I feel like Bradley Cooper in "Limitless" before he got NZT. I have been doing dissertation research for a year, my hope was to be done in that time. I have worked extremely hard to get to this point, but it feels like time is dilating and I cannot finish this dissertation. My target is to have this thing done by the beginning of the Fall, but I have roughly 3 chapters left and I don't know if I can do it. It;s not that I haven't worked on this monster. I have worked every single day (with a few exceptions). I have made some mistakes in terms of research. I have collected far too many sources and spent too much time diffusing my focus. I think that primarily owes to a poor proposal design process. I had no idea how to write a proposal and no one I asked could really tell me how. In retrospect, it kind of makes me angry. It also makes me wish I visited a forum like this earlier.

Does anyone have any dissertation completion tricks or just a bit of helpful advice? Thanks a lot

Hi Burrahobbit, just checking about the timelines you mentioned in order to clarify where you are so it's easier to respond...

You are in the US or Canada (you mentioned the 'fall') and doing your PhD dissertation?
When you talk about doing it in one year-do you mean that you have been working on it and related courses for some years and now wish to write and submit your dissertational thesis in one year?

You might need to explain a bit more about where you are with the writing as well. Are your final three chapters, results, discussion/analysis and conclusion chapters?

Have you done the analysis of results yet? You mention that you have too many sources.

What type of dissertation are you writing- a humanities one based on literature or texts, a social science one based on quantitative or qualitative data or a scientific one-based on experiments, lab results? Sounds like one of the first two but not sure.

Did you have an original hypothesis or did you develop research questions-if it all seems 'diffuse' go back to those reseach questions or hypothesis to help you sharpen up the focus when you look at sources and evidence. Ignore all of the really interesting side bits that distract you from your main topic.

Others might be able to provide you with some good advice about finishing in short timeframes ( mine is a longer one and I am still collecting data)-but if you clarify a few things, it might be easier for others to respond with specific advice.

Hi burrahobbit,

what you are facing is common in researchers with little experience (and lots of perfectionism). I also faced similar issues when I was writing my first publication. I started reading endlessly without keeping notes and without proper focus. My supervisor was furious with me (insert very traumatic experience) because after 9 months I had made very little progress.

First of all, I started using the library and worked 9.00 to 19.00 and put myself in a routine . Then I changed the way I was working. I broke down the report in sections, subsections and paragraphs. Then, I inserted tables and figures. Finally, I wrote one bullet point per paragraph. Each paragraph should negotiate one topic and be no longer than 250 words. So if your introduction is 1000 words, then you need 4 paragraphs; think in advance what you want to include. My aim at the time was one paragraph per day... I felt desperate because of my slow progress. Little by little I managed to build a coherent report.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the replies. It feels good to communicate with others working in academia. It's almost like you can't even talk to anyone else about it (including colleague half the time)

Pjlu--I'm in the U.S. and I am working primarily with texts (this happens to be in philosophy). By working on it for a year, I mean that I have being doing just dissertation stuff, along with conferences and so on, for a year. I think my main difficulty is that I cannot even envision it being finished, it's like an apathy sets in when I set to work on it.

Dr. Jeckyll, I like that approach of writing a bullet per paragraph. I really need to make this thing more manageable.

Have you worked out a schedule for your writing? I don't mean when you will write in the week, but rather targets for when specific chapters will be finished. I did this in my part-time PhD, taking the initiative to manage my own (very limited) time effectively. I found it really helpful. I was up against a firm finishing deadline, and worked back from that to work out how long I had to work on each section.

Have you worked out your 'learning style' ? auditory, motor etc. Figuring out how 'YOU' learn and work best can be key to getting things done and how others work may not suit you. You can google learning styles to find various 'tests' for it.

I know for myself that I have a great short term memory so exams I cram for a few days before or on the day only and about an hour after the exam I've usually forgotton most of it.

I'm not a planner and when it comes to writing I can't do lists. I use a 'writing frame' for guidance e.g the main headings and subheadings that are expected in a dissertation and put the word count for eaach section to work to in bold. I then usually 'free write' about the topic before re-drafting/editing about 3 times. I write when I'm in the mood to write (sometimes I can be writing from sunrise until sunset), I don't write anything when I'm not in the mood, there's no point as I just frustrate myself.

I like hard copies of journal articles/reports kept in lever arch files. I write short notes on the front page of each artcle and lots of written notes on the article and highlighting as psychologically, hand written notes embedd info into your brain easier, especially if you have repeated what you have wrote about 3 times.

I'm a visual learner and I can remember information by thinking about what it looked like on the page so I will box off or underline the most important part of my written notes.

I've never missed a deadline and I finished my MA 8 months early whilst working full time hours with 2 pre-school children, with my 'haphazard' style, but it worked for me.

If you reallysit and think about how you learn and work you will know what suits you best.

Good luck

Bilbo--that;s a good plan. I have tried to do that, but unfortunately I didn't get serious about it until recently. I think I would be much better off if I did that early on.

wowzers--I am very impressed by your success there. I'm not sure your exact approach would work for me, but I love the idea about the hard copy articles. Taking notes is crucial as I found out a little late. I wasn't used to needing that, but when you are working with this much research it is central.

I like the free writing idea. I think I may try that for my next chapter and just see what happens. At least I would have something to work with and I could avoid the pefrectionism road blocks that eventually lead to avoidance and giving up

How long do you guys write each day? I'm having trouble writing anything meaningful beyond 3 hours. I need (and want) to do more though

Erm I'm a bit unusual. I managed my part-time (6 year) history PhD on no more than 5 productive hours a week in the later years. You can do a lot in very little time, well I found that out anyway. Would have been nice to have more hours to work with, but I have a severely disabling progressive neurological disease. So was rather restricted, and increasingly so as the years rolled on.

My supervisor said I was extremely good at using very limited time ;)

That's impressive--I think it is more ideal to work that way, to be honest. I think there is a diminishing return problem with the chunking technique. Also, later in one's career when you have to be writing publishable papers while working on a bunch of other stuff it's good to develop a way to work faster in smaller bursts

My problem is that I much prefer working on the 12-15 pg conference length papers. I feel like I can offer something much more insightful and sharp in such a setting

Burrahobbit, if you think of your chapters each like a 15 page conference paper (or two combined) it might be a bit easier to get into the zone. Each chapter is a separate piece of writing, even if it links to and develops the chapter before it.

Secondly, I find that I have to use my holiday time (I'm a secondary school teacher and administrator) and so often I need to write for 6 hours a day or so in long blocks. What I do though is break it up. I write for three hours and then spend a bit of time doing other things, exercise, housework, shopping or errands or similar and after a couple of hours, go back into another 2 hour block before dinner and maybe spend an hour on it after dinner as well.

I get up fairly early in the holidays so I can start writing-actual work by around 8 at the latest-sometimes it is 7.15 or so.

It might be a little late to go back and take many notes, but you could find spending a bit of time organising your key sources into groups and then writing a very short (paragraph) summary of each source, really helpful. Or you could just look at key themes that you are evaluating and group all of your authors and sources into these themes. Then work out which group belongs primarily in which chapter.

Don't get hung up on perfectionism-academic writing and research is all about process-finished product is only ever a snapshot in time of where you are on the journey. And it is hard -academic writing that is. I recently had to do a bout of professional writing for a new job application that required a very long selection criteria statement (around 6-7thousand words). I managed this over a weekend and it required very little redrafting and I only had around a half dozen minor typos to weed out in total. It was much easier because I knew my stuff, really wanted the new position and could write for professionals not academics (harder audience). This reassured me that the difficulties often experienced with academic writing did not occur because I was losing my writing ability, but because academic writing is very challenging.

You can perfect and polish once you have your drafts out-just get the words and ideas out. Good luck with it all.