2.13 define done-ness - it's less obvious than you think!
lately, i've been asking people to define not just the tasks they want to focus on - but how they'll know when that task is done. and it's a LOT harder than you might think it is! this week's episode gives you two strategies for figuring out doneness, and debunks a PERSISTENT myth about how other people know when they're done. get into it!
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If the answer to this question was easy. I wouldn't need to record a whole podcast about it. Let's talk about how to know when you are done on this episode of
📍 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. And in season two, I'll introduce you to various tools that might make the hard stuff from writing to managing your time to taking care of your brain just a little bit easier.
And if you like what you hear on this podcast, you're going to love what I have cooked up for you in summer camp. More details in the show notes. Now let's get into it.
As part of the planning process for the sprint kickoff that I run in the summer camp program, I ask people to define not only what tasks they're going to work on over the course of the two weeks, but crucially how they know when that task is done. And you'd be surprised, or maybe you wouldn't be by how difficult an answer that can be.
If it were easier to know when things were done. I think a lot of academic planning, estimation, deadlines would be a lot easier because it'd be a concrete finish line. You're done preparing for exams when you've read all the books. You are ready to turn in that draft when it exists. But as we know those questions, aren't as clear cut. They aren't as black and white as we might want them to be. And that gray area invites in all kinds of new friends to play like perfectionism, avoidance anxiety, because your definition of done and everyone else's might be really different from one another.
So let's get into what kinds of tasks it's really important to define and done point for and how you might go about doing that.
Now. Raise your hand. Or don't, I mean, you're listening to a podcast, so I can't really tell, but raise your hand if you have ever thought. Okay. I wish that somebody would just give me a to-do list for everything that I need to do in order to have this project be done. Just give me a to-do list for my dissertation. I don't care if it's 600 things long. I want to see every single step so that I can check it out.
So that I can check them off one by one. It might take me years, but I will have my list and I will feel secure in my list hood. Now I have begged for such a list. I've had clients beg me for a list themselves and I regret to inform you that it really doesn't exist. And partially because there is no standard for when something is done.
For example. Take something like a draft of a piece of writing your advisor might leave you with a common refrain that says, come back to me when your draft is done and I'll give you some feedback and you say, great. That makes sense. As soon as the draft is done, I'll come back and then you work on it.
And you work on it and you work on it and then it's not really clear to you when it's done. Is it done when all of the pros exists, even if some of it is a little bit rough, is it done when all of the citations are there? Is it done when every table and figure is complete and in the document? Is it done when it's copy edited? Is it done when it's formatted or is it done at some other mysterious time that you don't really know about.
In just that one example, we can see where there are multiple invitations for your brain to jump in and either tell you that something is done way before it is. Or much more likely to stall you from the next step because you are pretty sure that your version of done isn't as good as what other people are expecting.
So in this week's episode, I really want to give you a couple of tools to define doneness. Not because they will protect you from feedback. Not because they are guaranteed to be the same definition of doneness as your advisor. Or your editor or whomever else you're submitting work to, but because they bring clarity to what can otherwise be a foggy finished line.
One way to measure doneness is to measure against the requirements. This is one of those situations where on paper, it seems really simple. Yes. Find the requirements for what a dissertation chapter must be, meet the requirements. And then I am done. But I don't know about you. Nobody handed me a list and said, here are the requirements for your dissertation chapter. It needs to be this number of pages. It needs to be this number of citations. It needs to be this level of formatted. People just said, come back when your draft is done and expected me to know what that meant.
Now. If you're in a program that gives you really clear guidelines. Enjoy them. Uh, feel free to skip ahead a couple of seconds, but if you don't. There's two ways to go about defining the requirements. The first way is to find a completed object that is similar to what you're trying to do. So in the case of a dissertation chapter, this might be somebody else's chapter that you're looking at, maybe an older graduate student who's a couple of years ahead of you is willing to share, you know, an in progress drafts so that you can see it.
But that's one way, find an example and then extrapolate backwards. If there's was 50 pages, then yours is probably going to be about 50 pages. If they cited 15 different sources, then you know, that 15 sources is probably closer to the ballpark than 30 or 50 or a hundred sources. It's not perfect.
But it will give you a ballpark estimate around about close enough estimate that will help, you know, when you've met all of the requirements. And if you meet the requirements, then you're done. The second level. The second way to know if you are done is to measure it against a deadline and your ideal plan.
So I sometimes refer to this is the Jedi mind trick effect. I had an advisor who only wanted to see what she described as polished writing. She didn't want to see anything in new draft version. She didn't want to see any bullet points or any placeholder references. She really wanted to see something polished, which meant that the space between when I could use feedback on my writing and what it was actually done enough to send to her was a pretty big space, months sometimes even. And so I had to build in a couple of extra deadlines and supports for myself, whether it was through a writing group or exchanging drafts with friends. Or doing what I would call a Jedi mind trick where I would finish up the chapter. I would know there were big holes in it. I would know that certain sections weren't as defined as other sections or that she might have feedback about things, but I would stop it at like 70% complete content-wise and then I would spend three or four days polishing up what I had.
I would go ahead and do all the formatting. I would add in the footnotes. I would make the tabs the way they were. We're supposed to be, and then I would send it to her. Knowing that it wasn't a complete draft, but it looked like a complete draft and it read like a complete draft. That way when she invariably had comments, I would go back and say, great. Thank you. That's awesome.
It was the only way for me to get feedback on my work in progress, and actually be able to revise it according to these requirements, that for whatever reason she was unwilling or unable to give me outright.
So, if you can't measure against the requirements, you can go with way two, which is do your best to make sure that it looks like it's done and acts like it's done. And then get that feedback. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. It doesn't feel good to send in work that, you know, could be better. But more often than not the earlier you engage the feedback. The earlier you engage the next step of the process, whatever comes after being done with the phase that you're on. So if that means being done with the research, it means the sooner you can start writing it up.
It might be that the sooner you get a draft, your advisor, the sooner you have comments to revise, or the sooner that you send something out to a journal, the sooner they send it back to you. With, you know, their journal Lee. Judgment. The idea here is that being done- even if it feels a little uncomfortable, even if you receive feedback that things need to be improved- is ultimately a much faster way to move through the process .
Because I'm here to let you in on a little secret. I have not. In all of my years of working with clients of working on things myself. I met anyone who has an internal switch that flips and says, ah, yes, this thing is done. This paper's ready. This chapter is complete. This dissertation is ready to go.
Everyone's doneness this is at least partially. Constrained by an outside force, whether that is your funding running out or your maternity leave or your advisor going off break for the summer, there's a thousand things that could create an external circumstance, but often your doneness is defined at least in part by this external circumstance that may or may not even be related to your work.
Your dissertation is done because you need it to be defended in August so that you can start your job in September. Your journal article is ready to go back to the journal because they asked for it to be backed by this specific date. So, if you're waiting for this kind of mysterious sense of satisfaction to know that something's done, then, in my experience, you're going to be waiting a long time. But overall. If you have a task that's on your task list this week, or for this summer, I really encourage you to take a couple of extra minutes and decide how you will know when that task is done.
It won't guarantee that you don't spend an extra couple of days polishing or that you don't have some sort of emotional wobbles at the end , worrying about whether this is actually good enough, but by defining doneness, you won't be waiting around for this abstract, somewhat mysterious sense that this is ready to go.
Now you will have an outside list of requirements, maybe written down, maybe in your head that will help you judge that doneness. And then you can be on to the next thing. Because if there's one thing that's true about grad school, that there will always be a next thing.
And if this is the kind of thinking that really appeals to you, then you might want to check out summer camp.
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