Week Four – Day Two
Allow Your PhD to Write Itself
If I could give you only one strategy for writing your thesis, this would be it: (1) find your focus (2) prioritise (3) do it! and forget the rest, and (4) relax. I call it: ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ because if you do it right that’s what it feels like. ‘Allow Your PhD to Write Itself’ is a formalised version of the technique I developed intuitively when I was trying to finish my PhD with only very little energy at my disposal. I needed minimum effort, maximum results. If that was at all possible… I use these four steps to this day. It is like an internal GPS that keeps me on track.
1. Find Your Focus
Writing a PhD is overwhelming at times. You have a stretch of three or four years, and at the end of it you should have written a book or a collection of publishable articles. How you do it is up to you. That’s a large and vague goal. At the same time, academia is all about the details. Every argument you make has to meticulously researched. Your main argument has to stand up against previous research, but so do all the smaller statements you make in every single sentence you write.
This combination makes it easy to drown in a PhD. You can drown because the task simply seems too daunting, the empty years stretching out endlessly in front of you and your own contribution difficult to envisage, let alone captured in analyses and words. How are you going to come up with something that is a real contribution in the field? At times, it may seem impossible. You can also drown because the details are too overwhelming and the amount of work done by other scholars so vast that you never seem to be on top of it. A good thesis is one where you are able to defend your decisions every step of the way, from theory to methodology to empirical analysis, but how to get all of these endless decisions right? There is so much to read! All the gazillion arguments in the literature can confuse your thinking considerably.
When you are thinking too big or too small, losing yourself in grand ideas or minute never-ending details, moving ahead is a real challenge. Finding the middle ground that is workable, between too large and too small is your first aim. You need to get your focus right.
Whether you work within a more structured research programme, or whether you are completely free to write your thesis the way you want, the following step will help you determine what you should be focusing on next. It’s simple, but it’s powerful. And you don’t need to have a detailed idea of what you’re doing for it to work.
To allow your PhD to write itself the first question you need to ask yourself is:
(1) What is the most important next thing to work on?
The wording is important. Whatever you choose to work on has to be important (no drowning in details), and it’s the next important thing. It’s not the absolute most important thing. It’s not solving all big questions your project poses at once (no drowning in the ocean of grand theories).
It’s a good idea to take enough time to ask yourself this question, and listen to what comes up. Don’t rush it. You won’t get the right answer if you’re rushing or if you’ve already decided what you are going to do beforehand. Keep an open mind, and see what answer you get. The answer should indicate where you should focus your attention. It says: Work on the conclusions of chapter 4. Focus on your methods in chapter 2. Expand the theory section of your new paper. It’s time to get started on your next chapter; you can rewrite your previous chapter at a later time. Work on the presentation of your paper. (And I mean ONE of these. Which one is the most important?)
Now you know what you need to focus on next.
2. Prioritise
After you have your focus right, the second step is to ask yourself:
(2) What is the most important thing I can do and finish today to move my thesis forward?
Again, the wording is important. You’re asking for the next step that is most important and that is doable within the day. So again, you are not thinking too small (focusing on a relatively unimportant detail), or too big (unmanageable within a couple of hours of work). You will move forward more when you focus on this particular action than if you would focus on any other action. This one is top of the heap.
The answer to this question is specific. It says: Run this regression analysis. Look up that article. Rewrite the introduction of this chapter. Reframe that hypothesis. Explain your argument better there. Write an outline for a new paper. Check how your argument on page so-and-so fits in with the literature. (Again: pick ONE)
If it’s not specific and doable, you’re not there yet. Ask the question again and listen.
3. Do It! and Forget The Rest
The third step has an easy part, and a difficult part.
The easy part is ‘Do it’! Whatever came up in the second step – that’s your job for today. Do it! When we are so clear on what we should do next, the actual doing becomes much easier. You have one doable task ahead of you. That’s all. If it’s still overwhelming or not doable, go back to the questions of step one and step two. You don’t have the right focus yet.
The difficult part is to forget the rest. Writing is a complex activity. There are always several arguments and things-to-do competing for your attention. There is never one loose end; there are always at least a dozen. Or so it seems. The problem is that we try to keep track of all these different things to work on at once. Bad idea. It is exhausting because it dilutes our focus. Forgetting the rest is often the single most important step between getting somewhere and getting overwhelmed. So, while you are doing your task for the day: single-task. Once you have finished your task for the day: stop! Or, if you have work sessions left, start by asking the above questions again and start on a new doable task. Just know that taking this one step is enough. You cannot take all the steps of a journey simultaneously. You have to take it one step at a time.
You may fear that by taking it one step at a time and forgetting about the rest, you will lose sight of the whole picture (thinking big). You may also fear that you will forget to do a hundred things. Your work may become sloppy if you’re no longer focused on every single detail (thinking small). In reality, your work will gain clarity and focus. Because you continually ask: ‘what is the next most important thing?’ you can finally relax. At one point, the next most important thing may be to tie all your arguments together. At another point, the next most important thing may be to check that specific reference. Before you get to those points, there are other most important things to work on.
By using this concept of working on the next most important thing and forgetting the rest, you don’t waste your energy on things that turn out not to be so important in the end. Although every detail may seem important in the moment it is not. By focusing on only the most important one, you will save yourself doing a lot of unnecessary work, that may cost you time at best, and utterly confuse and overwhelm you at worst.
It takes a bit of courage to take this approach. It takes a leap of faith to trust everything will work out, without you continually thinking about the thousand different elements that make up your thesis.
I learned to use this technique the hard way. Due to my energy limitations I could only do and think about one thing at a time. And I didn’t have the energy to do more than one small thing a day. It was infuriating. But paradoxically, it improved my work. Everything that was remotely unnecessary or could get me side-tracked had to go. I couldn’t allow myself to get bogged down by the details; I simply didn’t have the energy for it. In the beginning, I was scared my work wouldn’t be much good, as it felt like cutting corners to my perfectionist self. The opposite turned out to be the case: because I was focused on the important stuff, all the non-important stuff no longer clouded my judgement, my arguments and my chapters. My work got better. I was clearer on what I was doing and what I had to say. Work became doable and dare I say enjoyable, instead of overwhelming. Everything got done: the main big and bold arguments, as well as the tiny details. But because I was no longer trying to focus on everything simultaneously, it got done a lot better.
What’s next?
Once you get the hang of the technique, you can simplify. Now, when I get to work, all I ask is ‘What’s next?’ Somehow the next most important thing is always ready, waiting for me.
Assignment
Allow your PhD to write itself. It’s time to start allowing your PhD to write itself: (1) find your focus (2) prioritise (3) do it! and forget the rest and (4) relax and have fun. Today we start with steps 1-3. Take a few minutes at the beginning of each work session to get focused, prioritise and go for it. Download the worksheet to get started!