As you'd know if you've come anywhere near me in the past month, I recently finished my final edits, received final approval and uploaded my dissertation to the Graduate School. This chapter of my life has ended. I'm going to share something that worked for me. It's just a trick but, as I said, it did work. Maybe it could help you too.
Toward the end, when I just needed to edit and write, I found it hard. I had become too focused on the big picture, on everything that had to be done. Getting myself to sit down and do it was a struggle. Finally I made these signs the read, as you see here "60 Minutes isn't very long," and taped them up on the wall above my desk and everywhere else I was working (I move around a lot).
Then I set the timer on my iPhone for 60 minutes and told myself that just for that amount of time I would do nothing but write and edit. No checking email, no answering the phone, not even any reading of research. Just writing. After 60 minutes I could stop, do all those things, get a cup of tea or whatever and then decide if I had 60 more minutes in me.
This worked for me, one hour at a time. It isn't very long.
