--What I have learned from the UQ PhD
MasterclassWorkshop hosted by the UQ Graduate School
Manage your thesis writing
Zheng Zhu
University of Queensland
Problems students had
Lacking motivation to write
Lacking control over study
Having negative feeling
Suggestions
Finding out what has got in your way
Putting the important thing first
Writing in a regular base
Getting some control
Managing feelings
Finding out what has got in your way
Finding out why things don't work or why you don't achieve a goal is useful information to help you make changes.
Do you need to make changes
to your goals or routines or
whatever?
Your role in your study
People
Thinker
reflector theorist
Doer
pragmatist activist
Self-sabotaging behaviours
Procrastination
Over-committing
Perfectionism
Inaccurate thinking
The imposter syndrome
Lacking Motivation
Don
’t wait for the motivation fairy!
Action-Motivation-Action
Putting the important thing first
What is the next thing?
When can you do it?
What will get in the way?
When can you hand stuff in?
Break it down into small little bits .
Writing in a regular base
Write at least 30-45 minutes a day
Write first, before you do anything else
Write in a silo
Don't go off and check up on things while writing
Write in order to understand what you really think
Writing clarifies your thinking.
Getting some control
This might be a good time to get the diary out and mark off
specific study periods, meetings
with supervisors, deadlines etc.
Managing feelings
If you do not get a PhD,
your life is not going to
end.
So some final points
If you are feeling stuck, rather than give you a list of strategies to pick
from I would say just do one thing and that one thing could be write for one hour every morning.
If you can't do it every morning, then how many mornings a week could you do it?
And if you can't do 1 hour (because you don't have time or it's too hard) can you do 30 minutes? Most people can stand doing something not pleasant for at least 30 minutes.
And if the voice in your head says "30 minutes isn't enough", trust me and have a go and if after a week you are not producing more than before then you can stop it.
And another voice in your head (boy it sounds crowded in there!) says "but I am so far behind, there's no way 30 mins is enough I have to do more", well that's fine if you are already doing more, but if you are not trust me and have a go and if after a week you are not producing more than before then you can stop it.
If you are not stuck, then keep up your two hours a day of good solid
work and remember and keep doing all the other productivity things we have talked about before - ie:
Don't turn on your email first thing
Write first, before you do anything else - ideally for 2 hours, but even 1 is better than not at all
Then you can do all those other "important" things for the rest of the day
If you feel anxious etc "nail your feet to the floor" - i.e. ride out the feelings and stay put - it will get better
Write in a silo - forget about the rest of your PhD - just write the next bit
Don't go off and check up on things while writing - do that afterwards
You have to write in order to understand what you really think
Writing clarifies your thinking (I know it doesn't feel that way, but I promise you it's true!)
If you don't feel motivated remember ACTION-MOTIVATION-ACTION
An extract from a participant’s response
Before I attended the masterclass, I wasn't sure that I would take anything 'workable' away from it. A lot of the strategies that were spoken about I had heard before, and hadn't worked for me in the past. The biggest change to my writing since then has been this concept that two hours of writing a day can get a PhD done. Prior to the class, my mind would irrationally say that two hours wasn't long enough to sink my teeth into anything of substance, and the writing that I would do wouldn't be good enough because I didn't have long to get it out. Because of this, I would avoid doing any work on writing as (in my mind) what was the point?
While sceptical about it, I tried out doing two hours of writing in the morning before work.
Unlike others in the class, the actual sitting down and doing focussed work wasn't an issue for me, more that it was my perception of how much can be done in two hours. And while I may need to save where I'm at and shut down the computer to go to work, I'm getting through the writing and making more progress than I have for a long time. Some days though I have been tempted to call in 'sick' as I'm on a roll...
Following on from this, I've actually become more motivated (yes, action does lead to motivation) to get it done, and I feel that I'm on the precipice of the '24/7 PhD buzz' that PhD graduates in my school talk about - where all I want to do is get the thing finished.
I'm now aiming towards having a complete draft done by mid-October. I'm pretty sure it's achievable, as long as I keep to the current plan.
