This post is a continuation from my previous one about having a timeline and meeting deadlines.
Since I’m a researcher, I thought I would research it. There are two parts to this process, as I mentioned in the previous post; 1) meeting deadlines to progress with my research/article writing; and 2) setting deadlines for writing a book.
As it happens, I’ve just been agreeing an author’s deadlines about their next book with their publisher. The deadlines are split into an initial two months and then six weeks between the last five. It’s the kind of book that works in batches so this process works fine. The complete manuscript is due at the end of six months.
Six weeks feels a little long for iterations of research, however, so I thought I’d try two-week deadlines. How do I provide an incentive to meet them though? External deadlines/pressure feel different to internal ones. If I don’t meet it, I evaluate my behaviour and conclude that I’ve acted just fine.
I was thinking of an app where you stake a certain amount of money and if you don’t do the corresponding act, you lose the money.
Or one idea that came to me in the shower was I could set up a scheduled post on this blog. When I meet the deadline, I can post what I’ve written. When I don’t, it will publish as a blank and be visibly incomplete. I like that idea. It seems very doable as well.
Research
Learning how to deal with deadlines is part of the research process as much as finding out who your fellow researchers are, and what your area of study looks like. When you begin a PhD, part of your role as a student is to find out where you fit.
You have to learn how to become a researcher; you have to increase your abilities, meet deadlines, and strengthen your writing qualities:
Ultimately, the supervisor’s role in providing feedback and setting deadlines is crucial in developing students’ abilities and in strengthening students’ writing quality (12). –Leite, Paditha, and Cecatti (2019)
The source for the above points on the supervisor’s role is
Darcy Haag Granello (2001) “Promoting Cognitive Complexity in Graduate Written Work: Using Bloom’s Taxonomy as a Pedagogical Tool to Improve Literature Reviews” Counselor education and supervision
[I’m reading through the literature to figure out the best practice for deadlines TBC]
Selfie PhD 