Make your list, and Check it Twice: Designing a Work Plan for the Holidays

Though November has blessed us with some beautiful, warm, sunny days, fall seems to have begun its inevitable fade into winter.  More and more conversations seem to be turning to turkey and travel plans, and last night my husband and I drove by our first house of the year with a display of Christmas lights.
The next six weeks can present some real challenges for many ABDs.  A hallmark of the month of December, along with the colored lights and Christmas trees, is the dramatic disruption in our daily routine.  Whether you’re traveling to visit others or whether your home will be the gathering spot, without careful forethought and planning, it can be tough to keep that dissertation moving forward. 
Unfortunately, many ABDs simply end up caught between feelings that they should be working and the distractions of the holidays.  Don’t let that be you.  Avoid the pitfall of assuming that you’ll somehow manage to squeeze in enough work time.  Instead, approach your work in a thoughtful and deliberate way.  Be clear about what your goals are, and how you plan to achieve them.  Decide now what you would like to get done during the month, and plan where, when, and how you will meet those goals. 
Below are five questions to answer that will help you to formulate a realistic work plan.  And, if you’re like me, you may discover that the need to work on your dissertation can have some surprising benefits.
• How much time will you really have to write?  Be honest, there’s no point in setting yourself up for failure by over-estimating your available time.  Are you facing a lot of travel time?  If yes, is that time you can use to work?  If you will be spending time with family and friends, how much disposable time will you have each day?  The answers to these questions may vary depending on your holiday plans, so think through the whole break, and evaluate realistically how much time you will have throughout the month.  You may well find that you can commit to larger blocks of time during certain periods, while you  may need to work with smaller chunks of time during others.  The important thing is that you think carefully about how much time you will have on a daily and weekly basis, and that you set your goals accordingly.
• When will you write?  In a study conducted by psychologists Gollwitzer and Brandstaetter, two groups of college students were asked to write an essay during the Christmas holidays.  One group was simply asked to write the essay, while another was asked to give a specific time when they would write their essay.  When the essays were received, two thirds of the group that had committed to a specific time to write returned their essays, while in the control group, the group that had committed to write, but not specified when they would write the essay, only one fourth of the essays were returned.  So when will you write?  From eight to eleven each morning? From three to five in the afternoon?  Will you try and write every day, or perhaps a few days each week?  Whatever your answer, identify a specific time now when you will be free to devote yourself to your dissertation.  This also has the advantage that you can tell others of your commitment ahead of time, so that they will know when you will not be available, and can support you in sticking to your schedule.
• Where will you write?  I don’t know about you, but my family sometimes bears a striking resemblance to the family in the movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding.  For those of you who have not seen the movie, this means they’re loud, raucous, and personal boundaries are virtually nonexistent.  And thus was born the great Starbucks escape!  This is what I meant about benefits.  If you’re one of those whose family can sometimes be a bit overwhelming—or if you just happen to be someone who needs a bit of personal time amid the chaos—You may relish the chance to slip away from the holiday hubbub for a couple of hours to a nice quiet place where you can relax and enjoy a little time to yourself.  And the need to spend some time working on your dissertation provides you with the perfect excuse to do just that!  So before you travel, identify that perfect quiet spot, whether it be Starbucks, or a quiet room with alovely view.  Then enjoy the peace and tranquility while you work away at your dissertation.
• And speaking of family, how will you deal with their expectations?  This can be a particular challenge for those of you who will be spending time with family or friends who you don’t see very often.  They want to see you, and you want to see them.  Saying no can be very difficult, so develop a strategy now.  One very effective way to handle this can be to prepare everyone ahead of time.  Tell them of your need to work, and explain the schedule you’ve set.  Explain that this may also mean that you have to opt out of certain events.  By talking with people ahead of time, you can avoid a lot of the pressure or disappointment that can come with declining invitations at the last minute.
• When will you NOT write?  Answering this question is as important as answering the previous four questions.  Unless you’re facing an extremely tight completion deadline, I suggest that you make sure to build in some time to enjoy yourself.  Are there parts of your holiday that you especially enjoy?  Do you have certain holiday traditions that you don’t want to miss?  Are there certain people with whom you want to make sure and spend some quality time?  Design your work schedule so that you build in time for those special people and events. Then allow yourself to enjoy them guilt-free, remember, you planned for them.  It’s not cheating if it’s part of your work plan.  This is every bit as true for those of you who will be spending a quiet holiday, or who don’t celebrate the season.  Seek other pleasures.  Prepare your favorite meal.  Go and visit a beautiful place.  Allow yourself the guilty pleasure of sleeping in.  Whatever it may be, make sure and build in time for those things that bring joy and meaning into your life.
Whatever your plans or circumstances, the important thing is that you approach your holiday writing in a thoughtful, mindful way that will foster your success.  Though I often encourage coaching clients to challenge themselves by setting higher goals, I think that in this particular instance less is more.  Better to return in January feeling refreshed and up-beat about what you’ve accomplished, than to set a strict work plan which you either cannot meet or which prevents you from enjoying any of the holiday merriment, leaving you feeling cheated and frustrated.
If you are one of the lucky few who is able to take a break from your writing, then be thankful, and commit to that without looking back.  If, however, you’re one of the larger majority who needs or wants to continue to write your way through the holidays, give yourself the best holiday gift of all, a well-designed holiday work plan that will send you sailing into the new year on a wave of success!

Taking Charge of your Summer: Goal-Setting Strategies to Move Your Dissertation Forward

Part One: Setting Effective Goals
At long last summer is finally here.  For three months your time is your own, no grading, no office hours, no meetings, no classes to teach or attend.
As wonderful as this moment always is, summer’s greatest gift, time, can also be it’s greatest challenge.  While the relaxed pace of the summer months always comes as a welcome relief, it also makes us completely responsible for managing and structuring our time, which most of us find to be difficult.  It is for this reason that so many of the best intentions for making progress on the dissertation never come to fruition.  And the best time to take charge of that situation is now, before you get too used to hanging out at your favorite coffeehouse, or reading those gardening books that have been sitting on your shelf since last fall.  In the first part of this article, I will talk about how to set good, effective goals that will keep you moving forward.  In the second, I will offer a few strategies to help you stick with those goals through the next three months, so that you will have real progress to show your advisor come September.
Setting Effective Goals
The first important step is to create the structures that will empower you to succeed.  This includes things like creating a schedule, choosing a work environment that facilitates productivity, and the removal of distractions that will side-track you.  Decide ahead of time what your writing hours will be.  Consider your work style, i.e. do you prefer to have one long work period, or several shorter ones?  Select a physical work location that is conducive to productivity and that eliminates external distractions.    If there are external factors that you need to take into account, such as child-care or other family or work responsibilities, take them into account now, so that they are less likely to take you by surprise, or provide you with an easy avoidance tactic later on.
Once you have your basic structures in place, you need to set specific, measurable goals for what you want to accomplish this summer.  Rather than using words like “a few”, “a while”, “some”, use specific language, two chapters, finish data collection and analysis.  Simply saying, I want to get a lot of writing done this summer”, will put you on a fast road to nowhere.  If you want to get to a specific destination by summer’s end, then the first step is to know where you’re going. 
Once you’ve identified your destination, the next step is to figure out how to get there.  To create a road-map to that larger goal, you must identify the smaller tasks, or subgoals, that you will have to complete along the way.  If, for example your goal is to write two chapters, think about what is involved in achieving that goal.  What do you have to read?  How long do you expect those chapters to be, i.e. how much writing do you need to do each day, each week, each month?  Do you need to do additional research?  Make a detailed, organized list containing each of the tasks involved in writing those two chapters of your dissertation.  Now take that list and create a daily, weekly, and monthly schedule for completion of each of those tasks. 
Having a written work-plan has many benefits.  One principal benefit is that it will help you to set realistic, attainable goals.  Breaking your goals into smaller tasks and setting yourself a schedule, will give you a more concrete sense of what you can actually accomplish.  It will also allow you to monitor your progress, which will help you to be aware of problems before they become so big as to be insurmountable. And there’s nothing like being able to look back at how far we’ve come, to motivate us to keep pushing on to the finish-line.  As you check off each completed task, you give yourself a concrete, visible record of your progress as you complete your to-dos for one week and move on to the next week’s work. 
Don’t be afraid to set challenging goals.  While setting unattainable goals can increase anxiety and frustration, setting goals that are not demanding enough can lull you into a false sense of security.  This can mislead you into underestimating the work ahead of you, which can lead to procrastination, and ultimately failure to meet your goal.  So set goals that will stretch you, and force you to stay on task.  And remember, if you’ve over- or under-estimated yourself, it’s fine to adjust.  Just make sure that any adjustments you make are deliberate, rather than allowing yourself to slide into unproductivity.
So set yourself up for success!  If you follow these guidelines, you will lay a foundation for a productive and rewarding summer.  In my next post, I will provide tips to help you maintain the structures you have put in place and stick with your goals so that come fall, you’ll find you’ve made significant progress toward a done dissertation.

Three Study Tips for Beating Procrastination

It’s that time of year.  You’ve been going to school since September.  The skies are grey and the weather—unless you’re lucky enough to live in a temperate climate—is cold.  Nearly everyone is tired of studying, and spring break can’t come soon enough.

Motivation, and its cousin procrastination can be real problems for many students at this time of year.  Here are five tips to help you beat procrastination, and produce better work during these winter months.

1.   Choose your study environment carefully.  Either create or go to a work-space that is conducive to studying.  Remove or reduce external distractions, phone, email, miscellaneous noise and chatter, Facebook, the fridge, etc.  Choose aplace that is comfortable, but not so comfortable that you are likely to sleep or day-dream.

2.  Do at least a little work each day for each of your classes.  Waiting till the night before to read that whole book or get that term-paper written will leave you feeling overwhelmed, and make you more likely either to procrastinate more, or just avoid the assignment altogether.  As I wrote in my last entry, break things down into small chunks, and commit to getting at least one chunk completed each day.

3.  Find a study buddy.  In much the same way that having a running partner can motivate you to get up and run in the morning when you’d much rather stay comfortably in bed, committing to another person and promising that you will study with them at a certain time and a certain place, can help both of you resist the temptation to be distracted by more entertaining activities.  One caveat, though, choose a partner who will not distract you from your work.  Your roommate or a good friend is likely to be a better choice than that guy/girl in your chem class who you’re hoping will ask you out.

4.  Tell people about your study goals.  No matter what the goal, whether it be related to studying, exercise, or other personal goals, telling others of our plans can greatly increase our chances of success.  Just as studying together with a partner can strengthen your resolve to get your work done, sharing your study goals with others will help keep you accountable and increase the likelihood that you will get your work done.  You might even make arrangements to have that person check in with you and ask about your progress.

5.  Reward yourself when you meet a study goal.  Praise yourself for having accomplished what you set out to do.  Then treat yourself to something you will truly enjoy: a coffee, some chocolate, watching your favorite television show, or even just time on Facebook.  It should be something you will truly enjoy, sort of a thank you to yourself for your hard work.

There’s no question that the second semester is a long one, both because you’re more tired than you were last fall, and because the days are shorter and colder.  But with a few strategies such as this, you’ll find it’ll be spring break before you know it, and you’ll have the good grades to celebrate when your break finally does arrive.

Counting Tomatoes: A Time-Management Strategy

Whether you’re trying to manage a heavy course load, or get a thesis or dissertation written, the Pomodoro technique can help you successfully manage your time and keep you moving forward.

Invented by Francesco Cirillo in 1992, this technique will help you turn that to-do list into lots of tiny, manageable pieces known as pomodoros, or tomatoes.  And all you need is a kitchen timer, a pencil, and 3 pieces of paper.  Cirillo’s original timer was shaped like a tomato, or pomodoro in Italian.  Your timer can be whatever you like; though for reasons you will see in a moment, I suggest that you not use your cell phone.

To begin, create your activity Inventory list.  This is a simple list of activities you would like to complete.  It should include any activity you need or want to complete, from finishing that paper, to reading for tomorrow’s anthropology class, to doing the laundry.  At the end of the day you will check this list, and check off all completed activities. 

Next, you will create your To Do Today list.  Here select those items from your To-Do Inventory that you need to get done today, and write them down on a separate list, listing each activity in order of priority.  This task may include anything from reading an article, to writing a paragraph or page, to outlining that presentation that’s coming up.  Your objective, as you go through the day, is to work your way down this list in 25-minute increments. Now, pick up your kitchen timer, set it for twenty-five minutes, the length of one pomodoro, and begin with the first task on this list.  When the timer dings, take a three-to-five-minute break.  During that break, get up, stretch, get a drink, and give your body and mind a break.  Don’t think about whether what you just wrote is good enough, what you’ll have to edit later, whether you should do more research.  Clear your mind of everything till it’s time to start the next pomodoro.  You have now completed your first tomato/pomodoro. Keep track of each completed pomodoro on your piece of paper, and repeat the process as many times as you are able.  After every four pomodoros, take a longer break, fifteen to thirty minutes.  Take advantage of this break for slightly longer, though still not overly complex activities.  Listen to music.  Take a short walk.  Go down the hall and chat with a friend or colleague.  However you spend that time, make sure that you are truly giving your mind a rest from the activity you were completing during your last pomodoro.  You may be surprised at how many pomodoros you can complete.

There are three simple rules to keep in mind: pomodoros are indivisible.  There’s no such thing as a slice of tomato here.  This leads into rule number two: the pomodoro must ring.  Once a pomodoro is begun, you must either complete that pomodoro, or it must be voided and started over.  Conversely, rule number three states that just as you must complete a whole pomodoro, you must also stop when the pomodoro rings, even if you are just minutes away from completing that task.  Here are a few pointers to help you live by these rules.  If you finish an activity before the pomodoro rings, use the remaining time to review the activity you just completed until the timer rings.  If activities are not long enough to require a whole pomodoro, then group several related smaller activities together and combine them into one.  These could be activities such as sending email, or making phone calls.  Lastly, if you are just minutes away from finishing that chapter, you must still get up, take your break, and finish the chapter during the next pomodoro.

Another essential component of Cirillo’s technique is to effectively manage disruptions, as these are often one of the biggest stumbling blocks to productivity.  There are two types of disruptions: those that are internal, that come from within us, and those that are external, or created by others.  Internal disruptions are particularly problematic, as they are often insidious, and can consume a surprising amount of time.  As you work your way through each pomodoro, take note of those sudden internal distractions: the desire to get a glass of water, to email your friend about going for coffee, to take the trash out, or to order tickets for that concert you want to go to next weekend.  On a separate sheet of paper, keep a list for unplanned activities. Write down each internal interruption on that list, then leave it, and continue with your pomodoro.  You can then handle these new activities in one of three ways:  you can include them in the next pomodoro in place of or in combination with other activities, they can be re-scheduled for later during the day, or they can be moved from Pomodoro to Pomodoro if possible till the end of the day.  You will probably find that many of those items will not seem nearly as urgent as they did when you first thought of them.  In fact, you may find that some of them, such as buying concert tickets, can be best handled by simply scheduling them into another pomodoro.

With the proliferation of the internet and mobile technology, external interruptions have only continued to increase.  So before you begin, remove as many of these disruptions as possible.  Close your email, and your Facebook page.  Turn off your cell phone, and all the connectivity that goes with it.  Make sure any family members or roommates know that you are not to be disturbed.  But what about your neighbor who stops by to chat?  Or the text from your classmate who wants to discuss your upcoming presentation? You have a couple of choices.  You can either remove them before beginning your pomodoro, or work out a resolution with the parties involved.  The former is often easily accomplished.  Simply let phone calls go to voicemail.  Close the door to your room or office, or go to a place in the library where others will not know to look for you. And again, close everything else on your computer.  But for those interruptions that persist, despite all your precautions, you’ll have to learn to Protect the Pomodoro.  Cirillo suggests the acronym INC, Inform the individual that you cannot talk with them, Negotiate—i.e. reschedule the interruption, and then Call back, as agreed during the negotiation phase.  Implementing this strategy places control of external interruptions in your hands, by allowing you simply to reschedule them, perhaps including them in a future pomodoro.

The idea here is quite simple.  While you may feel overwhelmed with all the work you have to do in a given day or week, if you break that mountain down into smaller pieces, just about anything is manageable.  You can do anything for twenty-five minutes, even finish that dreaded paper, or read that book you’ve been putting off.  So, though you may in fact work for four hours, your only commitment at any given time is to that pomodoro.  And each pomodoro builds on the one before, leading you one step at a time to your final goal.

For many students, it seems that the work of the semester can be all-consuming, leaving little time for anything else.  The pomodoro technique can help you not only in accomplishing academic tasks, but it also allows you to organize your time so that you can plan for some of those other things that you either need or want to include in your life.  Anything can be assigned a pomodoro.  Want to go to the gym??  Want to spend some time on Facebook?  Fine.  Just include it in your To Do Today list, and assign it to one of your pomodoros for that day.  Remember, each pomodoro is a complete unit, whether or not the entire activity is completed.  Once you’ve finished one, savor your accomplishment, take your allotted break, and move on to the next pomodoro, whether or not you are continuing with the previous activity.  You are then free to meet your next obligation.  Put it on your next day’s to-do list, and keep working, one tomato at a time.

For more information about the Pomodoro technique, including Cirillo’s complete manual, see the Pomodoro Technique web-page.

For information about academic and life coaching see Student Success Coaching.