What They Forgot to Teach You
Issue #9
๐ Welcome
On Friday I ran a workshop called "How to write a lot when you have no time."
I named it that on purpose because it is exactly what everyone wants: a system, a routine, a trick that finally makes the words flow and makes writing easy. But I never intended to hand anyone a system that would solve all their writing woes. Everyoneโs brain works differently and everyoneโs circumstances are different. There is no right way to write.
Most academic writing advice pretends otherwise. Write first thing in the morning. Never edit as you go. Always outline before you start. Write every single day. Some of those ideas will fit your life and some of them will not. There is no way to tell in advance which pieces of writing advice are going to work for you.
My workshop was not about a particular system that will guarantee writing productivity. It was all about how to design a system that will work for you. I have been re-reading Anne-Laure Le Cunff's book Tiny Experiments, and it is the perfect frame for this. Instead of committing to a routine you hope will work, you run a series of small experiments and let the results tell you what to do next.
We worked through the three things you actually have to figure out for yourself: when and where you will write, how you will get the words onto the page, and what will keep you coming back.
You know how to run an experiment. You are a researcher.
๐ This year I read
Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World โ Anne-Laure Le Cunff (2025). Have a look here โโ
Le Cunff is a neuroscientist (she did her PhD in psychology and neuroscience at King's College London) and a former Google exec, who now writes the very popular Ness Labs newsletter. Her argument is that we have all been sold big goals as the only way to make progress. We should all have SMART goals, five-year plans, an idea of where the finish line is before you make a start. But a goal is a bet on a future you cannot actually see, and when life refuses to cooperate (it never cooperates), a missed goal can feel like failure.
Her alternative is what she calls a PACT: Purposeful, Actionable, Continuous, Trackable. Instead of "finish my literature review by October," you commit to a tiny, repeatable experiment ("I will read one paper and write three sentences about it, every weekday, for two weeks") and you watch what happens. The point is to experiment with the conditions that are associated with the outcome you want, to collect data on yourself and to adapt your action along the way.
๐ The hidden curriculum
When someone hands you a writing rule ("write every morning") and it does not work for you, it is too easy to conclude that you are the problem. You are not disciplined enough, not a morning person, not a real writer. You just adopted someone elseโs data and then felt bad about yourself when it didnโt replicate.
A writing system is really just the set of habits and conditions that help you get started and keep going. You need a system that will work for you and you can work that out one small experiment at a time. The template I gave the workshop was deliberately tiny:
I will [do something] for [some period of time].
Commit to a small action and keep track of whichever dependent variable makes the most sense. You need to point your experiment at these three things.
When and where you write. Stop waiting for the clear week that never comes, and go hunting for the pockets you already have. "I will put four 30-minute writing slots in my calendar for four weeks." "I will write for 20 minutes while I drink my coffee, for seven days." You are looking for the time of day your brain cooperates and the setting where nobody interrupts you.
How you put the words on the page. Most of us write slowly because we try to write and edit at the same time. Writing is putting ugly words on the page, editing is making them less ugly. Try preventing yourself from mixing the two processes: โI will write continuously with my screen brightness turned all the way down before allowing myself to fix the mistakes 3 times a weekโ
What keeps you coming back. For busy researchers this matters most. You are fitting your thesis around teaching, a job, a life, so the gap between sessions is often days or weeks, and the longer the gap, the higher the cost of starting cold. So make coming back easy. Park on the downhill: stop mid-sentence, in the middle of a thought you know how to finish, and leave yourself a note about what comes next. Making it social can help too. A standing Shut Up and Write accountability group can get you back in the chair when nothing else will.
None of these are prescriptions. They are experiments. Keep the ones that work for you, with the life you actually have, and throw the rest away.
๐ก What I'm into
I have been reading and thinking about what makes for good feedback. Not all supervisors have the capacity to give really detailed, critical, and personalised feedback that helps you become a better writer, and that sucks. Prof Inger Mewburn has some thoughts about this on her Thesis Whisperer blog. She suggests that in the context of PhD research, other students can be a good source of feedback. I feel like the competition that is inherent in Honours and GradDipAdv programs makes that less true.
She also suggests that in the absence of other humans, Generative AI can be helpful.
How are we feeling about giving our work to the robots? I think the robots need guardrails.
Here is something to play with. Scroll down to the bottom of my Events page and you will find a detailed prompt to download that you can use to put really strong boundaries in place if you are thinking about asking Claude or ChattieG for thesis feedback.
If giving your work to AI feels icky and you would rather have a smart and interested human let you know how your work is landing and what you can do to make it land more clearly for a naive reader, I am always happy to chat about Writing Review, book using my calendly link.
โhttps://calendly.com/revealresearchcoach/30minโ
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Join me
Free Friday workshops โ one hour, Zoom session, leave with tips and tricks
- How to polish your thesis (and get an HD) โ Friday September 4, 12pm AEST. Your ideas are good. The HD is in how easily your tired marker can grasp them.
- How to set yourself up for research success โ Friday September 18, 12pm AEST. Just getting started? Put a few project-management systems in place now and save yourself hours later.
Small group coaching โ N= 5, two hours, Zoom session, bring your results and/or data and work through outlining your discussion or making compelling plots together.
- Keep Calm and Write Your General Discussion โ Fridays September 11 or September 25, 12โ2pm AEST. You have your results, you just don't know where to start. We work through the six discussion moves together and you leave with an outline.
- Plotting for survey research โ Fridays September 4, September 18 or October 2, 1โ3pm AEST. Think plotting is only for experiments with neat conditions to compare? Survey data needs more looking, not less. Bring your data and I'll help you build the figures that check for problems and tell your story.
Register for everything at www.revealresearch.org/events.
๐ ๏ธ For your toolkit
The full slides from Friday's workshop. Everything above (the three areas to focus on, the experiment template) is free online here. Steal the template, run one experiment this week, and see what your data tells you.
๐ thanks!!
This newsletter is one of my own tiny experiments. Every week I hit send and collect a little data on whether any of it lands. A couple of weeks ago, one of you wrote to say you found your dinosaur, which is the best data I have ever collected. So if one of these experiments works for you, hit reply and tell me. Iโd love to hear about it.
Until next time, Jen
P.S. If a friend keeps waiting for the perfect writing routine to arrive, forward this and suggest they subscribe to "What They Forgot To Teach You". It's free, and it might be exactly what they need.
P.P.S. If this is the first What They Forgot to Teach You to actually reach you, issues 1 through 8 are almost certainly sulking in your spam folder. Go and rescue them.
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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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