#finishthatthesis

Writing consistently hides a multitude of sins. You would be surprised. In my opinion, the most important thing you can do in graduate school is to write every day for at least 15 minutes. This is not a new idea. There is a great book out there called Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes A Day, and this sounds totally laughable. And..... it is. You can’t write your dissertation if you really only spend 15 minutes a day working on it. But the magic is in the “a day” part - writing every day (every weekday, at least) makes it easier to write every day. That sounds cyclical, but what happens is that when you force yourself to sit down and write for 15 minutes, even if all you write is half a sentence, the next day will be easier. And the day after that will be easier. 

This doesn’t mean you won’t struggle. You will. But the magic is in those 15 minutes. Just like Kimmy Schmidt declares that she can do anything for 10 seconds, you can write for 15 minutes. You can. It doesn’t have to be good writing. It doesn’t have to be fast writing. Just write. Do it. 

After a while, push yourself a bit. Do 2 sessions of 15 minutes each. Then expand those 15 minute sessions to 20 minutes. Keep expanding. Then, on those hard days, those days where you can’t do it, fall back on your “at least 15 minutes” plan. 

So when you hit this point, of writing every weekday for at least 15 minutes, you will still have your ups and downs. Days where the words won’t come, where you spend 45 minutes staring at the page and manage to get 3 sentences out. The beauty of consistency is that you will also have days where you write 3 pages in those 45 minutes. If you’re writing every day, whether you have a good day or a bad day doesn’t matter. They will balance each other out, and over time you will have more good days and the bad days won’t matter as much. 

Do you think you’re lazy? Are you a big procrastinator? Writing for 15 minutes a day is something even the laziest procrastinator can do - I should know, because I used to think of myself as a lazy procrastinator. Just showing up every day and putting words on paper, no matter how bad, even if it’s just for 15 minutes, will, over time, conquer any real or perceived laziness and overcome procrastination. 

The twitter account Shit Academics Say posted about this today - it’s a great idea - Shut Up and Write Tuesdays. It is basically chat writing on the first and third Tuesdays of the month, done at 3 times during the day around the globe - one at 10 AM Australian Eastern Standard Time, one at 10 AM British Summer Time for UK/Europe folks, and one at 10 AM Central time for North American folks. They run it for an hour, using the pomodoro method. Check the website for the specifics. The next one is September 15th. 

Marva Collins