I started out well writing 200 words and rewarding myself. However, gradually, I drifted back into old habits and making little progress. You might say, I started doing what I had been doing and I got the same results that I had been getting. What went wrong?
1) My environment changed - slowly. Since January, may work load at work has gradually increased, and more recently, dramatically increased. I did not read the changes in my environment and make appropriate adjustments in my commitments to the dissertation process. Consequently, in order to deal with the increasing pressure at work - I allowed myself to drift back in to my old unproductive habits.
2) I did not regularly review my commitments i.e. writing 200 words and rewarding myself and writing in the mornings before work.
What do I plan to do about it?
1) recommit myself to my commitments and attempt to stay attentive to how to adopt them to my environment. I intend to start writing 200 words with a reward and writing again in the morning. However, I may need to adjust my morning writing to burst of a few days or 1 week. It is difficult, for me, to sustain weeks of getting up at 3:00 am to write.
2) Make a small change. I often find Nancy Wichard's blog Successful Writing Tips helpful in jump starting my writing process. In her post Three Quick Fixes to Jolt You into Action on Your Dissertation (see RSS feed in left column), she proposes putting a short cut on your desktop for your dissertation so it is only one click away. Well, I cleaned up my desktop so there are only 8 icons on my desktop (including my dissertation). Then I gave my dissertation a distinctive green arrow icon. The green arrow icon makes the dissertation easy to identify and the image, for me, symbolizes forward action - get going!
Points to Ponder
Has your environment been slowly or rapidly changing around you and causing you to drop your dissertation as you, perhaps unconsciously, attempt to navigate the changes? What do you need to do to adjust your commitment to your dissertation to your changing environment?
