Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

GET A LIFE. Remember to have a life too; sometimes it’s the time spent away from your work that is the most beneficial. This is easier said than done when you have a deadline looming or you’ve got limited time to work but here’s the thing, the work will take twice as long if you don’t have a clear head. Ever noticed how you can sit down to work one week and it takes most of the day to get a paltry amount on a page but after a weekend away you can fit a week’s work into one day? Remember that. Take adequate amounts of time off from what you’re doing to enjoy everything that isn’t academia.

For more information on becoming a Hackademic , click here !

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

DRINK LESS ALCOHOL. Or maybe this should be: ‘don’t drink and write!’ Having too much alcohol while working will make you think you’re invincible – at least in academic terms. It really isn’t worth all the editing you’ll have to do to the sentences you write under the influence. Similarly, drinking heavily between writing sessions will only make them harder to endure – you’re not in college now kid! So where has being abstemious got you exactly? How about taking this option, oh, and bottoms up.

Also, this tips can help your hackademic life!

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

EAT GOOD FOOD. Don’t eat junk food, especially when writing. Well, at least don’t eat junk food all the time. If you’re working to a deadline then it’s a good idea not to over-think these things and just grab what’s easy and handy and get the work done. However, where possible, it’s a better idea to get into a habit of eating (and writing) healthily. Aside from the fact that if you eat junk and sit at your desk all day all those sugars and fats will make you fat and unhealthy (and the last thing you need is to struggle with health issues on top of having to cope with the usual level of work an academic lifestyle involves) it might also make you a bad writer. Junk food will likely give you bursts of unsustainable energy, meaning you write in fits and starts and easily lose the thread of the argument. Too much sugar also makes you crash pretty badly, meaning your productivity will sink to a soul-crushing low and you might resort to too much caffeine, creating a perpetual cycle of peaks and troughs. Pay attention to what works for you. As a general rule, too much carbohydrate at lunch can make you sleepy in the afternoon. Instead try vegetables and protein at lunch time and save the carbs for dinner. You might also find that eating little and often keeps you charged up and that lots of green tea rather than one giant coffee keeps you energized in a more balanced way. And if you get coffee jitters, make sure you eat something while you drink your coffee.

What else does it takes to be a hackademic ? Click here to find out.

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

DRINK MORE ALCOHOL. If you’re stuck at your desk writing the same paragraph over and over again, lost in a recursive loop of editing that takes your work neither forwards nor back, take a break, call a friend, grab a beer. If you find yourself having to stay in on a Saturday night to finish that book chapter or journal article, there’s really no need to feel like you’re in prison. Why not pour yourself a lovely glass of wine and actually enjoy your writing. Yes, we did just say ‘enjoy’ because oddly enough, writing can be enjoyable and if you allow yourself a few treats along the way, the journey to submission can really be rather jolly. Some very famous writers were also raging alcoholics, although we’re certainly not advocating that.

Want more hackademic tips ? Click here!

* Acknowledgements at bottom of blog

Today’s post is by Ellen Spaeth, a PhD candidate in Clinical Psychology and Music. Her research concerns how listening to music could help people with anxiety disorders. She has an excellent blog about academic writing, productivity, technology, and music psychology and Tweets about those things, and her ukulele as @ellenspaeth. In today’s post she creatively uses a video gaming metaphor to consider ways of developing motivation for writing a PhD; an approach also relevant to the academic publishing journey post-PhD. 

When I was 13, I spent hours playing Super Mario on my Nintendo 64. I would try again and again to get something right. My dad asked me why I was happy to work so hard to make Mario wall-kick off ice cliffs, but had no patience when it came to practising the clarinet.

Last year, the answer just popped into my head: motivation. Since then, I’ve been trying to figure out what it is about video games that motivates me to play them, and how I can use those things to make my PhD more fun and productive. What did I find? Here are 4 things…

1. Big goals are divided into manageable chunks

If you divide a big goal up enough times, the goal becomes tasks, and tasks become instructions.

Can you imagine a 3-or-4-year video game where your only instruction was “Complete the game”? Make sure you don’t view “Complete the PhD” as your only goal. For more advice on this, see my posts on identifying, scheduling, and reviewing tasks.

2. Cost/benefit analyses are easier

In a video game, you’ll usually be told what you need to do (cost), and what you’ll gain (benefit). A quest, or task might be necessary for the game to progress. Or it might get you a great, rare, item. It might get you something that you didn’t even want.

But if you know in advance what you stand to gain, you can make the decision of whether the amount of work involved is worth it. Is it worth doing the tedious, lengthy task for the unwanted item? Probably not. Is it worth it for the great item, or to continue the game? Almost certainly.

Try to think about your PhD that way. If you’re finding something really difficult and distressing, think about what you’ll gain. Is it worth it? If not, don’t do it. If it is, focus on the thing you’ll gain. It should motivate you more.

3. If you’re stuck, someone can help you

Video games are popular. That means there are a lot of people talking about them on the Internet. Some of those people have made “walkthroughs”, which are step-by-step instruction guides for video games. So if you have no idea where you’re going, and have run out of patience, you can look at the walkthrough.

After you’ve looked at the walkthrough, you can make an informed decision (as per step 2). If you decide you’re not getting anything out of the game, you can choose to stop playing. But at least you’re making an informed decision.

So if you’re stuck with your PhD, look for help. Go on a development course. Have coffee with a friend. Read a book or a blog post by someone else who’s experienced the same problem as you. If you still decide it’s not worth it, you won’t be making the decision blindly.

4. Achievement is built in

When you’ve completed a task, you are rewarded. Maybe you’ll get an item, or a new area will be unlocked, or you’ll be given a star for completing the level. The game is teaching you to value small achievements. If you were never rewarded for any of your actions in a game, how long would you play for?

Do you value small achievements in your PhD? It’s something that I find difficult. On completing a task, my brain is less likely to say “Fantastic! Good job!” and more likely to say “Oh. Well. That wasn’t much of an achievement. I’d better do some more work.”

To me, completing a task for my PhD feels a bit like putting money into an overdrawn bank account – the money just disappears into a hole, leaving you feeling even more panicked to make up the difference. I think this happens because we don’t stop to notice when we achieve things. So stop, and take notice!

And finally…

In an attempt to apply some of these ideas, I’ve written a short series of blog posts on trying to create frequent bursts of achievement within my PhD. The first post looks at using free writing and doing lists (with Scrivener, a pad of paper, or another word processing tool) to identify specific and achievable tasks. The second discusses how to schedule those tasks using a diary or task management app (such as Producteev). The third post shows how reviewing your progress each week can improve your feeling of achievement and your ability to judge how long a task will take. If you have any experiences, suggestions, or tips to share (or nice things to say), I’d love to hear from you in the comments section.

* The following tutorials aided in the drawing of the blog image. (C) Ellen Spaeth

How to Draw Mario and How to Draw Tutorials

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

HACK YOUR TIME. Some weirder tricks here: 1) If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep, rather than tossing and turning in bed, get up and write. 2) Give yourself bizarre and unrealistic deadlines, and make yourself stick to them. 3) Ask friends to join with you on bizarre and unrealistically-deadlined projects for moral support. 4) Never stand in a line without a mobile device and work you can do on it. 5) Get hands-free bluetooth in your car, so you can make phone calls while driving. 6) Get a dictation app for your smart phone, so you can write while driving. 7) Do work for friends (preferably work they loathe doing) and then ask them to do work for you (work you loathe doing). 8) Use the dead time in between other things to do work – take shower, work while hair dries, call taxi, work while waiting for it to arrive, etc. 9) Keep written summaries or mind maps of major projects handy at all times and review them often. Newer and better ideas will occur to you at the strangest moments and you’ll find it easy to share these ideas and get useful feedback in chance encounters. 10) When you have no work implements at hand, work in your brain (train rides are good places for this).What else do you need to hack ? 

The #acwri live chat this week focused on the value of Twitter for supporting academic writing. Some of the key Tweets from the discussion can be viewed below but the following briefly summarises the discussions.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, there was a lot of support for using Twitter to help with academic writing. Those who took part in the chat are established Twitter users and already use the #acwri hashtag to discuss writing. However the reasons why Twitter is considered useful were more varied and may even persuade the novice Twitter user to give it a try. People like that it can be used to link to informative resources (such as blogs), that it challenges them to write concisely and to break down key messages. They also like that it is accessible and facilitates a network of individuals from diverse backgrounds, all who share an interest in academic writing. They also think that it helps to improve their other forms of academic writing.

There was also a critical discussion about the value of Twitter for academic writing. Some discussed lacking confidence in Tweeting opinions and points and felt that being accountable was important. Others discussed the challenges of negotiating and presenting identity through Tweeting. It was felt that disagreeing with people’s points was more difficult. It is much easier to agree with others through this medium, possibly limiting debate.

Finally, not included here, was a discussion about how the use of social media continues to be blamed for the poor writing styles and writing abilities of students. A summary of this discussion will be posted soon.

In a previous post for PhD2Published, I mentioned that I would be talking in a symposium at the Society for Research into Higher Education Conference 2012.

I went last Friday (14^th December 2012) and really enjoyed the experience. Professor Pat Thomson started with a really interesting talk about her project with Inger Mewburn (aka The Thesis Whisperer) about analyzing blog spaces for academic purposes, followed by Dr Jeremy Segrott who presented our talk about #acwri. Andy Coverdale spoke next about the use of social media and the way in which it aids the research process for PhD students, and then I concluded the session with discussion of how PhD2Published is an empowering space (for me in particular as Managing Editor) and one outside of institutions that is transforming academic knowledge production.

We seemed to get a good response to our papers from a really engaged audience, which was encouraging and we all commented on the strangeness of meeting face-to-face having ‘known’ each other on Twitter for so long (there is proof in the slightly blurred photo in the Storify below!). The symposium was the first real opportunity to meet up directly as a group and to share our experiences and reflections on social media use as academics.

Below is a Storify of some of the Tweets from the day that we Tweeted directly from the symposium to give an idea of what the papers were about and what we discussed:

Hybrid Pedagogy’s Jesse Stommel and our very own Charlotte Frost rethink academic life and writing productivity in this on-going series of hints, tips and hacks.

ATTEND TO YOUR MIND. Ommmmmmmm! Here’s the thing, if you’re an academic you are, by nature, an over-thinker. This can take its toll. You might not even realise you’re doing it, but be honest, when was the last time you didn’t approach something – anything – like a research project? Even buying a TV involves wading through numerous sources and comparing information, doesn’t it?! So a lot can be said for doing something that switches your mind off. One route is having a hobby. Another way is through some kind of meditation. If you haven’t already tried meditation, you might be sceptical. Unless you’re a Buddhist monk practicing for hours a day, it’s unlikely you’ll ever reach the stage where you can flip a mental off-switch, but that’s fine. Find a class or even just a meditation CD or podcast and learn that it’s in the act of trying to clear your mind that peace is found. You won’t be able to ditch every idea, but each time you tell a nagging feeling about a wrong citation to get the hell out your head, you’re making more room to feel good. And when you do go to fix that citation, you’ll do it quicker and happier. All up in your head already? How about getting a bit physical and working out with this tip <links to ‘Attend to Your Body>

Want to be a full-time Hackademmic ?Get on track and read this tips.