Summer Productivity Tips: Use the August Hype for Successful Writing

What does August have in common with January and New Year’s? 

If you are an  academic writer, a PhD in academia, or an ABD, the last half of summer and August, in particular, may be the calm before the storm, the last best chance to do some serious writing before classes start and maybe before your advisor  (or department chair) returns to campus and you have to face him or her.

Just as in January, when everyone is urging you to start afresh, to lose weight, to join a gym, with August looming, you are now getting offers of four free sessions with a coaching group or membership in a low-cost online writing group.  Come closer to the August dissertation/academic writing hype—use the hype to start your own fire. 

You could try my Boot Camp, or steal my model for yourself.

My Boot Camp is a concentrated 2-week session in which I ask writers to commit to write four hours daily. Writers draw firm boundaries to eliminate distractions and to avoid setting themselves up for failure.  For accountability, I ask clients to email me after each daily writing session. 

By sticking to the plan, a success strategy is in motion.  Over the two weeks, writing becomes a habit because success is a habit.

Even if you’re working full time and also juggling a dissertation, you can make time over the next few weeks if you open yourself to the potential for summer productivity.

Don’t let this season of opportunities pass you by. If you’ve been an on-again, off-again dissertation writer for far too long, establish the writing habit and enjoy successful writing. 

Enjoy the success of building a consistent, daily, robust writing habit. 

I’m keeping an eye on the calendar.  Are you?

Nancy

P.S.  If you’re interested in successful writing and summer productivity, I’d like to hear from you.  Have you tried Boot Camp? Check out my tips at my website—www.nancywhichard.com and www.dissertationbootcamp.net.

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com
www.usingyourstrengths.com
www.dissertationbootcamp.net

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Something Has to Change if You’re Going to Make Progress on Your Dissertation in 2009

How many people signed their holiday card to you by wishing you a joyful, peaceful and productive year?

When you read the word productive, did you wince, thinking that they had somehow emphasized it?

Regret and shame can do quite a number on you, making you want to slink behind the couch because you’re sure everyone knows how little progress you made on your dissertation in 2008.

Have you said to yourself that something has to change?

On the second day of January, one of my Dissertation Boot Camp clients told me that she had made a New Year’s Resolution that never again would she have her thesis hanging over her head during a holiday.

The holiday season now ending was the last time she would experience the guilt she felt as she worked on her thesis when she wanted to spend time with her family and alternately worried about her work when she was having family time.

She has committed to daily writing over the next two weeks in order to get a good start toward finishing her degree by July.

If she sticks with her plan of daily writing for two weeks, she will be well on her way to having a habit in place, a habit that replaces her resistance to writing.

If you want to be productive in 2009 but something has to change first, then make a sacrifice for the sake of you.

Do whatever you need to do, get whatever help you need,  in order to show up to write each and every day for one to two weeks.

Working with someone—a buddy or a coach—adds accountability and will strengthen the habit.

Once you have a habit in place, you will be amazed at the change you see in yourself.  Give it a try!

If change is what you want more of this year, then make it soon!

Happy New Year and here’s to a change in writing habits!

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

 

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Dissertation Boot Camp and Self-Improvement Gurus—Using the Power of Habit in the New Year

What do you want more of in 2009?  Greater productivity in your writing?  Much more motivation to help you start writing your dissertation? How about Perseverance?  Or physical endurance?

Are you ready to launch your 2009 Self-Improvement Package?  How about joining a Dissertation Boot Camp?

From Oprah to gyms to decluttering gurus, we’re being given great opportunities that will help us make significant changes in the coming year.

If truth be told (and I try to tell the truth to others, if not always to myself), I think I’m going to need Oprah’s guidance for a few months in 2009.  Although I exercise, I am too fond of the comfort of food.  Whenever I hit a wall in my writing, my first thought is what could I eat? I’m definitely making some changes in 2009.

I need habits that are working for me.

The beginning of a new year is an opportune time to assess our habits and consider how they are working for or against us.

As writers, most of us have habits that fall into both categories, such as writing every day (works for us) and procrastination (works against us).

Although it may seem that we should simply cease and desist from those “bad” habits that work against us, as most of us know all too well from experience, that rarely provides a lasting solution.

Fortunately, there are positive strategies that can achieve lasting results. Most of these involve capitalizing on the power of habit.

Are you interested in using the power of habit to your advantage in the coming year?

A Dissertation Boot Camp helps you establish a robust daily writing habit.  With each day, the writing habit becomes stronger.  Would you be interested in that? If you’re interested in how a boot camp might be part of your 2009 plan, check out my website:  www.nancywhichard.com.

I’d love to hear from you.  What strategy would give you lasting results in establishing an industrial-strength daily writing habit?

Hope and cheer to you for new and better habits in 2009,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

 

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Make Getting Started on Your Writing Easier: Top 5 Reasons to Develop a No-Kidding, No-Fooling Daily Writing Habit

What if writing each day on your dissertation was a habit?  What would you gain from that?

Do you know the power of habit?

Here are the top 5 reasons for developing a solid, robust, no-kidding daily writing habit:

1.  You would not lose time and energy fighting the internal battles of whether you would write today.

2.  Your writing would come easily to mind at random moments during the day, giving you the opportunity to have new ideas and to make new connections.

3.  You wouldn’t have to find time to write—the time would be there, available, ready-made, dedicated to your work.

4.  You would replace distraction and self-deception with a solid, reliable writing habit.

5.  You would be writing on your dissertation every day.

Too often when ABD’s are isolated, working alone and with little accountability to anyone, a daily writing habit is far from reality.

Just as often, newly minted PhD’s working in their first appointment have lost the writing momentum they once had and are now procrastinating on their own writing.  They think they have no time for their research projects, or they’re making up excuses not to write.  They may distract and even deceive themselves to keep from writing.

I’m putting together some strategies that should put a habit in place that will give you the muscle you need to push distractions and self-deceptions aside and start a new day in your writing life.

Many writers who have been part of dissertation boot camps have high praise for the results and give their experience rave reviews.

If you’re interested in a virtual boot camp, you might want to check out my website at www.nancywhichard.com or sign up for my free e-newsletter.  I have an article on boot camps in the next issue that will go out right away.  Sign up at www.nancywhichard.com.

I’d love to hear from you if you have some ideas or strategies that can help make writing each day a habit or if you’re interested in gaining an intense, daily writing habit.

Best wishes,

Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

 

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How to Motivate Yourself toward Successful Writing

What is successful writing?  And how can motivation play a part in your achieving successful writing?

You, along with many people, may be celebrating holidays this week.  It’s probably been next to impossible for you to do the writing that you had promised yourself you would do.  It may also have been quite some time since you produced any text at all.

Getting started after being away from your writing for a while may be a challenge.

To me, whatever writing you can do will be successful writing.  The most successful writing is that first writing that you get on the screen or on the page after there’s been a slowdown or a complete stoppage. To start, regardless of how much conflict you feel, and to write through whatever anxiety you’re feeling are causes for celebration.

During this holiday season, you have some time where you can slow down a bit.  You can forgive yourself for all the times you didn’t write.  Let go of that regret.  Let’s think about a different way to approach your writing.

What would it be like for you to stay in a calm, trusting mood for a couple of days?  Trust that you can feel some anxiety, but write anyway. Trust that you will find your way through the work when you return to it.  Plan the time when you will return to your work and envision yourself doing the work.

This is the time to refill the well and to nurture yourself. Stay in a calm and trusting mode, knowing that you will move into the plan at the appropriate time.

If you’re interested in how a boot camp might be part of the plan, check out my website:  www.nancywhichard.com.  And sign up for my free e-newsletter, too.  The issue that’s going out very soon will also have an article on boot camps.

All good wishes for a Merry Christmas/Happy Holiday,

Nancy
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

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Find Motivation in a Dissertation Boot Camp with its Elements of a Hard Deadline

Christmas with the intensity of family, gifts, and travel can blot out everything else.  Just Sending Cards can balloon into a fast-paced skit that ends with husband driving wife to the Post Office while wife continues to stamp, apply return label, and seal the final 15 cards that could possibly arrive before Christmas.

Christmas is like the hard deadline, familiar to all writers.  You know that  you’re through getting ready for Christmas when it is Christmas.

When it’s time for people to open their presents or when the kids are coming downstairs or when everyone is seated at Christmas dinner, you’ll know you’re done.

There’s something reassuring, if harrowing, about a hard deadline.  It’s often not of your own making, but the definitive, clear nature of the hard deadline removes from you some responsibility and even commitment.  You didn’t set the deadline—it’s outside yourself—and you just keep working until you’re gathered with others around the tree.  Then you know you’re ready for Christmas. You made it once again.

In writing a dissertation, you won’t encounter too many hard deadlines, sorry to say, but imagine how a Dissertation Boot Camp might somehow capture the elements of getting ready for Christmas or of having a hard deadline.

A Boot Camp can help you by giving you the daily structure of when to write and when to stop writing.  A Boot Camp can offer you a great number of benefits.

If you’ve participated in a Boot Camp, I’d love to hear from you.  Please share your experiences.

Check out my website for a suggestion about a Boot Camp—that’s at www.nancywhichard.com.  While you’re at my website, sign up for my free e-newsletter—Smart Tips for Writers.  My newsletter will be going out within the next couple of days.  You’ll see a piece on boot camps there, too.

With wishes for a happy holiday,

Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation and Academic Career Coach
nancy@nancywhichard.com
www.nancywhichard.com

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Dissertation Boot Camp? Use All that January Offers for Your Dissertation Surge

January is the time for take-charge measures.

Weight loss organizations market heavily in January.  Gyms offer great deals.

E-newsletters multiply, magazines bulge with tips to make this year different, and Oprah offers all of us a way to control our weight.

It makes sense to take advantage of the season, the urge, the energy in the air, in your head, in your body.   Use that challenge to your advantage.

Channel it into your dissertation.

You hear the call to join dissertation groups, to buddy-up, to hire a coach.  If you were ever going to sign up for a dissertation boot camp, now could be the time.

A new dissertation coaching client, who long ago stopped taking graduate classes, but, alas, still pays tuition, has decided that she’s in a no-kidding, no-fooling mode.  She paid her tuition for the current winter term. But that’s the last time.  She has decided that she will defend in April.

Another new dissertation coaching client who for a year had been knocked off her stride by a negative reaction to a proposal has now jumped back into the race.

Use the January fever as a resource.  Make your move now.

If you’re interested in dissertation groups or boot camps, I’d like to hear from you.  What do you need?  What would you do if something were available?

For more support and for tips that you can use, go my website and sign up for my Smart Tips newsletter.

You’re in my thoughts.

Until next time,
Nancy

Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
Your International Dissertation Coach and Academic Career Coach
nancy @ nancywhichard.com

http://www.nancywhichard.com

 

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Dissertation Boot Camps, Writing Buddies, Dissertation Coaching– The More Support, the Better

Whether living hundreds of miles from campus or sitting at a table in the university library, many ABD’s feel isolated from their schools. They voice concerns that their schools rarely reach out to them, other than when tuition is due. 

The feeling that universities give little or no help to doctoral students during the dissertation process seems widespread.

If you are one of the ABD’s who feel isolated, here are some sources of support:
• Boot Camp
• Writing Buddy 
• Dissertation Coach
• All of the above

In an attempt to respond to some of the needs of ABD’s, a few universities have started dissertation boot camps.

This is a fairly recent development, and the University of Kentucky may have been the latest to enter this field.  Kentucky ran a two-week Dissertation Boot Camp this past summer, June 4-15, 2007. 

It consisted of
• A mandatory 3-hour writing session each morning, with an optional 3-hour writing session each afternoon
• During the two weeks, 3 talks/presentations on subjects of common interest (procrastination, perfectionism, choosing manageable tasks)
• An optional support group available to all students
• Occasional follow up with the students after the boot camp ended

The cost was very reasonable– participants paid $25 for the two week session.  A big bonus was that students who were off-campus could stay overnight for only $20 per night. 

The University of Pennsylvania was the model for the UK Boot Camp.  Penn offered its 2-week boot camp 3 times during 2005/2006, the first year for the Penn camp.  Eighty students participated in those 3 camps the first year.

In 2007, Yale University offered 3 sections of its boot camp to 20 students per session.  Though modeled on programs at other schools, Yale’s camp was more of a “retreat,” that is, a program of only 2 days, 8 hours each day, with drinks, snacks, lunch, and dinner delivered to the students as they wrote.

In August 2007, UCLA held what appeared to be a narrowly focused boot camp for students needing to write a prospectus or a proposal.

The University of New Mexico has held a boot camp for a limited number of students, but additional details were unavailable.

It was several years ago when  I first heard of dissertation boot camps— the first one was privately run by Sonja Foss in Colorado.  And she continues to offer a boot camp:
• Each session is limited to 8 students at a time
• The cost is in the neighborhood of $1600 for each session
• Foss provides personal attention
• Students write from 8 am to 9 pm each day with breaks for meals

Dissertation boot camps can give students a good start.

While book camps are not available to most students, resourceful, determined writers can find support.  My clients gain support from friends, clients, and a dissertation coach:
• One of my dissertation coaching clients, who has a fulltime job as well as children and a husband, meets an acquaintance each Tuesday night at a coffee shop, where they write for 1 ½ hrs.
• Another client meets a college friend, who happens to live in her area, for Saturday afternoon writing sessions at a local library.
• My clients have also chosen to hire a dissertation coach—me! 
      1. My clients and I  talk weekly
      2. Clients email me with updates between calls

Many ABD’s say that they think their universities could do more to reach out to them during the dissertation process.  In the meantime, do what you can.  Working with someone can make all the difference.  Pair up!

Remember, you do have some choices:
• Boot Camp
• Writing Buddy 
• Dissertation Coach
• All of the above

The more support the better!

I’d love to hear about the support that you have put in place.  Have you had any experience with boot camps?

Also, please stop by my website (www.nwcoaching.com) and sign up for my free electronic newsletter– I’m giving a bonus for signing up.

Until next time,

Nancy
www.nwcoaching.com

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