Phd Advice: How to Make Progress When You Write

photo credit: Marcus Povey

Introduction

No matter where you are in your dissertation writing process (having settled on a topic, doing heavy research, the outlining stage or the actual drafting of chapters) chances are you’ll experience the “looking up at the mountain” syndrome.

The “looking up” syndrome is that point in time (or several as the case may be) where you are staring up at the mountain of research still left to be done, and it leaves you feeling overwhelmed and, quite frankly, a little paralyzed.

For me, this happens quite often after I read another person’s killer published dissertation.  And then I head back over to my keyboard, with the superficial paragraphs I’ve written (academia lite) and think, “How will I ever reach the PhD summit?”

Well, there’s a sure-fire cure for the “looking up” syndrome, because I’ve used it on a few occasions to pull me out of the paralysis…

A surefire cure for feeling overwhelmed

My solution to this dilemma can be stated this way.  If you feel stuck in the “looking up” syndrome, do the most critical thing that will make the greatest contribution to moving your dissertation forward.

This is an idea I stole from Tim Ferris’ book The 4-Hour Workweek (While I can’t subscribe to all of Tim’s ideas, I found the first part on productivity extremely useful. What’s more, I credit Tim’s book with giving me the initial impulse to start this blog!)

At any given moment, there is a most important task that you must complete in order to move your dissertation along. It might be having to read a particular article, doing a book review, summarizing a particular author’s arguments, translating a foreign language, looking up all occurrences of a word in the Septuagint, tracking down the right Unicode fonts, writing section 2.1.1 or any host of things.

What is key is that you think about what is critical to move forward and then just do that thing.  Forget the rest.  Don’t get distracted into doing something else (See my previous post on How to Focus When You Write for helpful suggestions.)

A personal example…

For example, right now I am working on Chapter 2, an exegesis of the Miletus Speech (Acts 20:17-38).  This chapter includes sections on the genre, structure, and the literary context of the discourse plus the formal exegetical piece.  Staring at all of it, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed, but in order for me to progress, there is a very key text critical issue that must be dealt with first (v. 28).

This requires looking up various treatments of this variant and summarizing the key positions.  Finally, it requires that I sit down with the Greek text and catalog the different manuscript families (for myself).  For me, at this moment in time, looking up the sources is the most important task.  After that, it is summarizing the different sources. After that it is cataloging the different manuscript families.

Conclusion

It is easy to feel overwhelmed at times.  A PhD is a serious academic endeavor that requires more work than I have ever had to do in my life.  Yet, finding that critical task that will move you forward and just doing it, has worked wonders in overcoming the “looking up” syndrome. (Now if procrastination is your problem, well, then, your solution will be a bit more complicated than this!) 🙂

Your comments are always welcomed and appreciated.

Happy researching!