Your Dissertation Doesn't Have to Take Years

If I only had 6 months to write my dissertation, this is exactly what I would do. Most people think that a dissertation has to take years to write. It doesn't. With the right plan and working through things in the right order, it can happen in 6 months. I'm Dr. Steve Tippins, Ph.D. I've served on 300 dissertation committees and helped hundreds of clients cross that finish line. Today I'm gonna walk you through the 8 steps that I would use to compress that timeline and finish in 6 months instead of 6 years. The first point, know where you're gonna get your data from, could also be considered publicly available data. The fastest way to slow down a dissertation, I know that sounds strange, is to be collecting primary data. If you wanna speed up your data collection, you need to know where it's coming from. You need to know you have access to that data. If my goal is to finish in 6 months, having secondary data available— meaning it's already there, I don't have to do anything to collect it— compresses the timeline dramatically. In addition, using publicly available secondary data can make the IRB process much faster or, in some cases, just go away. You may not need IRB approval. I worked with a client once who was going to collect primary data, and it worked out it was gonna take months to get that data. But then they found publicly available data, which made data collection a matter of hours and not months, and they moved forward dramatically faster. If speed is your goal, Publicly available data is your best friend. Publicly available data, my estimate is it could save you minimum of 2 months in your data collection phase and potentially 6 or 7 months or maybe even more depending on the type of data collection you were going to do and your access to it. But saving months along the way can finish you up faster and save you many tuition dollars. The second thing I would do is make sure I had a supportive committee. I'm not gonna call it a bad committee, but a committee that's not supportive and doesn't get along can add a great deal of time to your process. A committee that is in alignment with what you're doing and supportive can take months off of this journey. You wanna find committee members who are reasonable and committed to helping you finish. We also wanna help have you find committee members who work well together, understand the other people and are reasonable in this process. It's important also to find committee members who have a proven track record of moving people forward. I talked to a client this morning who had two committee members who were working in different directions, and we were strategizing on how to make them both approve what was going on instead of one wanting to go this way and another one wanting to go this way. All of that strategizing time takes time and slows you down dramatically. I think a committee that gets along can save you a month or two, if not more, in your process. So choose your committee for their supportiveness, not their prestige. Having a great name on your dissertation doesn't help if it takes you an extra year or two to graduate. If you're currently trying to navigate committee dynamics or map out your own accelerated path, you don't have to do it alone. I invite you to join our free Dissertation Help Community. It's a supportive place where you can ask questions, share progress, and get actionable advice from peers and experts who understand the journey. The link is in the description. The third thing I would do is learn to use downtime as my friend. Not just have downtime and wait, but use downtime in my favor. If I've got a 6-month timeline, I can't wait for things to just happen. I have to use every moment to be helping me move forward. So what does that mean? Well, one, I have to know the steps that are coming up and maybe even set up like a PERT chart to schedule things out. This is going to happen, and while that's happening, while they're reviewing this, I'm doing these other steps. The people who are able to do that move forward faster. The people who wait to be told move much more slowly. One, you're depending on your committee to say, "Oh yeah, you need to do this next." And two, they may not even be paying attention. When things are being reviewed by your committee, work on your literature more. Think about where you're going to get your data from. Be thinking about what's ahead. Or You could be working on your IRB application. This step is highly contingent upon you knowing what's coming and thinking about what's coming. I recently worked with a student who was saying, "Okay, great. When this gets finished, I'll then work on my—" in this case, it was an IRB application. And I said, "Well, can't you finish almost all of the IRB application right now so that once there's any little tweaks, you can then add those and submit it instead of waiting, doing nothing to move forward, and then, you know, work on this hurry up and wait type model, or continually working. And they got their IRB application basically 95% finished and were then within hours able to submit the IRB application once they got feedback from their committee, saving them in this case probably a week of time. Overall, if you treat your downtime is actually productive work time, it can be easy to take a month or two or more off of your schedule to finish. The fourth thing I would do is, if I know what's coming, I'm gonna pre-write a lot of sections for my dissertation. I don't have to wait for my committee and their comments to know that in Chapter 4, maybe I'm gonna repeat my problem statement and my purpose and my research questions. Well, they've already been approved. I can already write that. Or I know that I'm going to have specific tables, or I know that in Chapter 5 certain things are going to be needed. Well, I can already write those. Any part of your document you can pre-write during downtime saves you time moving forward. You can set up an outline if your school gives you some sort of template. Start with that template. Start filling in. Oh, they want the research questions. I'll just cut and paste those here. Oh, they're looking for the purpose. I'll put that here.. So anytime I get a chance to cut and paste, because for consistency purposes, we want to keep the wording the same anyways, I'm saving time. This step is— may not save you months, but it can save you a week or so along the way. In a conversation with a client recently, they figured out that if they do this, they're feeling productive instead of just waiting. They feel like they have more control. You know, why not build the frame of the house before you need the furniture? So get everything in as quickly as you can ahead of time so that then I'm just filling in the spots with the findings. The fifth thing I would do is master my analysis tools ahead of time. Many times you're gonna use software, whether it's SPSS or NVivo or something to be part of your research. Well, if you wait until you've collected data to then start figuring out how to use this software, it can be stressful and can take a lot longer. Many times I recommend to people use some made-up data, not data that's gonna be part of your dissertation, but some data to start testing and playing with the software. Because if you can play with the software during downtime, there's, you know, less stress because it's just made-up data. So I can try lots of different things. But if it's real data, I'm pressured to try to get things finished, and it can be frustrating, and it's hard to learn new things when you're frustrated. So work ahead to use these and learn how to use these pieces of software. It will save you time. And if you're using publicly available data, which there may be little to no IRB process, you can always start on that very quickly and very early in the process. I actually talked to a client yesterday who has publicly available data, and I said, okay, you can get on this quickly. And she said, oh, I've already done the analysis. And I said, great, because she's already done the analysis. Once the committee approves the proposal, boom, chapters 4 and 5 come really quickly and can save probably a month in the process. The 6th thing I would do is I would learn to become friends with university policies, and that means handbooks and templates and anything the university puts out of information for students and faculty. If you become intimately aware of the policies and the dates, you can use those to your advantage in the process. For example, I talked to someone recently who said, "Well, my plan is in September I'm gonna get my proposal defended." I've got secondary data. I'll have it all done. I will then defend my dissertation in late November, early December. And I said, well, will your university allow you to do that? And they said, what do you mean? And I said, there are many universities that do not allow you to defend your proposal and your final dissertation in the same term. They want you to have space there. So your plan wouldn't work. But that means you need to speed up your proposal defense so that you can then meet your December timeframe. And then, is December the right month? Because many schools say, if you want to graduate in December, here's the last date that everything has to be to the university, and here before that is the last date for your committee to defend. So being aware of those, I just talked to somebody recently who was not aware of those. Their chair was not aware of those. And when I brought it up, they realized they're gonna be going to school for at least an extra semester because nobody had planned this. Knowing this, planning this can save you months and thousands of dollars in the process. The next step I would do if I'm gonna write a dissertation in 6 months, I need support and consistent support, and I need great teachers. Time management. I'm going to have to set up dedicated time, X hours every day that I'm working on this, and whether it's the actual writing or working ahead on things, but I need to be there every day to make sure I'm making progress. I need to know if I'm in a family that my partner is going to support this, at work they're going to support this, because this is a big push and you may have a life outside of this push. So you need to know that there's support there for you to do this. Also, this is the first time you're writing a dissertation, so you might need expert support, whether it's in the process or in the editing or in the statistical analysis. Line these things up early so that they're there with you along the way to help you finish. Getting adequate and expert support I've seen save people 2 to 3 months in the process. If you're looking for support, look for it early. I have people come to me all the time early in the process. We help set things up so they move forward faster. But I also— we have people show up who are stuck. I recently talked to someone who had been searching for their data for 4 months and had zero responses. They wasted 4 months of time because in a week and a half they've now collected half of the data they need. Based upon tweaking what they were doing to get the actual data they need. And the last step that I would do is, look, for some rest and give yourself grace. Okay, you cannot sprint a marathon. You cannot cram a dissertation. 6 months is a very short time period, but you do need to be able to breathe. I want you alive when you get to the end. Plan time during the process, but also Have a goal, plan a retreat or a vacation at the other end saying, I'm gonna reward myself. Be good to yourself during this process. I can remember when I was studying for my comprehensive exams and doing other things, I wasn't that good to myself. I lived on the food groups of Cheez-Its, vanilla cream cookies, and cheap jelly beans. And you can live on those sugar highs for a little bit, but eventually I realized, wow, I need a vegetable. And that helped me move forward a lot faster to really start taking care of myself instead of trying to work between sugar highs. If we set up a goal of 6 months and you make it in 7 months, that's okay. In the long run, no one's gonna— it's not gonna matter. No one's gonna know, but you are gonna finish much faster. The timeline is the goal, but your well-being is the priority. And like I said, we want you alive to be able to enjoy your accomplishments. When you finish. So in summary, if you really want to finish very quickly, here are the steps I would take: secure available secondary data early in the process, build a motivated and supportive committee, use downtime to be working ahead and drafting other sections of your document, pre-write anywhere that you can with— if you're using repetitive terms, for example, problem statements, things like that. Pre-write those areas. Learn how to use any software that you're going to use early in the process and before it is vital to what you're doing. Master your university's formatting template as well as any guidelines. Lock down your time management and lean on expert support. And finally, plan to rest and give yourself some grace. Good luck!