In this instructional video, Ph.D. coach Steve Tippins outlines a series of concrete, fixable mistakes that cause doctoral students to stall or never finish their dissertations. He emphasizes that many of these pitfalls stem from a lack of awareness about institutional rules, passive work habits, misaligned expectations with advisors, over‑attachment to a single research idea, and unforeseen disruptions such as strikes or chair retirements. Tippins provides practical advice for each issue: thoroughly read handbooks and templates, proactively plan next steps during downtime, learn the preferred workflow of one’s chair and committee, keep research topics flexible, develop risk‑management strategies, and prioritize physical, emotional, and relational self‑care. Throughout, he stresses communication as the thread that ties these challenges together. The video concludes with a brief invitation to join a free dissertation support community.
Chapters
I can tell you exactly why smart, hardworking doctoral students end up stuck for years or never finish. Here's the hard truth that nobody tells you. It's about a handful of specific, fixable mistakes that your program, your advisor, and your institution are never going to warn you about. So I'm going to. The first mistake is not understanding the requirements. And this not understanding can mean it can take you months longer to move forward. I've seen that most students do not fully read their handbook, doctoral handbook, or understand the template or any other information their institution gives to them. You're going to be best served by reading this information. Very few people do. Very few people understand the requirements of their institution. And that not understanding comes back to bite them later on. For example, recently I was talking to someone and they said, well, I'm going to defend my proposal here and my plan is to defend my final dissertation at another date. And I said to them, oh, have you read your handbook? And is there a requirement at your institution that you cannot defend your proposal and your final dissertation in the same term? And they kind of looked at me blankly and said, I don't know. I said, well, you better check it because some institutions have that requirement. They got back to me and in fact their institution did have their requirement. So they had to restructure their timelines. Otherwise it was going to take them at least another term longer because they didn't understand the rules. Understanding the rules means you can make them work for you, not against you. The second thing some people call the waiting trap. Being passive as a student hurts you. And by this, look, you come out of a coursework background usually where you have due dates and then they tell you the next thing that's coming and you get reminded. When it comes to the dissertation, there's no syllabus, there's no due dates, there's no reminders, and you've never done a dissertation before, so you don't know what's coming. So too many students finish something, submit it, and then wait to be told what's coming next. Well, that wait can be weeks during the downtime. But if you understand what's coming next, you can be working on 1 or 2 or 3 different areas of your research and document while there's downtime, which moves you forward dramatically faster. The third thing is, yes, your school may have a template and it has a handbook, and your chair may have a way that they like to work. And not understanding how your chair likes to work can slow you down. I know chairs who say, I don't want to see anything till I see your finished proposal, your first 3 chapters. I know chairs who say, I want to see 1 chapter at a time, and I want you to start with chapter 1 or 2, typically is one of those that they want to see first. I know chairs who have said, okay, I want to see this in small pieces. Give me your problem statement, or give me your intro and your beginning of your lit review for chapter 2. Understanding how your chair works and wants to work can help you move forward faster. If your chair wants an entire proposal and you submit them half of chapter 1, well, now we're stuck in the waiting for them to get to it, Waiting for them to look at it, getting it back to you, which can take weeks. Oh, that's not sufficient, I'm not gonna look at it. Well, now you've just wasted all of that time because you didn't know what your chair wanted from you. Getting a good understanding of what your chair and your committee want is really gonna be something that's beneficial to you, makes it a known for you, which is better, but also will move you forward faster. Number 4, and that's getting married to your idea. You've done some work, you've looked at a topic, you've looked at the literature, and you say, this is the way it's got to go. This is it. I know it. Think about your committee. They're going to have a perspective, and their perspective comes from not only their understanding literature, but their being involved in the literature for years, perhaps having published multiple times, maybe even scores of times with your committee, or depending on your committee, maybe even if you add it up, hundreds of times. They may know what works and doesn't work better than you. So don't get married to your topic. Think of it as an opening salvo for a conversation. Don't bring your ego to the table. Allow them to help you get this to a point where it's going to be meaningful but also doable. It's the students and clients who are married to their idea who, one, typically take longer, two, many times go through multiple committee members because they're You know, basically knocking heads with each other about it. And the committee members I've seen quit, or a student saying, I gotta replace this person, he doesn't agree with me. This is about finishing. Get the degree, then go change the world. A 5th thing that's an issue in your dissertation is there's uncontrollables. For example, I talked to somebody recently whose university shut down for 2 weeks because of a strike. Well, they can't control that. But we kept working on things they could work on and things you can control. Other things— a client of ours recently, their chair said, yeah, great, but I'm retiring in a month. This is something a chair probably knew and probably should have been shared, but you know, you can't control that. So now you have to keep moving forward and finding a new chair. Much of this can be handled through communication. Okay, something happened. Great. Now let's Figure out a way to move forward. Let's involve advisors. Let's involve the department chair. Let's involve whoever is going to be able to help you move forward by communicating with them, not yelling at them, not demanding things, because if somebody retires, they don't control that either. If the university closes for a while, well, then the university's got to make a decision on how to handle things. You be as flexible as possible so that you can handle things. There's also a risk management technique of not putting all your eggs in one basket. Look, if you've got a chair who's 78 years old, the odds are probably in favor of your chair retiring sometime. So you may not want to start, embark on a journey that's going to take a year or 2 with a 78-year-old chair. You know, just think about things like that. There's another thing that people don't talk about much, and that's students getting exhausted. This is a long process. It's a confusing process. Sometimes the rules seem to change on you. Sometimes when you thought you had a grasp on something or a data source, it goes away. Now you have to work extra hard at it. Taking care of yourself is incredibly important during this process. And by taking care of yourself, I mean physically, get rest, eat well. Emotionally, meditate, have a therapist, have someone you can talk to. But also even beyond that, take care of yourself in your relationships because those are incredibly important and you need the support of those who love you. When we get tired emotionally, physically, whatever, we can start to think into things. Committee member hasn't responded in a while. Oh my God, they must hate me. I must have done something wrong. I've insulted them. Oh, and then I start spinning into, whoa, yeah, I made a comment about their child or their research. I should have praised it more. Look, just be present. A mind can be a terrible thing to use if we let it spin. From what I've seen, people who finish doctoral programs many times may not be the most intelligent people, but they're the ones who stuck with it and communicated well. They didn't do it alone. Communication is the thread running through most of these issues with your institution, your committee, and honestly, with yourself. If you're sitting in any of these issues right now, you're not behind. You're not broken. You just haven't had anyone pull back the curtain and show you what actually is going on. That's what we do at Beyond PhD Coaching. If you'd like to join our free dissertation support community, just click the link below.
