6.8 it just needs one more week and then i can submit it
you said you'd send the chapter on friday, but if you just had one more week....
do it once? okay. but no one ever presses snooze just once, right?
let's talk about this loop - and how you can get out of it, in this week's episode
mentioned:
if i work hard enough on this draft, i won't have to revise it
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📍 Welcome to Grad School is Hard, But... A Thrive PhD podcast. I'm Dr. Katy Peplin and this is a show for everyone who's doing the hard work of being a human and a scholar.
This season is called Just at Me already, where I go through all of the different kinds of people that I run into and have been myself as a coach for academics. And we talk about how to shift that if you want to. I.
And make sure you check out the link in the show notes for my working more intentionally tool kit. Which is available for you totally for free. Now let's get into it
This week's episode is called, it's Not Ready to Send right now. I just need one more week and then I'll be ready to submit it. And this is one of the most requested episodes this season because so many people come to me and they say, Hey, I really need to submit this draft. I said it was gonna be done a couple of weeks ago, and when I asked the person I'm working with, you know, what's stopping you?
And they think, man, I just, you know, I just need one more week, and I think I'll be able to get there. The last couple of weeks have been totally bananas, but one more week. I'll definitely be ready. I'll definitely be ready by Thursday. I'll definitely be ready by Monday. And on and on and on. Now, there's a couple of things that feed into this.
Number one is perfectionism and misunderstanding what the role of revision is in the writing process. This is something that's come up in a bunch of the episodes this season, and it's not because I really like repeating myself. It's because it's that common, it's that prevalent, and it's this idea that we need to shift from the, I write it once.
I polish it, I maybe do a little bit of adjusting, but then it's pretty much ready to go. It's ready to be graded, which is how we used to approach papers, seminar papers, even in grad school. But definitely before final papers, term papers, you work on it, you build up to it all semester, you submit it, and then you get graded.
Life as an academic writer is completely different because up until that last submission deadline, you are always submitting your work with the expectation that it will get feedback and that you'll need to revise it. And that's not a punishment. That's not something that you've been sent back to do because you didn't pass this hurdle.
It's how academic work, which is complex and needs a lot of attention in order for it to be clear and readable and persuasive. And you can't get it all in one go. It can be really scary to submit things knowing that you're gonna get feedback. So of course you think, huh, I'll do that next week.
I'll make sure that I spend this next week really working on it. There's that fear, there's that sense of being unclear. Is this ready? Is this what other people send? Is it not? And we just don't really know when the point is that somebody else wants to see it. We know they probably don't wanna see a stack of notes all jumbled up with no complete sentences, but.
There's a big space between, here is a bunch of completely unorganized paragraphs, and here is a publishable journal article or a publishable dissertation chapter. There's a lot of space in between there, so how do you know when it's ready for that feedback?
The problem with the one more week. Is you set a deadline.
Usually you're trying to make yourself accountable to somebody else, your advisor, your writing group, and then you press snooze on that deadline, just like an alarm clock. It goes off at 7:00 AM and you press snooze and you think, okay, I'm not ready right now, but I definitely will be in 10 minutes. I'm not ready to send this to my advisor right now, but I definitely will be in a week.
The problem with this cycle is that there's a hit of temporary relief, right? You press that snooze button and you think, okay, I get a couple more minutes of sleep. I was feeling really anxious about getting ready to submit this, and now I have an extra week to make sure that it feels better,
like the fourth or fifth time, or maybe even a little bit more that you press that snooze button, it gets harder and harder 'cause that temporary hit of relief hits less strongly. The first extension feels like an amazing relief, and the third one feels. Less powerful, more anxious because you know that time is getting away from you and it's harder and harder to submit it because you think, okay, well I've had X number of extra weeks.
It needs to be that much better because it's late. It needs to be that much better because I'm behind. And so every time you get there you think, okay, I definitely do just need another hit of time because this isn't gonna be what I want it to be when this person sees it. Now. What are some ways to get out of this loop if you find that you're in?
The first one is to outsource this decision. This is something that we did talk about last week with editing checklists, and I will make sure that I link to last week's episode and also some of the checklists. In the show notes, but if you can outsource this decision to a checklist, amazing. Where you say, okay, here are all of the things that I wanted to get done on this draft.
I wanted to make sure it was all complete sentences. I wanted to make sure that all my topic sentences were really fresh and crisp and sharp, and I wanted to make sure that all my references were in there. I hit all those three things. It must be ready to submit. Now, if you like me, can think your way into and out of a checklist where you say, okay, this is definitely gonna be it.
And then you don't feel quite ready anyway. You can also outsource the decision to another person. Have a trusted friend or colleague go through and read your draft and say, okay, is this ready to submit to my advisor? Is this ready to go to a writing group or not? And having that friend check means that it's somebody else's responsibility to help you make that decision.
And then they can even help you press that submit button if you need. They can attach the file to an email, write it for you, and send it. Maybe not that far, but you get what I mean. Your friend can help you make that decision. If you are like, I just, I think I need one more week. They check in, they say it's ready.
You trust them. The other thing to note thing number two is that that done feeling is. Almost never an internal state or a switch that flips. I never work with any writer who says, yeah, I sat, I worked on the draft. I worked steadily through my revisions, and it's 100% ready to go. Everybody is always submitting because.
It's the deadline because that's when their advisor wanted it, because they need to keep moving because they need to move to the next section because they need to have the time off at the end of the year. A thousand different reasons. These things come to administrative ends, not content-based ends.
You're submitting it because it's due, not because it's done, and that distinction can be really uncomfortable, but it's the one that helps you move forward faster. Because if you accept as a premise that you are gonna have to do some revision, you are gonna have feedback, well, then the earlier you submit it, the earlier you can get started on that feedback and get it to the next hurdle.
The third thing that I wanna share with you. Might feel like a little bit of tough love, but I think it's one of those things that if you can wrap your heart and your head around it, it can make a really big difference. And that thing is that what you're avoiding.
The feedback, the criticism, that awful ego hit of not doing a good job is survivable. But avoiding that thing, avoiding that vulnerability is what makes it a harmful situation to you and kind of the overall life scheme of things. It is completely understandable that nobody wants. To get a bunch of criticism, a bunch of feedback, even if it's the most kind, gentle, constructive feedback in the world.
It's not fun. Nobody likes looking through somebody's red line edits on their work, but it is survivable. It is something that you can support your way through. You can have a friend look through those comments. You can take a break after you read them, you can read them, process them, put them in your task manager and then move on.
It is survivable, but the more you avoid it, the more it turns into this trap where you can't move on because you're trying so hard to avoid a thing that you can survive. It's not fun, but it is. Something that if you can commit to doing it, to sending that draft, to moving forward, to letting other people see your work and give you feedback, you might be able to shift your writing process away from this system of perfectionism and avoidance and feeling stuck and into a conversation, a conversation between you and the draft between you and advisors, you and your writing group, and eventually you and your readers.
Because you're not going to have that piece of writing enter the world if you're hanging onto it for just one more week, perpetually at the end of every week. I hope that this helps you. I have heard from lots of people that it's helping them, but the most important thing is that you are not alone in pressing that snooze button.
It is scary to submit something that you're not a hundred percent confident in, but it is survivable. And if you can survive it, then the writing can keep making its way through that cycle, through that repetition to get it to be the most clear version of what you want it to be out in the world.
I'm hoping that for you and I'm hoping that for all of us, and I'll see you that, and I will see you next week.
📍 Thank you for listening to Grad School is Hard, but... You can find more information and resources in the show notes and at thrive-phd.com. Every month, I'll select one reviewer for a free 45 minute session with me. So please subscribe, rate, and review to help spread the word about the show. Thanks so much and I'll see you again soon!