I managed to write my dissertation in almost exactly two years. I finished my research year in May of 2023 and found myself staring down the barrel of an empty Google Drive that was, supposedly, to eventually hold a dissertation.
For me, in May of 2023, two years of writing felt like a death sentence. So I decided to shoot for a year and a half, instead. (Those six months somehow felt less death sentence-y.)
In this post, I am going to outline what worked for me, and I will also link to my Notion templates at the end.
Note that I am in the humanities, in a field that is on the longer side even for a PhD. My technique will work for anyone who needs to finish a long-form piece of writing, though.
My system addressed my BIG fear re: getting the dissertation done: Will I be writing this forever?
It also addressed one of my other anxious quirks of oscillating between not looking at a project and then not being able to stop looking at the project. I can easily slide into avoidant procrastination or anxious hyper-focus, both of which eventually result in paralysis and/or burnout and no finished project.*
*I am a big proponent of working WITH hyper-focus, if that’s something your brain does. Just make sure it’s structured so that you get enough to eat and sleep and that it’s not driven solely by sheer panic. A little anxiety sometimes, good. A lot anxiety all the time, bad.
Procrastination and Slow Writing
My Very Slow Writing Speed has haunted me ever since high school, particularly the ACT and SAT essay sections, which caused an incredible amount of angst for someone who could (and can) finish the entire Harry Potter series in under ten days. Sadly, my gifts in speed-reading are the direct inverse of my ability to write quickly, and while I zoomed through standardized test reading sections, I repeatedly found myself struggling to finish the most basic of written essays within any decent amount of time. The same thing followed me through higher education: I can speed through most kinds of reading, but when it comes to taking in, digesting, and coming up with my own ideas I am very, very slow.
Faced with my nonexistent dissertation, I had to wrangle two coexisting facts: I write very, very slowly, and it takes me a HUGE amount of mental energy to produce smart words. And also, I was rapidly running out of steam and could NOT take all the time in the world.
1. Find out how long your dissertation needs to be
The first thing I did was to look at average dissertation lengths in my field. These came out to approximately 160-200 pages.
I then looked at how many chapters I would be expected to produce. The average in my field is three, plus an introduction and a conclusion. I decided to start with a round 10,000 goal words per chapter, plus an 8,000 word introduction and 6,000 word conclusion. That comes out to about 181 pages.
I wanted to finish my draft within 18 months, and that had to include editing time. So I decided I’d give myself a year to finish my body chapters. That was an easy calculation of about four months per chapter. I started writing in May of 2023, and planned to have a first chapter draft by August.
Here’s a screencap of the Notion template I put together to track my progress (I edited the chapter 3 dates after the fact, which is why it says 7 months):
Action Step for you: Calculate how long the finished project needs to be. Break it down into sections. Give yourself an estimated timeline for each section.
After looking at the big picture, I got nitty-gritty. How many words can I produce in one day? I landed on 250 as a comfortable, achievable writing rate. I can write 250 words per day. That’s barely a page. No problem, right? If I write 250 words per day for 4 days per week, that’s 1000 words per week. 1000 words per week for 10 weeks gets me to 10,000 words. That’s with what felt like a not-terrible daily goal, plus an extra (week)day built in for if I didn’t hit my 1000 mark.
I made a different template to track my daily progress. I used the “relations” function to connect it to my “chapters” database.
As you will see, there were many days where I exceeded my 250 goal, and a few where I didn’t even get close.
Action Step for you: How much can you comfortably do in a day? Give yourself a REALISTIC daily/weekly writing goal. How long will it take you to reach your section goals? Adjust your section goals to be a REALISTIC reflection of your daily/weekly writing rate.
2. Schedule your time, and expect setbacks
The way I’d structured my writing time is that I was allowed to STOP WORKING once I’d hit my word count. Some days I could barely hit 100 words, and that was ok. If I felt my brain going night-night I could stop, knowing that I had an extra day built in. I also knew that usually I could do an extra 50 or 100 without trying on some other day of the week.
I ended up going over my projected finish date because I vastly underestimated the amount of time it would take to put together and teach my stand-alone course in spring of 2024. I am glad I had the opportunity to design and teach my own course, but oof. No dissertation happened for those four months. Shoutout to my kind students who totally assumed I was writing when they popped in for office hours. I was probably on Instagram.
The second thing is that I also underestimated the amount of revision my raw drafts would take. I had built in several months of revision time, but it took me much longer to wrestle what I was thinking into a shape that makes sense.
Action Step for you: Schedule in a LOT of time for revision, holidays, and breaks (planned and unplanned).
3. Write first, edit later
I gave myself permission to write whatever I wanted for my daily 250 words. It could be a freewrite, it could be a reflection or a description of a piece of media, it just had to be tangentially related. This process is what made my editing time take so long, but it also got me a finished word count, which was my primary anxiety.
This technique will work to nip procrastination in the bud. Procrastination comes from anxiety, and giving yourself permission to write anything you want is intended to help mitigate the anxiety of sitting down to write every day. You only need to write x words, and they don’t have to be “good.” Just write them. That’s what all that editing time is for, to go back and fix whatever you want to fix – and if you’ve built in enough time to do that, then you’re golden.
Action Step for you: Give yourself permission to write freely
4. Be consistent
The bottom line in the writing process is consistency. The templates, the math, and the tracking are all there so that consistency is visible, motivating, and not discouraging. Knowledge is power, and in this case it’s knowledge of our own habits and how much time we actually have.
I really hope this has been helpful for you. As promised, my Dissertation Notion Templates are linked here.
Action Step for you: Prioritize consistency over all else, and enjoy the template!!!