Unlike a lot of students I actually enjoyed writing my PhD thesis, so in this post I share some of the things I did a little differently…
I decided before I started writing not to invest energy into worrying about what the examiners thought of my work, or whether I would pass or fail the defence. This isn’t to say I wouldn’t have been affected had I failed, but worrying about it in advance wouldn’t have helped in any way.
I also decided to focus on the areas where I was strongest and what I found most interesting.
I’d spent a lot of time, especially early in my PhD, worrying about the gaps in my knowledge, but focusing on what I was good at made it a lot easier to write, easier to defend, and I think also more interesting for the examiners.
While I tried not to worry about what the examiners would think, I still put care into the work. I didn’t “just get words down on the page” or try to write a “shitty first draft” as so many people advise, I took my time to think about what I wanted to say and how I wanted to say it.
Whenever I mention this people often raise the issue of perfectionism, but what people call perfectionism is often just indecision stemming from a lack of confidence, and writing as fast as you can doesn’t really solve that problem.
If you want to write well, you need to put some care into it, and if you want to make an intelligent academic argument, you need to give it some thought. Now if you over-think and doubt everything it’s a problem, and this is why you also need to make confident decisions and move forwards.
To help me do this, I set myself the target of writing a minimum of 500 words per day. For me, that was a relatively easy target I could beat almost every day. Sometimes I could write 500 words in about an hour, other times it would take all day, depending on what I was writing about. Some things are more difficult to write about than others, so they take a bit longer: So this target allowed for a bit of variation in pace, it allowed me to slow down and think when I needed to, while also making sure I made decisions and moved forwards.
For me, 500 words per day was an achievable target, but I was writing in my native language and was able to work on it full time. So set a target that you can beat. That might be a minimum of, say, 150 words, but it adds up if you do it consistently.
Having an objective measure of success meant that if I smashed my target I felt good, and if it took all day to reach 500 words I could feel good about overcoming the difficulty… That meant that I finished pretty much every day feeling good about my progress.
To reinforce that good feeling, I also created a grid to stick on the wall next to the computer. Each block represented 500 words, each row of 4 blocks represented 2000 words, 5 rows represented 10,000 words, and the whole sheet represented 20,000.
As I increased the word count, colouring in the blocks helped visualise and reinforce my progress. It was a small thing, but it just felt really good to do.
Part of the reason for setting these word-count targets was to help maintain consistency from one day to the next. While there was some variability, I was at least getting the minimum done every day and my average per day was higher.
Another way I tried to ensure consistency was by stopping each day while I still had energy in reserve. Some students, when they feel they’re in the flow, keep going late into the night for fear that they won’t be able to recapture the energy the next day. But that approach of working to exhaustion guarantees that they won’t have energy the next day.
By stopping with something in reserve, I could switch off and let my brain relax and process, and as a result I was able to start the next day well rested.
Another slightly unusual aspect of my approach was that I started with the introduction and worked in sequence through the document, instead of starting somewhere in the middle, or working on several sections at the same time and jumping between them.
The metaphor I use for this is that it’s like digging a tunnel through a mountain. You can’t start in the middle, you have to start at the beginning and as you progress you can only dig at the rock face in front of you.
This meant that I never had to decide what to work on- I had a clear point of focus which in some ways made things much simpler, but it also meant that whenever I hit a problem—something I wasn’t sure about or something that was difficult to explain—I had to face the problem and find a solution.
Most people will just switch to writing about something else, and while that helps you increase the word count, at least in the short term, it removes any possibility that you solve the problem. Eventually, you’ll run out of easy things to write about and all you’re left with is the difficult problems you ran away from, which you then have to face all at the same time, when you’re probably under the most time pressure.
Worse, instead of learning how to solve problems in your writing, you will have trained the habit of avoiding problems, and habits are very hard to break when you’re under great stress. But if you face problems as they arise, slow down and deal with them, that’s when you develop your skill and confidence as a writer, and that’s when you can start to enjoy writing your PhD thesis.
Related to the last point, another unusual thing I did was to try to finish each section, to a submittable standard, before moving on to the next. This meant reading through it, editing it, and wherever possible taking care of any references and formatting and any other details, rather than leaving them for later.
I often speak to students who have written a lot, maybe 100,000 words or more , but nothing is actually finished, not one section actually looks submittable because it’s not properly formatted, there are loads of missing references and incomplete sections and notes to self.
The more you write this way, the more mess you’ll create, so it’s not surprising if you feel like you’re working and working but not getting any closer to the finish line. And again, you’re training the habit of not finishing what you’re working on, and you’ll have to try to tidy up everything at the same time at the end. Guaranteed stress.
But if you tidy up as you go, finishing the sections you work on to a submittable standard, or as close to submittable as possible, then you’ll probably have a lot more confidence that you can finish the whole thesis, and you’ll be able to look back at the sections you’ve done with pride.
I know that some of you will be thinking, “yeah but I can’t write this way because…”
If so, leave a comment below and I might be able to help. I can’t guarantee that you’ll enjoy writing, but if we can reduce the suffering it’s definitely worth it.
Also, if you enjoy writing, how do you do it? Is there anything you do that’s a little different?
I offer one to one coaching in academic writing. Click below to learn more and book your introductory session.
PhD: an uncommon guide to research, writing & PhD life is your essential guide to the basic principles every PhD student needs to know.
Applicable to virtually any field of study, it covers everything from finding a research topic, getting to grips with the literature, planning and executing research and coping with the inevitable problems that arise, through to writing, submitting and successfully defending your thesis.
All the text on this site (and every word of every video script) is written by me, personally, because I enjoy writing. I enjoy the challenges of thinking deeply and finding the right words to express my ideas. I do not advocate for the use of AI in academic research and writing, except for very limited use cases.
See also:
Barth Ogunretin says:
I am at the first year of my PhD. at the moment, I look so confused and discouraged to continue with the programme. I am struggling to write review of literatures and reference correctly. Please, what would be your advice .
James Hayton, PhD says:
start here: How to write a PhD literature review WITHOUT using AI (Part 1: Understanding the literature)