How to Keep Going

How to Keep Going is the second installment in my “How to” writing series, the first of which was titled (aptly, I think!) How to Get Started.

The point of this post, How to Keep Going, is to give you some inspiration to help you get through the middle of a writing project, particularly if you find yourself feeling a little stuck, on the verge of stalling out, or if it’s been days, weeks, or months since you’ve worked on the project and you need to find your way back in.

Here is my best advice:

You’re going to start with time goals only (that is, goals for how many minutes to work, not goals about what or how much you need to accomplish), and you’re going to keep them very, very low. The idea is to make meeting the time goal outrageously doable. I’ve heard KC Davis talk about this as the “shortest on-ramp” to the new behavior, as in, If I want to make daily exercise a new behavior, what is the shortest on-ramp to me being able to accomplish that? Is it that I spend 3 minutes per day on the exercise bike until it starts to feel like a habit? Great, then that’s what I’ll do.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Three minutes? I’ll never finish my dissertation if I only work on it for only three minutes at a time. But see my earlier point about making the goal outrageously doable—pick a length of time that you know you could meet on any day, even on the busiest of days. Because, in spite of all of your good intentions, on a day when your schedule is packed to the max, it’s going to be easy to let yourself off the hook for not working on your dissertation (or whatever your current writing project is) for 40 minutes. You know what’s NOT easy to let yourself off the hook for? Not writing for only 3 minutes. This is only a starting point, you’ll build on it later.

How long should you aim to work at a time? Ten minutes is good. Five minutes might be even better, as it’s really hard to argue that you don’t have just five minutes to spare for your project. I have successfully gotten myself meditating and practicing Spanish via Duolingo daily, by telling myself I only have to do it for five minutes (and then doing it for longer when I can and want to).

But let’s say you start with the goal of working on your project for ten minutes per session. Put three to four 10-minute work sessions in your calendar for the next week and—here is the absolutely crucial part—stick to them. You have to show up for them for this to work. I’m sure you’ve heard this before—treat the entry in your calendar as if it were a “real” appointment with someone else (you know, someone whose time you really value and you wouldn’t even dream of cancelling on. Give yourself the gift of being that person!)

At these initial work sessions, your only goal is to familiarize yourself with your project again. You’re simply getting your hands in the work again. Make very simple goals: Find the documents you need. Save all project-related material in one computer file, labeled clearly so you now know where everything is. Track down correspondence (emails from your advisor, feedback on your work, etc.) and put that in the file. Once you have all of your documents in one place, your goal is simply read through what you have. Don’t do anything about it yet. No new writing is required!

(One quick aside here – be really ruthless here about what you actually need to push forward with your project. Now is not the time to track down and reread all of the literature that informed your project. You don’t want to spend so long organizing that you never get writing. I would recommend working with the bare minimum of documents that you need at this stage – this will vary by project but it could look something like: the most recent draft of your writing, a set of comments on it from your advisor, a prospectus describing the requirements for your dissertation, and an outline for the project, if you work with outlines.)

At this point, you’ve gathered the documents and materials you need to move forward and you’ve saved them in one, easy-to-find place so that at the start of each new writing session, it’s easy to get back into the work. Now your work sessions will look like this: Open the document and read through what you have. Read through any feedback from advisors or reviewers. If you feel any resistance coming up, remind yourself of your two goals, which right now are your only goals:

#1 Open the document

#2 Read what I have

By the way, it is VERY common to get stuck after having written a draft and then gotten feedback on it. Forgive yourself for the time it’s taken you to get back into the project—you were resting the part of your brain that was focused on this project and maybe that rest was needed so that some important pieces could fall into place. The right time to begin again is now. The best time to begin again is also now.

Reading through what you have, take notes on it either by hand in a notebook (my preferred method) or in a separate Word document. Be an archaeologist of your own work—what have you accomplished already? Where did you leave off? What gaps, or obvious next steps, remain? In doing this, new ideas about the project will likely start bubbling up. Jot them down for safekeeping, but don’t act on them yet.

As you follow these steps, opening the document, reading through what you have, reading any feedback or critiques you’ve gotten on the work so far, it’s likely that a rough idea of your next steps will start to emerge. Write them down.

Here is a helpful practice: At the end of each work session, write 2-3 next steps at the top of a blank notebook page. The idea is to leave yourself breadcrumbs; give yourself a way back into the project so that way you’re not wasting time bringing yourself up to speed the next time you sit down to work on it. Remember, these next steps do not have to be the most perfect or comprehensive next steps in existence—they merely need be some concrete action that will push your project forward.

Ideally, after working like this for a few weeks, you will feel excited about your project again, you’ll have a sense of purpose because you know what your next steps are, and you’ll be feeling ready to increase the amount of time you’re devoting to this project. Do it! Ride that wave of enthusiasm!

As you move forward with your work, I would offer two guidelines:

1) Keep in mind that human beings can only concentrate deeply for about 90 minutes at a time before there are diminishing returns on the effort you put in, so I would keep your deep-work, focused writing sessions limited to around 1.5-2 hours. And, 2) if you find that you’re working on your project for longer periods of time, but suddenly your brain starts throwing up roadblocks again, and you start missing work sessions—cut back on the length of each work session, but not on the frequency of the sessions. Joli Jensen talks about the importance of “high-frequency, low-stress contact” with one’s writing for success in the academy. Don’t make the mistake of shoving your project in a metaphorical drawer again. Maintain regular contact with the project, just lessen the length of time you’re forcing yourself to engage with it at any one time.

If, even after several weeks of regular resistance-busting work on the project, you find you’re still not excited about it and you can’t find a toehold to start making progress, that may necessitate a larger conversation with yourself and possibly with your advisor or even a writing coach – How can you make this project a better fit for you? How can you capture some of the passion you may have for other things and bring it into your work on this project? Writing a dissertation is, at its best, an exciting adventure of intellectual discovery. You deserve to enjoy it, to be lit up by it.

Happy writing! I hope this helps you get unstuck.