Well, we are almost at midterm of the Fall semester. My dream of having my proposal defended by this point is shot or rather pushed to the end of October. I have made significant progress on my proposal (which is the first three chapters of my dissertation) and I am definitely in line to make my defense in the next month. But that is going to take some work. As I mentioned in a previous post, I found the joy of having a writing group this summer and that group is mostly responsible for the amount of work that is done on my proposal. So I have joined another group for the Fall since I know it will keep me on track. What is even better about this group is both members (myself and one other), we are both at the same point in our dissertation. We are both working on second (or third or fourth or…) draft of our proposal and we are both educators! So I feel like this group will be even more productive! And knowing how productive I was this summer, I am super excited to see what I get accomplished in the next 12 weeks. I am still with the same coach, Katie Linder, who is amazing and if you haven’t looked into her work, seriously do yourself a favor and click above!
As for the rest of my life, I am trying to prevent the overtaking of my life by my dissertation. So I have started another coaching group for my health and exercise. So far it is going well as I have lost weight and I am eating much better and sleeping much better, which in the end makes me more productive in the other things in my life…aka my dissertation. I have also found some podcasts on dreaming big and goal setting that I have been enjoying as I work out and on trips to and from school. One is called Do It Scared by Ruth Soukup and it is all about setting big goals and going for them even when it is a little scary to do that. I also, of course, listen to all of Katie’s podcasts (I may have an academic crush here! Katie is what I want to be when I grow up!). And then I have also been listening to The School of Greatness with Lewis Howes. All of these have helped me refine my goals and set new ones.
My first goal is to finish my dissertation (duh), but my other goals include: riding the Square2Square Bike ride in the spring with my hubby (it is a 30 miles ride and I’ve never done more than 6), finding a job in education as a professor or a consultant/coach for a school district or two, writing two articles in the next year on topics other than my dissertation, and losing 50 pounds in the next 9 months with my coach’s help. Wow now that I write that all out, I realize I am definitely going to have to do this scared!
As to how I plan on achieving all these things, is based on plan, plan, plan. If I have learned anything from all these podcasts and books I have read, it is the necessity of having a plan and sticking with it. I set weekly goals with Katie and my health coach (Shanda), and those mostly encompass everything above. And the big key is a write them down and I track them…all of them. Even on the weeks that I may not have made progress on one of them. I track it. For some reason seeing that I did or did not accomplish what I needed to during the week makes me even more motivated for the next week or even the next day. It also allows me to look back over the week or month or three months and see what accomplishments I have made. Which my mind conveniently forgets as soon as I make the goal, so having a record keeps me from focusing on the things I haven’t gotten done yet.
So my advice today is: write it down! All of it, the good, the bad, and the ugly…because you will need the reminder about all that good and writing down the bad and ugly will help motivate you to clean up your act! So go forth and write! That is what I will be doing.
O's Bureau of Scientific Investigations 