23. 3 Must Haves To Finishing Your Literature Review (Part 3)

Get it done framework. It's about the systems that you have in your life to keep you organized or prioritize the things that matters. It is about your mindset, like who do you have to be the show out to do the things that you need to do so you can have what you want to have and it's about the community, the environment that you are setting up around you and the people that you're surrounding yourself with. Because this is the 95% remember I talked about the 5% like that being just like the, the content, the how do I do the literature review? How do I write this and that? That's 5% this systems mindset and community is 95% without these things, you will not be successful, It does not matter how much content you know, these things will get in your way if you don't have them in order. So the first, here's why. This is why you were going to put into action your system. I want you to look at your schedule. I want you to go to your writing schedule and for real, for real, pull out your calendar. You're going to find 10 hours, no more, 10 hours of what you're going to write. You're not doing this in one day. No one writing session can be more than four hours. Right? So you got to find 10 hours throughout your week that you're going to write and it's just for writing time. It's just 10 hours. Do you need to find, you assemble a writing routine. What is the thing that you can show up and do every time they use a diner? Right? How? What is your process from going from step a, which is opening up your laptop to being done for the day? What is the same thing over and over? What I like to do is I open my laptop, I open up the document or a new document and then I just brained up for a good five or 10 minutes, whatever's in my head. I just type that all out and then eventually like I just typed it all out and then I just let that go and go and go. Until I can't say anything anymore. And then I go back and I edit that because usually when I'm not thinking I can write and it gives me a system to follow open laptop, pull up document. Right. And it doesn't matter if what I'm writing has anything to do with what I'm supposed to be writing or not. Because I know eventually my brain will go to what I'm supposed to be writing. And then the third piece of your system is that you need to find someone who can give you weekly feedback. You need to be in drafts of what you're writing on a weekly basis. It gets you in the habit of consistently producing something so that you know that by the end of the week I gotta turn in something to this person so I can spend all my time reading and writing notes. I got to write something. It also gives you used to getting feedback because that's usually the hardest part of the dissertation is getting a feedback from your chair and a committee. You get used to that and it helps you clear, like get clarity on your ideas and making sure that you're communicating what you want to communicate and then it holds you accountable. Right. Because again, you know, you gotta show up with something, you do it. So for your systems that what you need to do a schedule, 10 hours or less, a simple writing routine and gets you writing and then weekly feedback so that you can get, um, you get feedback on what you're writing. So that's systems. Okay. This is what I started with my clients on. We were start here. Right. Because this doesn't, you have to be accountable and you can't just do this by yourself because we'll lie to ourselves quick. Right? So I want to introduce you to Aaliyah. Aaliyah is a client of mine and when she came to me, she was, I remember she telling me she was like working 10 hour days, multiple days, like her whole weekend. Um, she's taking courses in doing her dissertation and she's in an online program and she just felt like she had no time for herself. She was tired. She was overwhelmed. We started working together and getting her on a consistent schedule, putting her on the time restrictions about not working more than four hours a day, working seven hours a week. We got her system so that she can read and review her articles and actually write and she completed her draft of her literature review in three weeks. Like she had a draft to work from in three weeks and we just spent the rest of our time like editing, getting feedback on back so she can make it perfect and make it what she want it to be like. She can turn it into her chair. She's feeling more confident about her literature review and about her project overall and just feeling really good about her writing routine. Like life has come up for her, some other things and she has had time to focus on that and do other things and not worry about if she's making progress or not because there's a system in place and there was accountability in place and that's what I'm asking you to do. Right. Again, this isn't about like you have to work with me. It is about you can do this for yourself. You can build it for yourself. So the second piece of the get it done for framework, it's mindset. You need time in your schedule. This is why the 10 rule and an a no more than four hours in a day rule is important because you need time to just be, especially like at least, once a week you need a day where you just get to just be. And throughout the day your brain needs breaks. And throughout the week you just need to know that there's time that you can do the things that you need to do and you want to do because your brain needs a break. Remember, it wants to be lazy. It doesn't want to constantly have to work. And if you're constantly doing these very relaxed days it has to work. It needs downtime to just do nothing, to like recalibrate, to get a break. And if you don't give it that, you've got to have way more problems, a good way. And I like to set myself up to just be in the, be in the, like a positive mindset. As I have a morning routine, I have a morning routine that helps them meet up, get my thoughts down, to be intentional about who I need to be, how I need to show up every day to get the things done that I want to get done. And I also have time and a system for planning for the worst. Planning for the worst sucks. Like what if you're not able to get any writing done this week, what have you. Right? And you get to your dissertation defense and you fail. What if you turned this draft into your chair and they hate it? What's your plan? What are you going to do? Because this is much easier to plan for that when you're at your house and you're feeling good and then you can think through those, you have the space to do that. It's way more difficult to do that in a moment. So when I was in the moment, I was felling net defense. I couldn't, I couldn't tell you what to do next. Cause I was like so freaked out that that was happening. But fast forward when I was preparing for my dissertation, I was able to prepare like what if I go here and I don't know what to answer, what is my response going to be? And I already had that written down and I already practiced what I would do. So that that helped me to be more confident when I walked into the room. So working on this is so, so, so, so important. Having a daily practice, having time just to be planning for the worst will make all the difference. I would argue that mindset is the number one thing you need to do. It doesn't matter about a schedule or downtime or any of that, like if you don't have the right mindset. So client Margaret came to me and she was working on her comprehensive exams. It was six week process that essentially she needed to turn in a 50 page document that would outline the background of her topic that she was talking about for her dissertation. And she had to write three like research, um, like designs possible that she would use for her dissertation when she came to me at the end of week three. Your members, she has six weeks when she came to me at the end of week three and think she maybe had a page done, a page written of the 50 pages in and she was tired and burned out and ready to give up. Now we worked or mangled after three weeks on how to give her, um, space in her schedule to just be, so yeah, we did the whole set up of the schedule and a writing, but I really talked to her about taking a break. She fought me on this, but I was like, you need a break. I get that you think you only have three weeks left and you're running out of time, but you need a break. So taking breaks, spending time with her boyfriend, going into other responsibilities and hanging out with people. We also worked through what she needed to do to write more. Um, but she was able to not only pass her, um, her written part of her comprehensive exams, but she walked into the oral part like, like a boss Ferrell. Like she owned the room. She was so confident she answered all the questions her, her committee were going back and forth and she just showed up different like she, it was like night and day from the person that I saw who signed up to work with me. Then the person who I saw commented their oral defense because we focus, we focus a lot on mindset and you can actually watch our video on [inaudible] side of her talking about her experience and you can see it even in that video of how like she just lights up talking about her research project and her experience. Because mindset is that important. I've been taken by voice. It's going out. Okay. So the third part is community. I'm going to give you some rules. I think it's important to organize a writing group cause it's, it's, they are key. This dissertation process is lonely. Like you think about it, you go from, excuse me, being in class with people for 20 plus years, like you know you have k through 12, yet undergrad degree got master's degree, you got um, now yearning as like doctoral process. You had like two to three years of coursework and then you get to the dissertation phase and it's like no people, most of us don't have classes that like for your dissertation. And so you go from something where you're showing up on a weekly basis with other people and learning to something was showing up to nobody with no focus. It's all up to you. So that is why your community and your writing groups are so important. However, not all writing groups are created equal. So for our writing group to be successful coming up with a designating writing time, right? Like what is the time that you all are going to admit you are all going to commit to, right? It's not negotiable. We show up, we write and we write for this long because I like how long are you going to write? Right? What are going to be the rules about writing? Are you going to talk any before? Do you need to check in with each other? How long are you going to let that go on for? Where are you going to write? Are there other people allowed to come into the writing group at different points? How long are you going to do this for? A semester, for a year. Those like get really clear about that in the beginning. No assumptions. You want to have a point in where you check in about progress. So that can be in the beginning of the writing session where you say, I'm going to work on, I've got, like these two articles. I'm going to get two pages done and our writing time and then at the end as I writing time checking in to see where people are or what they said they were going to get done. Because what you outlining, what your intention is going to be in the beginning helps keep your burning focus on what you need to do. And then at the end when people asked you if you did that, it helps keep you accountable. Ask each other powerful questions like don't be afraid to ask each other questions. Like what do you mean by that? Or how are you going to write those two pages? What's your process for reading those two articles? Being each other's help cause that helps us to think and then having a place to celebrate wins. We don't celebrate enough. You just think that like only defense time do we need to celebrate but celebrate it. You wrote two pages, celebrate that you actually showed up for the writing session. Celebrate that you got your topic pass by your chair. Having people to do that and sometimes you may not have anybody in your program that you can have a writing group with. Maybe that means you're going to have to go online and form a group with people that you probably never met face to face before, but y'all are Facebook friends or you're in this group. It doesn't have to be this big thing. It could just be one, it could be two people, it can be a group of 10, but just making sure that you have structure is gonna really be helpful for that. I'm just like my client, Dr Layla McCloud, um, Layla came to noon at the end of last year. Um, she was, she was tired. She was at the edge. She was working on her proposal and I just didn't think I, like, she went through some things in her program and she was just feeling like maybe, you know, she just, she didn't know how she's going to continue. And while I didn't think working one on one with me, what's going to be the the right thing for her just because she, I mean, she had a system, she was doing very well at progress. Um, you know, she had to balance just because she's a mommy and kids will do that. Um, well what, what was, what was missing was community, like having that sense of support and people that she can show up with. And so she joined my right away group and she showed up week after week. Oh and cam were working, she share with us what she was going through and we celebrated with her when she, you know, pass her proposal and she was working on her like dissertation in data and she had Hashtag to get her through it and we all were like hopping or her pictures and stuff and say the Hashtag. Um, but her showing up week after week help me. I know personally to be even more committed because it's like it's motivating when you know somebody is serious, a member, the people you hang out with keep you going. And we were all just motivated by with her, cause she finish where she was six months before graduation, she didn't think she was going to be able to do it. There was no proposal defended and nothing. Six. Yeah. Like five spies. Six months later she is doctor McCloud just because that's the power of community and that's what I mean like one thing can throw it off. She knew that she needed to write. She knew what she was doing. She had a schedule, she was organized. Speaker 1: ( 16:17 )