168 Hours, Headlight Sight and One-Inch Frames or Writing a thesis whilst working.

This article took shape when Dr. Carla Enslin asked me to speak to a group of Vega School Masters and PhD students about what it takes to develop a working schedule and stick to it. For two to five years. They, probably like you, work full-time and now need to find an additional 16 hours a week for their studies and do so for a few years. It’s a big ask for anyone.

After having spoken with them, I thought that it may be useful for a broader audience, so here is an edited version of what I said.

Working full-time and tacking post-graduate studies is a brave act. It will require a lot. There are seven things that are worth keeping in mind as you travel your journey.

1.?You’ve got to have fuel in your tank. ?

2.?Count your time and make it count.

3.?Get a Brains Trust

4.?You’re a writer now.

5.?Get a first draft.

6.?Take your thesis for a walk at least once a week.

7.?Use your voice.

?#1: You’ve got to have fuel in the tank

At some point in the next two years, things will happen that you can’t control.

?Your child will probably get a cold at some point in the next two years. There go three writing days. Your geyser might burst, and there go two days. Your boss might decide to launch a new product – next quarter. There go the next six weeks.

These things will happen. You can’t control them. The best you can do is ensure that you’ve got reserves to get you through.

?And building reserves is the self-help stuff. It can often seem trite, but it is invaluable.

Be active. Get sunlight. Eat well. Rest well. Find ways to be peaceful. Experience beauty. Read. Go to galleries. Count the colours in the park. Have connections. Give and get hugs. Listen to yourself. Listen to others. Laugh. Sleep. Stretch. Dream. Daydream. Walk. Be kind, to yourself and to others. Seriously, if you’re feeling blue just tip your waiter the cost of your bill, their happiness will make you happy.

Each of those phrases is rooted in philosophy and science (science sometimes takes a while to catch up). I didn’t choose them randomly. Read them again. Do them. You’ll build your energy reserves.

Bad luck will come. When it comes, you’ll need to have reserves, so do those things that ensure that your personal fuel tank is full.

Part of writing a successful thesis is doing those three push-ups before you shower. It is reaching for the glass of water instead of the fourth coffee. It’s ensuring that some part of your morning includes time outdoors. It’s remembering that there are people in the world outside of your supervisor. Speak to them.

Part of writing a successful thesis is not going to bed with Instagram, Tik-Tok, WhatsApp or whatever digital siren calls to you. That includes LinkedIn by the way (sorry guys, thanks for publishing this. Although, I know you agree with this).

Put them to bed an hour before you head to bed. They cause leaks in your tank. They do. Protect take your reserves. Especially at night! ?Spend that last hour with yourself and your loved ones. Perhaps read a short story. Let your brain and body calm down. It may seem like an indulgence, but better sleep will make for a better thesis.

?#2: Count your time and make it count.

I stole that one from Peter Drucker.

Your time is your most valuable resource. Make it count. You have 168 hours in every week. How will you use them??

If you’re going to do this in two years, you have 17,472 hours. How will you use them?

17,000 sounds like a lot, except you need to take off 4,200 for sleep. So now we’re already into the 13,000s and you haven’t yet hit a rush hour commute.

So, count your time and make it count.

If you need 16 hours a week, it means you’ll need 64 hours a month or 192 hours a quarter to successfully finish this journey.

16 hours a week, 64 hours a month, 192 hours a quarter.

?I am expressing it that way, because sometimes BAD LUCK. There might be a two week stretch where you can’t get to any thesis work at all…that means that somewhere over the next quarter you need to make up 32 hours.

Let’s make this practical:

?

1. Map out your week - 56 hours sleep, 4 hours exercise, 10 hours for cooking etc…it will give you clarity.
2. Look at your year. Map the major events. Quarterly Board Meetings that might swallow the week. Someone’s milestone birthday or wedding that you’re going to. Hopefully a holiday. Know that in those weeks you’ll do less thesis work, add the hours elsewhere.

Remember these four principles:

1. Work when you work best. For some people that’s the early morning. For others its night. Experiment with it a little. Try writing in one part of the day, reading in another. See what feels best. You’ll already have an intuitive sense of what is right but try some variations. You might discover something about yourself.
2. At 65, retire. Beyond 65 hours of work, your performance will deteriorate. After 50 hours of work, you’re not going to be amazing but realistically you’ll probably need to keep trucking but after 65 hours is the danger zone. Your performance deteriorates and your relationships suffer. In that zone you’re leaking fuel from your pressure reserves. Keep 65 as your hard limit.
3. Make sure that you care. It might seem self-evident, but you really do need to care about your topic. You need to be sure that it will make a difference to your life and to others lives. If you care, you’ll bring your best efforts to your work. Its not just the hours, it is the quality of the attention that you bring to your work. Your attention will be better, your effort will be more intense if you care.
4. A change is as good as a holiday. Sometimes, you’re going to get stuck. While I was preparing for today, loadshedding hit. I sat in my study in the gloom, my keyboard pushed to one side, external screen blank and no words came. I moved to my bed with the laptop. The words started to come again.

?#3: Get a Brains Trust

This idea comes from Pixar.

?All their movies go to a Brains Trust. It is where the business’s story tellers gather to give the director feedback on a film that’s in production. The director can do what he or she wants with the feedback. The Brains Trust’s job is not to give solutions, but to point to what works and what doesn’t.

Yes, you’ve got your supervisor. But creating a dissertation or a thesis is a long journey. There will be dead ends. You will be blinded by your own brilliance. You will despair at your own stupidity.

Whom do you know that you trust? Who has the requisite experience to become a part of your Brains Trust?

They’re not there to give you solutions. They’re there to give you a sense of whether your thesis is flowing or not. Does it connect? Does it inspire? Is it useful?

?#4: You’re a writer now

?If you’re writing a thesis or a dissertation, you’re a writer. Yes, you’re whatever profession you’re in, and a researcher, and an academic AND you’re a WRITER.

?So, read about writing. Pay attention to the craft.

Read Elmore Leonard’s “Easy on the Adverbs, Exclamation Points and Especially Hooptedoodle ”. Check out the Paris Review's Art of Non-Fiction interviews.

?Get a copy of Donald Powers and Greg Rosenberg’s “Become a Better Writer: how to write clarity and simplicity ”.

?John McPhee’s Draft No. 4 and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird will help you.?

?#5: Get the first draft

E.L. Doctorow said that “writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

There will come a point where you’ve done all your reading, you’ve done all the interviews, but the words won’t hit the paper.

You may phone your supervisor and tell them you need to change the topic. You might phone the head of the department to tell them you need a new supervisor. You might become convinced that you’re doing the wrong course (if you do, just finish, you’ve already 60% of the way. If nothing else, you’ll learn what it is like to persist with something that isn’t right). You might be overwhelmed by the need to find an out-of-print book on the Tao of Marketing last seen in 1832. You might convince yourself that you need one more interview of an esteemed thinker who sadly is on a silent retreat until 2026. You’ll find a reason not to write.

But as Pulitzer Prize Winner John McPhee says, “Until it exists, writing has not really begun.”

And to get a thesis, you’ve got to write.

In her book Bird by Bird, Ann Lamott advises write “shitty, first drafts”.

She says “Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something— anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draft is the dental draft, where you check every tooth, to see if it’s loose or cramped or decayed, or even, God help us, healthy.”

?McPhee’s book on writing is called Draft No.4 No prizes for guessing why.

?He says that “First drafts are slow and develop clumsily because every sentence affects not only those before it but also those that follow. The first draft of my book on California geology took two gloomy years; the second, third, and fourth drafts took about six months altogether. That four-to-one ratio in writing time—first draft versus the other drafts combined—has for me been consistent in projects of any length, even if the first draft takes only a few days or weeks.”

?The depressing thing is that even after you get going, you’re going to get stuck again. Maybe even after the first or second draft. It will happen. It’ll suddenly seem pointless.

Lamott advises aspirant authors to tackle writing books by setting short assignments. She keeps a one-inch picture frame on her desk to remind herself that “all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being”.

One inch at a time, she has written 18 books, 15 of them bestsellers. You can do the same.

All of this is to say that writing your thesis will be a process. There will be multiple drafts. It will be overwhelming but getting the only way to do it is for you to write the words, one at a time.

#6: Take Your Thesis for a Walk

At least once a week take your thesis for a walk.

?Set a broad intention about what you want to think about on your walk and walk. Not so fast that you’re paying attention to walking. More meander than power.

?If you get stuck in your writing day, take your thesis for a walk. We are taught that we have to think away through problems, which we then also interpret as ‘sit behind a desk and wrestle with it’, but actually sometimes the best thing is to go for a walk. As long as you return to writing.

?All the great artists and composers have done it and, of course, science now tells us that walking helps thinking.

?So, at least once a week, take your thesis for a walk. If you can do it every day whilst you’re writing, even better.

?#7: ?Use your voice ?

You may not yet have realised this, but it is your voice that is telling this story. It’s unique. Keep it that way. Be curious about what it is. Who are the people you’re drawn to interview? What are the resources that inspire you? What interests you? What writers do you love? Get to understand your voice. Amplify it. Be you.

?You’re the editor and the narrator. You’ll be drowning in material by the time you start to write. Like Michelangelo and his block of marble, you’ll be selecting what needs to stay. Be interesting. Be hopeful. Be useful. Above all, be intentional. And, remember to be you.

The resources

In writing this piece, I drew on: ?

·??????Ann Lamott Bird by Bird

·??????John McPhee Draft No. 4

·??????Donald Powers and Greg Rosenberg Become a Better Writer

·??????Annie Murphy Paul The Extended Mind

·??????Morten Hansen Great At Work

·??????Ed Catmull Creativity Inc

·??????Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers Creativity in Business.

·??????Jim Collins. The Ten Lessons I Learnt from Peter Drucker.

They’re all worth reading.?