Having just struggled to get my written submission for DipAbrsm teaching in, I would love to know from other adult learners, any tips for those who like me are hopeless at getting on with written work?

I know it's human nature to procrastinate, and some people operate better under a short time pressure anyway, but this has been a problem all my life, it made me quite ill at university. Now I've come back to study as an adult with a whole heap of other stuff going on in my life, I no longer want it to be something that ends up making me so unhappy.

It's not just that I put off the final write-up, going over the plan/notes endless times convincing myself I'm doing something, but I put off the research, feeling scared that as soon as I open the books I'll discover how much I don't know, and generally stick my head in the sand till a very late stage. I can then justify the need to do something else but get writing to a ridiculous extent.

I know this is common, and the obvious reponse is just get on with it, and start it sooner, but I do seem to have a serious mental block in committing to paper subjects I would happily discuss for ever (so if the Dip was just a Viva I'd be sorted.)

I just wonder if anyone else with a similar problem has found a specific solution - life coaches? Hypnosis?
Any advice would be welcome.

Not helpful I'm afriad but I'm rather like that and was at school.
I was always in the top 3 in the top sets too so it's not that it was escecially difficult for me.
It's probably the main reason I'm holding back from doing anything that has written work attached.
As you say, I don't want to get into something that is going to make me unhappy and stressed.

Hi - I sympathise with how you are feeling completely. I'm currently trying to write up my thesis and I am in big trouble with my supervisor due to the lack of progress, which has mainly been due to the fact that I've been quite ill the last year but I can't seem to get that through to anybody, oh well. Apparently, if I don't make significant progress in the next month or so, I will be in major trouble. I want to get it done because I never ever want to have to deal with academia ever again. I want to get it finished and then walk away because the last 4 years have been ######. I know what I want to say in my head, but can't get it down on paper, so I put it off and put it off.

I don't know if this will work for you (or me either as I'm just about to try this tactic) but take each day as it comes and break your writing down into tiny pieces. Don't be too hard on yourself and aim for any sort of progress, however small, even if it's just a paragraph a day, that's still progress. If you find you're better talking out loud, why not get a dictaphone and then just say your ideas out loud, then you can play it back and get it down on paper. Hope everything works out for you, good luck.

I think the most important thing is to accept that what you are going to write will not be perfect.

I spent six years researching and writing a PhD thesis. I was also teaching full time, had two children in the middle and almost died of peritonitis. After the peritontis I did virtually nothing on my thesis for about a year and then when my younger daughter was born and started sleeping through the night I suddenly felt ready to finish writing. I entirely rewrote the little I had already written and wrote more or less the whole thing in about five months.

When I finally got round to finishing it my main motivation was simply to finish; I no longer minded what mark I got for it and I no longer felt that I had to use absolutely everything I had discovered. I really believe that when I stopped worrying about what the examiners might think I gave myself the freedom necessary to write and it was a quite extraordinary feeling - I have never written with such ease either before or since.

The happy ending is that not only did I finish it but that I was awarded the highest possible mark and what I didn't use in the thesis provided material for my first research papers after I got a job as a senior lecturer.

I'm sure this sort of story is very common ... I am also a procrastinator, and gave in my PhD thesis with 20 mins to spare!

I think the only solution is just to do it, to recognise (as has been said) that it may not be perfect, but that it will at least be done! As many generations of PhD students have been told: 'don't get it right, get it written'. And in fact, it will be much better than you think ...

nick

I write for a living and the best piece of advice I've had is 'don't get it right, get it written.'

When I'm procrastinating (which I still do a lot) and the deadline is loomng I just remind myself of the above and make myself write without stopping. I don't let myself stop to think about whether x or y is the 'right word' and if I can't think of the right word I just put 'XXX' or 'lalala' or something silly. Sometimes I put myself under pressure, saying 'just sit here for an hour and write something' What always amazes me is that the result isn't far off what I'd do if I agonised over every word! A bit of tweaking and it's usually good to go.

Hope that helps.

OOh - I see Nick has beaten me to it. Great minds think alike!

java script:add_smilie(":agree:","smid_23")
agree.gif

... while writing an MA and then a PhD (and also writing for part of my living) I developed what I modestly call 'the Jones method' (though I see that it might as well have been called 'the jinxi method').

This was to just write what I wanted to say in the way that first came to mind - and then to revise it later, to get the wording and grammar right, and make sure that it exactly expressed my meaning. Avoiding self censorship in the early stages meant that I could concentrate on getting the ideas down, without worrying too much about the writing. And at least when you then come to revise, you have a wodge of stuff to work on, and a smug sense of achievement... Still takes a while, but it's much less dispiriting.

nick

eeeeeeeerrrmm ditto to the above. Thoughts first, grammar later!
Iona

Freelance translators often discuss this problem (in itself a form of procrastination!). Some people stick a note saying "bank balance" on their computer monitors, while I remind myself that I want to make life easier for my family by getting stuff finished, so I'll have more time and more money for them.

I tossed my PhD in rather than finish my thesis, and I truly regret it. Don't ask yourself if you want good grades, just remind yourself that you want to come out of all this hassle with a DipABRSM rather than poorer, older, and without it.

It's really that simple, unfortunately!

Obviously, this stuff happens because we want to continue harbouring unrealistic, or even impossible ideas about the value of our completed work , and many of us are able to make that impossible situation *almost* work out. But all that does is postpone the inevitable crunch - my Master's thesis was a tome, 10 times more than what was needed.

The mistake is to regard this type of achievemet as successful! In terms of the brief - demonstrate a moderate ability to research, organize, and present original material - and what I actually produced, it was a timewasting failure. The fact that students pay to waste their own time and money simply masks the bitter taste of what would be failure in real world terms of development schedules and cost-effectiveness.

I find it helpful to regard my working self as a kind of public secretarial service - I assign this other self a job, and at the end of the day I expect to see results, not excuses.

Funny thing is, doing that helps me to separate my self-esteem from the job in hand - the "secretarial self" is expected to produce results, not to bore me with her personal life or takes on how the job "should" be done, etc.!

P.S. I DID clear today's deadlines before I posted this, I promise!

At 5.44 am? Blimey!!!!

allears is in Japan, Misterioso - so she wasn't up as early as you thought!!

For me, the hardest thing about the DipABRSM teaching submission was that it had to go in WITH the exam application.

This was difficult because it meant the task was open ended - if I didn't finish the essay for one application date, there was always another one in six months' time, and I'd lost nothing by putting off doing the writing.

If the submission had to be written after the application, I'd have undoubtedly buckled down to it in a more timely fashion, in the way I always do when I know the exam clock's ticking and there's a fee to be lost.


Having said that, the thing that did galvanise me into getting it done, and into getting it and the application sent off, was knowing that my best mate was planning to do the exam too. The idea of her getting the qualification while I missed the boat 'cos I couldn't write an essay on time was enough to make me get on with it

Sympathies... I am a World Record Holder Procrastinator. I actually love exams, because they only last of x length of time.... course work etc for me is torture.

But a couple of mini suggestions.... small, small bits at a time. These soon build up and confidence grows once you have something on the page. Just sit down and write in a stream of consciousness way for 5 or 10 minutes, and then stop. Go back and do the same later on that day, or the next day. You have to coax yourself as if you were a wild animal being approached by a human.

And, maybe get a dictaphone, so you can "talk" your essay to yourself and then play back and write it down later. Do in bath, on loo, wherever.

There is only one thing needed

B O C








B (as in nether regions) On Chair

Once you have cracked that - the rest will follow. Enjoyed reading about all the procrastination - be there, done that, got the T shirt.
My new motto - I will stop procrastinating - but not until to-morrow

Hmmm, except where do you think my ###### was when I posted this topic, instead of getting on with my essay?

Thanks for all the replies. Would still be interested to hear if anybody has ever got more specific training/dabble with hypnotherapy etc. to help with getting on with reseach/writing.




goodness, I wrote a very harmless word, beginning with b, three letters and now those ##'s make it look like I wrote something far worse!

I'm currently sat at my desk trying to write a grant proposal!

I now spend virtually my entire working life writting reports / proposals and papers - I do enjoy it and find it quite satisfying when a nice study finally gets written up, but..........the procrastination!!!!

I tend to try and do work on Figures (as in diagrams) when I get stuck. If I worked at home I'd just end up playing the piano instead of working.

This is the same as I used to do. I just wrote down what came to mind, in everyday simple language - bad spellings and grammar and everything - just to get some ideas down. Often I'd just do loads of bullet points and half written sentences just so I wouldn't forget anything. Then I'd rearrange all the ideas and start putting it into academic language and some sort of order. If I was at home I'd find a glass or two of red wine at my side while I was writing worked wonders - the more I drank the better the writing got - until I read it again the next day and had to rewrite chunks of it!!!

I have written 3 diploma submissions now and what I found worked for me was to 1) do some reading and research
2) jot down some general ideas from the reading etc 3) THE MOST IMPORTANT STAGE - go out for a walk and just let what I have read mull around in my mind gently.

I found this break away let me take a more objective view of what I had just read and somehow the ideas flowed more easily than when I just sit hopefully with a pen in my hand. I found that some really good ideas and thoughts developed and somehow found it easier to then write constructively and concisely.

I'm currently procrastinating instead of writing a lecture ... forums are the devil's work!

nick

Hubby had to get to the stage of acting a systems administrator that blocked my access to forums until my accounts were upto date. This procrastinator has learnt her lesson.

, oh joy, I'm supposed to be doing that too, but the deadline isn't until Tuesday, so naturally I haven't started yet . Well actually, in fairness I'm just butchering an old one to get some feedback on it, so it shouldn't take so long, and there's a conference deadline before that .

The best advice I can give has already been given, write something and worry about whether it's any good later. Those writing long documents, fix a number of words that you've got to write in a day and do that (again don't worry about it being that good it just has to be done). If you then want to finish do so; if you're still feeling inspired to carry on then do so whilst you're on a roll but the important thing is that you don't have to.

As another poster has suggested, someone once said to me the best way to write something is to get slightly drunk since one then cares less about what one is writing (not too drunk though ). Since I don't drink I haven't tried it, so can't recommend it, but it seems to work for some.

It was me who found the red wine to be a useful aid to writing, and yes, I found that as as I relaxed a bit as a result of the wine, the thoughts and ideas came much more easily - I sometimes found I could write whole chunks of stuff and the words just came flowing. Occasionally I'd stay at my computer for hours when I was on a roll, as I knew that once the alcohol wore off I'd get stuck again.

As you say, I think the important think about writting is to get onto a roll, it can take me several hours to work up to it, compliacted things take a long time to get properly into your head, but once your going the best think is just to keep going. If you hit problems just write incomplete sentences and place markers. If you stop you'll lose the overall picture and will struggle to get it back again.

Anyway - must get on with work!

I'm currently trying to write the worst nightmare of a thesis chapter. All my bullet points are currently saying I hate you chapter, I really hate you chapter or variations there of. I'm procrastinating big time even though I have loads of bits of paper saying don't get it right, get it written and that once this chapter is done, I am on a home run.

My violin is looking at me saying please play me, I am so neglected, don't write that chapter, play me. Of course I have to give in. Must write myself another note saying don't procrastinate. Soon as this chapter is done, I'm on the home straight and more time for my violin.

Good luck to everyone with written work

Oh thank heavens, I have found my fellow procrastinators at long last - I was beginning to wonder if you were really out there or had I imagined you.

A friend of mine recently told me that she would rather be a nit nurse than sit down to write her latest submission (she is studying hard though)