Episode 46: How To Start Your Dissertation

Introduction

Hey friend, the time has come to finish your dissertation, graduate and become doctor. Welcome to office hours with Dr. Lacy where we talk about how to finally master this time management thing so you can stay on top of it without losing your mind. Every Wednesday you can find a new episode wherever you listen to podcasts, make sure you hit the subscribe button to make sure you never miss an episode. I'm Dr. Marvette Lacy, your dissertation writing strategist here to be with you along every step of the way and I would like to thank you for coming to today's office hours. Let's get started on today's episode. Before we get started, I have a question to ask you and I sincerely don't want to ask you this question because I know you're probably tired of people asking you this question and I know I need to ask you because I sincerely want to help you. So here it goes. How is your dissertation going? I know, I know. Hear me out. A lot of clients come to me and they say, I just don't know where to start. Can you relate listener? I mean, of course you know you have to complete your proposal and maybe you even decided to start with chapter two. But what's next? How do you start? How long should you dedicate to writing? How do you know which things are most important to focus on? How do you know what to do so that you don't waste time reading and writing the wrong things? I hear you. And that is exactly why I created start your dissertation. Start your dissertation, takes you through the step by step process that I use with my current clients every week to get the structure, consistency and discipline needed in their writing process. Imagine having doable writing goals. I'm talking about goals, when you read them you're like, is this real? Of course, I can do that with no problem. And so as a result, you're at leaping out of your bed every day to write. Can you imagine such a thing? Excited to write. My clients tell me they're excited all the time. But imagine that you, yes, you who is listening can be disciplined enough to show up consistently and not only showing up cause I know you, cause that was me showing up to the Panera and to Starbucks. Just more excited about the coffee and the lemon loaf. But like imagine not only showing up to write but that you actually sit down, turn off all distractions and you right, but like best of all, imagine having so much confidence in your writing that happily press send to your dissertation chair with your latest draft. Friend, that is what I'm offering you in this course. I am offering you a proven system that's going to take this huge goal of finishing this dissertation and break it down into very bite size pieces that like actually work for your life. But don't just take my word for it. Listen to Pascale who has just recently completed this course and Pascale says you need to do this. It will get your whole life together. Since taking this course, she says, I've gained momentum towards completing my literature review revisions. I've also been really intentional about writing every day since the workshop or how about Micah? Micah says my daily writing is consistent, which wasn't true a few weeks ago. Like y'all, she was even able to submit her proposal to her committee in just a few short weeks. So friend, what are you waiting for? Are you ready to finally start this dissertation? If you are, I want you to go over to startyourdissertation.com and sign up for the wait list. You will be among the first notified when doors are officially open later on this month. Now for real, let's get back to the show.

My PhD Journey

Happy new year everyone. Can you believe it? We made it to 2020 if you're listening to this in real time. Today is actually January 1st, 2020 so I want to say happy new year. And if you are listening to this and its way past January 1st, I mean there's always some time for an extra happy new year and there we can always restart whenever we want to. That's the beauty of life. So today I'm going to be talking to you about how to start your dissertation. I want to do a little bit story time though before I really get into the meat of things about how you can start your dissertation. I want to tell you a little bit about me because maybe you don't know, um, my backstory and so I just want to let you know a little bit about it. So let's see. I graduated from the University of Georgia and my program is called a college student affairs administration. And that is a podcast for another day about what that means. Um, essentially I just help people. I study college students, um, but I, my program, was designed to be a two year of coursework and one year of dissertation. And there are some other steps in there too. Um, but I got to the preliminary exam phase of the program late fall of 2015 and I think it was, it may have been late October when I did my oral exams, if I remember correctly. And I remember thinking that I was just going to take November and December as a break to recover and that in January I was going to be all set to go, you know, you know how it's like, you know, Ooh child, we made it through the year and I'm going to be ready to start in January. Right. Because I felt like the process was very overwhelming. Um, not only in preparation but like the mental part of it, like the stress of am I going to pass these exams? Am I going to know what to say when I get into the room? Like the oral part really stressed me out. Sorry y'all. If the audio is changing my, okay. My foot went to sleep. Yes. So, um, and I was just trying to readjust myself anyway. Yes. So yeah, it's just, I just thought I was going to be able to have two months to prepare. Right. And so unfortunately that two months break that I thought I was gonna take ended up being an eight month break. Like I would try, like there were a few times that I would like open up my laptop and try cause my, my chair kept saying just write, you just need to write. And I would try and, it's not that I didn't know the information right, because I had just did my exams and the part I was starting with chapter two because that's the advice that you usually get. 

Writing Barriers

And I was like, I'll just start something easy. I'll just start with theory. I mean, so at the top of my head I should be able to write that part, no problem. And I would open up my laptop to try to write and it was so painful. I just could not do it. I don't know what it was. I just, I would stare at the blank page with that cursor, just like, that's the sound effect that I'm, that's the sound effect that I, that I heard in my head when I saw it blinking on the page. Um, and I just couldn't, and I, I mean, that did not help what was already happening. So my anxiety and my depression had went into overdrive. I was in this very toxic relationship and it was coming to an all-time peak y'all like, I just didn't think I was gonna make it. Um, and I was just, I was over the relationship. I was over being in Athens, Georgia. I was over at being in the program. Like I just was overriding, I was over all the things. I just wanted to pack up everything, move somewhere else and go live out my dreams working at Trader Joe's, like, because to me, Trader Joe's, everybody's happy. You wear a Hawaiian shirt, you get endless amount of cookie butter. Like you know exactly what it is that you need to do every day when you show up to work. Like if you've run into a problem, there's a bell system, one bell to bell, three bells. Like I just was over what life was looking like, which was, I felt alone all the time. I felt like I did not deserve to be in the program even though I was a candidate, but I just, it was like that was too much effort to get there. I wasn't, I didn't have the best relationship with my family because there was some other things going on and I felt really frustrated that they didn't understand what it was like for me to be a PhD student. And then I just went through this huge milestone and they just viewed it as like another class, all the things, right. I was having daily panic attacks and I just wasn't in general, like showing up as my best, I was smoking too. A lot of people do not know this, but I was smoking like a pack of black cigars if you don't know what that is. Um, a day at this point in sometimes two a day, depending on how much things the anxiety had like creeped up and yeah, it just, it got so overwhelming that I finally stopped fighting and I went to make an appointment with a psychiatrist, um, and started seeing him on a regular basis. It also did not hurt that he looked good and his voice was really deep. 

Bouncing Back

Um, but I would say that I started to come out of the fog of deep anxiety, depression, all the things around mid-May that I could just, I could finally like start having conversations with people, um, like actually going outside and being fine or like even just talking to people in my program or just friends. Like, cause I had cut off all communication. Um, and even really started to talk with my chair for real, like seriously this time. Um, and I mean this whole time I will say I was always downloading articles and books and putting lists together because I was, I felt like I could do that, but everything else, I couldn't do. Um, and so I started to try to organize all the things that I have downloaded, like downloaded and collected from different places. And so, um, it also helped, this was, May was mid, late, mid to late May, was when lemonade came out. Um, and just every little, the life that it gave, it just spoke to my soul. Um, and so around this time too a few friends came to me and they're like, yeah, we're going to be doing this very small writing retreat in the mountains.

The (Writing) Retreat

You are coming with the, um, so figure out what you need to do, but this is how much it costs. This is when we're leaving, this is what you need to do. And we packed up the cars. I remember like, I like scraped together a few hundred dollars, um, that I needed to go with them. And it was really like all the money I had. Um, but yeah, like scrape it together. I went with them, we like packed more things than we really needed all the clothes, all the food, movies, coloring books, journals, laptops, I mean, anything that you need for four days more than what you needed. I mean, I felt like we took like two or three cars. It just was ridiculous. It was only like four of us or five of us. It just wasn't enough. But it is great. And we went to this beautiful cabin in the mountains, just beautiful view, all the things. Um, and it was like the first time in like months, maybe even years, that I was just outside of Athens, my apartment and the dumpster fire of a relationship that I was in that I could just really be alone with my thoughts and my feelings in a positive space. Right, cause you, I was always alone with the thoughts and feelings, right? But I just felt so much heaviness inside of my apartment inside of Athens. And it was just something magical about being in the mountains in spring, summer-ish. Um, coloring. Cause that's how I spent most of the initial days and having some great conversations and like being around other people and talking to other people again and enjoying some good food. And we explored the towns and we did things. Went to like an Apple orchard and we took tons and tons of pictures because that's who I was with. That's how they roll. 

Um, but I think it was like the second or third night I was there, um, everybody was writing, right? Everyone was like, for real. Y'all were going to write and I just was real committed to, Nope, I'm in writer's block. I can't do anything. It's not happening. Um, I said, I'm just going to sit here and color and cause I was like, that's all I can focus on because I wanted to be a part of the group, but I just, I didn't think I was ready. And my friend, Lamesha now, Dr. Lamesha Brown was, I think she says something like, what happens if you just write? Um, and I was like, nothing's going to come out, so why are we doing this? I'm sure I've probably really snarky. And she said like, just what happens, just write for an hour and then if you can go back and do whatever you want to. So that's what I did. I was like, be grudgingly pull down my heavy laptop. We were at the kitchen table. I remember we were at the kitchen table, she was writing, we were talking. And then, um, I just like everybody went on like a quiet time and I just wrote for hour and I was like, I'm just going to write whatever comes to my mind went from like, I don't want to do this. This is dumb to like, why men so stupid and lemonade is the best album and Jay Z is dumb. 

And like all the things and then it went to black women and higher ed like needs more support or really we just need people to get out of the way. Um, so my dissertation, loosely is a about that identity development of black women in graduate programs at predominantly white institutions. And so that, it just was a brain dump of all of just all the thoughts and feelings that I had from my own personal experience from what I've seen other friends and people go through it. And when that hour was up, I think I had about ten pages. Um, and they were not great. They were awful. There were like I started paragraphs and then went to the next and started the thought but didn't finish it. Like it just was all over the place. But it was 10 pages that I was able to write and just one hour, 10 pages more than I was able to do in the past eight months. And I sent that to my chair and if she's listening and thank you so much for reading that and like making sense of that. Um, cause she, did she read it, she gave me feedback and sent it back. 

But it was something about realizing that you were able to sit down and an hour and write this. Like what else are you able to do? And so that mixed with the community, so the other people who like the other doc students I was with like their support meant everything. I finished a whole draft of that proposal in 30 days. Now I'm not saying it was perfect or I was ready to defend it. No, but it was done. Like there was bones there, there was something to work with. And of course, we went back and forth and did edits and stuff, but like I was on fire, I felt like in terms of writing. So I want to share with you in this episode and it took me a long time, this intro leading up, but really I just, I want to talk to you probably if you are experiencing anything like I was during this time having a very difficult time like showing up to write or like knowing that you're like, I know what I'm supposed to do theoretically, but like what does that look like on a day to day basis? Um, I just want to talk to you about the like the real reason you're probably having a difficult time showing up. Why I was having a difficult time showing up and starting my dissertation. Um, and I also want to tell you what you can do to change it. Cool. Cool. So, it's, can I just, when I think back to my process, it just feels very overwhelming is what I kept thinking like, Oh, I'll just feel overwhelming. Like kind of confused but not really. Cause I like, I kind of know what I'm supposed to do, but like the whole process just seems so out of control of like, how am I supposed to write a whole dissertation? And I think part of the reason is that you've built up your whole, like probably academic career to this point up to, to the dissertation, right? Everybody kept saying like, you hear about, it's usually the first thing you hear and when, um, or you talk about when you ask anyone about their doctoral experience, right?

Journey vs Destination

Like, you don't have to write this dissertation, it's just a book, whatever. Um, and maybe, or you were like more dismissive of it in the beginning when you didn't know that much about what the process entailed. Now that you're in it, you're like, Oh, if, if only I knew. Right? Um, and so because the dissertation ends up being very overwhelming, you start, maybe you're like me, you start to daydream about all the things that you don't get to do, that you have to put off and all the sacrifices you have to make to finish this dissertation. Um, or all the things that you can't wait to do once you've finished the program. Right. Cause it like, while it's overwhelming, your brain still knows that you just need this one last step and then you're free, right? Like you, you graduate from the program and you may even say something like, I hear, or even myself, right? Like once I finished this program, right, you're not going to be able to tell me nothing. I'm gonna have all the time to do all the things I want to do. I'm going to travel. I'm going to get real serious about working. Now I'm going to go do, I'm going to be at all the parties.

I don't know what your thing is, but like maybe you said something like, once I've finished this degree, this program, this dissertation, I'm going to do X, Y, Z. Right? And we can get caught up in this cycle of feeling like we need to have the right circumstances in order to be the people that we really want to be. Right? Right. Like, maybe you said something like, I need this degree in order to be taken seriously or to be um, promoted or to be the academic, to be the person, the smartest person in the room, to be the person who knows all the literature, to be the good speaker, to be the good writer, whatever the be thing that you're trying to do. You feel like in order for that to happen, all the circumstances you have to have certain things. So, whether you have to have the degree or you have to have time where you had to have space, right? Like I was caught up in like feeling like I had to have the time away from my apartment, or like the perfect relationship. Right? Cause most of my energy was yes, was on the relationship. It was also like I had to be like, I don't know. Um, I lost my train of thought. But I think you get what I'm saying and I, I've heard this from many different people.

Have-Be-Do Model

When I talk to my clients, what I refer to this line of thinking or reasoning is as the have-be-do model. So have be and do, um, like we think we have to, uh, we need to have something in order to be the person who does the thing. Like I was just saying. So, um, when you say something like when the semester is over, I have more time so I can be more focused on my dissertation and write more. Right. You feel like you have to have more time in order to be more focused so that you can write more and that line of logic makes perfect sense. Right? Cause the of course, excuse me, of course you would say like I mean how else am going to write more if I don't have time. Like duh. Right. But the thing is even if you have more time, nine times out of 10, you still wouldn't write more. Even if you have more of the thing that you think you need, you still wouldn't write more. Right. Cause going back and being completely vulnerable and open. 

Like I thought, if I can get to a place where my, if I had a relationship that was more peaceful and calm on good terms and I would have more energy and space to show up in my dissertation or I didn't have anxiety and depression, I would have more energy to show up in my dissertation. And times came where the relationship was a quote unquote on good terms in time came when I did have, um, like, like better days in terms of less anxiety and depression affecting how I was showing up. And I still didn't, I still couldn't do the writing of the dissertation. I still would open a laptop and still not be able to write anything. Right. And what I know to be true to my core right now and what I've seen in clients, you won't do the thing or have the thing until you be the person who does the thing and is the thing. I'm using too many things. Right. Um, so instead of saying like, you know, when it's going back to our example, like instead of saying, you know, when the semester is over, I have more time. So I can be more focused on my dissertation so I can write more. Instead you want to flip it to when I show up as the more focused person, then I will write more and I will have more time as a result. Right. Um, and you're probably like, Oh, maybe, maybe I haven't really like convince you all the way and so let's just keep going.

Perfectionism Strikes Again

Um, you're like, I don't maybe what do you, what are you talking about? Um, that's like a pause on that. We will definitely come back, but I want to take a moment like, so the real reason most of us is that we can't show up to do the thing is because we want to be perfect at it. Perfectionism, I'm sure you knew this was coming. Um, and you, it's like perfectionism is so sneaky. Like it can camouflage itself to be many things. It will perfectionism, will have you believing your own hype and your own, your own inner voice about why you haven't started yet. Right. Cause I'm sure when I just gave you that last example and I was talking about the have be do model, you probably was like, well I don't have, perfectionism isn't my problem. You were like, maybe it's like more procrastination. I would say tomato, tomato, because to me, procrastination and perfectionism, they are, I was going to say something very inappropriate, the two sides, two different sides of the same coin. Is that the term or the phrase? I think you get it. Um, let's, but um, I'm a fan of like less defined terms so that we all can be on the same page, words mean things. And I want to let you know what I mean when we're talking in this moment, right? So procrastination is the act or habit of procrastinating okay or putting off or delaying, especially something requiring immediate attention. Perfectionism is the refusal to accept any standard short of perfection. 

Perfection is the condition, state or quality of being free or as free as possible from all flaws or defects. Right? So here's the thing. I believe that you care about your dissertation. I believe that you are committed to finishing. I believe that you want it to be a quality dissertation though. Like you don't want to just give your chair trash, like you're not out here trying to be one of those people who just, you know, put something on a page just so they can say they have the letters. I honestly believe that you do care and you want it to be quality and there's like you want to put good out into the world and you want to help people. Like you want to demonstrate your learning and your research skills, right? Like you want to be the academic that other people look up to and you feel like this dissertation is like finally you're a chance, right? Because you've been a student for so long and you feel like you finally got to the point where you get to prove how much you've learned. You get to prove that you have something valuable to say. You get to prove that like you know what it is and at the same time like you probably are questioning it a little bit, right? There's probably this, a little small voice in the back of your head is like, but do I know enough? Can I write it? Like, I mean sure I've been to school, but like while I want to be that person, like can I ever be that person can little old me. 

And so then as a result of the like very tiny quiet voice in the back of your mind, what happens is, what was happening with me is you go to sit down, you're like, okay, today's the day I'm going to write. You open up your laptop, you have your favorite drink and your favorite snack. And then you sit down, you open it, um, you open up a new document and then nothing happens. It is like all the words have completely erased from your brain. Oh, excuse me. Yeah I got animated y'all. I'm like knocking over stuff, but like everything got erased from your brain and you're like, Oh shit. Like what? What am I supposed to write again? So then you might go through like, Oh, documents, maybe like, Oh, notes, Oh papers, um, you know, Oh, articles or whatnot. Cause you're trying to get inspiration or you're just trying to get started on this new document. And so you read a few things. Maybe you decided to take a break cause you been working for awhile and you're like, you know, I'm just going to go look at Facebook real quick, just for a minute. Just curious about what's going on in the world since I'm over here writing and working so hard. And then before you know it, right? Uh, maybe like a work email comes up, maybe like somebody started a live video and Instagram, it's like you hopped over there thinking like you're having in the background why you like read over this book and you skim and then you've write. And then you start typing like whatever. You go back and forth and then next thing you know it hours have passed and you have nothing to show for it, right? And then you say, well F it, I've been here for a few hours. I read some things I don't really know what to do. I'm tired. You close your laptop, you go home and you're like promise yourself. And like tomorrow is going to be better. Tomorrow I'm going to do it. I'm going to be serious. I'm gonna wake up early and I'm going to get to work, right? Now why did I go through definitions in this scenario? It's because I want to show you the power in the sneakiness of perfectionism because this scenario I just described, one, I'm sure most of you are nodding your head so you know, you know, you know, even if you won't say it out loud, you know that you did something like that. And while it could be easy, like your brain can rationalize and be like, but I did, I went to the writing place. I showed up at the time I said I was gonna write. 

Writing Expectations vs Writing Reality

You know, writing isn't always actual writing. It's other activities like reading and reviewing stuff. You're absolutely right. Writing isn't always like putting words on the paper. Yeah. Sometimes it is editing, sometimes it is researching. However, what I just described was procrastination. Nothing about the scanning and the reviewing and the Facebook and in the work emails and the Instagram lives. Nothing about that was productive or was helpful for you to get to the next step. You just wasted hours and I'm being a little bit tough and yet I'm not trying to come at you. I'm just trying to get you to see. I'm also talking to old me too. That is procrastination and you're procrastinating because of perfectionism, right? If we go back up to what I said, like you had all these reasons, right? I said you care about it. You want to be this person. But then when that little voice kicks in and says, I don't know, it starts questioning and starts to doubt you are quote putting off or delaying, right, which is procrastination, writing that is supposed to have your immediate attention cause it's your only goal right now. Right? Or your main goal because you refuse to accept any standard short of perfection. You want a good quote unquote perfect, and we being real, dissertation like really think about it, right? You're putting off writing and cause what you probably are not paying attention is that that voice never, the little small voice that was questioning never really went off. Instead in the back, it kept running the script. Are you sure you sure you can do it? 

You sure it's going to be good? You sure you're going to be the academic that everybody knows? That voice is leading you down a road of like nothingness because really what that voice is saying and what you're repeating to yourself is that if you cannot sit down and write it perfectly the first time, then you might as well say F it and do other things like reading old documents and reading articles, like things that you know that you can do because you did it before, right? You've done it before already. You've wrote hundreds of papers probably in your academic career. You know how to read an article and make notes on it. You know how to scroll Facebook, you know how to watch your face, I mean Instagram live, right? If we're going on with that same example and it's easy to justify things like reading old documents and articles and rereading stuff, it's easy to justify it as being well it was related to my dissertation. I'm doing something. It wasn't a complete waste.

However, in this scenario it is just you indulging. Yes, I'm using the word indulging and procrastination and perfectionism. I was recently listening to, that was my alarm to start my night routine. Um, I was recently listening to um, Jasmine Star podcast, um, who she's a business owner if you don't know her, if you're interested in anything, having your own business, yes, listen to her. But that's not important right now in this episode is important is that she said procrastination is the highest form of selfishness. Repeat procrastination is the highest form of selfishness. I would add that both procrastination and perfectionism are the highest forms of selfishness. Think about it. You most likely chose your goal, your topic area, your dissertation, whatever you, you most likely came to it because you want to make a difference. Like either you want to make you like personally experienced it and you want to change it for the people coming after you. 

Like, at least I knew that's what I wanted cause I was thinking about my own program and experience and even what I was going through in that moment. And I didn't want anyone else to go through it. Right. Or I was just curious cause it was close to me. But either way you want to make a difference. Well how do you not make a difference if you never write the dissertation? Like if you never write the proposal so that you can show up and collect the data, which is the part that you probably real excited about. If you never write the proposal though so that you can defend it. So, you can tell IRB, Hey this is what I'm doing. And they can say yes. So, you can collect the data and talk to the people. If you never write it, how are you going to get to that part? Right. I feel like this needs to be a part 2 because I've been talking for 30 minutes and um, I want to keep going, but I also know, you know we're going to keep going cause it's fine. Um, you might have to take a break. I just say this is a good opportunity to go get some water. Pause this right now, whatever you're doing, go drink you some water so that we can finish off the second half cause it's about to get good. 

Perfectionism Pitfalls

Because what I want to do is really hammer this point home because I want to show you what perfectionism looks like. Right? Cause maybe, maybe I'm bringing you around a little bit, but you're probably still like, but I don't know. Right? Excuse me. So let me tell you some common things that I hear from students and from clients, right? They don't think it's perfectionism. They wouldn't call it perfectionism. But for me it reads perfectionism. Okay. So tell me one of the like, things that my students will say or that they'll do now they're getting to the point where they didn't want to tell them. They don't want to say it in front of me, but I still can catch it cause it's really easy. So one thing they'll say is, you know what? On Friday, I'm going to take all day to write because if I write all day I'll be more productive, right? So we go back to this have-be-do model, right? What are you really saying is if I have more time to write, I would be more productive and if I'm more productive that means I'm writing more. I would do more writing. Right? So here's where this line of logic is going. If you take a larger chunk of time (i.e., the whole day) to write everything, right, then it will give you more time, right? Cause you're taking your whole day. If you have more time, cause you took all Friday, then you're going to write more. The logic is that more time means more writing cause you maybe you said that you're going to lock yourself in a hotel room or you're going to cut your phone off for the whole day or you was going to drive somewhere else where nobody knows you. Whatever. You're equating that if you have more time on this Friday, that means you're going to write more. 

And if you write more, right, what you're not saying, but what you really mean with this is that if you write more than the writing would be of higher quality, or if you have, because you have more time, you can take more time and be more careful with your writing and it will be higher quality and if it's higher quality now, right? If you take the time on the front end, then it's going to save you time on the back end and you're going to have a good draft. That's where that line of logic is going by saying, I'm going to take all day Friday. I'm gonna have more time, I'm going to write more. I'm being more productive. I just want you to notice this is how sneaky perfectionism is. That logic that I just said, it makes sense. Like I could be like, Oh yeah, I follow your logic there. Yeah, that makes sense. But I am sure that you have done this. I'm sure that there have been days where you decided today is a day I'm going to write, or maybe you went to a writing retreat. Maybe you took off the whole weekend, whatever.

Like you like set aside all this time and I'm sure you've done this before and got to the end of the retreat that weekend, that day or whatever and you still are not sure how you spent your time. You're like, I don't have nothing to show for it, but like did I do something? I don't know. Did it like I was there, my laptop was there, I was reading things, I was doing things, I was writing things down on the paper like but what did I do? Right? Cause it's going back to this thing of if I have more time then I'll get my writing done. But more time is just more time at the end of the day. More time just means you have more time. Your writing habits and what you're able to write is completely independent of time. Y'all, this was as much quantitative, you're going to get me. Listen, we're talking about dependent, independent. That's all I got for you. Don't ask me nothing else, but in this case, writing habits, writing is independent of time just because you have more time, that has nothing to do with your writing.

Instead, what happens is you got more time to procrastinate and I already told you procrastination is just perfectionism. Like intellectually we know that perfection is unattainable. That's why you don't probably don't want to call what I'm saying, perfectionism. You want to call it procrastination, but really if you were not concerned about it being perfect, you would just write it. You would just open up the document and just write. If I didn't have so much stuff, because also what was happening, which I didn't say this part in the beginning in terms of the story and maybe I need to do a podcast of my whole life story or whatever. Was that also what was running in the back of my mind? My tiny quiet voice was, you don't belong here. They're right about you. You should just quit. You're not gonna be able to write this dissertation. All these things, and I kept wanting it to be good so that people would accept me and I would get passed. I could get to the part of collecting data. I knew I could do that. I was on research teams, I knew I was, I could do the data collection part. I just didn't know if my writing would be up to par.

Giving Up Perfectionism

But the truth is, and what I know now is that if I would have just sat down and just wrote, so when I sat down at that kitchen table with Lamesha and I just wrote and I and I like gave up, it had to be perfect, right? Cause I didn't capitalize I, there was no punctuation, there was no structure. Like listen to me when I say there were curse words, there were like, things didn't even make sense, song lyrics y'all like nothing that I should have sent to my chair. But when I gave up it needing to be perfect or looking a certain way, I was able to go faster and do more. But it is so scary for many of us to sit down and open up a document and do that. It is like what? Like what I tell my clients to do that they look at me like I have two heads or something. Like they can't believe that that's what I'm telling them to do and when they do it every single time. I just had a client who, excuse me, I just had a client whom wrote a whole draft of a literature review, like a full out 25 page literature review, 30 days if that, because I said just sit down, you know what to write. Everybody knows what to write. Sit down and write it. But the reason why we can't just do that, that voice is because we are trying to, the voice says we have to be perfect. That voice is saying we got to fix it now because we won't have time later.

And honestly, when you switch this model, instead of saying that I have to have the things in order to to do the things, to be things, it's like when you show up as a person who is more committed, like you are a productive person. When you be a productive person, you behave as a productive person, then you know like I don't have time to mess around. I'm a sit down. I'm a write this cause I know that the goal is just to get the words out of my head onto paper and then you write more cause then cause you know because you are the productive person, you believe yourself to be the productive person and you just go ahead and write it. You now have more time to go back and write or rewrite or edit to reread to like now you have more time to scroll the internet and the Facebook and check the work emails. And guess what? You don't have, you don't have guilt when you go do that. Why? Because you know you already wrote the thing that you needed to write. Here's the thing. The truth is you cannot skip steps in the learning process and part of the learning process is writing and making mistakes and people giving you feedback and having to do several rounds of editing.

Choose Progress Over Perfection

People get themselves in trouble because they don't leave enough time for editing because they were so stuck on getting started. How you start your dissertation is that you show up and you be the person who's going to start the dissertation. What does that mean, Marvette? You know what it means and we're going to talk more about this cause this is a whole series that we're going to do over the next few episodes or so cause I really want to get down like to the bottom of what does it mean to be the person. My simple answer to how do you start your dissertation is to choose progress over perfection, to choose the, "I'm just trying to get to the next step." It doesn't have to be perfect to choose not indulging in perfectionism or procrastination but saying that I'm just going to move next cause progress, the definition of progress means of movement towards a goal or to a further or higher stage growth or development, continuous improvement. 

I'm asking you to choose to move forward in your dissertation process while continuously improving as a writer, as a researcher, as an overall scholar. Clarity comes from doing. You can only really learn by when you take the first step. You can read all the books, you can watch all the people on Facebook like defending and moving through their program and you being frustrated as to why you're not making the same progress. You can keep opening up that laptop staring at that empty page staring at the blinking cursor. You can keep doing that or you can make the decision, right then and there to have your own back to save the day and say, you know what? What happens if I just write? What happens if I just choose progress? I'm just going to do that. So, a simple answer again of how to start. So, to recap, the problem is perfectionism. The simple answer is to choose progress over perfection. 

Three Step Plan

However you're probably like imma need a little bit more. I got you, I got you. So three steps. What we're going to cover over the next couple of months is that first you need to develop a scholar mindset. So, we got a little bit into the mindset piece here. If you're new to me, you never been a student of mine, we spend 80 to 90% of our time talking about mindset because that is how important it is. I could tell you exactly what to do in a few minutes of what you like the actions to take to finish, to start and finish your dissertation, but it will be no good if you don't have the mindset to go with it. So step one is to develop a scholar mindset. Step two to start your dissertation is to establish a scholar routine. And I'm going to explain to you what I mean by a scholar routine. It's not what you think I'm sure. And then step three, which I don't know, it's a fight for number one. Step three is to engage in a scholar community. You have a good, you have like a very strong scholar mindset, very strong scholar routine, and a very strong scholar community. Not only will you finish this dissertation, you will set the world on fire. Okay? 

Final Thoughts

But I'm curious, you've listened to this episode, you made it to this point. Thank you so much. How is perfectionism and procrastination showing up in your writing process right now? Let me know. Uh, come on over to Instagram and let me know how that's showing up for you. And then if you are ready to go deeper, if you like, yes, I need more of this, please go over to startyourdissertation.com. Join the wait list for the course. It is my signature course so that it's going to take you from being confused and overwhelmed to being very consistent. Focus in your dissertation process. It takes a few hours, but by the time you are finished with it, you will know exactly what you need to do to set yourself up for success and your dissertation. You'll have the structure, you have the support, you need to finish the dissertation. So go ahead over there and sign up and you'll be notified, um, when the doors are open for the first time. But that's gonna do it for me. 

Like I said, come on over to Instagram. Let me know your thoughts about today's episode. I'll see you back next week for another episode. It's going to be an interview. So I'm going to do, I'm doing a new format starting now for 2020, and it's that, um, the, like we had this episode, alone time together, and then next week is going to be an interview. And so we're going to alternate every other week with that. I'm so excited. There's so many amazing interviews coming up. I recorded many of them already and I just can't wait to share them with you. But that is it for now. I know that was a lot of information. Let me know on Instagram. I'll talk to you next week. Bye for now.