I was invited by my friend and Cape Town host Gen. After a fantastic visit in 2023 I am trying to make my trips to Cape Town a regular feature, and this year I succeeded and I was back in town. A place had opened up in this workshop she was attending for work: would I be interested in going? Well yes, I would!

Now to be honest I wasn’t expecting much from the strengths assessment test. I thought it would be something like the Myers-Briggs assessment, or any of the many tools for personal development out there. I was there more because it was a unique invitation, and I wasn’t going to let that opportunity to taste a bit of SA life slip. But when I dutifully filled out the test to my surprise a profile popped up that described me pretty well!

(So much so in fact that I have ended up in some of the promotional material of the lady who organised the event, as they were recording when I was telling her how well!)

What I naturally bring: agile mind, excellent thinker, enjoys musing, brings new and fresh perspectives, finds life intriguing, understands and appreciates the uniqueness in all individuals. Check, check, check and check!

But equally interesting was what they call the ‘basement’ of each of these strengths, and this is where I will get into the PhD bit.

Four out of five of my top five strengths according to this system are in strategic thinking. These strengths are mostly conceptual. I am very good at thinking, as probably you are too!

However, the negative side of these strengths read something like: slow to act, wastes time thinking too much, lacks focus on results, learns a lot, produces little! (I am only a little offended here.)

Now obviously, compared to any other profession, academics need to err on the side of thinking too much, rather than thinking too little! But I realised looking at these results that ‘thinking too much’ was one of the main habits I changed to successfully finish my PhD in the very few hours a day I had available.

At the time I realised I had to get out of my own way. I had to trust myself and just get it done, rather than spend more time thinking. Or worse: spend time worrying about how it was going! You can even start worrying that you’re worrying too much etc. There are endless meta levels here!

The muscle I had to train was that of being disciplined in consistently doing the next task, write that next paragraph etc. which would allow me to keep the PhD moving towards completion. I had to decide to become unapologetically forward-moving!

Interestingly, as a result the whole process started to flow and just work better.

It was an epiphany, honestly. Not overthinking my thinking. And making sure I didn’t get stuck there, but rather to keep it moving.

What about you? Are you overthinking your PhD?

If you’d like to know exactly how I stopped the pattern of overthinking consider getting my course, as I walk you through the process step by step.

As a start: observe and start recognising when you’re in this pattern, and choose to finish something tangible in your next work session. It could be just a paragraph. But make it real – get it from your head onto the page.

You can do this!

This is a slightly shortened version of my newsletter. Sign up for the newsletter on the right by signing up for my free resources. You will be the first to receive my PhD tips & stories!

Cassandra’s PhD Tips:

1. Attention is My Prime Resource

   Attention is the PhD candidate’s prime resource. Attention is the power to get things done. Through attention, the student learns, researches, conceptualizes, writes, and finishes a dissertation. Yet, this same resource is the target of social media, news networks, politicians and political organizations, businesses, and nonprofit groups. The most crucial strategy for completing a PhD is to recognize attention as a precious, prime resource and treat it accordingly, by nurturing, protecting, and using it wisely.

   I nurture and strengthen my attention with three habits. First, I start each work session with a 2–5-minute meditation in which I close my eyes, breathe deeply, and relax. Second, I tighten my focus by committing to a single, 30-minute task: this unit of time always feels achievable to me, but it’s fine to exceed it (as I often do). Third, I prevent distractions automatically with the Freedom app on my computer and a Focus app on my phone, but with an extra twist. These apps are scheduled to start when I wake up, so my attention is not divided before my work even starts!

2. Uncomfortable Feelings Express my Core Values

   Fear and anxiety reveal that I’m concerned about compromising or losing something I value. Anger shows that something I value is threatened. Grief also expresses my core values. I grieve because I care, because something I value might be lost, has been lost, or has ended. This course has highlighted the importance of connecting our work to our values. And PhD work must sometimes be done in the midst of uncomfortable feelings. I’ve discovered that the uncomfortable feelings themselves are useful for revealing my core values if I lean in and listen to them.

   Three years ago, I lost my supervisor and my dissertation topic. I considered leaving my PhD. But then I realized that my intense grief and disappointment showed that I care deeply. If I care that much about my work, then it must arise from my core values. My work is worth cherishing and defending. I should fight for it! I took walks and wrote in a journal every day for three months while I found a new supervisor and a new topic. I acknowledged my feelings and honored them as part of my human experience, and I also honored their significance.

3. Five Elements of Smart Breaks

   All breaks are not created equal! My most effective breaks include one or more of these five elements: (1) My brain swings from focused mode to diffuse mode and relaxes, so that I can synthesize and make fresh connections; (2) I reward myself  just for working and re-establish a healthy work-reward balance; (3) I move my body, instead of continuing to sit; (4) I do sensory-rich activities, to counteract the chronic sensory deprivation of dissertation work; (5) I enjoy a taste of regular life, apart from my dissertation, to keep my sense of self distinct from my work and prevent academic tunnel vision!

   One easy way to push myself into a smart break is to stand up and look outside. I watch birds or clouds out a window, step out onto a balcony, or walk around the block. What can I notice? What do I see? What can I hear? How does the wind feel and smell? Suddenly, I feel more alive!

4. Use a Writer’s Day Book to Warm-up to Writing

   For the last several months, I have started most days by writing spontaneously in a Day Book, preferably over my first cup of coffee. I got the idea from The Essential Don Murray: Lessons from America’s Greatest Writing Teacher (Don Murray, 2009). My free-writing session lasts for 15-30 minutes. My one rule is that I write. This simple practice flips on a virtual switch in my brain. As I write whatever comes to mind, I let the emerging words lead and surprise me. Later, when it’s time to write for my dissertation, my brain is warmed up, humming, and more likely to generate ideas. It has been crucial for me to identify and use my own writing method, which is quite different from the writing methods of my supervisor and secondary readers.

   I prompt my Day Book entry with morning rituals. I make coffee, get a simple breakfast, check the sunrise, and play some classical music. With my first cup of coffee, I open my laptop to a Google Drive document or open a small journal, and I write whatever comes to mind. I just show up on the page and let the words happen. I practice the inductive writing method.

    

   

What I (re-)learned about writing this time around (aka: writing tips to finish your paper ASAP!)

1. Routine

Sorry, boring start to the day, but this is so incredibly necessary. By all means, if you are the person who writes whenever she feels like it, and it works well for you, do it that way. But chances are slim. Why? Because academic writing and difficult emotions go together. Why? Because academic writing is hard. Having a writing habit in place will catapult you right into it, where you want and need to be. If you write regularly, at set hours, you have cleared the most difficult hurdle: getting started. Start at 9:00 every day, sharp. Earlier if you are an early bird. Or at any other time, as long as you can be consistent. (For me, finishing my PhD it was always at 10:00. Some people have already put hours of work in by that time of day, but it worked very well for me. Two – three hours of focus is a lot, if you put these hours in consistently.)

2. Inspiration

The moment you start writing you realise the actual doing is more difficult than the thinking about writing! Blinking cursor alert! Urgh. So one option is to procrastinate. The second option is to hurl yourself over the barrier that separates you from that writing flow that is in there somewhere. A neat trick to do so is to get as inspired as you possibly can. What I suggest you do is to pull out a paper or book that is incredibly well-written or that has inspired your thinking about the topic you will be writing about. Or you could even pick a novel. It doesn’t really matter, as long as it has a rhythm or substance that gets you over your resistance. (For me, I when I was finishing a particularly difficult chapter of my PhD I used a book by Peter Mair. He was my supervisor, and an old-school academic. A writer more than a technician. He could definitely write an opening sentence. And when I would read it I would realise: yes, I can do this too!)

3. Lighten up and do it fast!

Okay, this one is a bit controversial. And during some stretches it will feel absolutely impossible! And yes, I am referring to that middle stretch where part of you is sure your work is never going to come together, and another part of you knows it will as long as you just keep pushing and plodding along. Which is what you are doing. Right in the middle of this, when fear and stubbornness are at full force, what would happen if you lighten up a bit? If you could add some quicksilver energy? I got this idea from the book ‘Big Magic – creative living beyond fear’ by Elizabeth Gilbert, and it works wonders. She calls it “the martyr vs the trickster” (p. 221), aka dying for your art vs gaming the system. When every word feels like a serious, difficult, impossible affair, are there ways to lighten up, speed up, do it quickly, or ‘not right?’ It may be the exact thing you need to get your ideas down, and for the writing pace to pick up. (You can go back and fix it later, but who knows you will find out there isn’t any fixing to be done!)

4. Take a break

Okay, so intervals tend to make an appearance in pretty much every blog post of mine, reason being: working in intervals works. Just a few days ago I got an email from a PhD I had a coaching session with, remarking how much working in intervals had improved her work. And her energy levels! Thing is, to work in intervals you need to take breaks. Proper breaks. And it gets so much more difficult when you are really under stress, and there is a deadline looming. Seems that procrastination while stubbornly sitting at your computer is the easier option. What if you do take a break? And make working in intervals a habit? You will gain control over your working hours (mental boost) and more chance of a writing flow, and new, fresh insights to happen. It’s the faster way.

5. Celebrate

Our brains have a negativity bias. That is, the regular person’s brain. Personally I think an academic’s brain will be about a thousand times worse. Trained to focus on what is lacking (gaps in the literature anyone??), what is wrong, what is insufficient. And we have criticism down to an art. Not necessarily criticism of the constructive kind! It was an eye-opener to me to work on a project with people outside of academia. They were trained to make the process as effortless as possible, to promote teamwork, to uplift each other, to keep moving. What a difference! So hopefully you have some of those colleagues, who do understand the value of support, around. But regardless of your peers and colleagues: how do you treat yourself? I say: celebrate every step of the way. And you don’t have to wait until you have submitted that paper. Finishing that paragraph is reason to celebrate too!

The idea of ‘working in waves’ is at the heart of the productivity part of the course. I’ve written about this way of working before before (click on the productivity tag). Today’s blog outlines how this works. The course will help you implement these ideas, step by step. In detail. Sign up here.

Working in waves

How many hours do you spend sitting at your laptop? And how many of those hours are spent productively? Maybe you don’t need all those hours. Following a ‘normal’ 9-5 working routine is not the best way to write a PhD. You can’t do intense mental work for eight hours a day. It is impossible. If you’re having an exceptionally good day you may be able to manage six hours of reasonably intense mental work; and considerably less if you’re doing something particularly demanding.

The good news is that you don’t need to work for six or eight hours a day. Once you start writing your PhD in a more efficient way you’ll need a fraction of that. Say two or three hours of intense mental work a day. Four maximum. When I was finishing my PhD (I had to do so with very limited hours) I started researching productivity and came across an idea I wanted to try: designing my day around my mental energy levels, instead of trying to push harder for longer. This simple idea completely transformed my PhD experience. I now call it ‘working in waves’.

Catch a Wave

The basic idea of ‘working in waves’ is to ‘catch a wave’ of energy, get a lot of work done efficiently, and then relax and recuperate before your energy levels and productivity start to drop. This second step, the relaxation part, is crucial. Allow yourself to recharge. Then repeat. You’ll notice that your ability to focus is renewed when you start your second ‘wave’, because you took the time to recharge. Over the course of the day these energy refills add up. You will be more productive and will feel much better at the end of the workday (which comes sooner too).

Step 1. Work like a sprinter

The first step is to determine how long your work cycles should be. This depends on your general energy level, your attention span, and on the difficulty of the task involved. In my own case 45-minute segments, followed by a 15-minute break worked really well. Some people prefer 90 minutes. I know someone who used 10-minute slots to finish her PhD. Really!

Step 2. Relax and chill out

The second step is to relax and chill out. Get away from your computer, go make yourself a cup of tea, put some music on, go for a walk around the block, go for a short jog or whatever helps you disengage from your work. We don’t value our downtime. This is a mistake. This is not just about productivity, of course, but from a productivity angle this is certainly true.

Step 3. Repeat

Then, after a little time away, get back to work. Set your timer for a new chunk of time, and get going. Once the timer sounds: relax and recharge. Over time, once you get into the habit of working this way, this will become a flow, dipping in and out of work. Working in waves in action. This is when you will see your productivity picking up.

Step 4. Stop

The next step is to stop when it’s time. Less is more. You shouldn’t try to fill the whole day. We often try to push harder for longer. In the short run, this can be a winning strategy. In the long run it doesn’t really work. Slowly (or not so slowly) we run out of steam, until we end up in a rut or a slump. Or both!

Implement it

Find out how this way of working in waves could work for you. When are you most focused and productive? Make those hours the central focus of the workday. When are you distracted? If it’s during a time you want to be writing: you have to find another way! If it’s during a time you wouldn’t be productive anyway, ask yourself whether you want to spend your time sitting at your computer, or if it would be better to give yourself permission to ‘leave’, and do something you really want to do.

Naturally, this approach only works if you apply yourself during the chunks of time you allot to working. Imagine it as a sprint – ready, set, go!! Run! You will get your rewards afterwards: a good chunk of work done, a sense of accomplishment, and the ability to relax because you know you have done your work for the day.

My Own PhD Schedule

In the course I go into depth discussing the details of what my own workday looked like when I was finishing my PhD. Not so you can copy how I did it (though you are welcome to!), but to give you ideas, and reflect on what might work for you.

Find out all the details of the programme here. Join us! Live sessions start Monday November 12th. (PS I am giving away 2 free spots in class here).

The reality is: writing a PhD is doable. Finishing the PhD is doable. You can do this.

So how to put this monster in its place? How to shrink it, do you can get on with what you want to be doing, that is working on your project, and finishing it well?

This summer I worked with a couple of PhDs who wanted out of overwhelm. Can you relate?

Are you getting frustrated and overwhelmed even after only a couple of minutes of ‘work’?
Are you heading towards your laptop full of enthusiasm, only for it to dissipate in a flash?
Do you find yourself doing a million other things, such as reading and ‘further research’, instead of writing that next paragraph?
Do you find yourself discouraged at your lack of clarity?

What helps tremendously when your project is overwhelming you and you’re feeling a bit deflated, is to make sure you are setting yourself doable tasks. Break it down. If you’re still not getting anywhere, break it down further.

Example: your supervisor/ a reviewer has asked you to add more about X in your paper.

Plan of action: break it down into doable steps. Note: ‘Adding more about X’ to your paper isn’t one task. It is a whole series of tasks. Let’s have a look at what it may involve:

• Scan your paper to find parts where an introduction to X might be relevant
• Selecting that part/ those parts where you want to introduce X
• Brainstorming about what exactly about X you want to include: how does it fit with your main argument/ research choices?
• Look up papers/ references about X and scan (stay focused! Distraction alert) them, to see how others have done this/ to make sure you make well-informed decisions on what to include
• Write a first draft of the paragraph introducing X
• Rewrite
• Polish til done

Maybe I have missed a few steps! Writing a paragraph sounds like ‘nothing’, but it involves a lot of work!

One way to keep momentum high is to give yourself a fixed timeframe to get the next small step done. Say 15 minutes to find the parts where an introduction to X may be relevant. Then another 15 minutes to select the parts you want to work on. You can also do this intuitively (sometimes we can take steps very fast indeed), but the key point here is to not let yourself be distracted. Stay on task. If this task is done, move on to the next.

Some tasks will be more intellectually and creatively challenging than others, and may not generate immediate, tangible results. That doesn’t mean it’s not work, or that you’re not moving forward!! The thinking, the pondering, the not-yet-knowing is all essential. It is what academic work is all about. Using a timer can be really helpful here, to make sure you don’t slip into overwhelm, to keep it concrete and doable. Setting limits helps. Give yourself 20 minutes to think about something, or 45 if you are in a creative/ thinking flow. Know when you want to stop, and intend for the task, even if it is intangible, to be completed at that point. If it isn’t, don’t worry, you can give yourself another work session to plug away at it. Or not! And this is the important part. You have a choice. It’s easy to let a whole morning or afternoon slip away, so now is really the time to check back in.

Ideas need time to develop. Give yourself that time. Maybe if you check back in with the same questions tomorrow the answer that was elusive today will present itself just like that. Ideas are interesting like that, they emerge. We’re not in control of this process. But we are in control of the task we are working on. That’s the aim anyway.

Focus on doable tasks, set time limits for your work sessions, and check in with yourself at the beginning of each work session to make sure you are working on the next small task that will help your paper one step closer to completion. This is how you build your paper step by step, without much of the noise and overwhelm.

If you want help with this: I can coach you. I can help you tame your project so it becomes doable, and you can get out of overwhelm. Have a look at the Stress-Free PhD Programme. Along with coaching, your PhD will be back on track before you know it.

The next live sessions of the Stress-Free PhD Programme start November 12th! Get your early bird tickets here. I am also giving away two free places in class. Enter the GiveAway here.

Roanne takes the concept to the next level. After obtaining her PhD with honours, she decided she would try to create an academic life…differently. Instead of focussing solely on her academic career, she now works part-time as an academic, while running an online business on how to live a courageous and productive life on the side. She has written books about her time living in the slums of Jakarta, multiculturalism, conquering your fears, and her latest, about soldiers returning to civilian life. She gets a few things right, if you ask me!

Today we catch up. I thought it would be interesting to hear Roanne’s perspective on freedom in academia and the choices we have and make, on productivity, on fear, and living a full life.

Roanne’s top tips:

1. Don’t settle for what is ‘normal’. You can create your own academic career path and create your own rules. You don’t have to conform to what everybody else is doing
2. You don’t have to work an 80-hour workweek to be successful. It will drain your energy and inspiration
3. Balance output, input, and rest, for creativity and productivity
4. Take time to think and reflect, and write from the heart
5. In the academic world receiving harsh criticism doesn’t mean you aren’t doing well. It means you are exactly where you should be. It’s the job of your supervisor and colleagues to criticize you. It’s your job to practice self-care and reflection, so you can deal with the criticism.
6. Take your PhD one step at a time. Keep your eye on the next step – don’t look to the end goal, this will cause overwhelm.

I’ve always admired your independence, the choices you make. Can you tell me a little about the process over the past couple of years? When did you know you didn’t want the classic academic career, and how did you carve out a way that combines the best of all worlds? Did you have many doubts?

Thanks for your kind words – likewise, you’ve been an inspiration to me!

I was initially trained as a journalist and worked as a foreign correspondent for several years. I loved the excitement of that job, but missed depth in the news items I made. For this reason I decided to go back to uni and obtain a PhD in anthropology. During and after my PhD I’ve done in-depth fieldwork in Inuit communities, slums; among refugees and humanitarian aid workers and soldiers – and each and every time, I was fascinated with what I learned and enjoyed emerging myself into a complete new world.

However, there were also things about my new academic job that I didn’t like. One of them was the culture of overwork in which working endless hours was regarded not only normal, but as something positive and necessary. For several years, I went along with it. I worked very hard and felt exhausted, but it was never enough. When I’d leave the office at eight in the evening, most of the lights in other offices were still lit. I felt like a faker, a fraud, as if I wasn’t a proper or ‘real’ academic, as the others seemed to be. After some years of trying to make this culture my own, I noticed two things: not only was I so tired of work that I lacked energy for other aspects of my life, I also felt that I was becoming less creative and inspired. My life felt too narrow, as if I could only develop part of my identity.

For a long time, I was in doubt whether I should get back into journalism, but at some point I decided to give it one more chance: I’d experiment to see whether I could be an academic – on my own terms. And although it’s an extremely unconventional way of working, it works well for me.

What does that look like, specifically?

I decided to take a part-time position, I don’t work from 9-5, and I refuse to work 80 hours a week. I also make sure I take the time to talk with my PhD supervisees at length and often, it’s important to me to be an inspiring supervisor and colleague. And I skip unnecessary meetings, the ones mostly spent scrolling on your phone – don’t tell anybody! But seriously: I prioritize other tasks, like thinking, studying and writing.

That must have taken some courage. How were your choices to opt out of the academic rat race received in the academic world?

With scepticism, in the beginning. But honestly, my way of working works well for me, and my colleagues notice. As long as my work is of high quality and I publish it is not a problem. And I know I am energized, happy and inspired, exactly because I stick to my own rules. We tend to forget that no pre-determined rules exist. Who determines what an academic job should look like, or how an academic should behave?

Many academics are addicted to their work and have little to no time for a social life, or other interests. Well, I don’t want that life. I love my academic work, but I also love time off to explore my other interests. Yes, I’m an academic, but I am also a writer, a woman, a rock climber, a wife, a daughter, a public speaker, and a friend. Those identities are important too.

You are also a writer. That’s another way your work deviates from the academic norm. Do you experience a conflict between pursuing academic impact and general impact?

I’ve always seen my writing skills as a strength. After my fieldwork on poverty and slum life, it felt extremely important to me to share what I had learned with as many people as I possibly could. I felt it was my job, in a way, to tell the stories of the people I’d met in the field – people who would remain voiceless, otherwise. So I wrote an academic monograph in which I developed a social theory on poverty and risk behaviour, but I also wrote a popular non-fiction book, and several articles on why it is often so difficult for people to escape poverty.

When I’d spent years of research studying people who lived or worked in risky circumstances, including extreme athletes, humanitarian aid workers and soldiers, I did something similar: I wrote academic articles for colleagues in my field, but I also wrote a non-fiction book in which I shared the main lessons on fear management I’d learned from my interviewees. As a spin-off I developed on-and offline training programmes to help people overcome common fears like stage fright, a fear of failure, fear of driving a car or flying.

This may be an unconventional path in academia, and I’m sure some of my colleagues will think my approach is too popular, or not complex enough to deserve the academic label. But I firmly disagree. Why do social research, if hardly anyone can learn about the findings? Aren’t we supposed to do stuff that is relevant and not only to an elite group of highly-educated, jargon speaking colleagues? If I, as an academic, am capable of communicating my research in a way that people are eventually helped by the research– then it is my responsibility (and joy) to do so.

Let’s get down to the nuts and bolt of how you do all this. How do you get your writing done?

I use a number of strategies that help me be productive. I have a rule of thumb of four hours of output a day – that’s the actual, complex work that I do, like writing an academic article -, and four hours of input – that’s finding inspiration, learning new things and refuelling my creativity, and four hours of rest, recharging and relaxation. I never start my day checking my Email – that only distracts me from my long-term goals. Instead, I start my day with journaling to set clear intentions for the day, and reading non-fiction books that I find inspiring. Then I move on to my ‘productive’ phase of four hours. I start with my most important task. The afternoons are for reading, listening to podcasts, learning new things that interest me or following webinars or online trainings. Currently, I’m inspired by themes such as minimalism, the warrior mind and high productivity, and empathic activism. I also like to go climbing in the afternoon, or walk with my dog. Exercise, to me, is not a luxury. It’s part of my job: I need to be able to think clearly in order to be a good academic, and physical exercise is a great way to do so.

When it comes to writing I always start with a pen and paper, a good cup of coffee and a quiet mind, to think about what my main message is. One useful tactic I use is to ask: if a ghost writer would do this job for me, then what would I tell her to write? How would I explain to her what my puzzle is, what I found, or what fascinates me? How would I explain it to a student? The trick is to write down the answers; then stop for the day – continue the next.

It’s most effective to do this kind of creative work in short bursts rather than forcing yourself to think for an hour or longer. Our brains prefer short peaks of maximum activity, followed by a break of several hours. During this break I try to find distraction. I do easy, practical work, or read something that inspires me. I’ve planted the seed of the question, now I give it time to ripen – the answer will come after several hours or days.

Taking time to reflect and think also helps avoid a common trap: writing (low-quality) articles solely for the sake of getting published. Yes, such articles count towards your publication record, but they do not develop your thinking or add to your body of work in a substantive way. They won’t make you sigh with pride after you’ve written them; at most, you’ll sigh because you’re relieved they’re done and over with! That’s not the way I like to work, and I know for many early career academics, it’s not the way they would prefer to work either – only they may know no other way. Above all I propose we write with a sense of urgency and longing. Personally, I want to feel joy in the creative process that writing essentially is – even academic writing!

Are there any specific PhD writing tips you’d like to share?

What is specific about a PhD, is that it is a long process – a marathon, rather than a sprint. This means PhD students need to look after themselves. They have to keep their energy and creativity high for months and years in a row, despite the on-going criticism they will inevitably receive, the uncertainty of not knowing whether they are doing a ‘real’ job, the stress that sometimes comes with supervision, etcetera. Taking your own needs seriously is crucial for such a marathon job. For most, it means making sure to take plenty of breaks from work, live healthy, work out, and find support in peers or others who can make you feel less lonely.

It is also important to factor in what I call ‘buffer time’. Everything always takes longer than you’d like – especially getting published – and even when you think you’re done, you are most likely not yet done. You need to anticipate that you will have to edit and amend more than you’d hoped for – it’s a normal part of the process. It takes a while to get used to these very long timelines, and to make sure you have the resources for the long haul.

You have studied fear, and how to overcome it. I am sure this is relevant in academia. The mountains PhDs climb are not the physical kind, like the ones you climb in your free time, but that doesn’t mean fear doesn’t strike! What to do when fear of writing gets the better of you?

Generally, PhD students have high standards and grand ambitions. They are also insecure. That’s only natural – essentially, it’s the job of their supervisors and their committee to constantly criticize the work they hand in, and so a PhD student is faced with a lot of harsh words. It’s the job of the PhD student to remind herself that this criticism does not mean she is not doing well. It simply means she is exactly where she needs to be. She needs to keep herself mentally fit, practice self-care, make sure she has a supportive circle around her, rest, and continue her work.

I work with people who struggle with a fear of failure a lot, and I myself have struggled with it throughout my career. One good piece of advice, which suits the mountain metaphor you came up with may be useful here. I learned it when I was studying mountaineers and other extreme athletes, to learn about their risk-taking behaviour and their fear management strategies. When mountaineers climb, they don’t look at the top. It would seem too far away, they would be overwhelmed with a fear of not being able to ever get there. Instead, they only look at their feet – and the first metre ahead. As long as they keep their heads down, literally, hour after hour, they will get closer to the top, and they will be reminded of their progress and hence stay confident. I think this is an amazingly apt metaphor for the writing life.

You are soon starting with a year-long programme that helps people be more productive and successful. I will be participating in the programme myself, and I am so looking forward to it. Can you tell us a little about the programme and how it came about?

I’d been given lectures and workshops about what I call ‘stress-free productivity’ for some years now, and recently decided to turn it into an online training programme to make it accessible and affordable for more people. The programme will run from 1 January 2018 onwards – but before that participants will already receive planners and other tools to help them set their goals. People who join me will not only learn the most effective time management skills, but we will also implement them as we work together on our personal projects. We’re in this together. Me from my computer; you, from yours. Each week, 12 months, for 52 weeks, myself and the other participants are there to advise you when you get stuck, help you overcome self-doubt, and get you in touch with exactly the right people, networks and tools to get you where you want to be. It is be the most complete training programme I have ever developed, and I can’t wait to get started!

Alright, let’s all sign up. If you are interested in joining Roanne’s ‘One Year of Focus and Success’ programme, you can get all the details here. Choose the affiliate option at check out, and you will get a €100 discount. Be quick! Offer expires Tuesday December 12^th. (Small print: I don’t receive any money from Roanne when you sign up through me. Academics need more support and I believe her programme contributes to that cause.) As always, if you found this article useful, could you share it? I appreciate it!

Now imagine such sustained focus happening for a couple of hours a day, at least five days a week.
Imagine what that might mean in terms of output.
Think chapters, articles, publications.

Imagine what it (both the doing and the results) might mean in terms of satisfaction.

Ah satisfaction! Interesting concept.

The paradox of satisfaction: we have to give up more superficial satisfaction-seeking behaviour in order to be able to do or achieve those things that indeed satisfy. Very zen idea to stop chasing the carrot and to stop scratching the itch. To stick with the example of working offline: our internet habits are fuelled by seeking immediate gratification, and if we’re not careful we get stuck in an addicitive, and ultimately not-so-satisfying-loop. If you’d like to get scientific about it (sort of), the specific loop we’re talking about is the dopamine loop. Dopamine rules seeking behaviour, and is released one notification at a time. Unfortunately the pleasurable effects are short-lived, and this mechanism isn’t self-limiting, as anyone who has spent significant time on FB or Twitter will attest to.

Last week I talked about how going offline helped me tremendously when I was finishing my PhD. The blank page becomes the only page for your eyes to focus on. It’s annoying and quiet and challenging in the beginning (dopamine loop withdrawal!) but wait til you get going. Creative work happens in the void, despite this being an uncomfortable truth in the age of distraction.

So how to actually implement the radical idea of focused offline work:

1. Determine how long you would like to go offline for

I like to work in 45 minute segments. When I was finishing my PhD I would do three offline ones in a row, with a short (non-internet) break in between, in the mornings. That would be most of my work for the day done! Perhaps you don’t have three hours, maybe you have two or only one. What matters most is that you do it – sit down and work – and do it consistently. Don’t underestimate a 45 minute session: with the right mindset you can get a lot of work done. Or, maybe you are working on your PhD full-time, and three hours seems next to nothing. I’ll repeat: don’t underestimate the 45 minute session. I like to err on the side of working ‘not enough’, as it gives you momentum, rather than working ‘all day, every day’ and slowing down to prevent burning out. Quick, fast, get in there and work. That is how it is done.

2. Determine whether to go fully offline or block certain sites only

Working offline completely might seem near impossible. I say go as offline as you dare go. We tend to think we ‘need’ the internet because we use it. I say try to use the brain instead. It is magnificent. The internet is secondary. (I know. Very old-school idea.) Perhaps you’ll need to download some articles etcetera. Do it. Do it before you start. If you absolutely must, you could use certain specific sites, while blocking others. I have talked about the Freedom app before. It now allows you to block a selection of sites, or the entire online world. Such a blocklist option seems to me very handy. I consider social media to be particularly unhelpful when in the act of producing academic work. Block those as a very minimum. Then add any guilty pleasures to the blocklist. Save them for later, once the work is done.

3. Recurring sessions

I believe in habits. They provide structure, and they allow us to get things done while skipping the step of ‘shall I or shan’t I’. Imagine the world where you switch on your computer and simply get to work. Imagine a world where you don’t lose half your morning to browsing. Imagine not having to use any willpower to achieve any of this either! Doesn’t that sound appealing? Freedom (or the app of your choice) again, to the rescue as it allows you to create recurring sessions, by blocking your favourite social sites for certain hours every day by default. Slightly terrifying prospect, but it might just work. Could be a tremendous help in creating a daily work/writing habit. My opinion: a consistent writing habit really is the cornerstone of a successful academic career. The beauty of it is the habit part: it is difficult in the beginning, but it becomes easier with every repeat.

4. Withdrawal

Withdrawal symptoms are likely to happen. We are in the dopamine loop for a reason. The temptation, offline, might be to procrastinate in the old-fashioned way: by sitting around daydreaming, making endless cups of tea, or chatting with your colleagues. (Some people who work at home report they procrastinate by cleaning the house. Sadly I have never discovered such tendencies in myself.) Stay with it. Stay with the page. Get into your work. Drown out all that is external and unrelated. Sit. Sit and work! Defer satisfaction seeking, defer gratification. You can do it, and you will be so pleased. Also have a look at the previous articles I wrote on procrastination here (with worksheet) and here.

5. Visualise

The short ‘imagine’ exercise at the top will help you stay on track. I firmly believe that the imagination leads. It’s not enough, of course. It needs a follow-up actually ‘doing’, but that becomes easier when you have a clear vision on what you’d like to achieve, and especially how that’ll make you feel. Being anchored into that positive feeling/ achieving state will help you to get going and keep going. It’s a topic that deserves a blog post of its own, but for now: keep the image, the feeling-image of it, in mind, and re-connect with it when motivation wanes…

Let’s make this offline thing a wave, a movement. What are your plans, and how are you going to support your new offline habit? How is it going so far? If you’d like a structured step-by-step foolproof system to help you build indestructible work habits have a look at the HappyPhD Online Course. It will guide you day-by-day until you cannot imagine working in any other way. As always: if you enjoyed this post, could you share it? I appreciate it!

One way of tuning into your inspiration is to be inspired by others.

Who are the scholars you admire?
Which papers are the ones you’d like to have written?
Which argument is so compelling it makes you go: ah!
Or, which papers annoy you to no end?

You are looking for the emotional response here. And the intellectual challenge.
Combined, they will lead to compelling work. Yours.

Collect these papers and books, and voices and arguments, and tune into them before you start writing.
Don’t overdo it, you don’t want to drown in other people’s voices.
Just read enough to gain momentum. To move past the voice of fear.

When I was finishing my PhD and was struggling with a particularly difficult chapter, I had one of my supervisor’s books within an arms-length reach, always.
He was a terrific writer, very gifted. He was also a very intuitive scholar.
These qualities lined up with my own, and often simply reading one of his paragraphs would be enough for me to want to write my next page. Yes, his work was that inspiring.

For me, personally, the feeling-tone is most important. I need to get writing, above all. The content is secondary, it always seems to follow. And when I write from a place of being inspired, I don’t need to worry about it. Or so I have learnt. It simply happens. At times I have used novels I was reading in the same way. Just a sentence or two could be enough to override the fear and just start putting my own words on the page. Creativity turned on.

There are other, more practical, ways of using the literature when you are stuck. Other scholars can show you the way when it comes to method, when it comes to structure, when it comes to making an argument. They can show you what has already been said and done, and where to look for references or evidence to help build your argument.

They can show you, above all, that whatever you are trying to do CAN BE DONE.
Writing that paper can be done.
Writing that chapter can be done.
Other scholars can show you how. The nuts and bolts of it.

Again, there were a couple of relatively technical papers that I referred to when I was finishing my PhD, and uncertain about some aspects of my methodology. How, exactly did my beta-brain sisters and brothers in the same field tackle these questions? How did they make their argument, how did they run their analyses, what were their exact disclaimers? What was ‘enough’ to make a compelling argument? Reading their papers narrowed it down for me. It gave me answers and made it all so much more doable.

Use the literature to help lift you above fear, by inspiring you into a writing spree, or help it move you beyond fear by grounding you into the small practical steps that make up an argument, and a paper. Allow yourself to soar & allow yourself to build methodically.

Have you used the literature to overcome fear when writing? Tell me how in the comments. I have much more on this, in my e-book, which you can download for free. Oh, and if you liked this article – could you share it? Thanks!