In this presentation, Steve Tippins, Ph.D., offers graduate students practical strategies for managing time and overcoming procrastination while writing a dissertation. He explains how avoidance often stems from not having a clear starting point and suggests breaking the dissertation into very small, concrete tasks—sometimes as simple as "make a list"—to generate early wins and momentum. He emphasizes the psychological benefit of checking off items and the power of accountability partners, noting that disappointing others can be a stronger motivator than self‑disappointment. Consistency is highlighted as crucial; irregular writing schedules lead to lost progress and overwhelm, whereas daily or regular writing sessions, even if brief, build compounding gains over time. Tippins advises structuring the dissertation into modular pieces (chapters, sections, templates) and treating each as a micro‑project, allowing flexibility to switch tracks when blocked. He draws an analogy to compound interest, showing how small, regular time investments grow exponentially. Finally, he recommends minimizing digital distractions by scheduling specific times for email and social media, turning off notifications, and focusing on single‑task work. The talk concludes with encouragement to apply these habits for a productive dissertation journey.
Chapters
Task management. And as always, if you have questions, please, oops, I just turned something off I shouldn't have turned off. If you have questions, sorry, please jump in and I'll answer any question I can at any time. So, look, time management many times comes down to procrastination. You know, there can be lots of reasons why we procrastinate. It's really common to think I'll get everything else cleared up, everything else taken care of, and then I'll be able to work on this. Typically that doesn't work too well. It does get us a clean house or the dishes taken care of, or the dog walked, or the bills paid, or things that have to be done. But, you know, procrastination is a big thing. It also kind of goes along with avoidance. One of the things that I have found that has been helpful for me and many others, and this is, you know, based on the concept of having a success generates more successes. So many times we procrastinate and avoid because we just haven't started and we can't start and we don't know what we're going to do and it's going to be hard. We think. Well, I like to. And I like to see people make lists of things you want to accomplish. And I'm not saying write dissertation the list, I'm saying break it down into really small pieces. And I've said this many times. There's a children's book from years ago, I think it was Frog and Toad. And in one of their books, Frog or Toad or whoever it was sat down to get the day going and made a list. And the first thing on the list was make list. And it sounds weird, it sounds funny, it sounds like cheating. But really, psychologically, you get to check that off, cross it through, check it off, highlight it, however you want to do, then becomes a step that you've taken and you can move to the next one. I've many times made lists that have included three or four things that I've already done that day or on that project. So I can start making check off marks, highlight marks, whatever it is I use to move forward or that you use to show that you've accomplished something. Do that, because psychologically it goes and shows momentum. And you want to have momentum because that can overcome any avoidance or procrastination. It's also having someone else to report to that you're going to talk about. Look, if I tell myself I'm going to work out and I don't, I can. I'm, you know, disappointing myself. But if I tell a partner, a friend, whatever, I'm going to work out, and I don't, I now have to go tell them I didn't work out. And that might be harder to do to tell them than it is to just disappoint myself. I don't like to disappoint others, other people. One of the things that can also slow us down is inconsistency, especially inconsistent with writing and, you know, doing research. We'll just lump that all under work. I was talking to someone several years ago and his plan was, I'm going to write and do my research. I'm busy all week. I'm going to spend 12 hours every Sunday doing it. And I asked him, how's it going? And he said, pretty good. And then he eventually admitted, but if I miss a week for a family situation or something comes up, it's now two weeks since I've been at it. And it means I got to spend a good amount of time figuring out where I was before I can actually start making progress. And if he missed two weeks, well, then it starts to take over and get really hard. And that's when people stop doing their work, is when it just becomes overwhelming because they've missed so much. But if you can set up consistent times, one of the reasons why we have a writing time every week for people, then you're going to be a lot more, you know, consistent. You're also going to make progress faster and it's not going to build up. It becomes daunting when all of a sudden you've put things off, you haven't been consistent with working on it, and all of a sudden, oh, I've got to get 32 pages in by the end of the week. Now this might have been doable as an undergraduate to say, I need this paper. It's got to be three pages and I'll pull it on later, maybe even as a master's student. But it's rarely possible as a doctoral student because you're not just reporting in a doctoral program or in a dissertation. You are creating knowledge. And you can't create something out of nothing, knowledge wise, with academic support overnight. So you have to stay at that. You have to be consistent in order to make progress. Some people ask, look, I'm going to work on this. How many hours a week is enough? And you know, the easy answer is, well, enough to make progress. Which doesn't really answer the question. Enough is when you are making progress. But it might be different at different times. Okay, but if you can consistently show up, there's a book out, how to write a dissertation in 15 minutes a day, well, that's an hour and 45 minutes a week. And that's probably not going to do it. But if you take the a day part of it, meaning you show up every day and you set aside time every day, and some days it's going to be 15 or 20 minutes that you're going to work, but you've done it. But other days it's going to be longer and you're going to get in a flow and move forward with it. So, you know, even on the hard days, you show up and do it. If you're trying to run a marathon, even on the hard days, you show up and do your workout. If you're trying to learn to play a musical instrument, if to you're trying, even on the hard days, you show up and you do it. There's a song I heard years ago and the title was, you can do this hard thing, and you can, but the way to do the hard thing is to show up. Then you, you know Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours. If you know, then you become an expert or become fully competent at something and you know you have to put in those 10,000 hours and this is part of it. Show up over and over and over again. It's too many hours if it's burning you out. Okay, you have to figure out a way that you're going to be alive at the end of the process too. And we work with people on things like that. Some people say, okay, I got a big goal. How do I break it into small pieces? I want to write chapter two. Well, chapter two isn't one continuous document of writing. It's. I'm going to write about a certain area to provide support, and then I'm going to write another certain area to provide support. Or another way to break things out is if you have a template and it talks about or presents your dissertation. Oh, here's chapter one. And we need. You need an intro and you need background, and you need a problem saving your purpose, etc. But those headings become smaller pieces for you to work on. So use whatever is available to you in order to do those small pieces that build up. And you know, in banking or in investing, compound interest. If you were to invest $1,000 a month for 10 years earning 10% interest, you're going to have an amount of money that's bigger than what you put in. But if you did it for 20 years, it's going to be an awful lot bigger. It's not going to be double, it's going to be triple or quadruple as big because of the compounding, earning interest on interest. Think of that as the time you put in. If I'm putting in a little time, it will pay off. It will compound as I move forward in doing my work. But it all starts with investing in your project, investing in yourself, investing in your time, investing early. And that builds so that later you're getting bigger and bigger and bigger returns and ultimately finishing your document and finishing on your journey. Are there questions from anybody? Hello? Sure. Yeah. So what do you do? Yeah. So, you know, there are physical limitations at times. Okay. And there are sometimes you cannot do it, which is why. And I'm going to get back to it. But if you're consistently showing up and then you have to miss every once in a while, the consistency will overwhelm that missing. That said, I always like to, at the beginning, break a project down into multiple pieces and multiple different types of pieces. So if I'm unable to do a certain type of thing today, maybe I can work on something else. Maybe I can think about the next steps in the process that have been bothering me. What am I going to do next? Maybe I can start doing that planning now. So it's having multiple tracks that you can move forward on, and moving from one to another is good. When you run into a problem with one, you just move to another, knowing you can come back. And look, every once in a while there's going to be something hard and you're just going to have to do it to move forward. But, you know, let's minimize those by making progress on as many fronts as possible. Right. Try to move that forward because all the trains have to get to the end. Let's just move. Which one I can move today? Well, great. Other questions coming out today? Sure. Look, there are many different things that can pull on us today in the world. And you know, when we have our computers or our phones set for automatic notifications with bells or buzzes or things like that, it's been shown that we get endorphin, hits a little teeny high. Oh, somebody loves me. And then it can distract us. And you know, I'm a very big proponent of turn things off and, or having scheduled time. Look, there aren't a lot of academic emergencies. Yes. If somebody in our family has broken a bone or something like that, you may need to jump on something. But most other things can wait. Even though, you know, texts are instantaneous. It doesn't mean we have to respond instantaneously. So maybe you set aside hey, I'm going to check my email, texts, whatever it is, two times a day or maybe three times a day, you know, 8 o', clock, 1:30 and 6 o' clock and then move on to other things. Just know that it's there. I'll go do it and then I'll handle it and I'll be back. But when we're constantly oh, what do they oh, somebody likes me. Oh, something's over here. It's. You know, we all many people think we can multitask, but pretty much we're not programmed to multitask. Yeah. Thank you. Well, I'm going to say good luck to everybody and do not go check your social media after this. Go right back to work. And. Under the dissertation help calendar there may not be but it's if you're in the dissertation accelerator calendar, that's where a link would be. Yeah. Everybody have a beautiful and productive day and I'll see you later. Bye. Bye.
