Be reasonable in your planning.

If you’ve been reading for a while now, the idea of being reasonable in your planning is probably something you’ve heard (read) me say before. As I mentioned, it’s easy (and seductive) to look ahead to the long, unscheduled days of summer and plan in 15 hours per day of dissertation progress. It’s tempting to do, but not that useful, especially when your 15 hours per day is dwindles to 14.5 hours spent avoiding and procrastinating and just 30 minutes of work is actually accomplished. A good approach, instead, would be to try and work at least as much during these next few weeks as you were during the regular school year. If you were working about 3 hours per week, commit to that, at first. (You can always go up from there.) If you weren’t really working at all, then refer to other posts I’ve made about getting started- but, in a nutshell, you want to start with small, tiny blocks of time- 10-15 minutes, initially. The goal here is to warm you up to work in earnest. Also, this lighter schedule is great because it allows you some time to enjoy the summer, too. You can always work more when you feel like it, but if you’re just starting out, plan to work at least as much as you were working during the school year.

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