How to manage your time effectively during the dissertation writing phase

[EmmaTook]

Year 4 of the PhD here. If you're about to start your dissertation or are in the middle of it, let me save you some therapy bills: you will never feel like writing. Motivation is a myth. The key to managing your time during this beast is building a system that works even when you want to light your laptop on fire.

Here are the three things that have kept me (mostly) sane and (slowly) progressing:

1. Write every single day (even if it's crap).
Stop waiting for big 8-hour blocks of genius. They don't exist. I use the Pomodoro method—25 minutes of writing, 5-minute break. I aim for at least 4 of these a day. Some days, I write 200 words of garbage. Some days, I write 800 good ones. But I never break the chain of sitting down. It keeps the project in your brain's "working memory." If you take a week off, it takes you another week just to figure out where you left off.

2. Break it into the smallest possible chunks.
"Write Chapter 3" is a terrifying, abstract goal that will lead to paralysis and Netflix. My to-do list today isn't "Work on dissertation." It's "Fix the methodology section's paragraph on participant recruitment." It's "Add citations to the first three pages of the lit review." When the tasks are that small, it's easy to trick yourself into doing them. Micro-tasks are your friend.

3. Protect your "non-negotiable" time.
You have to treat your writing time like a class you have to teach. It is non-negotiable. I have a block from 9 AM to 12 PM every weekday. I turn off my wifi. I put my phone in another room. My advisor told me "a finished dissertation is a good dissertation," and she's right. Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. Just get the words on the page. You can't edit a blank page.

It's a marathon, not a sprint. And honestly? It’s mostly just showing up. We got this. (Please tell me we got this. I'm tired.)

 

[Alan]

Emma, I'm in year 3 and needed this so bad. I've been stuck in the "I need a full day to get anything done" mindset and then those full days never happen and I feel like a failure. The 25-minute thing is so much more realistic.

My contribution: accountability buddies. My friend and I do "writing sprints" over Zoom. We set a timer for 45 minutes, write in silence, then check in. Knowing someone else is writing too keeps me from scrolling on my phone. Also we shame each other if we miss our scheduled times lol

Also Emma, the "you can't edit a blank page" thing is my mantra. My first draft is always garbage but at least it EXISTS. Future Emma and Future Me can fix garbage. We can't fix nothing.

What's your dissertation on? I'm always curious what other people are suffering through