the grid

the grid

Sunday 6 August 2017

Week 12: Getting Unstuck

I enjoyed thinking about work spaces last week. I just love thinking about beautiful views and desks and paper and pens, etc.

Nevertheless, I thought I might shift gears this week to talk more about the craft and process of academic writing. During our discussion about work spaces, JaneB mentioned that sometimes she tidies her office when she is feeling "stuck" with her work. That got me thinking about various strategies for getting "unstuck" or dealing with a problem in an article or chapter. Perhaps some of us might step away from a project to tidy a room or go for a walk; others of us might freewrite or do some further reading on a relevant topic. Or maybe some of us have other specific strategies for dealing the puzzles and conundrums that our work presents when things aren't quite fitting together. This week, perhaps we can share strategies for getting through the sticking points or rough patches of our work. (Sorry for all of the mixed metaphors.)

I hope everyone has a great week!

Contingent Cassandra (from week ten)
--Get grades in (TRQ, but also necessary to having a bit of time to concentrate on TLQ)
--Figure out what I'll do when in the next month as much as possible (I realize that not having a plan is raising my anxiety levels, to the point where I've had some trouble sleeping. On the other hand, some of this involves other people -- other people whom I really want to see, even more than I want some unplugged time to myself, though I also want that -- and their schedules, so I may just have to live with it. 
--Keep lifting weights; get in the pool; move some more mulch if weather cooperates

DEH
*regular stretching and gym
*make two appointments
*meet with writing group
*e-mail students about getting their work in
*put in a few hours of professorial work
*make two rooms Presentable
*empty a file cabinet (pack/recycle/shred, as appropriate)


Elizabeth Anne Mitchell (from week ten)
Walk forty-five minutes a day. 
Continue to compile versions of Prudence and continue to follow the schedule.

GEW
1) Write: 3x, 30 minutes.
2) Do kids' online registration.
3) Finish "checklist" of items for son's high school (!) registration.
4) Be present with family. This is the week to (mostly) be the water, not the stone.

heu mihi
1) On my ch. 2 to-do list, I have 12 small items, 9 medium items, and 5 big items. Goal is to complete 5 smalls and 3 mediums and to make progress on 1 big.
2) Complete 1/3 syllabi.
3) Read something for fall classes.
4) Get to work on scheduling September speaker.

humming42
1 finish book reviews (two due in the coming week)
2 read rbp editor comments
3 create rbp workplan
4 work on Snow in spare time
5 get caught up with summer class grading

Matilda (from week ten)
1) Finish first draft of Chapter 2. At least, finish almost.
2) 5-minute-exercises at least twice a day.
3) Find ‘my own 15 minutes’ as many as possible, and do something.
4) Think positively, plan concretely, work practically.

JaneB
1) work on some "loose ends" papers where I'm middle author
2) see if Gallimaufrey Review is ready to go out to the other co-authors
3) do something with GrantINeverShouldHaveStarted
4) touch base with PickyPaper

KJHaxton
1. write exam questions, keep plugging on with lecture/class prep
2. finish two posters for conference
3. finish skirt
4. go to beach

Notorious, PhD
1) On my ch. 2 to-do list, I have 12 small items, 9 medium items, and 5 big items. Goal is to complete 5 smalls and 3 mediums and to make progress on 1 big.
2) Complete 1/3 syllabi.
3) Read something for fall classes.
4) Get to work on scheduling September speaker.
5)"Finish one nagging task."

Susan
1. Make sure I've ordered desk copies of all books for fall
2. Keep moving
3. Keep reading 

Waffles
This week’s goals:
1. Practice APA talk
2. Winnow down something in my house (to prep for move)

23 comments:

  1. I find that the best thing to do, when I'm stuck, is to make a list of things to do--as concretely as I can. Like, "Look up call number for book." "Get book from library." "Read chapter X." "Fix citation on page Y." Etc. Then, I just start with the easy stuff and gradually move into the more complicated. As entirely un-romantic as this process is, it does demystify writing in what can be a very helpful way.

    Or I go for a walk, or take a nap, or something entirely more pleasurable.

    So, last week:
    1) On my ch. 2 to-do list, I have 12 small items, 9 medium items, and 5 big items. Goal is to complete 5 smalls and 3 mediums and to make progress on 1 big. DONE; I did quite a bit more than this, actually. However, revisions beget more problems, so I've got plenty more to do with this chapter.
    2) Complete 1/3 syllabi. DONE
    3) Read something for fall classes. NOT DONE, but I did bring some books home. I've actually read everything before, at least, but there's certainly a lot of re-reading to be done.
    4) Get to work on scheduling September speaker. PROGRESS MADE; we have a date!

    I had a couple of theses (1 diss, 1 MA) dropped on me last week, and that, combined with the realization that I'd not been very on top of some upcoming service things, inspired a bit of panic. So I spent half a day in the office NOT writing, but rather dealing with admin, service, and teaching prep, and that really made me feel better. Still, I have a lot to keep track of this August--more than seems fair, really! It's still summer!

    This week:
    1) Read MM's dissertation.
    2) Finish at least 1 Big thing for ch. 2 and as many of the S & M things as Interlibrary Loan will allow.
    3) Create a course pack for FYS.
    4) Take notes on the books sitting on my desk.
    5) Complete syllabus 2/3.
    6) Annual faculty report.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I struggle in August between trying to get ahead with service work and teaching prep or putting it all off so it doesn't take up the last of summer. I think it's probably best to do what you did (devote half a day) rather than letting it seep into every day.

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    2. Feels like it's been half a day EVERY day this summer here... it's a really difficult balancing act, isn't it?

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  2. I do several things when I'm stuck. If I'm confident I've done all the research, then I often do something as basic as going through my document to read/check my topic sentences. This often helps me see where connections or argumentative elements are breaking down. If I'm really stuck I turn to a spiral notebook and I freewrite, make diagrams, etc. If none of that works, I go back to reading my sources.

    Last week:
    1) Write: 3x, 30 minutes. NO, only once.
    2) Do kids' online registration. NO, but plan to do it today.
    3) Finish "checklist" of items for son's high school (!) registration. NO, but plan to do it today.
    4) Be present with family. This is the week to (mostly) be the water, not the stone. YES!

    We're on a family vacation, and so number 4 really dominated, which is fine, but we head home tomorrow and this is the last week before meetings start at work! I always struggle during this time (as I said in my comment to heu mihi), as I'm trying to soak up the last of my time for writing, family, etc., while also trying to get ready for the semester. It's a challenging push/pull situation.

    I am also having some weird health symptoms that I'm afraid will take up some of my time in the coming weeks as I try to address them.

    This week:
    1) Do online registration tasks Monday or Tuesday.
    2) Write 3x for 30 minutes.
    3) Read a couple of more chapters of book on structure.
    4) Make appointment to see my primary about weird symptoms.
    5) Do 2 syllabi.
    6) Do sprucing up of laundry room.
    7) Sort through 1-2 boxes or bags in garage.
    8) Get (or at least choose) some plants for the backyard.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How I did:
    DEH
    *regular stretching and gym: YES and NO. Did well till my back really got bad.
    *make two appointments: ONE. Am putting off the second.
    *meet with writing group. YES.
    *e-mail students about getting their work in. YES.
    *put in a few hours of professorial work. YES (advance planning for fall).
    *make two rooms Presentable: NO.
    *empty a file cabinet (pack/recycle/shred, as appropriate). YES (I cheated: I'd already done this when I posted the goal).

    Back pain is still dominating my life. I'm seeing my massage therapist this afternoon and I hope she'll help significantly. This week is stay-cation for me and Sir John; we have low-key activities planned for most days. I have about a half-day's work to do finishing off summer grading, and since some pesky students still haven't turned in their work, I will probably put that off until something close to the last minute.

    So my main goal for this week is this:
    Relax and have fun.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Despite the pain, you seem to have had a good week! I hope the massage therapy helped and that you and Sir John are enjoying the stacation.

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  4. Getting unstuck... I have a LOT of tools for this, partly because I task-hop a lot and get very emotionally invested in projects, partly because I work by galloping through a draft then redoing the whole thing several times and there's overlap between getting unstuck and turning a crappy draft into something more polished, I find (and I often get stuck at the point where I have to get from crappy to polished - I have overcome my issues with blank pages, but I just found a new place to get stuck basically). Some of them are: I reverse outline (same idea as topic sentence spotting, I guess?), I switch tasks or sections, I have a rant (freewriting by hand starting from the prompt "I can't do this because..." for 5-10 minutes then shredding the paper is remarkably cathartic when you're feeling all fraught and emotional about a project), I do something productive and easy (filing, folding laundry, even marking a few tests), I make lists of small pieces I need to do, I sketch out a conceptual figure of the bits of the argument, I switch work places, I put on my "get up and go" playlist and work on it for "just one song", I print the document out, open a new word document and start retyping it, I change the font and the colour, I talk to the cat about it (there is a stuffed cat and a stuffed furry prehistoric animal in my office at work to talk to if necessary), I swivel my chair around really fast or do my chair stretches or make a new cup of tea in a good mug (or even a proper pot of tea with a cosy if I'm really stuck, or sometimes I make myself a fancy snack plate with say peeled grapes and apple rabbits and little cubes of cheese...)... and if necessary I give up for the day and make it the Very First Task of the next morning so I use the best bit of my attention on it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Last week:
      1) work on some "loose ends" papers where I'm middle author yes! One is resubmitted, a second is back with the 'team', and the two Problem Child papers are limping very slowly towards the submission line too...
      2) see if Gallimaufrey Review is ready to go out to the other co-authors yes. And as many of them are in Europe therefore on summer hours or on holidays, I can with good conscience leave this alone for a week or two to let everyone have a chance to have a say
      3) do something with GrantINeverShouldHaveStarted I finished the budget!
      4) touch base with PickyPaper no, but I did that today...

      analysis: last week was... mixed. I was pretty productive with a lot of bits and pieces for about 3.5 days then I went to the dentist (which was fine although I need work doing in a few months' time), ate a cake (which wasn't as nice as I hoped) and somehow lost momentum entirely and read 8 novels in three days (6 urban fantasy, 2 comfy throws-in-icky-office-job-finds-true-work-passion-and-romance-along-the-way type stories, one where the main character went from advertising sales to interior design, another from marketing to making ice cream, sorry, gelato. Amazingly one inherited enough money to follow their dreams and the other was successful quickly enough to keep paying the mortgage in an expensive seaside town despite splitting up with the live in partner she'd bought the flat with). Aaand now I'm kind of stressed as I have too much to do and not enough time (yeah, yeah, that's ALWAYS true). This week is quite busy - two days of Black Summer Project, several meetings etc. - but tomorrow is an In Person Write In though I can only make the second half thanks to Meetings. And then things get really busy as I'll have both a high school student and OtherSideOfTheWorld Postdoc to look after/work with for a couple of weeks, plus teaching prep and LikesMaths project is getting to a stage where she needs more input again (coding time...). SIGH.

      The coming week:
      1) write very rough draft of a paper which is for a special collection and is due at the end of September. This is the third ProblemChild paper (we originally planned on four, but have decided one meatier one is probably better). It is a nice long way off now but it will catch up VERY SOON.
      2) remake figure for Tagalong paper (so-called because I feel a bit of a fraud being a co-author, although I've written a nice chunk of the discussion and edited the heck out of the draft)
      3) get as much as possible done on Black Summer Project in the two days
      4) keep in touch with PickyPaper (I have sorted out the next batch of simulations today, so I can set them going between meetings & stuff so I can feel a little productive).
      5) read at least one more novel (I like reading novels)

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    2. I love your long list of strategies for getting unstuck. Printing docs and drinking tea are some of my strategies, too. I am curious about "apple rabbits"?

      Sounds like quite a productive week with TLQ goals, and your reading jag sounds divine. The 2 "comfy" books sound a lot like the Jenny Colgan books I binged on just before the viva. Her books were all I could handle.

      I hope this week's many projects and writing tasks go well!

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    3. Apple Rabbits is a fancy Japanese way of cutting up an apple to encourage kids to eat them - you get apple wedges, then cut a triangular piece out of the peel from one end and lift the remaining little triangles to make two "bunny ears" - I can't describe it very well, here's a link:
      link

      Anyway, making cute fruit pieces to eat with my cheese is just the kind of fiddly manual task that I find effective at resetting my brain for writing, and it also counts as a healthy taking care of myself snack...

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  5. Topic: I need new ways of getting unstuck. Normally I would swap tasks for a while, do some low grade but productive feeling work such as formatting references or figures, prepping lectures, responding to emails. I've spent a lot of time in the last year going for a walk and am starting to learn the benefit of staying on-task but moving away from the computer and letting my mind wander more. Both task swapping and going for a walk would work better if I had decent plans for a piece of work so I think I need to learn to build in a planning stage to help me keep track of work, and include references and notes so i don't forget what I've read.

    Last Week
    1. write exam questions, keep plugging on with lecture/class prep - done
    2. finish two posters for conference - progress, not finished
    3. finish skirt - bit stuck
    4. go to beach - done and it was lovely

    It was Husband's birthday last week so we did three days of things. We made a nice dinner on 'Birthday eve', went out for dinner on Birthday (because we had to work - boooo), then went to the beach for Birthday Boxing day :). Progress was generally made, there could have been more but I'm fairly satisfied.

    This week:
    1. finish posters
    2. finish exam questions
    3. finish skirt
    4. start new knitting project (wool is ordered, sketches and plans made...)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So glad you and your husband enjoyed his birthday and that you had a lovely trip to the beach.

      I did my PhD thesis part-time, which meant it took forever, and the worst part of that was forgetting SO much of what I'd already read. Often, I took notes in spiral or moleskin notebooks, but many times I didn't. As I got closer to the end, not only did I regret not keeping more notes, but also I was kicking myself for all of the pen-and-paper work because those notebooks were very dark archives that I couldn't "search." But it turned out that flipping through those notebooks was a great way to get unstuck and remind myself about things that might need to be included. I'm sure other ways would still be much more efficient (my supervisor had perfectly filed notes of her research/reading), it worked out okay in the end. Still, I should probably develop more organized, digital habits of notetaking.

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    2. GEW, well, how to make memos and notes is problem to me. I like taking notes manually, because I like arrows and drawings, but it is difficult to find important memos to cite afterwards. I then started to take notes on my PC, so now it is easier to find what I need, but I still miss arrows and drawings, free ideas inspired by articles and books....

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  6. Topic: I seem to have more trouble getting started than I do with getting stuck. I’ve managed pretty well to do some kind of housework or cleaning to get unstuck. It took me WAY too long to realize that playing solitaire or surfing the internet creates a distraction that is actually unhelpful. My tactic lately for both kinds of stuckness is to be mindful about what I am doing, when I find myself adrift. Acknowledging that I’ve been scrolling through Twitter for 20 minutes or checking the price on every item in my amazon shopping list gives me the opportunity to ask myself why I’m not doing the work that awaits me. It seems to help get me back on track.

    Last week:
    1 finish book reviews (two due in the coming week): yes
    2 read rbp editor comments: yes
    3 create rbp workplan: yes
    4 work on Snow in spare time: a bit
    5 get caught up with summer class grading: no

    I have a ton of work to do on rbp, so it will basically dominate my workload for the next two months. I do want to work on Snow project, ordered another book, and don’t want to abandon it. I just don’t know if I can get it done.

    This week:
    1 finish revisions to rbp chapter 2 (saving intro chapter for last)
    2 grading for summer class
    3 follow up again with co-author

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Looks like you had a good week on the rbp. I hope this week goes well, too.

      When you start something new, do you start on the computer? Or do you start with long-hand drafting?

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    2. I haven't written anything long-hand in years, but I'm glad you asked because the question relates to getting unstuck. I remember really struggling with something in my dissertation and going outside with a notebook and a pen. This could definitely be a good thing when I find myself hitting the wall.

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    3. I often draft quite a bit long hand--basic arguments, breakdown of key points, a potential first paragraph--before I face the blank computer page. It's easier for me to start typing on a fresh document if I can take it from another page.

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  7. Topic: I don’t have a lot to add to everyone’s excellent suggestions about getting unstuck. One thing that sometimes works for me is to switch projects. It works especially well if they are very different--scholarly paper and narrative non-fiction, or fiction. The downfall is that one project can gain more “ooh, shiny-ness” and get more attention, when it is rarely the one that needs the attention. It still might be worth a try.

    Last week’s goals:
    Walk forty-five minutes a day. Yes,the first week, not the second.
    Continue to compile versions of Prudence and continue to follow the schedule. Yes, the first week, not the second.

    Analysis:
    I did great Week Ten, and was on a roll. Week Eleven, I attended an intense five-day leadership workshop. I didn’t realize that it would start at 6pm Sunday evening and last more than 10 hours a day until Friday afternoon, at which point I collapsed and slept for four hours. It was emotionally draining to be with people all the time, topped off with discussions of difficult people and difficult conversations.

    Next week’s goals:
    Walk forty-five minutes a day.
    Clear my part of the study so I can think.
    File eveything on my desk at work so I can think.

    Quite the theme there in those goals. Have a great rest of the week, everyone. Excelsior!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 10 hours workshop, difficult people, difficult conversations! Please take some rest and I hope you will have your own quiet time this week...

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    2. Looks like you need space for your thoughts this week! I hope you get that. :)

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  8. Hello,

    I missed check-ins again. Sometimes it is difficult for me to re-construct my days, plans and ideas, when I felt I wasn’t able to do what I planned and I didn’t know what I could do to cover it up. This summer time, we are having lots of guests and trips, so things need to be discussed, planned and amended. We enjoy guests and trips, but we also get worried how much time we have missed, the time my husband and myself should have spent for our research.

    Topic: I have read all check-ins and comments, and how various tactics people have to unstuck - unstack problems. When I get stuck, which is always happening, I just try to do something easy, something I just need to work manually, like checking the citations or finding out where in the library are the materials I need. Or, I do some freewriting. Or, I drink strong coffee, not just a cup, sometimes a few cups. I usually avoid net-surfing for changing my mood, just because I know once I start to watch music videos on Youtube, I can never stop!

    Goals for week 10
    1) Finish first draft of Chapter 2. At least, finish almost. - not yet. I continue working.
    2) 5-minute-exercises at least twice a day. - only once a day, but better than nothing.
    3) Find ‘my own 15 minutes’ as many as possible, and do something. - not very many. I will keep trying.
    4) Think positively, plan concretely, work practically. - mmm. The idea is good, but not really concrete?

    Next goals:
    1) Finish first draft of Chapter 2.
    2) 5-minute-exercises at least twice a day.
    3) Find ‘my own 15 minutes’ as many as possible, and do something.
    4) Re-consider my plan.

    Have a great week everyone!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yes, it's great to enjoy guests and vacation, but there is also something nice about getting back to the daily rhythms that allow quiet time and deep work. I hope this week is a good one and that you come up with some good, concrete elements for your plan.

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    2. Thank you for your warm comments, GEW! Sometimes it is difficult to come back to my daily life after exciting days, but I will think it nice and soothing to get back to my rhythms.

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