Monday Motivator: Focus on Finishing

Monday Motivator: Focus on Finishing

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When you put your hand to the plow, you can't put

it down until you get to the end of the row.

                           -Alice Paul

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Most faculty and graduate students contact me because they are having trouble finishing projects. Incomplete tasks keep faculty from getting tenure and graduate students from getting their degrees.

Academics who seek coaching often have several journal papers in process, can’t get themselves to complete a book proposal, have course ‘incompletes’ remaining from past semesters, or have been unable to finish their dissertation – often for years.

To become a successful academic you must learn how to

persist on a project until you complete it. The ability

to finish projects is a key ingredient to effectiveness

in your career and your life.

Becoming a finisher requires practice.  One of the ways to

develop the habit of completing projects is to break large

tasks into small goals and finish something every day. 

In a given work session, instead of trying to finish a

dissertation chapter, you could first aim to write three

paragraphs of your literature review covering a discrete

theoretical topic. 

Instead of trying to revise a paper for resubmission, you

could first try to address two reviewer criticisms. 

Instead of trying to send out your entire book proposal

to publishing houses, you could first aim to write one

chapter summary.

You’ll find that finishing a task creates a burst of

energy.  When you accomplish your achievable daily goal,

you’ll feel a mild surge of satisfaction and an increase

in motivation.  When you cross an item off your “to do”

list, you’ll experience satisfaction.

Finishing small tasks can also mitigate discouragement

about how long the large, complex projects take.

For example, today I had that common experience of

Tackling a project that seemed to become larger and more

complicated the more I worked on it.  After a few hours,

I felt frustrated and disheartened.  I thought that I’d be

able to finish, but instead I discovered new blocks to

completion.  When I noticed how cranky I was becoming, I

decided to switch gears and work on something I knew that

I could complete: writing a Monday Motivator. 

I find that these weekly emails are both manageable and

satisfying to send out (in part because some of you let

me know that you find my tips helpful.)

So, now that I’ve written this draft, I feel much better

about my day.  And I’m ready to return to the discouraging

morass that prompted me to write about this topic!

Let me know what you finish this week.

Until next Monday,

Mary

P.S. A graduate student sent me the opening quotation because

she had found a previous Monday Motivator particularly relevant.

I always appreciate finding great quotations to add to my

burgeoning file, and in this case I had the added benefit of

learning that Alice Paul was an important suffragist. 

Mary McKinney, Ph.D.

Clinical Psychologist and Academic Coach

Successful Academic Consulting

Visit http://www.SuccessfulAcademic.com

for more tenure track tips.

Visit http://successfulacademic.typepad.com

to read Mary's blog

Comments

[w.]

thanks for this motivator and the wonderful quote! It is all particularly timely for me today as I sit down with the task of finishing a project (or trying to finish, as the case may be!).

[Yvette]

Bravo, Coach! I printed this out and have it posted on my board right next to my chapter outline. Thank you. (One request: Printer-friendly format pages!)

[Don Sturgill]

Thanks, Coach. Your experience reminds me of my own when trying to learn a difficult part on the guitar. When I hit a point of dead-end... it just isn't working or going to work... then turn away from it for awhile; when I go back to the same thing, I find that it begins to fall into place. The moral: don't feel like a quitter if you need to just stop beating your head and go on to something else for a spell.