GRIT: A psychologist has come up with a painfully simple 12 question instrument to determine whether someone has the stick-to-it-ive-ness to finish something great.  She calls it GRIT.  See Getting Things Done in Academia (newly reawoken) to understand a bit more and follow this link to the instrument itself.  I got a 4 out of 5, meaning I have quite a lot of Grit.  Hardly a surprise.

SPITE:  In contrast, Post-Academic in NYC talks about the power of SPITE to drive you through the completion of your dissertation.  I could empathize here, since there was an extent to which I finished to prove a particular full professor wrong.  I’m pretty sure he told people I would never finish, and that pisses me off.

I’m not quite as bitter as Post-Academic, and I don’t know that spite alone could have gotten me through if I hadn’t had grit as well.  Grit was the part of me that said “You said you were going to do this, so DO IT.”  Spite was just the gleeful voice in the back of my head that wanted to rub his nose in it.

P.S.  The universe gave me a graduation present this summer.  I was asked to review an article on a topic I know something about.  I agreed.  When it showed up, it was clearly the latest edition of an ongoing series of reports by aforementioned full professor.  I shredded it.  Not maliciously, but because he had failed to support any of his assertions with research or facts, and I called him on every single one.  It was cathartic.

How project management applies to research

Think of yourself as the customer, the project leader as your chair, and the others as your committee and you'll be pretty close...

Your research is a project, or rather a series of projects within a larger program called your research agenda.  The first big project is your dissertation, but nearly every paper, conference presentation and book/chapter after that qualifies.  It therefore pays to learn early some of the basic principles of managing such a project.

Note: I do NOT advise taking formal project management training.  That training is intended for a much more complex environment than most researchers face.  If you end up running a lab somewhere you’ll need to learn those skills (or more likely hire a project manager to do the work for you), but early in your career you will be mostly concerned with yourself and maybe a couple of others.  Full-scale project management is too administration-heavy for that environment.  However there are some principles you can and should borrow.  That’s what I’m going to talk about.

The Triple Constraint

If there is any single project management concept that you should learn, it’s the triple constraint.  It goes like this.

You have three general types of resources at your disposal:

• Time
• Scope
• Money / Costs

You can control the SCOPE of your project.  You do this when you define the research question you are planning to answer.  For this reason, a person introduced me to the concept early on of the LPU: The Least Publishable Unit.  You should choose projects that contain sufficient new ideas to get published, but NOT put all your great ideas into one paper.  When people ask me how I got through my dissertation so quickly I point to this idea.  There were a LOT more questions I could have asked, but I tightly controlled the scope of the project in order to get it done.

Scope ties to TIME.  The bigger the scope, the more time it is likely to take.  And TIME ties to COST, both in terms of additional time at a lower salary to the cost of lost opportunities while you work on the old stuff.

Here’s the thing about the triple constraint.  You can flex one leg of the triangle, but when you do, you need to change the other two accordingly.  The three are still joined at the corners, and something has to give.

A couple of examples:

• My chair announced he was taking a year-long sabbatical in Spain (lucky dog) and that, therefore, I needed to finish before he left.  TIME was constrained.  Therefore I strictly monitored the SCOPE of my project and invested more MONEY by paying people to do certain things for me (like editing and delivering meals) in order for me to get the project done in that time frame.  I kept a tight rein on SCOPE and allowed it to COST more in order to meet the TIME constraint.
• A colleague got to their proposal review and had their committee heap a bunch of additional stuff on to the scope of the project.  (In their defense, she will be writing on this data for a decade and got some great stuff.)  She didn’t have a lot of money to spend, so in her case she cut out everything else in her life to finish the project.  She put in more TIME to make up for the increased SCOPE.

One of the dangers of the triple constraint in academic circles is the COST issue. We tend not to see it clearly.  All too many PhD students take a very long time to finish their dissertations due to massive scopes without any awareness of what that time is costing them.  The tuition cost is easily quantified, but few look at the cost of continuing on as a graduate assistant rather than getting a full-time job. Early career faculty see six years to tenure review as a very long time when, in fact, with academic publishing on a stone-age schedule, it is actually quite short. And this is before we get to what economists call the Opportunity Cost.  What COULD you have been doing/making (now and for the rest of your career) if you were done now?

Scope Creep

One of the biggest pitfalls for academics is Scope Creep.  We ALWAYS have more questions, more ideas, more literature to read, etc.  I got stalled for about a month on my literature review; there were so many interesting things to read, most of which were only peripherally related to  my hypothesis.  Then I almost did it again with methodology books/articles.  It’s in our nature to be curious, but that makes us especially at risk.

You have two protections against scope creep.  First, tightly define your research question for the project at hand and stick to it.  If what you are reading/asking doesn’t apply to that question, set it aside for now.  Second, keep a notebook of ideas to explore and things you want to read.  This is where you place those things not related to your current project but that could lead you in potentially interesting directions in the future.  Plan time between major project to review that material.  Your Nobel Prize may start out in that notebook, so it’s worth going back to regularly.  For more on this topic go back and read my post on Cal Newport’s research framework.

Planning

The first stage of planning is determining which of those constraints represent hard limits.  Think broadly here.  Whether you are heading toward graduation or tenure review, there is always a deadline.  What defines that deadline in terms of graduation might be money (your assistant-ship runs out at the end of year four) or an externally imposed deadline (tenure at year six or your contract doesn’t get renewed).  Regardless, figure out what it is and then back into what your scope needs to be in order to meet your objective.

Once you have that objective defined, you can now lay out how much time and cost will be involved in achieving it, as well as the minimum scope of the projects.  PhDs very rarely do only the minimum, but if you know what that minimum you can be sure to meet it while going above and beyond in your core areas of interest.

I would not advise making up a gantt chart, detailed work breakdown structure or any comparable formal project management tool.  Since much of the work of an academic is solitary or in small groups, using the agile project management ideal of focusing on communication is usually your best bet.  However that is a big huge topic for another day.

If you have questions about managing your research projects and agenda, feel free to leave a comment or ask/follow me on twitter: @protoscholar.

Conference proposals (and resulting presentations) serve a number of purposes.

• They allow a researcher to get their work out to an audience, in some ways more quickly than through journals
• They offer a great networking opportunity at which you can meet others interested in the same topic
• They get a new researcher exposure and name recognition with the established leaders in the field
• You can get some feedback on an early draft of a paper and refine it before submitting to a journal

My current thinking is that my summer would be better spent writing up my work for a journal, not crafting a proposal.  However one thing on my to-do list is to research missing data methodologies and apply them to my data in order to allow me to draw some conclusions on the really different questions I was trying to answer.  (The conclusion in my dissertation was that I can’t answer them because once the missing data is removed the sample is no longer representative.)A friend suggested that I could get a lot of mileage out of submitting the proposal with a discussion of the intended change for missing data techniques written up.  It would both be interesting and different, as well as ensuring that I actually did the work.  I can write a good proposal.  (Heck, the very 1st one I did my 1st year of graduate school was accepted and upgraded from a poster to a presentation.)  But would I be better off just charging forward?

I haven’t decided yet.  I have to admit that conference proposals are good ego boosts, in that so far most of mine have been accepted.  It feels good to get that positive reinforcement back, and far more quickly than a journal would get back to me.  But is it a waste of time when I have a pile of other presentations under my belt?  Can I do both without delaying either?

This was followed up in 2007 with the following even more brilliant paper:

I will find a way to cite these in my dissertation.  I’m not quite sure HOW yet, but I will find a way!

In a search for guidelines this afternoon I stumbled across something one step better.  Serenity Software makes a product called Editor.  Editor is a proofreading and copy-editing software product.  It reads your text/word document and makes suggestions about what to fix and what possible alternatives exist.

The tool is labor-intensive for the author.  You go through your document line by line with the programs output either right next to your text or in a pop-up box within word.  The program flags potential homonyms, usage errors, and wordy prose.  It provides suggestions for how to fix the problem, but doesn’t try to make the repairs.  This is important since many times the suggested fix doesn’t actually fit the sentence.  You make the repairs and decide which to skip.

I ran my first pass at this document through Editor.  Here is a sample of the output it produces:

SPELL2: <2>intend   POSSIBLE HOMONYM ERROR: intent?

SPELL1: <8> copy editing     COMPOUND EXPECTED

CONSIDER: <16> since  COMMONLY MISUSED TERM; unless you mean “after”, use “because”

TIGHTEN:<18> that particular   PROBABLE REDUNDANT EXPRESSION; delete “particular”

POLISH: <18> rather   PROBABLE VAGUE DICTION unless expressing a preference

The program found 36 items to be reviewed in a 20 sentence, 319 word blog post.  (Going through it with my dissertation is going to be time consuming but worth the effort.)

My only complaint is that it checks citations in MLA format AND there is no way to turn that feature off.  Since my dissertation is being done in APA, about half the items it flagged are MLA errors.  I would rather have that check as a separate library with a mechanism for disabling it OR, better yet, a choice of the 3 or 4 big formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc).

UPDATE:  I got an email from the maker of the software with the following instructions for turning of MLA and many other optional checks:

Here’s a tip: from Editor’s Main Menu, go to File > Preferences > Change USAGE Settings and click on D to disable it.  Presto! no more unwanted remarks about your APA citation style.

As you use the program, you’ll find other categories that you’d just as soon not have the program bother you about.  You can turn any of the nearly 50 analysis categories in Editor off, temporarily or permanently (until further notice).

Other useful ways to modify Editor’s behavior are detailed in the .doc file ”Using Editor Efficiently” in the installed Serenity Software folder.  The “exclude” list, easy to create and maintain, can be helpful to scholars using specialized vocabularies.

For $55 (or $75 with the word plug-in) this tool is cheaper than an editor for early drafts and can be reused.  Editor offers a 10 day trial to see how much your writing can be helped, but for me I already know it  is well worth the money and will be purchasing a license.

Books about the Graduate School Process

The graduate school process is a thing onto itself.  From application to oral exams to thesis/dissertation defense, the process is like nothing else in the world.  Here are some books that can help.

Demystifying Dissertation Writing: A Streamlined Process from Choice of Topic to Final Text Unlike Destination Dissertation below, this book provides excellent techniques for some of the very mechanical tasks you will be doing.  What is the most expedient way to take notes on the literature?  How do you organize all that material?  Destination Dissertation also contains these kinds of tips, but frankly I find the ones in Demystifying Dissertation Writing more usable.   Check out my review as well for more ideas of what is in this book.

Playing the Game: The Streetsmart Guide to Graduate School This book is one of the more realistic books I’ve come across with respect to the actual process of graduate school.  It’s also irreverent and funny.  It starts with asking an important question; do you REALLY want to do this and why?  If yes, it then plots the shortest possible path from application to graduation.  It further helps you clarify where you should cut corners and where you shouldn’t.  I’m pretty sure most faculty don’t want us thinking about the process this way, but frankly given the crappy academic job market this type of fore-thought is a leg up on finding a job after graduation.  That alone makes it worth the money.

Destination Dissertation: A Traveler’s Guide to a Done Dissertation While this book is focused strictly on the end process of completing your dissertation (which is far and away the hardest part), it contains a remarkably down to earth approach.  Specifically, it lays out the steps you need to go through and estimates of how long each should take (in working hours).  This may sound like no big deal, but the hardest part of project management is always figuring out what all the steps to the plan are.  These guys have done it, AND given you an idea of the level of effort required.  Whether you can work on it every day all day, only on weekends (like me) or just a couple of nights per week after the kids are in bed, this book provides a structured plan and an idea of how much further you have to go.

Note that I have left out one of the most commonly cited books in this area, Writing Your Dissertation in Fifteen Minutes a Day: A Guide to Starting, Revising, and Finishing Your Doctoral Thesis. This is for two reasons; First, it is somewhat out of date in terms of technology and process.  Second, there is one principle piece of information you get out of it, and I can sum it up for you right here:

Write a little every day, even if what you write sucks or you do nothing more than type “I don’t know what to write” over and over.  Write often, don’t wait for bit chunks of time.  The more you do it, the better you will get.

I’m certainly not telling you NOT to read this book, as it’s considered a classic for a reason.  But If you take that one piece of advice and use the techniques and processes from the other books it will get you just as far.

Books about the Academic Process

Being an academic requires changing your approach and integrating new ways of writing and communicating with other scholars.  These books can help with that process.

The Craft of Research, Third Edition (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Also a classic, this books goal is to help you move into clear, concise research writing.  It will help while in school and for years to come as you work on becoming published and later teaching others how to do the same.  It isn’t short, but it is comprehensive and can be used as a reference book when you get stuck.  Think of it as the old 5 paragraph essay format you learned in middle school all grown up.

“They Say / I Say”: The Moves That Matter in Academic Writing (Second Edition) This book is all about the process of entering the conversation.  Scholars use specific phrases that vary only slightly between fields, but in essence every paper amounts to a recitation of what other scholars have said, either an acknowledgment of why they are right and important to your argument or a polite disagreement, and then presenting your own argument.  This book gives you a leg up on integrating these types of arguments into your writing smoothly and respectfully.  Additionally this is a short, easy read.  Given some of the stuff you will read in graduate school that will be a welcome change.

The Chicago Guide to Writing about Numbers (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) Even if you plan on writing a qualitative dissertation, you will still be talking about other people’s numbers and this book will help you learn to do so clearly and concisely.  This is not as easy as it sounds, as anyone who has seen a page full of numbers or a junk chart knows.  This book isn’t about artistic infographics; it’s about clarity in research papers, which are going to be your entire world for a while.

Books about the Writing Process

We all like to think we are decent writers, but we all need some help.  Here are some of the best:

The Elements of Style (4th Edition) Strunk and White’s classic book is as relevant today as ever.  What really amazed me is that it is short, concise, and easy to find things in.  Read it through if you can (or at least skim it) then keep it close at hand as you write.

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation Who thought punctuation could be funny?  This book never ceases to make me laugh while FINALLY explaining where I should and shouldn’t use a comma.  (I still use too many in casual writing.)  This book is useful as much because it is an easy and pleasant read as the fact that you will learn something from it.

Economical Writing, Second Edition While written for economists, this book is a quick, easy read that makes a strong case for getting rid of the weasel words, writing in active tenses and being concise.  People outside economics may not recognize the names she throws around or understand what the quotes she uses means, but you will quickly see how you can improve your writing while making it clearer to your reader.  Probably one of the most valuable skills out there.

Your Field’s Style Manual

Every field has a chosen style manual.  Own it.  Social sciences generally use APA, Humanities generally use MLA, History generally uses Chicago, etc.  Whatever it is have a copy close at hand.  (Since you only need one, this counts as just one book.)

Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Sixth Edition
MLA Style Manual and Guide to Scholarly Publishing, 3rd Edition
The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition

If you are short on time I would suggest going for the first book in each section.  Those are the books I turn to again and again.  They aren’t necessarily the shortest or the most amusing.  They are, however, the must reads on this list (along with your style manual) and books that will serve you well throughout your career.

1. Set deadlines for yourself - even artificial ones will keep you moving forward.  These deadlines should be realistic but not lazy.  For example, I gave myself a set deadline for sending copies to my chair and then worked to hit that and send him SOMETHING.  It’s way too easy to see time as infinite and never actually finish what you’ve started if you don’t give yourself interim milestones.
2. Outline – organize your thoughts as outlines or bullet points.  Then write within those sections when you are ready.  This helps you to never face a blank page and always have an idea of where you are going.  You can move things around later if you need to, but that starting point is invaluable.
3. Keep it focused – One of the hardest things for me to get my hands around was staying tightly focused.  It’s really easy to wander off into side topics and marginally relevant information.  Remember that your goal is to finish what you are doing, and that means staying focused on that end result.  Particularly in the literature review, keep asking yourself “how does this relate to my research questions”.  If the answer is that it doesn’t directly relate, it’s time to redirect yourself.
4. Keep it succinct – While most are, dissertations/thesis don’t HAVE to be painfully long.  Don’t mistake length for clarity.  Clarity comes from short, focused phrases, using the active voice and avoiding excess descriptive or weasel-words.  I recommend Economical Writing.  While targeted for economists, it can help any academic writer avoid the traps that lead to lengthy, confusing documents.  More important, it’s short thereby modeling the behavior.
5. Find out what the required format is and use it from day one - Every university has a format they want dissertations to be submitted in.  Look that up BEFORE you start writing, create yourself a template in your chosen word processing software, and then use the template.  The result will be a LOT less work later.
6. Make use of appendices – The goal of the main text is readability.  Huge tables of numbers hurt that goal.  Use an appendix.  My dissertation already has two; the first will contain the list of fields I am using from the data set, including their definitions and possible values.  It may also include comprehensive descriptive statistics for those fields.   The second will include the detailed statistical tables of my results.  In line with the text will be just the key statistical elements needed to make my argument.   This will make the final document both easier to read AND easier to convert to a series of journal articles when I’m done.
7. Create a writing schedule that works with YOUR life – One of the most common pieces of advice you hear is “write every day”.  That is the entire point behind the Academic Writing Club is to do just that, and its great advice.  But it may or may NOT work for you.  If not, find a schedule that DOES work and stick to it, whatever that schedule is.  If you can only write for 8 hours a day saturday and sunday and not think about it during the week, then do that.  Just make sure you are consistent and include any limitations in your deadlines (point 1).
8. Read a few other dissertations from your university – Focus on recent ones on related topics and ones that your advisor has been chair on.  This will help you get a strong feel for the style and quality you are shooting for.  This is important, because most of what we read (peer-reviewed journal articles) seem far beyond what we are capable of right now.  But no ones dissertation is at that level.  Those are the best work of experienced academics; the dissertation has been rightly called “the worst piece of research you will ever do”.  No one expects it to be at the level of papers in the top journals.  You will find writing much easier if you have a better idea of what the real target is than if you keep comparing yourself to the pros.  Your dissertation’s job is to show basic competence and promise to eventually reach the pro level, not that you are there now.
9. Write from the very beginning – One mistake I made was thinking I needed to read first, then write.  There is some reading that needs to be done first to ensure that you have the background, but at some point you need to start organizing and writing as well.  Start with writing your outline; model your document on the studies you are reading and use their organization as a way to begin yours.  You will almost certainly end up moving things around, but you would be amazed at how helpful getting something started is for moving the project forward and helping you  understand where the gaps in your knowledge are.
10. When in doubt, just start writing anything – Write about how you don’t know what to write, then write about all the thoughts swirling around in your head.  Write about your fears and worries.  Get them out.  You may find that the process helps you organize your thoughts, figure out the gaps and help you move forward.

One more thing related to but not specifically about writing:  Work WITH your advisor – It is reasonable to ask your advisor to review your work and give you feedback/direction.  It is not reasonable to either pester them every day or to behave as though you are begging for their time/attention.  Mentoring you is part of their job; holding your hand/doing the work for you or ignoring you is not.  Find a balance.  For example, when I send off a chapter/chapters to my advisor I ask for an estimate from him of when he can respond.  I don’t expect it on my time frame, but I do want to know his so I can plan my work accordingly.  The first time he got back to me on my preferred time frame and I went back to work. The second time he was unable to do that.  KNOWING when I would hear from him let me decide how to allocate my time better and make forward progress.  Communicate what you would like (for him to review by X date) and what you need (to know when the review will be done regardless of whether it is X date or later) and be respectful of his time.  By acting like a professional, you will encourage him to treat you that way as well.

Flow is the mental state of operation in which a person in an activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Flow is the point when you realize you’ve been working on something for hours and have more energy than when you started.  It’s when you lose track of time so completely that your partner with a cold sleeps in until 3pm and you don’t notice.  It’s when you have great ideas, but not so many that you can’t process them, use them and work them.

I was lucky enough to hit that yesterday; I spent 9 hours working on my dissertation proposal and felt great.  I had tons of energy when I was done and only stopped because there was a TV show on that I wanted to see.  Then I woke up this morning (a holiday in the U.S.) at 7am ready to get back to work.

If I could bottle this feeling it would make me incredibly wealthy and put red bull out of business.  Of course, that isn’t possible.  But there are some tricks to getting this feeling more often and hanging on to it once you do get it:

1. Make sure your goals for the session are clear.  Ambiguity saps focus, which in turn prevents you from achieving flow.  For me, I have a self-imposed deadline to send a draft to my chair by the end of today.   I have a short list of things that need to be included in that and a small pile of articles that I need to review and write about for the draft.  By having specific, constrained goals I take mental energy off of “what do I need to do next” and can focus it on my work.
2. Choose tasks that are challenging, but possible.  You need to feel you can accomplish what you are setting out to do but, at the same time, cannot feel that the tasks are too simple.  There must be a balance between challenge and self-efficacy (your view of your ability to meet those challenges).
3. There should be an immediate feedback mechanism.  You need a way to know if you are going off track quickly, so your task should have some way for you to judge built in.  Most of what I am working on is the lit review, and I have found that reading the abstract of an article, then flipping through my lit review to where a reference to this article would go is a great way of getting quick feedback.  If I can’t figure out where an article fits in the chapter, it probably doesn’t and I should set it aside.  I also have taken to reading my work out loud to my dogs.  They are happy for the attention and I can quickly hear any awkward phrasing.
4. Make sure you have some time.  Flow doesn’t just start when your fingers hit the keyboard; you are going to need to work into it.  So make sure you give yourself some time to get into the process.  So while taking regular breaks is a good thing, give yourself some time to get into the work before the first one.
5. Don’t force it.  Anxiety is the enemy of flow, so getting anxious about not reaching a state of flow is about the worst possible thing you can do.  Relax and focus on the work.  Flow will come.

In addition to individual and group coaching, Gina started the Academic Writing Club.  The idea behind the club is that it is more important to write CONSISTENTLY and REGULARLY than in big chunks.  The goals of the club are to help you develop that habit.  Each day you have the opportunity to record what you did as far as writing and as far as research/reading.  The goal is to record at least a little bit every day in order to see steady progress.

You are set up in a group of around a dozen people who have a similar goal; for example my group is all grad students working on their dissertations (although there are also groups for people working toward tenure).  Each group session lasts for 4 weeks, during which you work with the same people.  My group has writing meetings during which we all meet in the chat room and agree to work for a period then meet up there for a break.  We have a superorganizer who has this set up for 6 days a week at times that work for the entire group.  (This last part is important, since we have people spread from Arizona to Europe to Australia.)

The group also has a message board and, most importantly, the progress page.  That is the page where you log what you worked on each day.  It provides accountability, but since everyone in the group can see it the tendency is also to provide support and encouragement.

You can log just comments, what you did or skip a day.  You can comment on other people’s accomplishments for the day and report on both your own and the entire groups achievements.

In addition to the group, you have access to all of the resources they have assembled over the years and to a coaching call to kickstart each 4 week block.

There is a monthly cost; $70 if you do one 4 week session at a time, $230 if you do 4 in a row paid all at once, and $610 if you do 12 in a row.  You also commit to an autorenew schedule, although their support is very responsive so if you decide it isn’t working for you canceling should be straightforward.  However this is far less than an actual one-on-one or even group coach would cost, and to me more useful.  Daily accountability is an important part of making consistent progress, and this provides it with a lot of positive reinforcement.

In all, I believe it is well worth the cost.  I know support is responsive because I changed from the 1 session membership to the 4 session membership once I determined it would be useful and they made the process painless.  A new session starts around the last week of each month, with the next one starting August 23rd, so I encourage you to consider joining!

Gina from Academic Writing Club has generously offered a $10 discount for readers of this blog who are interested in trying the club.  Just put the code PROTOSCHOLAR in the “coupon” field  of the cart and the discount should show up immediately.