In this instructional video, Dr. Steve Tippins, a doctoral coach with 35 years of academic experience and over 300 dissertation committee memberships, outlines five concrete practices that the fastest‑finishing doctoral students share. He argues that most students waste time because they work in the wrong order, not because of their chair. The five strategies are: (1) Leverage every coursework assignment to build dissertation content early, gathering literature and practicing methodology; (2) Read and internalize the graduate/doctoral handbook to know institutional deadlines, registration dates, and graduation requirements, thereby avoiding costly delays; (3) Map out upcoming program milestones so you can anticipate what’s next and avoid waiting for faculty prompts; (4) Use any downtime to work ahead on dissertation components—literature reviews, methodology drafts, CITI/IRB paperwork, chapter outlines—so you stay continuously productive; and (5) Adopt emotional resilience by not taking committee feedback personally, recognizing that faculty moods and harsh comments are not reflections on you, and simply keep showing up. Throughout, Dr. Tippins emphasizes practical, actionable steps, shares personal anecdotes about navigating difficult advisors, and invites viewers to join a free “Dissertation Help Community” for peer support.
Chapters
Most doctoral students are doing the same work that you are. They're just not doing it in the right order, and it's costing them months, maybe even years. In this video, I'll give you the 5 things that students who finish the fastest all have in common. Things that you can start doing today, no matter where you are in your program. If you don't do these things, You'll end up like most doctoral students, spinning your wheels, waiting around, wondering why everyone else seems to be making progress but you aren't. I'm Dr. Steve Tippins. I've been in academia for 35 years, and I've sat on over 300 dissertation committees and have helped hundreds of students cross that finish line as a doctoral coach. Let's dive in. The first thing you want to do is leverage your coursework, and by that I mean start Building your dissertation from day one, if possible. If you have an idea for your dissertation, start really early. And by that, I mean, if you're in a class and they ask you to write a paper, if you get the opportunity, turn the emphasis of that paper towards the area of your dissertation idea. You'll start practicing writing on it, but also, and possibly even more importantly, you'll start gathering literature and be building up a storehouse of literature for your eventual dissertation. In methodology courses, start trying to understand the methodologies and how they might apply to your idea and how you might want to use it. Practice those methodologies. Get good at them early. For example, if you're in a methodology course and they ask you to, hey, find literature that talks about a regression study or one that talks about a case study, Well, that gives you a really broad area. Why don't you find a regression study in your field? Why don't you find a case study in your field? So you're starting to narrow things down and put the emphasis on your work. It's the students who wait until they're told, now go ahead and work on your dissertation, to find a topic, who waste months of time. The people who start on their ideas very early really hit the ground running. When they're set free to work on their dissertation. Second thing you need to do is read your school's doctoral or graduate student handbook. This is going to tell you what the school will do for you, what the school expects of you, and give you dates. These dates might include you have to register by a certain date. If you want to graduate, your dissertation has to be defended by a certain date each term so that documentation can be turned in by the next date, and so that all graduation paperwork has to be submitted another date. I've seen too many students get to the end of a term and say, well, I don't know what to do. Where do I go? What do I do? Oh, I missed the graduation date by 4 days, and then they can't graduate. Learn this stuff early. Use that information to your advantage. Yes, every school is going to give you or tell you there's a handbook available, but there's no quiz on it. Nobody's going to ask you to write a paper on it, and very few people actually spend the time to read it. But reading it can save you money. Because if you miss one of those deadlines and you have to go into another term, you're paying for another term both in money terms and time terms in order to move forward. If you're working on your dissertation right now and want to make sure that you're not missing steps like these, I've put together a free community called the Free Dissertation Help Community. It's a place where doctoral students help each other, ask questions, And get the kind of guidance that keeps you moving forward. There's a link in the description. Come on and join us. The 3rd thing you want to do to move forward quickly is understand what is coming. Very few doctoral students actually look ahead and understand, oh, when I get through this phase, this is what's next, and after that, that's what's next. Many people wait for their chair or maybe even their program director or something like that, or advisor, to say, Okay, you've finished this. Now go work on this next section. You're dependent on someone else telling you. They could go on vacation. They could forget. They could not remind you to be working ahead. But if you know something is coming when you have downtime, you can be working ahead on it. Knowing what's coming eliminates surprises. Waiting to be told what's coming creates surprises. You want to eliminate surprises so that you can be working ahead and finishing faster. I've never met anybody who has said, you know, I think I want to stay in my doctoral program. And that follows to the next point logically, which is work ahead whenever possible. When you submit something to your committee or your chair for review, it takes time. Even if they're really fast, it could take 2, 3, 4, 5 days or weeks or months. To get response. You have a choice. Do you want to sit there, or if you know what's coming, start working ahead on things, adding more literature, thinking about your methodology, pre-filling out parts of your dissertation ahead of time because you know what's coming. You can complete things like your CITI requirement to show that you're ethical enough to do research. Do that during your downtime. Don't wait to be told. Whenever possible, work ahead. For example, you have completed your proposal, you have got your IRB approval, and you are starting to collect data, and you are waiting for data to come. Well, there are parts of Chapter 4 you can work ahead on. For example, you might be restating your problem and your purpose. You might be setting things up. I am going to have these themes, or there was this analysis and this is significant. You can start setting up the outline, at least, of your document. So that when you get things, you're moving right ahead. The students who finish fastest are not necessarily the smartest. They are the ones who never stop moving. And the 5th thing that's going to help you is to not take things personally. Look, people like committee chairs, committee members can have bad days. And you might walk into their office or into a phone meeting with them, and they might just be having a bad day. And they might Respond to you in a way that may not be helpful, or you might even take it personally. Remember, they're not spending a lot of time thinking about you, so don't take this personally. Just let it roll off of you. You're going to move forward much faster, as opposed to wondering whether they hate you or not. All they want you to do is finish, ultimately. You can spend a lot of time thinking about it, or you can let it go and move forward with your work. I've seen lots of people get frustrated by comments and just say, I can't do it. Well, you can stop there or you can work through them. If you choose to work through them, that's when you can finish. Never stop showing up. Even if they've had a bad day or said things you don't understand, just keep showing up. Consistency and persistency will get you there. I had a professor in graduate school who would— really good at yelling at you. I mean, amazingly good at yelling at people. But then for him, it was gone. The next day you saw him, he was fine. You had to understand him. You could get a lot of information from him. There was also a cost. You could sit there and be berated a little bit. Yeah, I know it's not healthy. But once I learned that, I moved forward much faster. He was going to say things and it didn't affect his opinion in any way. He just wanted to yell and show how smart he was. Then I could move forward. I just kept showing up. His yelling actually got less because I just kept showing up. So, as an aside, I just want to acknowledge, look, this is not okay behavior. Academia allows it to happen, though. You can choose to learn how to work your way through it. You can choose to just leave, or you can choose to fight. Fighting, you're probably going to lose. Just leaving means you didn't get what you're after. Understanding how to live your way through it May not be the optimal way to go in the real world, but it may be the way to get through this. But again, it's not kind behavior. Let's just put it that way. So to summarize, you want to leverage your coursework towards your dissertation. Use every assignment, every reading possible. Sometimes it's not possible, but every time it is possible, change the emphasis in a way that you can get information that helps you move forward with your idea. And ultimately your dissertation. Reading the handbook means you know the rules probably better than the faculty do, so you know how to make them useful for your situation instead of having them happen to you. Learn the process so that nothing surprises you, so that you're ready to move forward. Work ahead when there is downtime, and there's a lot of hurry up and waiting. In doctoral programs, while you're waiting, have other things to do. Go back to Chapters 1, 2, and 3 and change them from future tense to past tense, because that's going to be what's needed in your final document. Use your downtime to your advantage. And finally, don't take things personally. Just keep showing up. If you're looking for support anywhere along the way, join the free Dissertation Help Community.
