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THE ALL-BUT-DISSERTATION SURVIVAL GUIDE™ The All-But-Dissertation Survival Guide™ focuses on ways to help its readers more readily overcome the roadblocks that often seem to stand in the way of completing the dissertation. It is read throughout the world. Want to become a coach?New MentorCoach Training Programs launching. Subscribe to our other no-cost ezines: INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH A DISSERTATION
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Devoted to providing practical strategies for completing
your Doctoral Dissertation.™
INSIDE THIS ISSUE - October 14, 2009
October 14, 2009
A Note from the Editor
Tracy Steen, Ph.D.
Tired
of working on that dissertation? Well, alternate activities (did anyone say
"procrastination?") are always available. How about getting to work
on a Halloween costume? Or maybe you could just clean out your junk drawer
(doesn't everybody have one?).
Actually, the junk drawer suggestion might help you get back on the dissertation track with renewed determination. Though that sounds unlikely, the reasoning is simple: Such a mind-numbing task is a tangible and convincing reminder of one reason you wanted to do the dissertation in the first place--you don't want a future with a boring job; you want the challenges and opportunities associated with an advanced degree.
Challenges and opportunities--yes, you want them in your future, but you already have them now. Isn't it interesting, or even almost paradoxical, that we look forward to the challenges we will have on a job, somewhere down the road, but we are less enthusiastic about the challenges we are encountering along the way?
If you aren't too keen on your current challenges, it may be due to insecurity in not yet having the credential you are striving so hard to earn. Yet any lack of confidence on your part is unwarranted. You have proved beyond any doubt that you have what it takes to complete a dissertation. You wouldn't be where you are today had you not persevered when things were tough. It's now only a matter of staying on course until you reach your goal. Keep doing what you have done before. It's just a matter of time.
And speaking of time, Dr. Nancy Whichard observes that now is the "time to re-engage with your work ethic" and take control of that dissertation. Be sure to read her very motivating article, "Mental Toughness, Discipline, and Planning--Essentials for Taking on a Beastly Dissertation," in this issue. Find out how you can be "mentally tough…again."
And as always, take a little extra inspiration from our Inspirational Quotes. In this issue author Stephen King, master of the horror genre, adds a few words of wisdom, though without the distinguishing sinister overtone for which he is famous.
Mental Toughness, Discipline, and Planning-Essentials for Taking on a Beastly Dissertation
by Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC
The
people I coach are terrific, bright, accomplished. Each is writing a book,
a dissertation, or a thesis. Many are published writers. Many have won awards
for their college-level teaching.
Their intellect and accomplishments amaze me.
But . . . (yes, there's a "but" here) . . . they are struggling with their dissertation. With dismay, they say that they are procrastinating. They are sabotaging themselves. And often, they aren't fully aware at the time that they're setting themselves up for failure.
One client, whose story echoes many others that I hear, told me that she can tick off accomplishments that she is proud of, but she resists and procrastinates on working on her dissertation. Each day she means to write, but she spends the day thinking about how she should be writing, even as she does less important work, spending time on whatever crosses her desk or her mind.
She wonders if she's addicted to avoiding the writing. She wants to do the right thing, and that would be to write, but she indulges in procrastination, feeling almost as if the dissertation repulses her.
Repelled by your dissertation?
Even approaching the dissertation can start to seem impossible. I've had the
diss described to me in various ways, but all of the metaphors used to describe
it seem to be along the lines of a lumbering, disgusting beast that sits in
the corner, watching TV and smoking, and it grimaces and growls whenever anyone
approaches.
Do you catastrophize?
Do you see yourself as totally inept, not good enough, someone who doesn't
know enough and who will never be able to pull out of this hole? Do you see
your dissertation as something so beastly that you avoid it at all costs?
Catastrophizing can make you so anxious that it is nearly impossible to push
past those feelings and approach that seeming beast of a project.
Time to re-engage with your work ethic.
You've had a strong work ethic in the past or you wouldn't have arrived at
this place in your academic career. That work ethic was one you honed over
the years, starting from the first time you faced up to a task that seemed
bigger than you. That was when you discovered what it would take to be mentally
tough.
What would it take to be mentally tough … again?
To be tough, mentally tough, takes more than a one-time flare of courage.
It takes discipline--doing something hard again and yet again. It also takes
a plan. A plan will remove the uncertainty of when you are going to work.
Use your past successes as a touchstone.
The client who says she is proud of past accomplishments needs to pull up
those accomplishments and keep them in front of her where she can see them.
They can be a touchstone. In fact, she said that at one point in her life
she had landscaped a rocky, hilly lot and turned it into a lovely yard and
garden. She told me how she had removed rocks and hauled dirt in a wheelbarrow,
and pushed and pulled, and conquered that beast of a lot. As I listened, I
saw in my mind's eye how that lot must have looked originally and how, step
by step, with no allowances for an aching back and no going back, she transformed
the land.
My client surely had taken pictures of the way that rocky, hilly lot looked originally and during the process as she transformed it. I challenged her to find pictures of that lot at various stages of change and tape them to her computer. If she had hauled rocks, she was tough enough to knock out a paragraph or a page.
Looking at those pictures and thinking what she was like during that time would halt the catastrophizing and ward off anxiety. She would remember the hard work that had produced such amazing results.
Then, because she was putting in place a plan that would help her stay mentally tough and disciplined, she would strategically post the pictures so that when she sat down to her computer, looking at them would help her draw the strength she needed to start writing.
Mental toughness will change the way you approach your dissertation.
Just as is true with my client, your past successes aren't flukes--you earned
each and every one through hard work. Some may have come more easily than
others, but each success built on the past.
To move forward on your dissertation, remind yourself that you are capable
of doing this because you've taken on more than a few challenges in the past
and come out on top.
This will take mental toughness, but with courage, discipline, and planning,
you will change your mental landscape
And you will be writing!
About the author:
Dr. NANCY WHICHARD, Contributor, ABDSG; Director, MentorCoach Academic
and Writing Coaching Programs
Nancy Whichard, Ph.D., PCC, is a dissertation and career coach. She has successfully
coached to completion doctoral candidates from 40 major American universities
and from many Western European and Canadian universities, as well. She holds
a Ph.D. in English from the University of Maryland and for two decades was
on the English and Literature faculties at George Washington University and
American University. A recovering academic, Nancy knows the importance of
politics and diplomacy in negotiating the dissertation experience. Nancy has
added a Virtual Dissertation Boot Camp to her offerings. For more information
on the Virtual Dissertation Boot Camp and on coaching, email Nancy at nancy@nancywhichard.com.
Sign up for her Smart Tips for Writers e-newsletter at www.nancywhichard.com
and read her blog at www.successfulwritingtips.com.
Inspirational Quotes
"Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's
plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards,
or sideways."
- H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
"Talent is cheaper than table salt. What separates the talented individual
from the successful one is a lot of hard work."
- Stephen King
"You can never conquer the mountain. You can only conquer yourself."
- Jim Whittaker
"Mental toughness is many things and rather difficult to explain. Its
qualities are sacrifice and self-denial. Also, most importantly, it is combined
with a perfectly disciplined will that refuses to give in. It's a state of
mind-you could call it character in action."
- Vince Lombardi
"There are no short cuts to any place worth going."
- Beverly Sills