How to Tame Your PhD

by Inger Mewburn

contemplated this problem and made a Plan; cobbled together from all the advice books on writing I used in my workshops with doctoral students

The process works best in the middle to late stages of your PhD, when you have absorbed a lot of information about your topic and have thought about it for a while.

The secret to writing at least 1000 words a day is to give yourself a limited time frame in which to do it.

So dedicate less than a quarter of the day to making some new text and then take a break and return later to clean it up. This sounds counter-intuitive, but trust me – it works.

Writing new stuff should be almost the first thing you do when you sit down to your desk.

This attitude is echoed in Helping Doctoral Students to Write, where Kamler and Thomson recommend that thesis writers think about their work in terms of ‘chunks’ rather than chapters.

Thinking happens during writing. The surest way to slow the process is to worry too much about whether your thinking is any good.

So give yourself permission to write badly. If you can’t think of a word, use another / equivalent / filler word. Don’t slow down and start to overthink. Do this ‘free writing’ in bursts of about 10 to 15 minutes.

Decide on the task to be done. Set the Pomodoro (timer) to 25 minutes. Work on the task until the timer rings. Take a short break (5 minutes) then do another burst. Every four Pomodoros, take a more extended break (15–20 minutes).

If you are a social person by inclination, it's not surprising it can be a struggle to write for long periods.

Since your most important audience is your examiners, one thing I recommend all students do, sometime in the second year, is to write an examiner profile.

A writer might use a series of questions to ‘sketch’ their character in words.

Write a one sentence summary describing your examiner’s academic ‘flavour’ What kind of researcher are they? What sort of things does my examiner already know about my topic? What is my examiner interested in, theoretically? What methods does my examiner like to use? What might my examiner expect to learn from reading this thesis? What annoys my examiner?

procrastinators are self-handicappers: rather than risk failure, they prefer to create conditions that make success impossible.” Ouch!

He suggests writers need to think more like companies who make gadgets like phones and computers. Electronic consumer goods companies have similar problems to writers, but they have shipping schedules they must stick to if they want to stay in business.

Boredom is not just the dark side of a creative turn of mind, but a lack of commitment to seeing the idea through.

The problem with intellectual labour is, although it can be hard, the effects of the struggle are not visible.

We can rail against the quality and quantity metrics that dominate academia as much as we like, but they are a fact of life for now.

In my opinion, it's only going to become increasingly competitive. As Becker points out: people will judge you on what you have done - not the ideas you have in your head.

Finished theses, chapters and journal articles are the only tangible proof of your invisible la...

Repeat after me: Perfect is the enemy of Done.

It can be particularly galling to be asked to take something out of your dissertation that the supervisor suggested should be put in there in the first place.

Ultimately I think we need to work towards inhabiting Kubler-Ross’s final stage:

Acceptance. Acceptance is when you stop caring about your writer’s ego as much and can be more open to suggested changes.

words to the effect that a writer should throw out the first million words: only after you have written this much that you start to get good, apparently.

Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance

All writers (will have to) edit their prose, but (the) great writers edit (it) viciously, always trying to eliminate (words that are) ‘fuzz’ – (excess) words (which are not adding anything of value). Zinsser compares (the process of editing out) ‘fuzz’ to fighting weeds – you will always be slightly behind (because they creep in when you aren’t looking for them). One of my (pet hates) is (the word) ‘also’. (If you search and replace

instances (of this word) you will find you can live without it and your writing will improve (instantly). (Likewise the word) ‘very’.)

Pay attention to your adverbs and such.

Get rid of qualifiers

Worse – they imply that you are apologetic or unsure of your ideas.

There’s quite a difference between ‘argues’ and ‘asserts’. The first implies that Inger is making a case; the second implies that Inger is defending a position without necessarily providing any evidence for it.

Likewise, ‘stating’ something is different from ‘outlining’ it – the latter implies that some explanation is supplied which will help the reader understand what is being discussed.

Paying attention to the words you use to describe the work of others saves you the trouble of adding another sentence to explain to the reader what you think of the work. It’s the thesis writer’s equivalent of a nod and a wink to the reader.

Resist the urge. The ideas and findings in a thesis are important; style is secondary.

A simple, precise style is like painting your walls white – a backdrop against which your ideas can pop.

The stated intent of the PhD process is to train novices to become ‘independent scholars’. Further, these novice scholars are supposed to be engaged in making ‘new knowledge’.

The supervisor should have helped you to develop what they already have – an internal critic. This internal critic you have formed while doing a PhD will be your friend for life. A strong inner critic is the essence of scholarly independence and will enable you to do the job of being an expert anywhere, including in academia if that is your wish.

Although the supervisor may give many reasons for withholding their permission to submit, it usually boils down to one: they see flaws in your work. They don’t want you to fail or have a horrible year of making substantial revisions. This is why I advise

students to swallow their pride and make the revisions supervisors have requested.

Developing empathy with the supervisor, rather than seeing them as the problem, enables you to go back and have an honest conversation about the risks you are prepared to take.

It’s best to try to negotiate with your supervisor about who this additional reader will be so that you can both be comfortable with their advice. You will need to be prepared for this person to tell you to put your ego back on the shelf and make the changes, because, I’m sorry to tell you – this is what usually happens.

Step One: Identify what is holding you back

Having a therapist on hand while confronting the fear of finishing is amazingly powerful.

Step Two: Commit

You will never find the perfect structure because it’s an illusion. A dissertation is a story of the research done, that’s all. You could tell at least 10 different stories; some will be better or worse, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter because the PhD endeavour is a pass/fail proposition. Perfect is the enemy of done. Just find a structure and stick with it long enough to get the whole thing written.

Step Three: Write the conclusion before you finish

Writing the conclusion sometimes helps you think through your methods: what experiments or data gathering would you need to do to prove anything you said? Writing a draft of your conclusion also forces you to surface assumptions and biases so that you can be aware of them as you process your data.

Step Four: List it out

In my experience, this mind game is remarkably effective, but it only works for short pieces, so if you are employing this technique for a dissertation, do a goal list for each chapter. Step Five: Imagine life without the dissertation