I have found some common beliefs underlying what gets my coachees blocked and feeling like they will never get This Thing done. All of them involve ways of making the dissertation process seem unapproachable. And when things seem unapproachable....well...we tend to not want to do it at all, eh?. See if any of these feel familiar...

Belief 1. Dissertations need to be complex and brilliant: No, they need to be tidy and clear in addressing a meaningful, but manageable question. This is not your lifetime “magnum opus”, it’s your first large professional research project. That’s it.

I work with a UK distance graduate program as an advisor. The number one barrier for most of these students when they get to the thesis stage is to try to make it Something Important — something that will rock their field. This means they "complexify" it, try to fit in everything they might want to know about their subject, address every possible perspective, every possible objection, and answer as many questions as possible with their data.

This means 2 things:

1) They’ll have a design and/or analyses so complex they either won’t be able to implement it successfully or they won’t be able to tease apart what their results mean when they get them.

2) They are much less likely to finish just because they’ll find themselves trying to wade through something so unwieldy they get overwhelmed and discouraged.

The solution: Minimize. Answer a minimum of interesting questions that emerge from the literature and design your study to be as clean and simple as possible. This will let you feel in control of the process at all times, speed your completion time, and make your results pop out for easy discussion and defense. Don't try to do it all.

Belief 2. You need to sound “scholarly and sophisticated”: Not if this means writing in ways that muddify your message and using 5 words where 1 would do. You need to sound coherent, objective, and direct. Simple is better.

I also assess proposals and completed theses and I can share that the simpler and more direct the language, the more I can pay attention to the content. When students write in a way they think sounds more “academic” (i.e., bigger words, passive voice, longer sentences) , the harder it is for me to figure out what they are trying to say and the more I focus on editing their text instead of their findings. They end up needing to make major changes to their drafts (and more drafts) = more time and effort to finish.

The solution: Keep it as direct as possible. You are in a Ph.D. program — you don’t need to prove you’re smart. You are. Your goal is to communicate what you have to say so no one can miss your meaning. You may have field-related jargon you need to use — and that your committee will all understand — but other than that, be as direct as possible in what you want to say. Comprehension goes up with active voice, short sections, shorter sentences, simpler words. And the more your committee understands your message, the fewer changes you will need to make. Fewer changes = less time to finish, right?

(And did you notice how having a simpler study will also make it easier to write more directly about it?)

Belief 3. The dissertation process is supposed to be hard -- only the most committed and gifted will finish: No, it’s not. It’s supposed to provide evidence that you have learned to do independent research and are ready to go forth on your own without embarrassing your department, school, or professional colleagues in your field. It’s a series of steps. If you’ve been invited to do a dissertation, you can finish it. Step by step.

The things that make a dissertation seem hard are the same things we’ve just talked about: complexifying your topic by trying to create the Perfect Answer to all questions about it and writing in a way that bores you as well as your committee.

The other thing that feeds this myth is mindset — what you say to yourself about your dissertation and your progress. If you complexify things, you’ll get yourself into a morass that will feed the negative, self-denigrating thoughts most academic students carry around with them. In my experience — both as a graduate student o-so-many moons ago and as a coach now — most academic students maintain a bit of an “imposter syndrome” feeling that they got into their program “accidentally”, that everyone else in their program is smarter, quicker, more accomplished, etc., etc. Telling yourself you’re not “enough” to get this done will, obviously, slow you down while you try to prove you are exceptionally qualified (you see how this leads to complexifying everything? More complex hypotheses? More complicated design? Muddified writing?)

The solutions:

Stay focused on a next little step. Keep it simple and feeling manageable — even the next step should be something you can do in a couple of hours or less. (I have had UnDissertationers who measured next steps in 5 to 15 minute intervals — and it worked!)

Get support. This will help with the mindset issue if you know others are also having similar experiences to yours (how often do we imagine everyone else is having an easy time? And how much easier is it to problem-solve for others?). You can create a group of other dissertationers for yourself, join a free group like Phinished.com, get a coach with or without a group component (like me ;-) to help you wherever you are getting stuck — whatever works to keep you moving, simplifying, positive self-talking…

Eschew Obfuscation. ;-) Keep it Sweet and Simple.

Keep it Approachable. If you don't, you may find you don't want to do it all...

You can do this!

Talk to me -- which of these rang true for you? What steps can you take to simplify your work right now?