Writers' Lab: Five Ways of Getting in the Zone

Getting started with writing is sometimes the hardest part to writing. Once we get into the zone, or reach our state of flow, the words start forming sentences in our minds and writing can feel effortless.

But too often we spend the entire day nibbling away at a paragraph here, an introduction sentence there and then a bit of polishing the figures. While I think editing and improving figures are vital elements to writing, I also think it is necessary to get to that deeper level of concentration when you need to write large blocks of text.

In my approach of writing a paper (in two days for a conference paper), I need to get into this mode of pouring sentences onto the screen when I reach the second phase of my approach: the constant writing with as little distractions as possible.

Whenever I need to get deep into my writing zone (a skill that I am using now as I type this post as well), I use the following tricks to get the writing juices flowing:

1. Clear goal

An important step towards getting your paragraph(s) written, is getting your thoughts together and knowing what precisely you want to cover in said paragraph(s). Have your keywords clear and sharp in your mind, and all necessary information ready, so that you can write constantly without getting disturbed and needing to wander in your thoughts to figure out what you actually where going to write about.

2. Mark and Go

Once you have your goal clear, you can start writing. There will always be references that you might need to look up, or figures that need to be added. Don't spend your time on these while you have your words flowing onto the screen, as this might break the inertia that you have built up. Instead, add comments, mark in yellow what you need to verify and refer to figure XXX (change this to the figure number once you have all the figures drawn and in the document).

3. Quiet environment

If disturbances cause you to lose your concentration, make sure you can write in a quiet environment. I've written vast amounts of my thesis during the evening hours at home, and on Sundays. Similarly, you might like to use headphones or earplugs if you really want to block out noise.

4. Freewriting

If you can't seem to get started on putting any sentence at all together, freewriting might be an option. 750 words is a great tool to pour out ideas as an unstructured mess of words that no one will ever look at. Simply write down what is on your mind (your research, any issues in Life, or why you find it hard to get started on writing), and before you realize you will have written your 750 words.

5. Don't start from the beginning

When the stress of writing the great opening sentence weighs on your shoulders, simply avoid the introduction and start drafting the paragraphs that feel like a safe ground for you - typically the experiments and analysis that you have spent most time working on. Once you have reached your state of flow, you can -if necessary- attack the introduction section.

What helps you in getting started on writing and having the words flow freely onto your screen?

Silver Linings: Stay hungry, Stay foolish

Whenever you are struggling and wondering why you embarked upon your little research adventure, I'd encourage you to watch this speech by Steve Jobs.

Regardless of all the hype around him, this speech is short yet so powerful. Watch it during a coffee break, and then wonder what invigorates you more: the ideas and looking at the broader things in life, or the shot of caffeine.

As a graduate student, PhD researcher or early career researcher, you've already stepped out of some of the expectations of society, and put your learning and curiosity on the first place.

Never forget how giving that liberty to yourself is perhaps one of your best gifts to yourself. Cherish it, even when your bank account is running dry or when you have endless comments by reviewers. Keep searching, exploring and playing around.

Writing and Cravings

Guilty as charged!

When you are spending long hours behind your computer screen to write your dissertation or your next paper, chances are high that you start to get those cravings to snack on something.

Sugary and fatty snacks can wreak havoc on your energy levels and your overall health and well-being.

But what should you do about those cravings you get while writing? I mean, you really get hungry and everything.

The problem itself are not the cravings. They are a sign you've already passed a threshold. You are already so hungry that you need a quick fix.

To avoid this problem, you can do the following:

1. Take regular breaks

When your body is so hungry and exhausted that it starts begging for a quick shot of sugar, it typically means you have been working incessantly for the past few hours.

Schedule regular five minute breaks throughout your days - and I mean: real breaks, surfing the internet does not count! Get up from your chair, gaze out of the window, savor a cup of tea, do some stretches - you get the picture.

2. Honor your lunch

Processed carbs, like pasta and bread result in a peak in your blood sugar levels, then a crash.
You might think of lunch as a quick run to the food court. Even worse, you might just shove down whatever while you keep on working.

Try having a balanced lunch instead: lean protein, complex carbs and healthy fat. Chances are very high you'll avoid that dip in the afternoon and won't be craving for a sugary treat to bump your energy up again (and then crash again).

3. Track your cravings

Do you have a fixed time of the day when you get a craving? Somewhere around 3pm for example? Start tracking when your cravings occurs (just jot down a note in Evernote, for example), and analyze your cravings after tracking these for some time.

If your cravings happen at a fixed time during the day, have a break 30 minutes earlier and eat a fruit or a yoghurt in peace. Craving tackled!

4. Have alternatives ready

So if all else fails, and you still have the urge to shove something into your mouth while writing, then make sure you have snacks available in your office - healthy snacks. At least you don't need a run on the vending machine then. Good snacks for during writing are fruits (although you might end up spilling juice over your keyboard), dried fruits and nuts.

Do you get major cravings when writing for a long time? Do you take a break, or do you stuff something into your mouth?

Writers' Lab: How you should start writing from Day 1

In the academic blogosphere, there are fans and haters of starting with writing at the very beginning of your PhD.

I started writing very early, and even though not much of that material has made it into my dissertation, I did find it very helpful.

Starting to write early on helped me to get used to academic writing (in English), but those early little reports and discussion documents also turned out very useful in meetings with my supervisor.

On day 1, you won't open a document and start writing the first chapter of your dissertation, but there are a few types of smaller reports that you can start working on. All these writings will help you become familiar with writing, and will help you produce something that your supervisors can look at before a meeting.

1. Summaries of papers

Whenever you read a paper that turns out to be valuable, write a small summary. This summary can be really short (half a page), or you can use the document to already write out some equations that you might need earlier on.
Among the only material in my thesis that survives from my first year are equations I neatly wrote and formatted in MathType at the very beginning.

2. Discussions of a set of papers

If you've read a few papers on a similar topic, you can pull that material together and write a small report of it (5 to 10 pages). Important here is to discover which points are still open in the discussion, where different authors contradict each other, what the limits, boundaries and assumptions are. If you can apply these ideas to a set of data from the literature and play around a bit - even better!

3. Exploratory calculations

Once I knew that I was going to be doing experiments, I made a whole set of exploratory calculations to see what, according to the current design codes and methods, my slabs were supposed to carry. In a preparatory report, I set out all the equations, and added a series of results of calculations and parameter studies.
Working on this material helped me get a good idea of what I could expect from my experiments (although that turned out to be different) and from the codes. Moreover, it helped me set up a few MathCad sheets and some Excel spreadsheets, that I've used for different purposes later in my research.
Don't fall in the trap of waiting until you have data to start working on calculations!

4. Plan of Action

Another important document to write at the very beginning is your Plan of Action (for me it was "Educational and Supervision Plan", for others it might be the Research Plan). Brainstorm the different methods that you would like to apply, and assess the amount of time you will need. Outline your research question, and identify a set of sub-questions.

You might deviate from your research question later on, but start with a defined question - it will help you get on track to start looking for answers.

5. Motivation of Research

Why does your research matter? Motivating your research is not about getting ready to write your introduction chapter, but it is about getting the larger picture. Write that larger picture down in a document, and revisit it frequently.

If your research has practical applications, keep a tie to practice. If your research has broader impacts on society, place things into perspective every now and then.

What types of documents did you start working on at the beginning of your PhD?

Silver Linings: Loving Kindness

Whenever you need a little pick-me-up, you might like to do a loving kindness meditation. This type of meditation is part of the online mindfulness course.

When I went through difficult times some months ago, I found peace and solace in the loving kindness meditation.

What I mostly appreciate about loving kindness is that it helps you to focus on all compassion and love and positive that you have within yourself. It helps me to see the little silver lining in my heart when all else looks dark and gloomy.

Here is a guided loving kindness meditation:

6 Essential Elements in Writing To Dos

In a not-so-recent Lifehacker post, I read the rather surprising stats about To Dos (logged in a particular type of software):

41% of to-do items were never completed.
50% of completed to-do items are done within a day.
18% of completed to-do items are done within an hour.
10% of completed to-do items are done within a minute.
15% of dones started as to-do items.

This post had me thinking about how I structure my own to do lists. In fact, I simply write in my planner what needs to be done on a given day. My office and research to dos are on the top of the page, with the appointments I might have marked at their time slot, and at the bottom I scribble down my to dos for the evening.

Given the fact that so few to do items ever get finished, and some others get finished almost right away, it is necessary to spend some time reflecting on when an item becomes a to do task, and how to treat these.

Over time, I've put a lot of effort into optimizing my own time management system, and writing to dos, as well as planning tasks is an essential element of organizing your time.

Here are 6 essential elements that you need to keep in mind when writing a to do.

1. Focus on the essential

Identify your Most Important Task of the day, and put that on top of your list. It might be tempting to go and do a lot of small things (reply some mails, file some papers, pick up a delivery, ...) but the most important task is what you really need to do.

2. Assess your time

Before starting to put 5 tasks on your to do list for the day, assess the time you have, and the time you think you need to finish them. If you don't really know how much time certain tasks take you, start tracking your time.

3. Distractions

If there is one thing for sure, you will get distracted. Allow for some buffer time in your schedule. If you work 8 hours, you can't fill these 8 hours with net work on your tasks. When adding to do items to your list, make a quick assessment of how much time of your day is lost by distractions.

4. Be early

If a task needs to be done, start working on it early. Don't put items a day before their deadline on your to do list, but plan them over a longer period of time. Take your own deadlines seriously, and work accordingly.

5. Think long term

Identify the tasks that really move your work forwards, and spend enough time on these. Don't let the tasks that are not urgent but important slip behind in your schedule, but place them high on your to do list.

6. Alternate tasks

If you can't focus on the same task for the entire day, add different types of work on your to do list. For example: combine writing a section on a journal paper with sorting out data in a spreadsheet and reading a paper. Not only will you get some more variation in your tasks, but you will also set shorter, defined times to work on these tasks. Short time slots are beneficial from your overall productivity.

How do you handle your to do list? Do you get your tasks done or do you find it hard to deal with distractions?

Writers' Lab: List of Common Mistakes

As I was proofreading my thesis, I made a list of the most common errors that I encountered in my own writing.

Creating a list of your own errors gives you some insights in your writing, areas of improvement and can help you spend some more time and effort on eliminating these errors.

I'm not sure if these are typical mistakes for a native Dutch speaker, or if most writers run into them - and I'd appreciate if you'd give your opinions on that.

For those of you who are proofreading your thesis or a research paper, you might like to pay a little additional attention to the following points:

1. Tenses

I need give my writings an additional round of proofreading, as I tend to shift seamlessly from past to present tense.
Even though I'm still confused as to whether I should describe my experiments in present or past tense, I now at least try to stick to a tense of my choice.

2. Singular versus Plural

When the subject of a sentence gets a little long (as often in academic writing), I lose focus of the subject and often make mistakes against the proper use of singular or plural.
Upon proofreading, I look for the verb and subject and check if they correspond in the proper way.

3. Typos

The typical ones: "strenght", as well as some more obscure typos that make it barely impossible to figure out what I actually meant. If the meaning of the typo is completely unknown, it might help to check which letters on the keyboard are close to the ones in the weird word; you might find out in that way what you actually wanted to type.

4. Prepositions

An error more common amongst non-native writers, I would think, the correct use of the prepositions is a difficult task for me. When in doubt, I simply look it up in a dictionary or online.

What are your most common errors in writing? Are these errors familiar to you, or are these typical for Dutch native speakers?