Writer's Lab: Why writing is (not) like sculpting

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Koen Van den Eeckhout for a guest post in the Writers' Lab. Koen has recently obtained his PhD in physics at Ghent University, on the subject of glow-in-the-dark materials. In the following years he will be focusing on how to improve the currently available LED lighting.

Besides science, he's curious about everything related to scientific communication, personal development, graphic design and photography. 

He only recently entered the world of social media, you can find out more on his blog or follow him on twitter: @Koen_VdE.

I was not born a writer. When I was younger, I had to struggle a lot to get my ideas onto paper. Not that I did not know what I wanted to say, but after a few sentences, or even a few words, I would get stuck and start doubting my word choice, or the structure of the sentence I just wrote down. Obviously, this frightened me at the start of my PhD, since I knew I would have to write reports, papers, and ultimately my thesis. Indeed, writing is the most important skill of a PhD student. How would I ever manage to finish all that writing?

Things changed in November 2011, when I decided to step out of my comfort zone and subscribed for the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge. Despite its name, NaNoWriMo is an international project open to anyone. The goal? Writing a novel of at least 50,000 words in a period of 30 days, from November 1 until November 30. This means that I would have to write on average 1,667 words a day, the equivalent of 3 A4 pages.

During the process, and thanks to the motivation of the large community behind the NaNoWriMo project, I quickly learned an important lesson. I used to think of writing as an art comparable to sculpting, where every word, every sentence is a small touch of the hammer, chipping away small pieces of stone until a masterpiece emerges. I learned that I was wrong, and I realized why - up to then - I never managed to transform my ideas into a piece of text. The first phase of sculpting is not grabbing your hammer, it's collecting your raw material, choosing the right stone with the size and shape you need. Similarly, the first phase of writing is not the crafting of beautiful words and amazing sentences. It's about writing down your ideas the way they are popping up in your head, without worrying about your words. Don't worry if the grammar of the sentence you just wrote is not entirely right. Don't worry if you know there is a better word for what you want to describe, but can't find it just yet. Just continue writing. All your doubts will be dealt with during the editing process.

I successfully finished the NaNoWriMo challenge, and at the end of the month I had a manuscript of 50,051 words (which to me felt as a massive amount of text). But I didn't have the start of a good novel. What I wrote down lacked a story, and did not have structure. Not even all the editing in the world could ever transform my text into a best-seller. Which immediately made me realize a second important lesson. I was wrong - yet again - about the first phase of writing. It's not about getting words on paper, it's about sitting down and sketching the sequence of ideas you want to explain, developing the structure of the text you are about to write. What will you discuss first, what is your final conclusion, and which path will you take to get from one to the other? Personally, I start writing by choosing which figures I want to discuss and in which order, and describing them by an accurate caption. This gives me a list of ideas, like a pathway leading from conception to conclusion. That is the real first phase of writing.

Only when the structure of your text is clear, you can start writing it down and gathering your raw material. And finally, you can start editing to turn your raw material into a piece of art. Since my NaNoWriMo experience, I no longer have problems to write proposals or papers. I have learned that it is okay to ignore my nagging sense of unhappiness with my sentence structure or word choice, and deal with it later during the editing phase. It has even given me the self-confidence to finish the 200 pages of my PhD thesis in only a few weeks' time. That's something my young self, struggling with even the smallest writing assignment, could never have imagined...

Writers' Lab: 5 Lessons from 3 years of blogging

On Tuesday, September 14th in 2010, I started PhD Talk. At that time I didn't have much of a defined goal for the blog. The original purpose of the blog, was the following:

"However, there are always better ways to do things, and most of the time you discover this while doing. "

I simply started a blog because I had had blogs (and websites) before, and I thought it was time to pick it up again. My previous blog never got more than 200 pageviews. I just wrote for my family and friends - and that meant my mom and two of my friends would read the blog.

I didn't start with a plan for PhD Talk. I didn't have a posting schedule, a mission statement, a decent following on Twitter - I just started.

For the first months, I was simply writing every now and then, without getting much traffic or comments. But gradually things started changing. Posts got retweeted. Marketing and Communications of TU Delft caught sight of my work, and gave me a pat on the back. And after a while, I started to identify as a blogger. I landed guest posts for a number of big blogs, live-blogged twice for TEDxDelft and became a permanent author at Grave Concerns E-zine, Lifehack and Gradhacker (which ended when I finished graduate school). I received some freebies here, a store voucher there and some Amazon credit elsewhere. And I'm extremely grateful for all the support of my readers. Thank you!

1. There's value to academic blogging

After some time of writing at PhD Talk, I boldly stated that blogging is for every single academic, which triggered the discussion of the added value of blogging to academia. That doesn't translate into: "every academic should start a blog". I think there lies a lot of value in guest-posting, or in universities paging their staff every now and then to write something, showing their work and/or view on a hot topic.

By sharing my presentations online, and making my research topic visibly linked to my name, I've received e-mail messages from colleagues worldwide to discuss my experiments, and share some of my papers. Without an online presence, I would have never had the opportunity to make these contacts. Conferences, yes, also - but conferences are a different dimension, with a different audience. The internet adds an additional layer to this experience of knowledge exchange.

2. Writing about new topics triggers learning

Researching topics for TEDxDelft and Lifehack has been an incredibly rewarding experience. I've learned to make a quick search for a topic that is completely new to me (say: sulfur concrete), analyze the available information, spot the caveats, and then try to explain it in plain English to a broader public. By developing this skill, I've expanded my writing skills beyond what I could have possibly learned in academia, yet my academic writing has significantly benefited from this.

3. Practice produces speed

I used to need an hour to write a CD review, it now takes me 20 minutes - because I have fine-tuned my approach. As for blogging, it depends on the post - but certainly my ability to form sentences has seen an increase in speed. And likewise, writing sentences for research papers now goes much faster.

4. Building connections helps growing a blog

It's the guest-blogging, the Twitter connections and the community of fellow academic bloggers that have helped me grow PhD Talk. If I'd have stayed in my own corner, fiercely typing away the hours, and not interacting with anyone, I don't think PhD Talk would have received the exposure it has today.

5. Building a community is difficult

But exposure is one thing - building a community with an engaged audience is another thing. I haven't discovered yet how to engage my audience as much as I would have liked. Posts don't get much comments. Things seem to be static, rather than dynamic. All discussion happens on Twitter, not on the platform of PhD Talk itself.

For sure, I'd love to keep on building this blog, and my own domain would be the first step. But I have to confess I prefer writing over tinkering with the layout and workings of the website itself. That change can still come, over time. Most likely, that e-book will come sooner, though.

By all means, stay tuned for more posts here at PhD Talk. If all goes well, I'll keep it up for yet another 3 years (and onwards).

What have you learned from blogging? What would you like to see featured at PhD Talk?

Writers' Lab: Improving narrative in multidisciplinary projects through blogging

As a starting point for today's post, I've chosen Maria Konnikova's excellent blog post on "Why grad schools should require students to blog".

Previously, we've looked at the benefit of blogging for your scholarly work, and how it can be valuable for every single academic. Moreover, we've discussed the possible reasons for blogging - there are many different paths you can take to blogging as an academic.

Earlier on PhD Talk, we've looked at how academic writing can make us better writers. Maria Konnikova shows us how popular writing can make us better academic writers, and how that can increase your chances for success in graduate school, or in her words:

And partway through another all-nighter (I was working under some tight deadlines), I had an epiphany: thank god I’ve spent the last few years blogging, writing a book, and doing freelance journalism. Otherwise, I’d be lost. Truly.

During that epiphany, she realized there is not much of a difference between on the one hand researching for an article for a magazine, bringing material together from different sources, and on the other hand writing about multidisciplinary research, reconciling two different fields of study and their own vocabulary.

As Konnikova explains how she came to an article that turned out to be a goldmine for her research, it is once more clear that it is not through sheer luck that she stumbled upon this piece, it is because blogging thought her to research widely. By the same token, it strengthens my belief that reading sparks creativity, and that grazing around in the literature, wandering off on undiscovered paths might lead us to unexpected goldmines. In Konnikova's words:

To me, as a blogger, cross-citation is standard practice. I have to do it every day when I research a new blog topic or look at the background for a new piece. It’ s natural to include anything that may potentially be helpful—and to put areas in dialogue even if they don’t normally cross over. I don’t feel compelled to stay within any arbitrary academic boundaries; I just use what seems most, well, useful.

She also proposes the following:

I’d go a step further: incentivize students to blog and to write for a popular audience on topics that go beyond their immediate area of interest. At Columbia, for instance, we can write a grant for one of our comprehensive exams. Why not let a series of published blog posts count as well?

Taking this idea one step further, we could recommend multidisciplinary research groups to write posts on a group blog, and practice writing in a style and language that is accessible for all different backgrounds involved in the project. We could invite groups to learn to speak eachother's language by sharpening their narrative into a common ground.

Writers' Lab: Healing through writing

Today, I have the honor to invite Bridgette Dembowski in the writers' lab to share her story on how writing can work as a healing tool, amongst others, for veterans. Bridgette G. Dembowski is the Director of Communications for Bare the Burden Project, a national non-profit agency that serves US military members and veterans recovering from trauma exposure and other invisible psychological wounds of war. Bare the Burden focuses on providing its online community with writing exercises, an anonymous forum for discussion of difficult topics, opportunities to engage in self-reflection, positive peer-to-peer-interaction, and personal growth and healing through the writing process. Mrs. Dembowski is also a contributing author to the edited book project, Diagnosing Folklore: Perspectives on Mental Health, Trauma, and Disability, edited by Trevor J. Blank and Andrea Kitta, scheduled for publication in 2015. Mrs. Dembowski holds a Master's Degree in Human Development and Family Sciences from Oklahoma State University and is currently studying Psychology at Kansas State University. She is married to Captain Matthew J. Dembowski, the Apache Troop Commander of the 4th Squadron, 4th Cavalry Regiment, under the 1st Armor Brigade Combat Team, 1st Infantry Division, U.S. Army. They have one child, Benjamin, who is a 2-year-old budding visual artist and wordsmith, and live in Manhattan, Kansas.

Ernest Hemingway once stated that writing one true declarative statement was all one needed to begin the writing process. Write one thing that is true. Start there. For many, writing is not only a form of communication or story telling, but a tool for self-discovery and healing. Writing in the form of correspondence as well as journaling has been shown to be beneficial for those suffering from loss, grief, traumatic exposure, and other invisible wounds.
The one true statement that Hemingway calls for may be a starting point for some; but in other cases, the one true statement is an achievement and a victory all its own.

As a mental health advocate and a senior member of a non-profit organization that serves military members and veterans, I see writing as an opportunity for healing and growth after victimization, experience, and/or exposure to trauma. Our organization, Bare the Burden, hosts a website that contains an online application. This application provides its users with an interactive and supportive group of peers, bound by their shared experiences of military life and exposure to traumatic situations (including: combat involvement, dangerous environmental exposure, witnessing disturbing images, and others). This site is a safe haven for users to talk to one another, and to write about their memories, experiences, and daily struggles. The focus of the site is to help trauma survivors grow and learn from their experiences. This is accomplished primarily through a guided process that includes writing exercises tailored to the individual user's particular traumatic experience, as well as peer-to-peer interaction and encouragement through written correspondence.

Writing is used as a way for trauma survivors to acknowledge what happened to them or in their presence. It is a way for them to tell their truth, to explore their memories, to examine the fragments of emotions, images, and jumbled sensory perceptions that often times accompany trauma exposure.

That one moment, that one initial post, when a trauma survivor tells their own truth to a community of similar others, peers who are waiting and willing to hear what that individual has to say about what happened to them, that is both terrifying and beautiful. That is the beginning of the process. The truth is exposed. The truth is known, and it can be explored through further directed writing exercises and through open communication between members within the community who may have had similar experiences.

This group-based approach to trauma recovery has been shown to improve the personal mental and physical health of individual group members. Community members give strength and courage to each other to continue on their individual paths to post-traumatic experience recovery and growth. The group is in turn strengthened and empowered in its mission to improve the lives of its members. Once the individual's story is told, the doors are opened. The individual learns that they do not have to suffer in silence. The user learns that talking about the event(s) of the past not only help themselves, but help others. The individual who takes the first step and writes, then becomes the individual who shares insights with others, encourages new members, and remains within the community of writers. Together, they become stronger and encourage one another towards recovery. They develop their own personal insights through their writings over time. Writing is a process, and that process of exploration, examination, and description is a powerful tool for acceptance and for growth post-trauma.

Although I am speaking of the usefulness of writing as a tool for military affiliated trauma survivors seeking relief from a painful past, much of what I am saying about writing, the action and the "doing" of writing, is applicable to really anyone, and most certainly to those navigating the stressful and often volatile world of higher-education.

To you readers who carry the weight of resentment, disappointment, guilt, unfair treatment, hopelessness, fear, or anger, I say this:
Write about it.
Write one thing that is true.
Let it out onto the paper.
No one has to see it.
Tell yourself your truth.
Write what is true, and go from there.
You have as much to gain from the experience of acknowledging your truth and exploring your thoughts and emotions regarding that truth, as any one else.

Writer's Lab: Six lessons we can learn from a family of writers

The Stephen King family is an exceptional group of novelists, in which writing seemingly turned into a family business.

While you could marvel in astonishment at the accomplishments of this family of authors, you might like to delve deeper - as I did - to read between the lines and see where their success might result from.

It's obvious from reading their accounts that the King family have their peculiarities, as well as an incredible work ethic.

But reading more deeply, we can distinguish six lessons the example of the King empire teaches us about writing.

Lesson 1: Read a lot
It's obvious from the very beginning of the account about the King family that they read a lot. The children would record audiobooks for Stephen King, and their library seems to be very impressive. You can't write without reading a lot - I've claimed earlier that reading sparks creativity, and their massive background must have been helpful for the Kings.

Lesson 2: Writing takes practice
As a teenager, Joe already wrote for two hours a day. Imagine how many hours of honing out his craft Joe already got in by the time he reached his twenties? Even though all beginning as an author is difficult, the many hours of practice and the search for your own voice all are something that -well- take time. You don't wake up one morning as a great writer - it's the result of deliberate practice.

Lesson 3: Don't be afraid of the big guys
Kelly Braffet married the son of Stephen King, and was very intimated at first. Only now that she published "Save Yourself", she turned to the Kings for advice - before than that, she tried to stay away from their influence. This example teaches us that there's nothing wrong to turn to the big fish to ask for advice - sometimes, they're more welcoming to help you out than you'd might expect.

Lesson 4. Don't be afraid of asking for advice from your partner
Tabitha's influence on King's work is much more than a traditional "stand by your man" approach. As a writer herself, she has given valuable advice to Stephen King. Sometimes it is said that you shouldn't take your work home. This example, however, shoes us that it might be the other way around: discuss openly with your partner what you're working on, especially if you are in the same field. Their expertise is available right there, and will be shared with a lot of love.

Lesson 5: Sit down to discuss others' work/writing
The King family would sit together and discuss other novels, and what could make the plots or characters better. Likewise, you could sit with fellow academic writers when you work through a paper to identify what could have done better in that paper; how to writing more clearly could have conveyed the message. Similarly, I like to take some of my "favorite" papers (i.e. clearly written) when I prepare a manuscript to focus on the precise elements that, in my opinion, make a piece of writing strong.

Lesson 6. Keep it light
The King family would play "the writing game", in which they'd think up scenarios about saving their hero of choice out of danger, and then the next family would be putting him in peril again. They'd also play "Ex Libris", in which they all try to write the best opening line for an existing book. Playing these games keeps their minds vivid, their creativity alive and -most of all- puts the fun into their craft. Never forget to add a drop of fun, joy and lightness to your work and writing - there's already more than enough mediocrity on this world, you might as well add a "zing" to what you do by staying playful.

Writers' Lab: Experimenting with Expertise

Today, I have the pleasure of inviting Dr. Scheg to share her views on the unique type of writing that is dissertation writing. Dr. Abigail Scheg is an Assistant Professor of English at Elizabeth City State University and an Adjunct Dissertation Chair for Northcentral University. She researches and publishes in the areas of composition, online pedagogy, and popular culture. She loves working with doctoral students and is dedicated to creating and participating in networks for doctoral student support. Follow her on Twitter @ag_scheg.  

As a doctoral student, I proclaimed a certain level of expertise in my subject area: online pedagogy and teacher preparation. I read, toiled, read, labored, read, wrote, and edited until I began to have dreams about Allen and Seaman and the No Significant Difference phenomenon. Since all of my degrees are in English-related fields, I felt fairly confident in my writing abilities as I drafted my actual dissertation chapters. I felt confident until I received the response from my Chair, who had obviously given this same speech a number of times,“The dissertation is a unique genre. Basically it's a new type of writing that you'll only use this once and then you can continue with your usual style.”

And just like that, everything that I knew seemed to slip away. If I couldn't even write it correctly, which I thought was my strong point, then did I really deserve to write it? Should I be working on a dissertation? Are people actually going to listen to me talk about online pedagogy?

The dissertation process is a unique juxtaposition of being a subject-matter expert and a neophyte. Jimmy Buffett's song, “If the Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me,” has the line, “I've had good days and bad days and going half mad days,” which, if I didn't know any better, would say that Jimmy wrote in the middle of the dissertation process. 

Some days spent reading journal articles will fit gloriously into the puzzle; a study will represent exactly the information you needed in chapter three. Other days will be spent staring at the same journal article for hours, unable to comprehend why one article was cited in another when they seem to have no ties whatsoever.

Now I find myself on the other side of the puzzle as a dissertation director. I strive to have a very open and honest dialogue with my doctoral students about the process of writing a dissertation. While the entire process can be isolating and frustrating, I always reach out to students that I haven't heard from and call them back towards the light. I find that students are usually very well-versed in their topics, but hesitant on the presentation of their documents or the appropriate length, tone, or amount of research in a finished chapter. 

Let me reiterate the advice from my Chair, a dissertation is an entirely unique writing process and provided that this is probably your first doctoral program, you're allowed to be relatively unfamiliar with nuances of this genre.  That is not to say that you should be entirely unfamiliar; read other people's dissertations. Learn about the styles that different universities use; look at the chapter breakdowns and try to recognize patterns. Make informed decisions about your writing based on the other dissertations that you have seen and then use your Chair as a sounding board.

My wonderful Chair helped me organize the information in my later chapters. I had the data, I had the analysis, but I couldn't figure out how to piece it together to fit the parameters of the chapter guidelines. He helped me to take the information and fit it into the puzzle.

One of the most important things that I learned about the dissertation process that made me want to get involved with doctoral students was this: Nobody knows what they're doing. Once a person reaches that stage in their education, there is a sense of confidence in their understanding of content materials, but until you have successfully completed a dissertation, you may not understand the genre. Accept your status as subject-matter expert and dissertation-writing neophyte and press on. Go, scholar, go.

 

Writers' Lab: Setting Up and Maintaining your Google Scholar Profile

As an academic, you might be totally focused on searching for articles in Scopus, and checking your h-index in Scopus as well - provided that your institution has a subscription.

However, many students and scholars these days use Google Scholar. You might be familiar with this search engine and you might have used it for a search when you were off your institution's network. You can improve your search with the these tips.

Besides being publicly available, Google Scholar has another advantage: you can set up your author profile.

And, if you haven't set up your profile - go there and do so immediately. Having an author profile is as important as having your articles showing up in a search on Google Scholar.

Setting up your Google Scholar profile is very easy. If you need a tutorial, go here.

This is what my profile looks like:



Here are a few elements that you need to keep in mind when setting up your Google Scholar profile:

• You need to use your institution's email address.
• Don't forget to add some keywords that summarize your field of research.
• Make your profile public - it's a great way of reaching out to follow researchers.

Keep in mind that you need to use an academic email address and make your profile public if you want to show up in search results.

An interesting feature of Google Scholar is that you have the possibility to add publications.
That conference paper that Scopus didn't pick up because it wasn't printed by a big publisher - add it to your Google Scholar profile.
Your research reports - add them to your Google Scholar profile!

If you keep a profile on ResearchGate, or you submit all your publications to the repository of your institution, Google Scholar will fetch this information and add these publications to your profile.

As you can add more documents to your Google Scholar profile, you might see a difference in their result for your h-index as compared to the "official" Scopus result.
Just keep in mind that Google Scholar, as useful as it is, is not the place to check you h-index.

Finally, as with every profile online, make sure you maintain your Google Scholar profile. If an article shows up twice in the list, merge the articles into one. Visit your profile every now and then to see if everything still looks as supposed to.
Typically, you can sit back and relax, as Google will automatically update your profile as your publications appear online.

Have you set up your Google Scholar profile yet?

Writers' Lab: How to write your Conclusions, Part II: Doctoral Dissertation

Last week, we discussed how to write the "Summary and Conclusions" section for a paper. We looked at what we don't want to see in this section in any paper - regardless of your excuse - and then we discussed how I go about writing this very section of a paper.

Today, we are looking at writing the final chapter of your dissertation, or at least, my 2 cents on that topic. We are assuming that you did some decent planning, so that you don't need to write your final chapter the night before your draft dissertation is due. I can't repeat it often enough: keep some buffer in your planning so that, whatever happens, you leave yourself the luxury of time to edit your work.

Before looking at the HOW of writing the final chapter of the dissertation, let's zoom into the GOALS for this chapter. Regardless of your field, you will have specific messages that you want your readers to remember. For my dissertation (engineering), my specific goals were the following - and elements of this can apply over the boundaries of disciplines:

• Give an overview of the main original contributions: I wanted to serve these up on a shiny tray for the committee and readers to show that where precisely my contributions are situated, within my research field. No need for unnecessary modesty, simply listing your contributions can be quite helpful to start a summary.
• Summarize what was said in the different chapters: My goal for the final chapter was to have an executive summary of the entire dissertation. I was shooting for about 10 pages, and ended up with 13 pages for my final chapter (book size, that is - not A4/letter). For every reader pressed for time or not so interested in my work, I wanted to have this chapter ready so that they can get a nice eagle view of the dissertation.
• Release the structure of the chapters: You might not agree with me on this point, but I wanted the summary to be rather thematic than by chapter. Therefore, I selected a number of main topic and summarized around these ideas. The overall sequence of these topics did follow the sequence of the chapters in my dissertation.
• Reaching out to practice: This goal might be typical for a more practice-oriented topic as mine, but I still think including a paragraph in which you reflect upon the practical implications of your results into the your field is very valuable. This paragraph can be detailed and ready-to-implement, such as the list of recommendations that I included for engineers assessing reinforced concrete slab bridges in shear, but it can also be as general as pointing towards a few ideas that can be further worked out by practitioners. Having a link to practice, by all accounts, seems to be valuable to me.
• Future work. As much as you might have done during your PhD and studies, you'll never have it all finished. As in, there will always be a number of open ends, questions that remain lingering in the sideline. That does not mean that your work isn't ready for a doctorate, that simply means another researcher might like to pick up from here, or you might like to assign these topics later on to a masters' student.

Given that we now have defined the elements that we want to include in the Conclusions section, it is now time to look at how we will be doing this. The key element here is reflection, reflection and then some more reflection.

• If someone were to read nothing but your conclusions chapter, what would you want them to remember from your work?
• What is your take-home message for your audience?

These are the questions to ask yourself, and to keep asking yourself while writing your final chapter.

As I explained last week, I write the "Summary and Conclusions" section of a paper by taking notes while proofreading the first draft. For the final chapter of my dissertation, I used a scaled-up version of this approach:

• I had used the "proofread, note, summarize" approach for the final section ("Conclusions") of every single chapter.
• I then went out to copy-paste all these summaries together into the final chapter.
• From that raw material, I started cooking up the main ideas for the overall summary.
• Then, I added the sections with the practical implications and the future research.
• Finally, I reread it, asking myself if this is really the very core of my work or not.

Using this approach, I could not only write my final chapter very quickly (about 2 to 3 days of work for the first version), but I also kept reminding myself frequently of staying on course, staying close to the core of my work and trying to make the final chapter the executive summary of the entire dissertation.

How did you write your final dissertation chapter, or how are you planning to do this? Is your approach similar, or completely different? Share your experience in the comments section!

Writers' Lab: How to write your Conclusions, Part I: Journal or Conference Paper

If you are the type of linear writer like me, you will typically start your paper from the abstract, then the "Introduction", and on and on - all the way down to the "Summary and Conclusions."

When you start proofreading your entire opus, you might find that you didn't quite keep the same red thread throughout your work that started at the "Introduction" section. You might have trailed off, adding something along the way that seemed relevant when you were writing that section. In the very worst case, you'll end up with a "Summary and Conclusions" section that is completely running in the wild.

Now, what do we not want in a "Summary and Conclusions" section? If you've been reading a number of papers for your literature review, I'm sure you might have come across a few papers where the final sections left you puzzled. Here are the typical ingredients of a poor "Summary and Conclusions" section:

• Contains new ideas: The final sections happily comes to serve you up with an unexpected dessert. No background, no reference to the experiments, no analysis - just an out-of-the-blue statement that leaves you startled.
• Contains nothing beyond the current state-of-the-art: If you are pressed for time and want to quickly get a grasp of a paper, you will typically browse through the abstract, then glance over the figures, and then read the "Summary and Conclusions." If this section is filled up with general statements of things we all know already, then you will start to wonder what original work this paper contains - and toss it to the side.
• Only sums up one part of the paper: If you read a "Summary", you expect a quick recap of all parts of the paper. Some authors (presumably pressed for word count or paper length) come in wham-bam with a list of their conclusions - without the soft bed of a few sentences that repeat the problem, literature review results and methods.
• Is not a self-sufficient unit: Take a summary out of a paper, without knowing the contents of a paper, and the paragraph(s) still need to be a logical unit that requires no further reading of the paper to understand the "Summary and Conclusions."

So now that we got these typical mistakes highlighted, I would like to share with you how I write my "Summary and Conclusions" section. Admittedly, I learned it the hard way, by getting a paper returned and the "Summary and Conclusions" part torn to pieces by the gentle reviewers. To repair the damage done, I used a strategy that I have been implementing ever since.

The approach that I will discuss is mostly suitable for linear writers. If you prefer to nibble and scribble at different subheadings at more random points in time, you might as well find this approach useful - it will help you get a grasp of the entire paper again and focus on the main points to wrap up your writing.

As I said, I typically start by writing my outline, then filling in what I already have from reports or earlier work, and then start to rework the sentences to actually write the paragraphs. The only thing that I never do is the following:

I never write my "Summary and Conclusions" section before a first round of proofreading.

I simply leave it blank - a completely blank section. Instead of finishing up my very first draft -as good as that might feel- I leave it open.
Then, I use the following sequence:

• I sit down to proofread my very first version.
• While proofreading, I take notes of the main points of every subchapter.
• Once I reach the end of the paper, I reread these notes.
• I use these notes to write the "Summary and Conclusions" sections.

Let's quickly look back at the list-of-shame for a "Summary and Conclusions" section, and link that to this strategy:

• No new ideas: it is virtually impossible to take notes of the main points and use these as a guidance and still manage to slip in a new idea.
• No general truths: Noting down your contributions helps you to keep your focus on your own work, and helps you stay clear of the random chatter.
• You cover all the parts: If you take notes of the main ideas of every subchapter, you'll be able to cover all the contents of the paper.
• Self-sufficient unit: Make sure you proofread your "Summary and Conclusions" to see if you wrote it as a stand-alone paragraph. Don't reference to elements of the paper, just keep it sharp and shine a light on the major elements of the paper.

How do you write your conclusions section? Do you agree with my approach?

On the road to the defense, part II

Right after the defense, with my husband, paranymphs, full committee and the Beadle

I'm writing the second half of my experiences in the final year of the PhD towards the defense here in hindsight, as I defended successfully on June 14th 2013 and received my PhD degree the very same day.

Previously, I described what happened between finishing my draft dissertation in November 2012 and sending copies out to the committee members in February 2013. In this post, I will continue where I left off in February 2013, and describe those messy final months of working on a doctoral dissertation.

9. Get the comments from the committee members
Most of my committee members preferred in-person meetings. Luckily, most of my committee members are based in Delft or often in Delft for meetings, so that I only had one long train ride to Germany for a meeting. During the meetings, the committee members gave me their input in many different ways. Some preferred my talking them through the dissertation, some interrogated me on topics more related to their field that I implemented into my work, some focused more on the layout and writing style - every reviewer seemed to have his own style of assessing my work.

10. Implement the comments from the committee members
With my piles of notes from these meetings, as well as the pages of comments from the final committee member in London with whom I didn't meet in person, I set off to make some changes to my dissertation. It took me about 6 weeks of full-time work to implement all the comments and respond to all the questions in a way that I felt was satisfactorily. With some committee members I met several times to improve large chunks of my dissertation, or I e-mailed back and forth with them. At first I was surprised as I thought "the work was done", but then I understood how valuable a fresh look at my work can be, not only for my dissertation, but also for my further publications (ie. the papers that I need to write from my dissertation)

11. Iterate if necessary
I felt at times intimidated by the knowledge of some of my committee members, so I felt afraid to ask for their help and input at first, and spent some time studying topics where I felt I was still lagging behind. But then it clicked, and I understood that if they take the time and effort to give some thorough remarks on my work, that they actually show me that they want to help me improving my work. So I went back and forth, learned more things, saw a few more connections in my work and genuinely made a better (yet almost 100 pages bigger) dissertation.

12. Get the approval from the committee members
I remember how my heart jumped up when the final committee member strolled into my office with his "signature". The committee members all need to sign two documents for the Beadle: the first one confirming their availability on the day of the defense and the second one their approval. One of my committee members approved under the condition of making corrections to the dissertation, which then required a written letter from my promotor and additional approval to keep the whole (bureaucratic) process rolling.

13. Revisit with promotor and copromotor
After editing my dissertation, I revisited the work again with my promotor and copromotor, and we needed to tighten my set of propositions (ie. a leaflet with 10 propositions additional to the dissertation that shows your scholarly insight). With a conference in Israel in between, I felt that time was ticking - and that those 4,5 months of preparation that seemed like an eternity where flying by.

14. Send to the printer
With all approval from the full committee, I sent everything to the printer. In the final weeks of working on the edited version of my dissertation, I spent some time in layout-hell, trying to make sure everything fit within the margins (I needed to revamp an entire Annex for that purpose), and making sure all tables are on portrait pages (I used a lot of landscape tables to hold all my data). I sent a draft to the printer before the critical date, and was reminded as well of the fact that all chapters should start at a right page. Lots of tinkering before sending it all off to the printer, as you can imagine. In the meantime, I had a designer at the printer's office developing my cover and invitations - which saved me time for sure, but needed my attention and input as well.

15. Check the print proof
I got my print proof even earlier than the schedule of the printer indicated, and I was very happy to hold the very first physical, book-like copy of my dissertation. I didn't really know how to check the proof: reading from A to Z felt pointless to me, so I ended up going over every page and checking if all looked right - and I did find quite a number of things that did not look as I wanted (yet looked exactly the same as the PDF I delivered to the printer).

16. The final order and delivery
I made more edits, then struggled with the PDF conversion for a few hours. The print-proof arrived right before the start of a conference in Rotterdam, so for the very first time (and equally last time) in my PhD studies, I had to cut back on some sleep to get through the final edits and make it in time to deliver everything to the printer. On the 17th of May, I received a call from the goods delivery point of our faculty that there were "some boxes" for me - and so started my journey to drag my 250 copies of my dissertation into my office...

17. Spread the word
I took the stack of business cards that I had amassed from previous conferences, and started mailing out copies to interested contacts (or at least, contacts that I thought would be interested). I also had two more conferences, 1 in Japan and 1 in Pittsburgh. I took an entire carry-on bag filled with copies of my dissertation, and distributed these during the conferences. By the time of my defense I had about half of all copies distributed.

18. Prepare for the defense
I didn't really know how to prepare for my defense, and I'll write a post about it specifically in the future, but essentially I didn't have much time for preparing my defense all in all. Certainly, I had to prepare my "lekenpraatje", and I reread my dissertation once more, but preparing for possible questions was a little more vague. I summarized my dissertation in a sentence per page, as suggested by Phillips and Pugh, I went over my meeting notes again, and I tried fishing for information from my committee members (unsuccessfully).

19. Defend
Less than a week after landing back onto European soil after my trip around the world to Japan and the US, I got over my jetlag (mostly) and defended my dissertation. I was nervous at first, but after the first question, I felt my confidence returning to me, and I sort of enjoyed showing my work to the committee members.

20. Celebrate!
After the actual defense and receiving my degree, I organized a reception in the TU Delft Aula building, and in the evening a dinner in a restaurant in Delft (plus some drinks afterwards in a bar). Even though I was exhausted from the stressful day, I was feeling uplifted and enjoyed celebrating my fresh degree very much (well, who wouldn't?).

How different are the preparations at TU Delft and my take on them from your institution? Please let me know in the comments!

Writers' Lab: A drastic revision strategy for improving your paper's story and organization

Today, I once more have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry student, she classifies her research as "applied ecological modelling". 

Within her Ph.D. she is investigating various methods for quantifying patterns in waterfowl populations over space in time. 
Alongside her research, she continually searches for ways to improve her writing, productivity, and R programming skills, and has found social media to be instrumental in this regard. You can read more about Nicole on her blog or Twitter. 

It seems like revising a piece of writing should be easy. You’ve completed the hard part in actually writing a draft, so it should be simple to fix the grammar and simply be done with it. However, depending on how long it took to write your paper and how much your thinking changed over that duration, you may find some hidden challenges.

If your vision, objectives, or "pitch" differed during the outlining or drafting stages from where it ended up, you’ll have a somewhat disjointed piece of work or section of work. I find that this happens most often for introduction sections. For example, it might not set up your paper’s objectives correctly, or perhaps it provides all of the details but not in an easy-to-follow story.

I recently adopted a new strategy, and now I recommend it to everyone I know. It’s based on chapter 3 of a book by Michael Jay Katz called From Research to Manuscript: A Guide to Scientific Writing. Any time I read a disjointed section of a paper, I remind people about this strategy. I also use it myself for all sections of a manuscript, from methods, to results, to discussion and introduction (keep in mind I’m in the sciences, but this strategy should be relevant for all types of papers, essays, and other writing).

The general procedure is somewhat drastic. It involves start from scratch – yes, a blank page! – once you have already written a draft. It can be intimidating and even discouraging to start from a blank page after spending the time to write a draft, but I guarantee it will lead to a better organized paper.

Steps: Within this new blank document, identify the main idea of each of your paragraphs and write it in sentence form. Ensure that these main sentences tell a story before you add any other detail. Fill in sentences one at a time from your rough draft to the correct paragraph in your new document in a coherent order. Edit each sentence for grammar and wordiness, but keep it in bullet point form. Once you have copied over all sentences and edited for coherence, you can change the sentences to paragraph form instead of point form. Ensure that each sentence flows into the next. Your “main idea” sentences become the topic sentences of each of your paragraphs. Katz’s book leads the reader through a detailed example of what this process looks like, and it’s quite illuminating.

Advantages: Starting from a blank page frees your thinking from the confines of your rough draft. Starting with main message of each paragraph ensures that your work has a flow and tells a story from start to finish. Reworking each sentence individually focuses your energy instead of breezing over individual sentences’ awkwardness or wordiness as can happen when reading a paper as a whole.

Disadvantages: It can be time consuming because you’re starting over. However, keep in mind that much of the work in your rough draft will be kept in this draft – it’s just moved around or reworked.

Let Eva or me know if you’ve tried this method or if you use another strategy for drastic revisions.

Writer's Lab: Constructing effective outlines using assertive language

Today, I have the pleasure of hosting Nicole K.S. Barker in the writers' lab. Nicole is a Ph.D. student at Laval University in Québec, Canada, working with Ducks Unlimited Canada and the Boreal Avian Modelling Project. While technically a Forestry student, she classifies her research as "applied ecological modelling". 

Within her Ph.D. she is investigating various methods for quantifying patterns in waterfowl populations over space in time. 
Alongside her research, she continually searches for ways to improve her writing, productivity, and R programming skills, and has found social media to be instrumental in this regard. You can read more about Nicole on her blog or Twitter. 

Most writers start with an outline. And if they don’t, they should.

Outlines help you think through your topic. They help you identify the thread of your story - the message you’ll carry through from start to finish. Nothing is more frustrating than writing a full introduction to your paper only to discover that it doesn’t mesh well with your results or discussion once you get to those sections. As you fill in the finer details of your outline, you can revise the order of sentences (or even paragraphs) more fluidly than if you were writing in paragraph format.

I’ve been using outlines to guide my writing since the beginning of my academic studies, and I've used basically the same format the whole time. However, I recently revised my outline format following a tip from one of my writing group members. I’ve already found it useful, so I wanted to share it.

Étienne suggests that instead of using an outline to simply describe the content of each paragraph, we should use assertive statements. That is, summarize the main message or conclusion of each paragraph in one sentence or phrase. In this way, the story of the paper is apparent within the outline before we’ve even started writing the full content.

These outlines are harder to write, because they require you to really think through what you are trying to say. (You might find that this style works best for a second outline once you’ve got the very rough ideas down.) However, the assertive outline makes it easier to identify problems with flow between paragraphs, or areas where your story becomes inconsistent. Because the ideas are still in outline format, it’s easy to rearrange or adjust as necessary.

Give it a try and let Eva or me know how it went for you.

As an example, the introduction and discussion from a hypothetical paper about visualizing music with paint as a means to understand hearing impairment.

Old

Introduction:

• Broad opening statement – hearing impairment
• Previous research 1 – cochlear implants
• Previous research 2 – visualizing sound
• Our study and objectives – effect of music on paint

Discussion

• Summary of results
• Relation to previous research – other attempts to visualize sound
• Relation to previous research – other attempts to understand cochlear implants
• Conclusions and implications for hearing impairment

New

Introduction:

• XXX number of people experiencing hearing impairment in one form or another
• Cochlear implants have substantially improved hearing in XXX people since 19XX
• In an effort to understand effects of cochlear implants, researchers have attempted to visualize sound using a variety of methods.
• We applied a novel technique to visually represent sound using paint and multiple styles of music.

Discussion

• We found that different musical styles showed distinct patterns in the corresponding paint splatters.
• Our research corroborates previous results that visual representations of sound display meaningful differences.
• The differences between paint splatters from Mozart and those from Metallica help explain why those with cochlear implants prefer music with a strong beat.
• Our results provide a novel means to make sound relatable for those with hearing impairments.

Writers' Lab: A Quick Tip for Proofreading

When I was proofreading my dissertation, I felt as if I could constantly fall asleep (every now and then, I literally feel asleep above my print). I experienced the editing and proofreading stages, especially towards the end, as incredibly tedious and boring.

No coffee (even though by that time I was more or less caffeine-free), loud music or other stimulants seemed to help me get through this terrible stage of going over the same sentences for the umptieth time.
I got distracted the entire time, fiddling around with my smartphone, staring out of the window, catching up with colleagues, taking on other tasks - you name it, anything to avoid the dreaded proofreading stage was a reason for escape.

And then I remembered how I used to study courses that had a lot of text in them. Most courses forced me to sit down and take notes, work my way through exercises and basically needed me to sit behind my desk.

But for courses with a lot of text, I used a different strategy. And I discovered that this strategy worked very well for proofreading my thesis as well, and for adding those little edits here and there in the final stages.

Here is what I did:

I walked up and down while holding the text in my hands (and reading it).

Getting some movement helped to get my concentration back together, and it distracted me from wanting to do any other activity that might distract me. While walking around, I didn't feel like picking up my smartphone, for example. I felt more energized, focused and with adding this little bit of activity, I also felt less like a constantly-sitting-lazy-bag.

If you struggle to stay awake to study a text-heavy course, or you need to proofread your dissertation for the twentieth time, then consider taking your printed copy for a walk up and down the hallway. Your concentration might thank you!

Have you tried pacing up and down while reading/studying.proofreading/editing? How is your experience?

Writers' Lab: The final months of the dissertation

"The final months of a PhD are incredibly messy," says James Clewett - and I couldn't agree more.
Unless you are doing your PhD in your home country and will roll into a faculty position naturally at your institution (there are rumors some people still get that opportunity), you will be searching for a job, moving out of your place, boxing up your stuff again and arranging long-distance moving.

I wasn't quite expecting it all to be so messy, but in between getting the thesis to the printer, filling out HR forms for my next job, attending 7 conferences to show the world the results of my research, finding babysits for my cat, ending all insurance and utilities contracts I had in the Netherlands and buying plane tickets, I reached a moment where I felt massive overwhelm.

The only piece of advice that I have to offer you, and what saved my sanity through this, is to just keep your head clear, plan realistically, allow enough time for sleep and recovery and just try to do your best without straining yourself out of bounds.

If you need to move away after your PhD and find another job, just be prepared for a messy period of time. It seems to be part of the rite of passage.

You can watch the interview with James Clewett below - I'm so grateful he spoke up about the messiness of the final months of the dissertation.

Writers' Lab: How much time does it take to write a dissertation?

As I've been keeping track of how I spend my time in ManicTime, I can now assess how much time writing my dissertation took me, and how much time rewriting and implementing comments took me.

When I finished my first draft, I thought the biggest chunk of work was done.

So. Wrong.

I spent a total of a little over 600 hours on my dissertation, over a time period from March 2012 to May 2013.

The following list shows you how my time budget breaks down:

Writing the first draft: 205 hours
Rewriting the first draft for approval by promotor and copromotor: 123 hours
Working on the comments of my committee: 255 hours
Final preparations on layout to get it ready for printing and publishing: 30 hours

As you can see: writing the first draft is only 1/3 of all the work. There's much more to be done afterwards...

If we break it down into time, the chronology of my dissertation looked like this:


Writing the first draft: March 2012 - November 2012

I delivered my first draft on November 14th. Most of my first 4 chapters as well as my 7th chapter were written in weekends and on the evenings, as I couldn't find the peace and calm for writing during the office hours, where regular research and teaching activities were in full swing. Over summer, I wrote a set of conference papers for the conferences that I was planning to attend in 2013, and in September and October I carried out the research for chapters 5 and 6.

Rewriting the first draft for approval by promotor and copromotor: early December 2012 - end of January 2013

As so many PhD students, I had to try rather hard to convince my busy supervisors to sit down, read the draft and provide me with their comments. As I had been working on my theory in silence, and not discussed it until I delivered the first draft, it took a number of meetings and significant rewriting of my chapter 5 to actually get my message across. In fact, this chunk of research was something I hadn't shown in a presentation yet, nor written down in a paper, so it naturally took me more time t crystallize my message.

Working on the comments of my committee: March 2013- mid April 2013

That was one hell of a busy time! The committee members get maximum 3 weeks for their feedback, I calculated a month, but the time it takes to pin a meeting with everybody added another 2 weeks. Working through the comments also added about 100 pages to the final document (also a number of extra Annexes).

Final preparations on layout to get it ready for printing and publishing: first half of May 2013

I found it very hard to stop proofreading, and to just let it go and accept that it can't be perfect. The final preparations were mostly related to fishing for typos, and getting my layout ready for the printer. Don't ask me about putting landscape tables on a portrait page - I spent three full days fretting away at that, and I still have a Table of Doom in my final dissertation.

How much time did you spend on rewriting as compared to writing? Do my results correspond to yours, or was your first draft an immediate hit?

Writers' Lab: Turning passive sentences into the active voice

Today, Ahmad Bilal shares a practical way on how to reduce your use of the passive voice. Ahmad is a civil engineer by profession from Pakistan, currently residing in Sweden. He received his bachelors in 2002 from NUST Pakistan and MS from Lund University, Sweden. His work experience revolves around structural design of buildings, tower foundations and design management. After about eight years of working experience, he felt the need to narrow his focus and selected Water Resources Engineering for his master's studies. One of the reasons to jump into water resources is his feeling that water related problems will the biggest challenge in the near future and that there are not enough experts available considering the magnitude of problems. His near future aims are to pursue a research related career or finding a suitable PhD position.
His life is a never-ending battle of "finding balance" and feeling guilty about what he is not doing at the moment. Besides struggling to look like engineer I also love traveling, enjoying nature, gardening and spending time with family. He writes at the following two blogs, about Water Resources and his previous experience .

Improved writing skills are one of the good things I have learned besides gaining professional knowledge during my masters. One writing mistake that I and other students often make, was excessive use of passive voice in our assignments. The use of passive voice is grammatically correct, but its overuse can make writing more prolix, mystifying and less appealing. A writer should use the passive voice when the object is to be given more importance than the subject.

One automotive way to check your use of passive voice in your sentences is to let your Microsoft Word check your writing. You can set your MS Word to always check for passive voice. The following instructions are based on MS Word 2010.

Consider the following sample paragraph, which heavily relies on the use of passive voice.

“Water resources are a lifeline to the human population and are being used for various competent purposes besides just drinking. With the advancement of technology, much artificial development has been carried out on natural water bodies to control and use water more efficiently. However, this has introduced mankind with some previously unknown and unforeseen problems. Sedimentation of dams is such a problem as it causes storage capacity of dam reservoirs being continuously reduced. “

If you have set MS Word to check for passive voice, it will automatically underline with a green line the parts of your text using passive voice. The procedure is simple, and consists of the following steps:
1. Click on ‘File’ in the menu bar
2. Click on ‘Options’, the penultimate choice from the file menu. A new window ‘Word Options’ will open.
3. On the left column go to ‘Proofing’
4. In writing style, from the dropdown menu, select ‘Grammar and Style’ and click on 'settings'. A new window ‘Grammar Settings’ will be opened.
5. Under ‘Style’ make sure that ‘Passive sentences’ is checked.
6. Click OK and from the ‘Word Option’ window, click ‘Recheck Document’.
Now when you will go back to your document, you will notice that sentences with passive voices are underlined in green.

Below is my version of rewriting the example paragraph. As compared to the previous option, the readability and ease of understanding the message for the reader have increased.

“Water resources are a lifeline to the human population. We use them for various purposes besides just drinking. In order to control and use water more efficiently, we have created many artificial control and diversion structures by making use of the advancement of technology. However, this has introduced us with some previously unknown and unforeseen problems. Sedimentation of dams is such a problem as it continuously reduces the storage capacity of dam reservoirs.”

Writer's Lab: How to stay motivated when writing an entire dissertation

That very beginning of writing your dissertation - chapter 1, the introduction - and then nothing but the flashing cursor in your writing software... This situation is probably the beginning of 99% of all dissertations.

The end is also quite the same for most of us: compiling a list of notations, adding the references if you haven't used an automatic importing system, and compiling the table of contents.

What happens in between those moments can be a bit messier. You might just sit down and write it all out, or you might come across gaps in your work and spend a few more weeks to figure things out.

Even though you might be able to write your dissertation quickly, chances are still that you will hit a rough patch at some point in the process. If you want to stay motivated when working on such a large project, here are 7 ideas to try out when you need to pick up your motivation again.

1. Reread an important paper

If you want to get your inspiration flowing again, then try to remember which work inspired you in the first place. When you are stuck somewhere, reread an important paper that was essential to your work. Or read a new publication in your field. Remember how we discussed earlier how reading sparks creativity?

2. Edit a previous chapter

Do some work that doesn't require much of your hard thinking deep working capacities, but that needs to be done to move forward. You can for example edit a chapter that you wrote earlier, and wait until your bad mood drifts away.

3. Think about your propositions

If you need to defend both your dissertation and 10 propositions as in the Netherlands, you might like to take your thoughts and worries away from your dissertation and look for good citations or ideas to use for your propositions.

4. Take some time off

You know yourself best - when you need a break, take some time to recharge and refuel. That doesn't need to be an entire holiday, but you can simply take an evening off and indulge in some things you love, or you can take a weekend to yourself and try to watch some inspiring documentaries or read some thought-provoking books.

5. Have a discussion with your supervisor

If you're really stuck and you are doubting the quality of your work, then don't suffer in silence. Speak up and ask for a meeting with your supervisor to discuss the difficulties that you are facing.

6. Don't stress over it

Friction and creative blocks are inherent parts of the entire process of creating something - and a 100k word thesis is certainly "something". So be prepared: you will run into some creative blocks, but that is just fine! That does not mean that something is wrong with you as a PhD candidate.

7. Set boundaries

At incredibly busy times in the lab and with my funding agency, I've ran on an 8am to 10pm schedule to get all the measurements done and all the simulations run. For writing, that just doesn't work (or at least not, to write an entire thesis). Set office hours for yourself, even if you work as a part time PhD. Know when you can work on your dissertation, and make a realistic planning of what you can achieve.

How did you get from the flickering cursor to compiling your table of contents? What challenges did you face along the way, and how did you resolve them?

Writers' Lab: A Quick Hack to Writing with Less Disturbances

Do you recognize yourself in the following description?

You are trying very hard to write a paragraph, and just got into the flow of writing. But then you need to add a table or figure, and you need to start switching between programs. By switching and multitasking, you feel like you lost your momentum again, and you end up slacking around for another 20 minutes, before hitting the keyboard again.

This problem often arises when two programs are both equally important for your work, a situation that can occur when you start writing about results that you have stored in spreadsheets.

You will need to go back and forth between your spreadsheet and your writing, continuously. And this continuous switching might slow you down. In fact, this continuous switching might make you lose your train of thought. You can get tempted to click that internet icon on your task bar and start reading the news or hanging out on social media platforms.

I made huge progress when I applied this super-simple easy trick:

Use two screens

No, seriously, adding a second monitor to my desktop has been one of the best productivity hacks I applied over the course of the past year.

Suddenly, I could place a spreadsheet next to my text document and start discussing my results while looking at the additional screen, showing me the spreadsheet.

For large calculations, I can now easily have two spreadsheets open next to eachother and see if I haven't copy-pasted the wrong column from one sheet into the other (something that has happened to me too often).

When I'm planning out my next week, I have my planning document in the left screen, my Google Calendar in the right screen and my planning on my table.

For me, having two documents available on two screens has been such a lifesaver. Before adding the second screen, I didn't even realize how much friction occurred in my work simply from changing between programs.

Do you use an additional monitor? Do you recognize the benefits I described?

Writers' Lab: Five Ways of Getting in the Zone

Getting started with writing is sometimes the hardest part to writing. Once we get into the zone, or reach our state of flow, the words start forming sentences in our minds and writing can feel effortless.

But too often we spend the entire day nibbling away at a paragraph here, an introduction sentence there and then a bit of polishing the figures. While I think editing and improving figures are vital elements to writing, I also think it is necessary to get to that deeper level of concentration when you need to write large blocks of text.

In my approach of writing a paper (in two days for a conference paper), I need to get into this mode of pouring sentences onto the screen when I reach the second phase of my approach: the constant writing with as little distractions as possible.

Whenever I need to get deep into my writing zone (a skill that I am using now as I type this post as well), I use the following tricks to get the writing juices flowing:

1. Clear goal

An important step towards getting your paragraph(s) written, is getting your thoughts together and knowing what precisely you want to cover in said paragraph(s). Have your keywords clear and sharp in your mind, and all necessary information ready, so that you can write constantly without getting disturbed and needing to wander in your thoughts to figure out what you actually where going to write about.

2. Mark and Go

Once you have your goal clear, you can start writing. There will always be references that you might need to look up, or figures that need to be added. Don't spend your time on these while you have your words flowing onto the screen, as this might break the inertia that you have built up. Instead, add comments, mark in yellow what you need to verify and refer to figure XXX (change this to the figure number once you have all the figures drawn and in the document).

3. Quiet environment

If disturbances cause you to lose your concentration, make sure you can write in a quiet environment. I've written vast amounts of my thesis during the evening hours at home, and on Sundays. Similarly, you might like to use headphones or earplugs if you really want to block out noise.

4. Freewriting

If you can't seem to get started on putting any sentence at all together, freewriting might be an option. 750 words is a great tool to pour out ideas as an unstructured mess of words that no one will ever look at. Simply write down what is on your mind (your research, any issues in Life, or why you find it hard to get started on writing), and before you realize you will have written your 750 words.

5. Don't start from the beginning

When the stress of writing the great opening sentence weighs on your shoulders, simply avoid the introduction and start drafting the paragraphs that feel like a safe ground for you - typically the experiments and analysis that you have spent most time working on. Once you have reached your state of flow, you can -if necessary- attack the introduction section.

What helps you in getting started on writing and having the words flow freely onto your screen?

Writing and Cravings

Guilty as charged!

When you are spending long hours behind your computer screen to write your dissertation or your next paper, chances are high that you start to get those cravings to snack on something.

Sugary and fatty snacks can wreak havoc on your energy levels and your overall health and well-being.

But what should you do about those cravings you get while writing? I mean, you really get hungry and everything.

The problem itself are not the cravings. They are a sign you've already passed a threshold. You are already so hungry that you need a quick fix.

To avoid this problem, you can do the following:

1. Take regular breaks

When your body is so hungry and exhausted that it starts begging for a quick shot of sugar, it typically means you have been working incessantly for the past few hours.

Schedule regular five minute breaks throughout your days - and I mean: real breaks, surfing the internet does not count! Get up from your chair, gaze out of the window, savor a cup of tea, do some stretches - you get the picture.

2. Honor your lunch

Processed carbs, like pasta and bread result in a peak in your blood sugar levels, then a crash.
You might think of lunch as a quick run to the food court. Even worse, you might just shove down whatever while you keep on working.

Try having a balanced lunch instead: lean protein, complex carbs and healthy fat. Chances are very high you'll avoid that dip in the afternoon and won't be craving for a sugary treat to bump your energy up again (and then crash again).

3. Track your cravings

Do you have a fixed time of the day when you get a craving? Somewhere around 3pm for example? Start tracking when your cravings occurs (just jot down a note in Evernote, for example), and analyze your cravings after tracking these for some time.

If your cravings happen at a fixed time during the day, have a break 30 minutes earlier and eat a fruit or a yoghurt in peace. Craving tackled!

4. Have alternatives ready

So if all else fails, and you still have the urge to shove something into your mouth while writing, then make sure you have snacks available in your office - healthy snacks. At least you don't need a run on the vending machine then. Good snacks for during writing are fruits (although you might end up spilling juice over your keyboard), dried fruits and nuts.

Do you get major cravings when writing for a long time? Do you take a break, or do you stuff something into your mouth?