways to do this with various tech setup) and use that as the basis of a more formal pass on my writing.
use a paragraph recipe - when i'm trying to get things into paragraphs, i often will use a paragraph "recipe" to help organize my thoughts - they're a little simplistic, sure, but thinking functionally (this sentence links back my evidence to my main idea, for example) helps to give me a roadmap, and then i can smooth out the writing once it's more formal.
try a phrase book - sometimes, i need a few ideas on how to make different kinds of sentences, and phrase books really help with that. my favorite is they say, i say , but i also like how dr. helen sword talks about sentences in this book, too, and there are a lot of suggestions in this thread too! (but you gotta be in the community to see it ;))
reverse outline the freewriting - sometimes i go through and i reverse outline my freewriting, or highlighting the most useful parts of it. the more i can trim down the freewriting, the easier it gets for me to wrestle with it
completing the stress cycle
I've been reading a book called Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. It's pretty good (although explicitly geared towards female-identifying people), and one of the main ideas is that:
Just because you resolved the stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress.
Think about it this way: imagine you've seen a lion. Your body goes into fight or flight mode (or it freezes), and your whole system is flooded with a bunch of chemicals and hormones to make sure that your body and mind act in a way that will keep you safe. If you fight the lion or flee from it, all those hormones have a job and are used by your body. You walk away with your life, and then you rest, because you just beat a lion.
Unfortunately, our bodies don't know the difference between a deadline and a lion. So we activate that same bunch of chemicals and hormones - our hearts can race, we can focus more clearly, we might feel jittery, and we either get the work done, or we don't.
But what most of us do not do when faced with deadlines, or any of the other stressors that can come up during the day, is complete the stress cycle. We resolve the stressor, but we don't give ourselves the chance to get all of that physical and emotional and mental energy a place to go. We hop to the next task, or maybe we get some fitful rest while feeling guilty that we aren't done. But the stress stays - and every time that cycle restarts without completing, we just build up more and more of a tolerance to the stress response.
And when we're tolerating the stress response, it takes more and more pressure to get it to be effective. A deadline a week away used to get us moving, and now it's more like three days. Or we feel the adrenaline kick in, and we ignore it, avoid it, or work on something else less scary. We get stuck in the feelings of stress and pressure, and that stuckness is what contributes to our burnout.
The good news is that there are ways, scientifically proven ways!, to complete that stress cycle. Here are a bunch of ways that they offer:
Physical exercise - one of the most effective, as it "tells your brain that you have successfully survived the threat and now your body is a safe space to live." Any movement will do!
Breathing - deep, slow breathing to downregulate the stress response
Positive social interaction - "reassure your brain that the world is a safe, sane place and that not all people suck!" Check ins on the Thrive Network or poms in the chat room are great for this, as is smiling at people on the street or saying hello to acquaintances in the hallway.
Laughter - Maru is always great for a laugh!
Affection - people, pets, all counts!
Crying - strong recommend from me if it's safe to do so!
Creative Expression - see this article for more!
Rest - Active or passive, they both can help
But, in general, you have to DO something to complete the cycle. You have to acknowledge the stress and take a step to assure yourself that you're safe. The threat is over, or it's time to take a break, and you'll be back tomorrow, or after lunch.
Adding more stress, or saying you'll break later, only adds to the feeling of being stuck, and the actual biological conditions that that creates. So experiment with doing things - at the end of a work day, a week, or even a pom - to complete the cycle. And let us know if it helps!
what if i never start again?
Sometimes, I have a bad week. And nothing really *happened* I guess, just the slow hum of more Pandemic Time. I've been jokingly referring to my mood as a Pandemic Pout, but you could also call it "hitting a wall", "reaching my limit", "throwing a big ole temper tantrum".
And even though I've built an entire business around helping people learn how to rest and feel less guilt and shame about it, I still fought myself all week. Here is just a small sampling of the unhelpful things my brain threw up at me this week!
Your pandemic is nothing - very little has changed!
You're being a baby!
You just want to be lazy and are using "the pandemic" as an excuse!
Other people have it so much worse - who are you to be pouting??
If you don't get to work RIGHT THIS SECOND you will never work again and this will be the moment where you look back and say, that's when my whole life stopped being useful and I slipped into the cavern of Terrible.
But underneath a lot of those conversations with myself is the idea that I both don't deserve to have my feelings or rest, and that if I do rest, I will not stop working again.
I didn't invent either of those ideas. They didn't come out of nowhere. They're baked into a bunch of cultures I'm steeped in every day - the idea that my worth boils down to how much I produce, and that there is always someone who deserves rest and care more than me. I can know intellectually that my thoughts aren't helpful, but it still takes a little bit of practice to not ACT like they're true.
So this week, I'm trying to practice being a person who experiments with rest, and practices showing myself more self-compassion. I'm collecting data - if I play 20 minutes of Stardew Valley over lunch, how do I feel? How does that change if I play 3 hours? If I sleep in, do I feel more rested or more anxious? What about going to bed earlier? What would a day off in the week feel like? What can I do on my off days to limit screen interaction?
I don't have the answers - I'm in the middle of navigating work and life and all the rest of it under these conditions like you are. But I do know that I do feel differently from day to day. Things feel a little more possible. Maybe I needed some rest, and some grace. Maybe you do too.
staying committed to your system
It happens with almost everything, at least for me.
There's the first blush of: I WILL NEVER LOVE A SYSTEM FOR KEEPING MYSELF ORGANIZED LIKE I LOVE THIS SYSTEM. TOGETHER FOREVER.
And then, we hum along in a sense of comfortable companionship, the system remembering my tasks, me feeling grateful for the system and putting in the work to keep it functional.
And then, sometimes, my attention starts to wander. A new system seems quite attractive! My old system just doesn't have the same spark that it used to! It's not you, Bullet Journaling, it's me!!!!
But I've learned now, over the course of a few of these dating - committed relationship - breakup cycles that there is a BIG cost to switching systems. Not an insurmountable one, but one to consider before you switch.
So if you're feeling antsy with your current system, or are just doing a general "where is this relationship going" check in, here are some questions to answer to see if there is work to be done, if it can be salvaged, and what to look for in a new system!
Am I avoiding using my system, and instead using a makeshift one (or none at all?)
What things am I missing/not doing consistently/losing sight of?
What feels sticky about the current system?
Undone tasks?
Complicated set up
Changing circumstances?
Would you use it again if you could have a hard reset?
Can you hard reset it?
Is there another system that meets more of your needs than the current one is?
But in general, the best rule of thumb for project management systems is: does this require the minimum amount of effort to maintain? How can I make it easier to use and still get the benefits?
Some amount of project management is important - it helps you remember things, keep on track, prioritize important things and not just urgent ones, gives you a sense of progress. But when maintaining the system is as much of a chore as doing the work itself, then something is out of balance. Think about it as a relationship - is it worth it to stay together for the history? Is it worth it to keep the investment and move through this rough patch? Or do you need a fresh start?
don't skip the warm up
"I don't have time for planning!"
"I only have an hour, I have to jump right in!"
"Ugh I would love to have a morning/work routine but I just don't have time for it!"
and listen, I get it. A lot of the tools we talk about in the Thrive PhD universe - goal setting! planning! time management! scheduling! freewriting! - take time to do, and they take time to see the benefits. No one sits down to do a monthly goal planning session and says "yes, cool, got it, all the work done for the month!".
And all of that extra work - the planning, the reflecting, the learning of skills, the easing into it, and shutting it down - it is objectively time that you are not "in the project." Freewriting about your sources and your argument is not the same as writing the chapter. Planning out your schedule for the week is not the same as doing the work.
But, as a coach, here's a pattern I see a lot:
Time for work gets reduced and/or deadline pressure mounts
Arrive for a work session and feel huge pressure to "get into it right away" and "not waste time"
Get flustered, frustrated, or distracted because you're trying to start right away
End up needing to repeat work, or fall into a Twitter hole, or just generally amp up the sticky feelings and work less efficiently
But, the warm up work - deciding what to work on, making a plan, checking in with yourself about how its going, taking a few minutes to do a few deep breaths and clean your desk off - that all helps you transition into the work more quickly, and focus more clearly once you get there. You might not have a whole pom to do freewriting, or two hours a week to plan and journal and reflect - but a little bit of warm up time (and/or cool down time afterwards, to wrap up and make notes) is NOT procrastination. It's part of the work. Write a few tasks on a post it note - scribble a few notes about what you were thinking about when you finished. It all helps work a little bit more on purpose, and working on purpose is always going to feel a little bit more grounded and effective.
We don't expect athletes to run a marathon without some stretching and a more gentle paced few miles. We know that warming up helps get the body and the brain in the same place - so pay attention to that voice that says you need some time to sync up.
clarity over momentum
Have you ever forced yourself to your desk because you were worried about losing your momentum?
Have you ever looked back at a good string of writing days and thought, oh yes, the momentum I had then?
Have you been wishing for the momentum to visit you again, like it used to in The Before Times?
Me too lol.
But I have a new theory, and after some testing, I feel confident enough to share it with you all.
I think that at least 80% of the time, when we say we have momentum with a project, we actually mean that we have clarity.
If you've been writing every day for 2 weeks, you probably have a lot of clarity - no part of the text feels unfamiliar, it all feels recent and alive, and even if you don't have detailed notes, it isn't too much work to figure out where you left off and what needs to come next.
There's a clarity that comes from being in the headspace of a project - when you know where you are and what needs to be done, it's easier to get started. It's easier to stay in the flow because you're not using all your energy to reorient and refamiliarize yourself.
So if you're looking for momentum, think about some things you can do to introduce some clarity:
Spend some time leaving good notes for yourself - where to start the next day, what you were thinking about, what to read.
Make your tasks as actionable, small, and concrete as possible. For example, instead of "write methods section", break that into 15 or 20 tasks like "describe lab equipment".
Schedule some time to reread your writing and your notes to refamiliarize yourself with projects that are feeling distant.
Spend a few minutes (even just 5) journaling about your work to ease into the headspace on days where it would be hard or impossible to do more.
Challenge the idea that momentum is something ineffable that you can't control, and start believing that you can create your own with your clarity.
rejection sensitivity and grad school
**This is part of a on ADHD and other kinds of neurodiversity in the academy - I am not a medical doctor nor am I a therapist or other mental health practitioner and this is not medical advice. It is PhD advice though!**
Have you ever seen a CV of failures floating around? The idea is that successful people, particularly academics, have a whole list of "secret" or unpublished failures for every accomplishment they seem to have. There's a lot that is normalizing about this - even successful people don't get grants! Princeton professors are just like us! But while it is one thing to be open about failures, and at least some of these conversations are acknowledging the huge privilege and resource drain it takes to produce that much unpaid labor in the hopes of one day getting funding/tenure, there isn't a lot of discussion of the toll the system of repeated failure takes on academics.
Especially if those people happen to also have rejection sensitivity.**
Because I am NOT a qualified medical practitioner, I am going to refrain from diving too deeply into the causes, symptoms, and treatments for rejection sensitivity. But for our purposes, the most important thing to know is that RS:
*can feel like sudden emotional waves after real, implied, or perceived criticism
*can feel like a whole body, whole mind, whole being response - people describe it as "unbearable", "devastating" waves of emotion and negative thoughts that are also hard to describe in words
*is a newer area of study within ADHD and other executive function disorders, as many previous diagnostic criterias do not talk about any emotional consequences or patterns.
This is how I see it play out in my work with grad students:
Grad Student A is working with their supervisor on a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student A says "well, I got a little bit behind because I had to grade 100 midterms in 2 days this week." The meeting goes on, the draft gets discussed, Grad Student A continues to work on the draft. They might make an effort to block out a little more time during high grading seasons, or send an email to delay a meeting if they aren't far enough along the next time.
Grad Student B is working with their supervisor on a a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student B freezes. They feel sick to their stomach, and they are distracted for the rest of the meeting because of how badly they feel for not having done more on the paper. They feel so awful that they avoid looking at the paper again for a few days, and when the time comes for the next meeting, they do not reach out to schedule it. They keep waiting to schedule a meeting until the draft is more developed, and waiting, and eventually the supervisor reaches out, concerned that they haven't heard anything for a few weeks. This is so activating that Grad Student B works on everything else BUT the paper until they finally either: build enough anxiety and shame about it that they tip into "deadline crunch mode" and get it done OR the paper becomes The Big Undone Thing that hangs over everything.
Grad Student C is working with their supervisor on a paper, and in the course of that conversation, the advisor suggests that the draft is not as developed as they expected. "I thought you'd have a little more done by now," or the like - and Grad Student C apologizes profusely. They have the rest of the meeting, and now, whenever any deadline comes up with that supervisor, Grad Student C will do anything to make sure they always, always have high quality work ready to go. They spend hours getting every draft as perfect and polished as they can possibly make it, even when they're sick/tired/busy/teaching/overwhelmed, and is utterly and completely burned out. The fear of ever having a draft "not be developed enough" hangs over every draft, even ones that have been explicitly labelled rough or zero drafts, and so each new writing assignment just adds to the pressure. They feel so overwhelmed by all the time it takes to do just one paper that they shove everything else to the side, even projects that are valuable, important, or pleasurable.
I see these types in many of my clients who are neurodiverse, who have experience anxiety, who self-identify as perfectionists - and a lot of that behavior is 100% normalized by academia. If you were to go on Twitter right now, I'm sure you could find all kinds of tenured faculty talking about their avoidance, their deadline-driven behavior, their perfectionism - there are far fewer voices stopping these conversations and saying "wait, what? Maybe there's a more regulated way??"
Because I'm not a therapist, I'm not trained to go deep into the emotional layers, and your own embodied history with these patterns. But, I can say that as a coach, there are a few practices that can help you manage some of the "avoid this" or "never let anyone down" patterns that can come up when you've got some sensitivity reaction things happening:
Have someone translate your feedback for you. Have you gotten a nasty email? Is your Reviewer 2 feedback awful? If you have a colleague you trust, or a partner, or someone who has a little distance, you can ask them to look at emails and see how harsh they are. You can give a red-ink covered draft a friend and say "can you look at this and summarize three big things for me to start working on first with this draft?" Sometimes, another set of eyes can help you translate it into language or a framework that isn't so activating.
Clarify expectations. If your advisor says "email me back when you have a draft" and you immediately jump to "a publication ready draft", either one of two things is true: they want to see writing that's ready to send off to an editor, or they are open to seeing writing in a variety of stages. If you feel comfortable, you can ask a clarifying question - "Would you be willing to read a rough draft?" is a professional thing to ask!
Assess where you are before you take any further steps. If you get a draft back with comments, and the email has language that sets off your rejection alarm bells, your body could be bracing for a fight. It might make sense for you to do a check in - is my pulse racing? Are my teeth clenched? What color do I feel like? - and act accordingly. This video has some good suggestions for green/yellow/red levels of activation. You might want to schedule a time to go through comments, maybe with a friend to help you work on them. Or you could set a schedule of looking at one or two pages of comments and translating them into tasks in your to do list at the end of each day, so that you can unwind and take care of yourself at night, before working on the to-dos the next morning.
Create some visibility around The Great Undone Thing. If you tend towards the "nope! never again!" reaction, it might be helpful to create a little bit of visibility around the thing that is not currently surfacing on your to do list. Especially with other executive function symptoms, you might swing from hyper-awareness of the thing you are avoiding, to periods of time where you are so fully engrossed in other projects or tasks where you lose sight on the other, more emotionally-loaded tasks. You could try repeating tasks in a database like "check in on draft", or have an accountability partner who checks in on that project, or a whiteboard where you have a visual cue of a few next steps you could take on that project.
So much academic advice seems to boil down to "write every day, and work as much as you can on every opportunity so you can always have slightly improved odds at succeeding on something every so often." And while that advice, when framed correctly, can be sound, it also can really invalidate the experience of someone who cannot simply open a rejection letter and keep it moving. And while a good task management system, or coach, or community can help, they're no substitute for compassionately acknowledging your own experience, and where you do or don't fit with some of the advice and assumptions on offer. If any of these patterns were easy or simple to solve, they wouldn't impact so many of us. But, the more you know, the more you can work with yourself, and build systems and frameworks that help you be your best self without denying who you are and how you move through the world.
**For the purposes of this article, I'm choosing to use the term rejection sensitivity, which is a symptom that can, in official DSM terms (on its own a flawed system!), overlap with diagnosable conditions like ADHD, BPD, body dysmorphia disorder, and social anxiety) rather than Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria, which is specifically talked about in relation to ADHD. For more on RSD, see here and here!
stealth expectations: or an easy way to ruin a perfectly good day
most friday afternoons, or sometimes saturday mornings, i make a list of all the things i want to do over the weekend. it's a menu of sorts - i can easily get overwhelmed with decisions so having a range of options to pick from encourages me to remember some of the 1908123908 hobbies i have, and lessens some of the pressure of the minute by minute decision making of what to do. in the early blushes of this routine, i loved it - worked a peach every time. and then, something else started to happen.
as soon as it became clear i wasn't going to do everything, i'd be annoyed with myself for "not maximizing" the weekend. and if something unexpected came up - i'd start to worry about how i would fit everything in (even if there was oodles of time). and if my husband had plans of his own that impacted mine, well, that could be the spark that lit a whole powderkeg of yuck. all together, it wasn't even a pattern that registered as a problem, just an intensifying sense that my weekends were less fulfilling than they had been.
it wasn't until i was reading ATLAS OF THE HEART by brené brown and came across a section on "stealth expectations" that things started to click. as she writes:
"every day, sometimes every hour, we are consciously and unconsciously setting expectations of ourselves and the people in our lives - especially those closest to us. the unconscious, unexamined, and unexpressed expectations are the most dangerous and often turn into disappointment...when we develop expectations, we paint a picture in our head of how things are going to be and how they're going to look....we set expectations based on not only on how we fit in that picture, but also on what those around us are doing in that picture. this means that our expectations are often set on outcomes totally beyond our control, like what other people think, what they feel, or how they're going to react....and when that picture or movie fails to play out in real life, we feel disappointed. and sometimes that disappointment is severe and brings shame and hurt and anger with it." (44)
and goodness me, that was a big part of what was going on. by making a list (EVEN THOUGH I CALLED IT A MENU) i set some stealthy expectations for myself about what i should be able to accomplish. i'd move through the weekend and each activity would be enjoyable - whether i planned it or not - but because it wasn't living up to a sort of fuzzy idea that i had for myself that i would do all the things, i would put a little disappointment into that soup and leave feeling less satisfied without having a real reason why. and once i examined that behavior in myself, i started to see how it has always been a part of my relationships, with others, and especially with myself.
how many of us have had a "fine" day but because we didn't cross every item off the to do list, we leave the desk for the day a little deflated? how often have we planned for a big work session, only to have something else come up or have something put on our plate, and even though there's still time to adjust, we're mad about it?
or maybe you had some expectations about how an advisor would work with your writing, or how a course would go, or how a conference paper would be received. maybe you had a vague idea of how long it would take you to write the next section of your chapter, and because you finished it friday instead of wednesday, you feel behind and rushed even though you still have plenty of time.
we all have expectations about how things will go, how they'll feel, or how other people will react to us. that's part of how we, as humans, move through a world that is at times routine but often unpredictable - we have to anticipate to some degree. and often, once we express those expectations, we can manage them. once i realized that i was treating my options for the weekend like obligations, some of the pressure released and it was easier to reset my expectations for something more reasonable. many of us have a perfectionist streak in us - we maybe are noticing and supporting the places where it's showing up clearly, but brains are sneaky, and so are expectations.
so, what do we do in the face of this cloud of sneaky expectations we can float in? a few tools that might help:
check in with how you're feeling. moods are mysterious and emotions can be tricky to nail down, but it can be a good place to start. once i name what i'm feeling (i try for as little judgment as possible, but don't always get there), it often is easier for me to trace where that is coming from. if i'm ending most weekends - no matter how they go - feeling unsatisfied, then that's solid data to start with.
if you have a sharp sense of disappointment about how something went - and you're in a space where your nervous system is up to it - it can help to use these questions to get some clarity:
how did i think this was going to go?
what made me think that?
how did i think i was going to feel?
what was i imagining in terms of the other people involved?
it can be (relatively) more straightforward to handle your own expectations of yourself - it gets more complicated when other people are involved. i often work with clients who have expectations of how grad school would feel, or how things would go with their advisor, and here are some of the tools that are most helpful in that realm:
write out your expectations - even if you don't verbalize them right away. if you send a draft to your advisor, it might help to write down what you expect to get back - line edits? global comments? notes on argument? help with grammar? if/when you don't get those things, you can then either be more specific in your requests, or find someone or someplace else to help get you the support you need.
figure out where your expectations are coming from. are you seeing other people tweet about amazing conversations in their conference presentations, and then feel let down when yours are more stilted? do other people get loads of help on their job documents, and all your advisor does is send out letters of recommendation? and then you can check those expectations against more sources of data, or data sources that are closer to your situation - there is so much that's individual about our situations that it can be really helpful to check in with where we're getting our expectations, and whether or not they apply to us.
this is the work of a lifetime - like perfectionism, stealth expectations sneak in and take root before you notice them (that's why they're stealth!). but, noticing the invisible expectations we have for how things will go and bringing them to the surface can really help us stay out of the disappointment and shame that we don't necessarily even mean to welcome in.
the premises of your plan
Recently in calls with clients, I find myself digging into the assumptions and premises that form the foundation of any one person's plan to move a project forward.
For example, say a client comes in and says "I want to make a plan to finish this piece before I start teaching again in September." And I ask "what plan do you think will get you there?" or "what do you have so far?"
"Well, if I write 1k words per day for the rest of July and half of August and then revise 10 pages a day in the third week of August and then footnote and format everything and do every step for submission and my writing group gives me feedback in 24 hours or less, then I will be able to submit it on August 31 and also I have given myself 12 flex hours to spend how I wish between now and then."
[This is an exaggeration, obviously, but only slightly ;) ]
And so, as coach, I start to dig in:
"What outside people or things is your plan dependent on?"
"How many hours are you expecting to put in a day?"
"Where is your buffer time?"
"Have you ever worked at this pace before?"
"What things will you be doing to take care of yourself during this period? When will you fit them in?"
Try asking yourself these questions about your plan for the week, or the month, or the project as a whole. And if the answers are alarming, adjust!
Plans are just drafts - they're your best guess about how something might unforld, and what milestones you need to hit in order to make that happen. They aren't contracts you sign with your future self, nor are they they only possible path forward.
So if you find yourself in a cycle of making plans, getting off track, making new plans, and feeling pressure because of it, it might be time to examine the assumptions you're making about yourself, your collaborators, and the world that inform your plan. The best plans are those that reasonably address and accomodate for the conditions on the ground, not the perfect conditions you want, or wish, to have.
managing "now" and "not now" time categories
**This is part of a new, irregular series on ADHD and other kinds of neurodiversity in the academy - I am not a medical doctor nor am I a therapist or mental health practitioner and this is not medical advice. It is PhD advice though!**
"Just schedule it!"
"Make a time for it and just do it then!"
"Put it on your to do list so you don't forget!"
"Once you get into a routine it'll be second nature"
The above is all very helpful advice if you're trying to deal an increasing amount of work, due at irregular intervals, and often not at all urgent until it is overdue and very urgent. But if your brain is divided into two times - now, and not now - then a lot of that advice is counterintuitive at best, and shame-y and hurtful at worst!
A lot of us see time in this way to some extent - there is what I'm doing right now, and then there's a sense that there will be time after this to do other things. But if you are neurodiverse, and specifically if you have some degree of executive dysfunction, then it isn't so much that you don't understand the idea of "later" as an important time intellectually, it's that it doesn't feel pressing or urgent, and therefore, it is really, really hard to get yourself to focus on it, plan for it, or invest in it, because now will always get first rights on your attention.
But no one is doomed to a present-only existence, like a goldfish putting out fires. Here are two areas you can experiment with to see if there are ways to help yourself better structure your now, and make your not now a little more concrete.
Capture the not-now tasks before they float away. This one is easier said than done, but I have seen a few different systems work really well for capturing that fleeting "oh I should do that" thought you might have during another activity, and put it somewhere where you can access it again, in a different "now".
It's messy, but post it notes, notebooks, or jot pads work really well for this. Think about something to do, jot it down, keep going. The trick is making sure you process all that data at some point - maybe you specifically use post it notes, and as part of the "cleaning" process you put them in a task manager. Or you use something like a bullet journal, which is essentially (at its most simple form) a running to do list that has different symbols for now tasks, and not now tasks.
Task managers like ToDoist or ClickUp will let you schedule tasks in the future, or set them to recur at a regular interval so you don't have to keep setting up the tasks. The trick I find is to keep the system as simple as humanly possible - many task managers have lots of extra features, but if you need to tag, sort, estimate time, etc for every task, you won't necessarily want to do that.
Use your phone to help. I have decided that my bargain with the Devil is to use Google Home so that I can shout reminders in the kitchen and have them sync to my Google Calendar. But lots of phones have a "speak to remind" function - and lots of us have our phones nearby!
Reset your now. If it were as easy as setting reminders, we wouldn't be having this conversation! But when we are in flow/hyperfocus, it's really hard to interrupt that - and when you do, it can cause some irritation and frustration, too. But there are ways to sync up so that the rollover into now can occur a little more frequently.
Alarm clocks - in your phone or often, separate physical objects work even better - can be really useful. One that goes off every two hours can be a cue to check back in and see if there are things you can/want to switch to. Tying that to an alarm/time of day, rather than the "oh @#*(@&# I'm late" or an email reminding you that something is due can be really useful in interrupting the shame loop that comes with new/urgent tasks.
A steady (as "no matter when it happens as long you can get it into the schedule") meeting with yourself on a regular basis. In the morning when you start to work can be a good time, or every time you sit at your desk, or even every Monday/Sunday with your whole family can work. This is a chance to look ahead, refamiliarize yourself with what's coming, get support if you need it, and basically, move things purposefully into the "now" time. The routine is helpful, the overview is helpful, and if you can do it on a time-based basis rather than an need-based (ie, things are late and you're overwhelmed) it can feel less like a punishment.
Use email to your advantage. Now that gmail has integrated a "send later" feature and a "snooze" feature to have things return to the top of your inbox, it is a lot easier to have important things show up in your email when you want/need to see them. This technique works best if you aren't an email avoider (no shame! just know yourself!), and if your inbox is relatively clear, but it can be a game changer if you basically use your inbox as a to-do list manager anyway. This saves you the step of having to turn things into recurring tasks and leans in to the way you use email already.
But in either zone, the overall goal is to take the now/not now distinction and have it be something you more consciously play with, rather than something that sneaks up on you. The more you can control how and when information comes into your field of view, the less the "oh I have to do this" feeling will be automatically linked with the "oh man I missed it / I messed up / this is late" cycle, and more with the "oh yes, now it's time for that" feeling. Elaborate schedules and complex systems of time blocking don't work for everyone, so lean into what does work for you, and make your now happen a little bit more on your terms.
doing it badly
It is often quoted that Gilbert K Chesterton wrote "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly" and while that is a wild misquote and completely out of context, there's some truth there I think.
There are many, many hard skills to learn in the course of graduate work, but one of them is to tolerate the discomfort of creating something (a draft, an email, a course session, a syllabus, whatever) and knowing that it isn't the ideal version of that thing. I can see what it could be......but not how to get there in that exact moment. I feel it in my body - it makes me anxious, it makes me doubt all kinds of things like whether I'm smart enough or whether this is done. It doesn't even really matter if I tell myself that I DO know things and that I am capable of learning and growth - I still HATE the feeling of doing something imperfectly - even if it's just a draft, or for me.
So, if just saying to yourself "anything worth doing is worth doing badly" works to help you get out of your head and into your work - awesome!!!!! yes!!!! Feel free to stop reading and use the extra four minutes to listen to a good song or doodle or something!!
But if that wasn't enough, here are a few ways that I put that idea into practice and tolerate the discomfort! Feel free to mix, match, or add your own in the comments!
Opposite day! - Sometimes, I need a sharp reset out of a perfectionistic swamp, so I do the complete opposite! If I've been ruminating over the same sentence for two days, I try and write as many new sentences as I can in two poms. If I can't decide how to respond to an email, I write six drafts in six different ways! Let's be real, I don't have time for opposite day all the time because it is a lot of labor but if I have a little time, it appeals to the inner eight year old in me that enjoys doing things on opposite day.
Track "failure", not completion - This is popularized in the 100 rejection challenge, but the idea is simple - swap what you're tracking for a better sense of how your work is actually going. If you are aiming for x number of acceptances in a year, it's really easy for your brain to be like, "okay, divide that by 12, that's the number I need to hit a month, it's currently the 25th day of this month and I haven't gotten any therefore I'm going to need to do double next month and that's a lot of work wow better get on Twitter!" (or at least that's how it goes for me!) By tracking the effort rather than the outcome, you can get a better sense of how much you're showing up. So maybe you track the number of books you skim and don't include, or the number of words you freewrite and don't use, or the amount of writing you cut from a draft. If you have books you've skimmed, you've freewrote, or you've cut things from the draft, that means you had material there to work from, and that means you're showing up, and that often means that things are progressing, even if it isn't a straight line.
Find the sneaky gremlins and ask them some questions - I work with clients all the time who are perfectionists, and I myself am one, and one thing that's really hard is that rarely is my brain saying "well, I can't be perfect so better go hang out on Twitter!" My gremlins are A LOT sneakier than that! They hang out in plain sight, or they say things that SOUND helpful but actually keep me stuck in the swamp, like:
Because I'm so behind on this draft, I don't have time to do anything but a really clean first try.
I don't have time for this to be in rough shape because it's due in x days.
I don't have time for a messy freewriting process because I have 1223898231 things to do.
I don't have enough useful material to send this out and get feedback on it.
What's the most efficient way to do this? I have to be efficient!
Almost all of these gremlins sound logical and clear! But the result is that they often keep me locked up in the stages before I actually try something - the research, the planning, the task creation, etc - because my brain feels that if I just nail the thinking, the doing will be effortless, flowing, and efficient. But, I also have SO MUCH DATA that I think really effectively WHILE I'm doing things - and that often that learning and growing happens way more effectively when I'm trying at things rather than thinking about how to try at things.
So when my gremlin says "we don't have time for a bunch of messy drafts of this" I ask it: "would we rather have lots of time to polish and play with a messy draft, or more time to perfect the plan and maybe risk having less time to polish it?" And sometimes, let's be honest, it does say PLAN MORE - but more and more often, it sees the logic in the discomfort, and I'm at least a little more willing to try.
Sometimes, the best way to do something is to do it, rather than think about it. When so much is feeling stuck, sticky, and frozen - I like to move where I can. I believe that objects in motion tend to stay in motion (so does Newton.) It's rarely comfortable! I don't leap out of bed in the morning excited to confront the uncomfortable space between something that exists in my head and the first (or fifth) version that I create that isn't anywhere close to the ideal! But, the more I practice, the easier it gets. And the more I practice, the better I get, too. <3
goals are like time traveling
One of the hardest part of graduate school is having to hold multiple timelines at once. You have a degree, and all the milestones that lead up to it, unfolding over a matter of years. Time between milestones, or even between points of feedback, can be weeks or months. At the same time, we often have another timeline, one that operates on the day to day. Paying rent, having personal lives, jobs, family, exercise - all things that can easily consume the day in a way that both assure us that we are people, as well as graduate students, and distract from the Big Goals of graduate school.
Which timeline are you more focused on? This can be a hard question to answer, and for many of us, the answer is "both, but different timelines take priority at different times." My challenge to you this week is build in systems that help you keep your eye on both timelines regularly. Create a way to pay attention to the important, and the urgent.
To help, here’s a little time traveling exercise.
First, list out your goals for next month. This is the first step because breaking your near term goals into achievable chunks, and focusing on achieving them in the near future, is a sure-fire way to build energy and momentum.
Next, imagine yourself six months from now. Where do you want to be? What do you want to achieve by then, or start on around then?
Zoom out even farther, to a year from now. Imagine where you want to be, or suggest specific goals for yourself.
But this wouldn't be a Thrive PhD resource without also inviting you space to take those goals and be purposeful about the steps you will take towards them. What habits, resources, skills, or changes do you need to build or make to make these goals happen?
I like to think about goals as a form of time-traveling - we go forward in time to visit with one version of our future selves. To me, this feels more imaginative, more fun, and more curiosity-inducing than setting up a system of benchmarks against which I will judge future progress. If you are prone to using goals as a way to set high, high expectations for yourself that you regularly fall short of, or achieve but at a cost to your health and happiness, try shifting your perspective to time-traveling. Imagine yourself in the future, and then ask that person what they needed to get there. You might be surprised at how different it feels.