What They Forgot to Teach You
Issue #5
π Welcome
We moved house a few weeks ago and there are still boxes in the garage that I have not opened. The pegs for the clothesline are unaccounted for, so everything has been going in the drier. I did have a plan for the unpacking. It was school holidays- tons of time! Reckoned it would be definitely done before school went back but no⦠it has been three weeks.
I am not lazy. The problem is that when I made the plan I pictured the good version: the kids helping, nobody getting sick, me not standing in the hallway for too long trying to work out where the food processor should live now that the kitchen cabinets were full.
You imagine you made a plan for your thesis too, and maybe it is not going the way you drew it up either?
π This week I read
Why You Procrastinate (It Has Nothing to Do With Self-Control) β Charlotte Lieberman, The New York Times (2019).
In this article (read it here), Lieberman pulls together the research showing that procrastination is an emotion regulation problem, rather than a time-management issue or a character weakness. When a task makes us feel something uncomfortable (boredom, anxiety, self-doubt, the fear that the writing is not good enough), putting it off gives us a quick hit of relief from that discomfort. That feeling of relief is real, which is why the procrastination habit is so hard to shift.
If you have been avoiding your draft, it is not because you are lazy. It is because opening the document makes you feel bad and closing it makes you feel better. This more recent article in the NYT includes some great tips for overcoming procrastination, including starting with small steps or pairing the task with something that you associate with positive emotions.
π The hidden curriculum
Why your thesis takes longer than you think
There is always a gap between the amount of time you estimate a task will take and how long it actually takes. Cognitive psychologists attribute that gap to the planning fallacy: we underestimate how long our own work will take, even when we have done the same kind of task a hundred times before.
When you plan your thesis writing, you imagine the words arriving, the argument clicking into place, a productive Sunday afternoon. You do not picture the paper that turns out to say the opposite of what you remembered, or the day you open the document, get overwhelmed and close it again.
Unfortunately knowing about this bias does not switch it off. But one thing helps. Start planning from actual past experience.
Rather than asking yourself "how long should this chapter take?", ask "how long did the last chapter actually take?" The real one, with the false starts and the sick kid and the afternoon that vanished. That number is your best guess for the next chapter too. Then add a buffer that you would be slightly embarrassed to admit to, because the real number is never quite enough either.
Your future self is not a calmer, faster version of you with a clear diary. Your future self is you, on a Tuesday evening, with the same life you have now. Plan for that person.
There is one more move that often helps. Give yourself a deadline from someone else.
βDan Ariely and Klaus Wertenbroch showed that students who set their own deadlines did better than students who did not have deadlines and were allowed to submit all their work at the end. But the ones who did best were those who had deadlines imposed on them by someone else. Presumably this is because self-imposed deadlines are by definition flexible, whereas when someone else is waiting for your work, you will get it done.
If you want a deadline like that before you submit, I have some good news!
π£ Prebook your September review (EARLYBIRD)
It is officially August, which for a lot of you means thesis submission is only a couple of months away. My September Writing Review slots are filling up. I have room to review 10 theses in September, once those slots are gone, they're gone.
The standard rate is $100 per 1000 words. Book now and use the code EARLYBIRD at checkout for 15% off and a guaranteed slot, so a full 8,000-word thesis is $680 instead of $800. The code expires August 12, or when the 10 slots fill, whichever comes first.
How it works: Writing Review is detailed audio feedback. I read your work outloud, recording what I am thinking as I read. I can let your know what is working, what is not, and what you can do about it. Check out what that looks like here.
If you are interested in nabbing a Sept slot, book your writing review and enter EARLYBIRD at checkout. I'll be in touch to schedule a quick 30-minute check-in before your review so we can chat about how your writing is going and when you would like me to set your deadline to be π .
Two things to know: I can review a General Discussion in the context of the whole thesis, but not in isolation, and I won't review a thesis less than 3 weeks out from your deadline. It takes me a few days to get feedback back to you, and you need time to actually use it.
What students have said about my audio feedback:
- It was a bit jarring to hear someone else read my writing out loud, but in a good way. It made it much easier to hear where things were clear and where I was assuming too much from the reader.
- I appreciated the audio format, this helped personalise the whole process and made it easier to receive feedback too (because it's definitely not AI!)
- Your review was a game changer for me. I think my rewrite has improved A LOT! (Thank you Jenny!).
π‘ What I'm into
In case you need something to procrastinate with, we have had good luck picking family movie night options recently. We have watched and likedβ¦
- Netflix: Remarkably Bright Creatures (Sally Field is awesome in this story about an octopus and the people who care for it)
- AppleTV: Palmer (this has Justin Timberlake in it but donβt let that put you off, it is a delightful story about belonging and community and being yourself.)
- Prime: The Sheep Detectives (impressive sheep working out who murdered their shepherd)
π
Join me
Free weekly lab meeting. We read a paper together and talk about what it means for your work. Wednesdays 12pm AEST on Zoom. Book via Calendly.
- βOpen Science + Good Writing β Aug 5. What good is open science if nobody can understand the paper? Why science writing got so hard to read, and how to make yours clear. Join us to learn how to avoid "Mad Libbing" your intro.
- βAre your research computing habits good enough? β Aug 12. Ever lost a file, or forgotten which version of your data was the "real" one? A paper about simple computing habits that might change your research life.
- βThe 9 features of accessible science writing β Aug 18. Participants in this study rated dense abstracts as less readable and less trustworthy. What were the nine things that the authors did to create the abstracts in this study and can we leverage them to undensify (that is not a word but I am going with it) our own writing?
Small group coaching. N = 5, mini-masterclass. A$49. One for those of you just getting started (Experimental Design) and one for those who have results and are beginning to think about the last section of your thesis (General Discussion).
- βExperimental Design Clinic β Aug 7, 12β2pm AEST. If you are just starting out this session is for you. You cannot write your way out of a design flaw, but you can catch one while your study is still a plan on a page. Bring your plan and we will work through Flake and Fried's six measurement questions together.
- βWriting your general discussion β Aug 21, 12β2pm AEST. You have your results and you know what you found, so why does the discussion feel impossible to start? Leave with an outline and the confidence to finish it.
π For your toolkit
A spreadsheet checklist for your data
At lab meeting last week we worked through Broman and Woo's guidelines for organising data in spreadsheets. I turned them into a one-page checklist you can run over your own data before you get too far in. Grab it here.
π thanks!
I am on a mission to find the pegs, wish me luck!
β
Until next time, Jen
P.S. Know someone who swore they'd be finished by Friday? Forward this and tell them to subscribe to "What They Forgot to Teach You". It's free, and it might be exactly what they need.
I'm Jen, a developmental psychologist and former UNSW A/Prof. I help new researchers go from feeling like they've missed something everyone else knows, to feeling like they genuinely belong in research, so they can get through their research degree and into the career they actually want.
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