2.15 get out the good pens - switching to paper
i'm not sure what came first - my passion for notebooks and pens, or my reliance on those tools when i feel stuck and overwhelmed with my writing. this week, i'm talking all about the benefits of going pen on paper - to slow down, to be less linear, and to get unstuck! if you've been waiting for an excuse to get out the good notebook and your favorite pen, wait no more!
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Get out that fancy notebook that you've been saving, your best pen, or those cool post-it notes. You out. Because this week's episode is all about taking your thoughts and putting them on paper.
📍 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 make sure you check out the link in the show notes for a brand new summer planning template, all available for you for free. Now. Let's get into it.
Computers are obviously amazing. They're so powerful. They're so capable. But have you ever met a really good notebook? That's bound just the way that you want to. And that pen that has the exact right ink flow. There's something that can't be beat about working on paper.
And one of the things that I encounter with a lot of my clients and even with myself, Is that there can be a real resistance to stepping away from the computer and working in another space. And I think a lot of that comes from this fear of not being efficient enough. Why would I do pre drafting work or outlining or restructuring? =On a piece of paper or a hard copy or a notebook, if I'm just going to have to quote, redo all of that work on my computer later. Now, I'm not here to try and turn any of us into people who write all of our drafts longhand, and then send them to the typist to get them ready for our advisor's eyes. But I am suggesting that in a few specific situations, it can actually help you speed up to slow down and work in the less efficient, but more tactile realm of the paper.
Computers are a place where you can move your writing forward really quickly. But this also creates a sensation of going a little bit too fast than the actual ideas are developing. If you have ever found yourself, lost scrolling through a long document, not finding what you needed, clicking way to Twitter to try and find it hunting down that citation, remembering that you needed to book a dentist appointment, Googling that.
The loop goes on and on then you've maybe experienced what I'm calling this sync up issue, where your brain is going at a certain speed and the computer allows everything else to go quite a bit faster. Writing, especially at certain points can be a slow process. You are generating new knowledge. Therefore it will take you a little bit of time to formulate these ideas, get them ready get them lined up sequentially so that you can write them down at a document.
Working on paper, it gives you a chance to break out of that linearity. Slow down and let your brain generate those ideas at the pace that's a little bit more comfortable for you. It's not to say that you won't get back to the computer and then have all of those temptations in scrolling that you might have already had.
But for the particularly sticky seasons, when you feel stuck, when you feel overwhelmed, moving to paper is actually a way to help break that pattern of kind of frantically clicking or typing and retyping and deleting things. That real frantic nature can be calmed down by a little bit of on paper work.
Here are a few of the ways that I like to work with my writing on paper. Take what's useful and leave the rest. But I think that these benefits alone are worth an experiment in the next couple of weeks. Writing on paper, it can open up a variety of different workspaces. Pop into an empty classroom to use the whiteboard.
Take your notebook to the library or a coffee shop, work in a different corner of your couch. This is one of those changes that seems really small. Why would it make a difference for me to go to the library instead of my office, where all of my things are and all of my special mugs. But if you were feeling really stuck, really sticky, really slow going somewhere else and going somewhere else without all of the trappings of all of the other jobs and roles that need your attention can really make the difference and get you a little bit of fresh air, so to speak.
Benefit number two. It can be easier to share your thinking with other people. If you're working on paper. A brainstorming session with a mind map that you make on a big piece of paper or a whiteboard in an empty classroom can be an excellent way to get your thinking about an argument more clear while you show your work to a writing group or an advisor.
I know that I used to sit in coffee shops with my very best friends and I would scribble things and be like, see, don't you see it? I would draw them diagrams and I would connect the ideas and having it on paper, helped them follow me a little bit more as I was trying to work out those ideas. And even if you don't have an extra person to share these ideas with, I have also done high quality brainstorming with my cats or with an imagined, interested. Yeah, kind of feedback giver. And the paper makes it easier for me to remember what I was saying and for them to follow along whether they are feline or human.
Writing long hand, whether in full sentences or just in bullet points. I can allow you to slow down the actual production of words and see your own thinking more clearly. I know that I think really fast and my fingers can almost get there, but if I'm writing long hand, it takes me quite a bit of effort to get all of those words out. So.
Free writing is one of those techniques where they slow the race and the kind of frantic nature of the thoughts down so that you can see them. As opposed to scrolling through the document, looking at the feedback, looking at the comments, imagining six different ways that you can restructure and trying to keep all of that in your head. If you're working through a particularly thorny organizational issue or argumentative change writing longhand, or even putting things on post-it notes can helpfully slow you down so that you can see what you're trying to do.
If you're in a very sticky spot. You're nervous. You're overwhelmed. Your nervous system is at an 11. Working on paper can make it easier to soothe that nervous system enough. And make it a little bit harder to bounce into a different task that ultimately is going to be a distraction from what you're trying to do.
I find that the slower pace of me writing my words out, hearing the scratch of the pen on the paper actually gives me a chance to kind of reduce that overwhelm feeling. And really dig into what I'm thinking and what I'm trying to say.
Now, there's no phase of writing that won't benefit from writing on paper. If you are feeling overwhelmed or frazzled, I find that it's particularly effective in two different phases, the pre drafting, and then the restructuring.
I have clients that start any writing project with post-it notes on the wall with big ideas, they might start with free writing in a journal or making a mind map on a big piece of paper. That pre-writing phase. Is often not linear. And when we force it into a linear by design piece of software, like word. Then it really can constrain us and make it hard to see how things might be organized.
The second phase that I recommend working on paper is if you're in the middle of a really big restructure. If you're in a restructure, then it can be really difficult to make all of those changes that people are recommending as you scroll through the document.
You might end up duplicating certain areas. You might accidentally delete more than you want to. You can get lost. It's really hard, especially with big, large scale documents to do that restructuring digitally. If you have access to a printer you might print it out, cut things up, make notes. You might re outline it or reverse outline it in a notebook just to give yourself a chance to sort of see what you have and then make a couple of changes on paper and then translate those changes back into the digital.
It's that translation process that I find stops a lot of people from slowing down and working on paper. And yeah, it is going to be a pain maybe. To sit down and type up those notes or to go through and make sure that your document lines up with the new outline that you made.
And it's this kind of tool that our brains like to tell us it's inefficient. That can be especially hard to reach for in the situations when you're feeling stressed or behind AKA the situations where they might help the most. But let me assure you that this really is one of those slow down to speed up situations. You might need to budget a little bit of extra time to input, work into your final document, but if working longhand, if writing in a notebook of doing it with your favorite pen gets you unstuck. It gets you a little more focused or support, then that benefit really outweighs the work that you need to redo. Plus pens and markers and stickers. And if you need any more of a pitch than that, I can't help you.
But if this is the kind of tool and encouragement that you really are looking for at this summer, then you are most cordially invited to summer camp. A new session is starting. It's soon. They start every two weeks and you can get more information at the link in the bio.
Plus you can download your free summer planning workbook and stay tuned for cool free webinars and all sorts of other things that are coming down the pike this summer. Thank you so much for listening and I will see you soon.
📍 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!
2.1 - get a tool actually built for drafting: non-linear word processors
Welcome to Season 2 of Grad School is Hard, But...where I give you all my best tools to make things a little less hard. To kick things off, we're talking about non-linear word processors. If you've ever done any of the following: completely lost where you were in the document; scrolled up and down for seeming minutes, trying to find where you left off; got completely confused; duplicated text; moved things around that you shouldn't have; gotten really overwhelmed, trying to start at the beginning; mixed up versions; mixed up drafts; then maybe a non-linear word processor is the way to go.
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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. 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.
March madness is a month of free writing resources, trackers, dash boards, and prizes. Sign up for free at the link in the show notes.
In this week's episode, I am going to let you in on one of the biggest secrets that I have about writing long, complicated academic projects. Don't do it in Word. Or Pages or Libre Office or any of your more standard word processors. Now, if it's working for you and you feel like it's fine. There's no bumps at all. Feel free to skip the rest of this episode, and catch me back next week.
But if you have ever done any of the following: completely lost where you were in the document; scrolled up and down for seeming minutes, trying to find where you left off; got completely confused; duplicated text; moved things around that you shouldn't have; gotten really overwhelmed, trying to start at the beginning; Mixed up versions; mixed up drafts; then maybe a non-linear word processor is the way to go. Now by nonlinear word processor, what I mean is a piece of software that makes it easy for you to create collections of smaller bits of text that you then assemble into a longer, more linear draft.
Word and all of its other competitors are pieces of software that in my opinion are really great for things like formatting, sharing your work back and forth, once you have a draft that's all in a straight line. That has a beginning, a middle and an end. And you feel like the order is more or less locked in.
Other pieces of software can help you so much in the earlier drafting phases. Because they let you do things like create smaller documents that you remix and shuffle around to create new organizational schema. It might let you see more than one document open at a time so that you can compare or write directly from your notes or your outline. They might let you put all of your notes, outlines, research, sources, everything all in one place to minimize, clicking out, and therefore getting stuck in whatever sticky parts of the internet or your computer you tend to get stuck in.
These tools are meant to support the earlier messier non-linear phases of drafting. Where you might have a project that could turn into a conference paper and also a dissertation chapter and maybe a guest lecture. And instead of having 15 different word documents labeled: early draft, crappy draft, final draft, final, final draft, final draft for lecture. You get what I mean! You have everything all in one place that you can export and move around as you want to.
The first and most popular version of this software is something called Scrivener, which is definitely paid software. You do have to pay to use it. However it has some of the most generous trial policies that I've ever seen. But other pieces of software that would fall under this umbrella of non-linear word processors are Evernote, Notion, Obsidian could be used this way. Even Google docs has some pretty cool hyperlink functions and folder structures that you can use to replicate.
These tools are good for a couple of things, and I'm going to list them out now. Number one, I think they're good for projects that have a lot of possible formats. Whether that's possible organizational structures, whether you're going to start with this case study or that case study.
Or, you know, this is a body of research that might have four or five different related, but distinct outputs, like a conference paper, a chapter, so on and so forth. It lets you shuffle and see all of these things, keep them together and keep them with the research that they belong to so that you're not trying to manage a thousand different files with slight but meaningful differences.
Number two. I think that this kind of software is particularly awesome for people who want to create really dense links between their research notes, outlines, primary sources to help them see and work with these things more completely. So if you're a scientist and you have A paper that you're supposed to be doing. And it has the same seven sections every time - this might not be necessary for you.
But if you are an anthropologist or historian or an archivist or a person who works with interviews that you're coding, it can be really helpful to have a piece of software that organizes itself around all of the different things that feed into your writing for those early draft stages. So for example, when I was using Scrivener, I would have four panes open at any one time, all within the same document window.
I would have the draft I was actually working on. A scratch pad so that I could capture any notes and things that come up because my brain is very busy while I'm writing. It would have the original source that I was thinking about. And also the long outline that I was working from. And I didn't have to have those in four different Word documents. They were all there in one thing so that I could see them and bounce between them.
This is great. If you, like I mentioned, tend to get stuck when you click out of a document and then suddenly you're in the rest of your life and not doing your writing.
The other function that these are really, really good for are when you are feeling completely overwhelmed about where to start.
The worst thing about opening up a blank document, calling it dissertation proposal, and then trying to start writing is that naturally you're going to start writing at the beginning. And beginnings are some of the hardest parts. I never recommend that people start with the beginning unless they have a really good reason to, I always say write from whatever feels the clearest to you.
It might be the subsection three quarters of the way into the chapter, or it could be the conclusion, or it could be, you know, the second paragraph or the 15th. But nonlinear word processors, let you open up a file easily quickly say, Hey, this is this case study. I write it out there and then shuffle or reshuffle it, depending on how your structure and organization end up being through various revision processes.
Okay, last bit a caveat. If you try one of these pieces of software, whether it's Scrivener or Evernote or Notion, any of these nonlinear word processors, and immediately you feel overwhelmed, discombobulated if it doesn't really click with your brain, it feel free to bounce on out of there.
There is no need to use a non-linear word processor. If it doesn't immediately strike you as something that would be really beneficial. But if you've been really struggling to keep track of various drafts, and want a little bit more flexibility and support and options to play in the earlier drafting stages. There's no better place to do it than a non-linear word processor.
Thanks so much for being here 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!