Your Timeline

Your timeline is a very general map of where you are right now, and where you want to be in x months time, with a couple of important milestones along the way. This could be official deadlines, or informal ones you agree with your supervisor (or yourself). The idea isn’t to map out your journey every step of the way. That would defeat the purpose of ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’. The truth of the matter is that it’s often incredibly difficult to know in advance what exactly needs to get done, and it’s even more difficult to estimate how much time a given task will take. In academia anything will take three times as long as you had initially envisioned, and that’s when you had already taken into account it would take three times as long. It’s slow work! In my mind, trying to plan your progress minutely is a recipe for defeat as it’s near impossible to get right. The idea of a timeline is to keep an eye on where you’re heading, and when you need to get there. The ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique will fill in the details and make sure that you get there.

What to include:

• Estimates of when your papers/ articles/ chapters are due.
• Meetings with your supervisor
• Any other meetings/ conferences/ presentations that require your written or oral contribution
• Teaching obligations
• Important administrative deadlines for funding etc.

Having an overview of these important dates can create a great sense of ease and eliminate overwhelm.

Your Task List

Your Task List is a list of every task that comes to mind, that you think needs to get done in order to finish your paper/ chapter/ project. Every time something comes to mind you cannot finish that day, write it down. Every time a new idea pops into your head, write it down. Every time you feel overwhelmed by the number of work-related tasks swirling around in your mind, write them down. The good news is that the Task List is NOT a To Do List. You don’t have to worry about getting everything done. If you systematically use the ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique everything that needs to get done will get done. And many things that could have taken up a lot of time may turn out not to be so crucial after all, and drop off the list. Don’t obsess about the items on the list. The problem of To-Do lists is that they can only take your current perception into account. Due to the nature of PhD work these perceptions change as you go along. You may take a different course or approach than you had envisioned, because you got different results than anticipated from your analyses. Or maybe you come across an article that changes your idea of what is going on, and you decide to pursue a different line of argument that calls for different literature to be read and methods to be used. If you cling too rigidly to To-Do lists you stifle this type of flexibility and creativity, and you end up doing a lot of work that in the end turns out to have been energy wasted.

You can think of it as the difference between using a detailed map, on which you plot your estimated course before you set out including the specific streets you will travel along, or using a GPS that computes the shortest route to your destination right from where you are. The To-Do list is the detailed map, which seems to work well until you find out the map is out of date, or you realise you need to take a different route than you had thought because you can’t find what you thought you would find along the streets you decided to take. The map gave you a sense of control because you thought you knew exactly where you were going, before you set out. And often, because it gives you that sense of control you will keep following it, even if there is a shorter route. The ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique in combination with a Task List and a Time Line is like using a GPS, which computes the best route to your destination from where you are in each moment. Even if you take a wrong turn the GPS will immediately point you in the right direction. Maybe you won’t travel through all the streets that are on your Task List, but that doesn’t matter. You will travel through the streets you need to get to your destination, and you will arrive on time and with all the necessary tasks done.

The best way to use your Task List efficiently is to use it for (1) inspiration at times when you draw a blank when you are asking and answering the questions of the ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique, and (2) as a checklist to make sure you’re not forgetting anything important. If you don’t have a clue what to do next, get your Task List out and ask the questions of the ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique alongside your Task List. See which task jumps out. Also, at the beginning and end of each week (or possibly each day), you can take your task list out to check whether you haven’t forgotten to do some crucial task. But don’t make the mistake to think you need to get everything on the list done. You really don’t. You will see. I personally have such good results with the ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ technique that I hardly ever check my Task List. I know the technique works, and I know that my Task Lists more often than not take me off track if I start treating them as a list of tasks that need to get done. Task Lists can be overwhelming and confusing if you treat them as To Do Lists. Nevertheless, I still jot tasks down I think I need to do, along with new ideas and insights. To get things out of my head, and onto paper, and to be able to refer back to them later if needed really helps keep my work in the flow.