Writing Your Dissertation During a Pandemic

In March 2020, I began to work on my dissertation with a defense date of May 27th, 2020. The pandemic had just hit, former President Trump was ramping up his anti-science rhetoric in full swing, protests over the horrible murder of George Floyd erupted all over Los Angeles, and I began a new teacher assistant gig teaching regression to the newest cohort of UCLA psychology graduates students, which was decidedly going to have to switch to online instruction last minute. There were sirens blaring up and down the freeway next to my apartment at all hours of the day, my phone was constantly buzzing with news updates that always seemed to chip away at emotional resources, and the students I worked with in class were struggling with crippling isolation, anxiety over world events, and trying to learn advanced material at the same time. I shadowed this experience, trying to relearn everything I had forgotten, fighting my own concerns about the state of the world, and was trying to find a way to support students through unprecedented times. 

How the heck was I going to write my dissertation? The world was on fire, it had already burned me out, but I had to keep going on empty. What happened to writing your dissertation in a cafe with soft jazz music, lots of caffeine, and the occasional blueberry muffin? What happened to that wonderful mirage of the dissertation experience where you get the space to do deep thinking and work on your life’s purpose, yelling ‘Aha!’ in the middle of the night and then tidy up all those ideas when you woke up the next day at 2PM?

Welcome to writing your dissertation during a pandemic. It is terrible, and if you are writing your dissertation now in 2021, you likely have it much worse than I ever did. During the last wave of dissertations in the spring of 2020 (us ‘plague doctors’ if you will) we weren’t riding off a wave of isolation for the past year like you are. We had the opportunity to see our family and friends in a normal environment a month or so beforehand, rather than over a year. Of course, the transition was rough, confusing, and incredibly stressful. We didn’t know what was going to happen. But you know the horrible toll this pandemic has taken on the world. We were gifted with optimism during that point, thinking that in maybe a month or so of quarantine it would be contained. You, dear reader, know just how unrelenting this virus has been, and how often it was underestimated, politicized, and the resulting consequences of that. 

So the world’s on fire, but you still have that dissertation to write. Very few people living today have written their dissertations during a pandemic, and as one of those people, I wanted to offer some things that helped me get through this process, in case it’s the least bit helpful. 

1. Read the general dissertation advice, and when it’s not applicable, let it go. 

Often step one of writing a dissertation is to collect all the advice you can about how to do it. But nothing is more annoying than when you’re looking for answers, and all that’s given to you are the same old ideas that aren’t helpful-- because no, you can’t really go to a cafe and write. My advice on this front is to read up on the general advice given to writers if you haven’t already at this point, take what you can, and leave the rest. If you’re anything like me, reading some of this advice will feel irritating, because it is a constant reminder that you will not have a normal experience writing your dissertation. Do your best to let those feelings go and move on.

2. Create dissertation context.

Our brains use the context of the environment we’re in – the color of the walls, the smell of coffee, the music we listen to – to learn. When you smell the inside of a dentist’s office, you might start to feel nervous because your brain has learned to map that sterile smell with the unpleasant experience of dental work. When you drink a beverage that you enjoyed as a child, pleasant memories of warm summer nights might make you feel more relaxed. If you’ve ever stared at the corner of the wall during an unpleasant phone conversation, looking back on that corner later might spontaneously bring up memories of the phone call. This effect of environmental context is why experts say to never work in bed, because then when you go to sleep, your brain might think it’s not time to sleep, it’s time to work!

Chances are, you’ve been stuck inside your living space for quite some time now. Your brain has probably mapped all kinds of things to your environmental context, and if you’ve had a rough year, your space is a reminder of that. My advice to you is to create new context that is solely associated with your dissertation writing. For example, when working on your dissertation, 

• Move your desk to face a new direction 

• Get a curtain you can pull across the wall you face when it’s writing time

• Change the background color of your desktop 

• Burn a candle with a new scent

• Buying yourself a new mug with a new type of tea or coffee

• Listen to a new playlist of music, or lofi channel

At first, this probably won’t feel very different. But your job is to get in some good working sessions on the dissertation with these contexts. Over time, your mind will start to associate these sensory experiences with focus time, and you will find it easier to get in the dissertation writing zone. If you find yourself starting to drift toward other tasks like checking email or doing other work, do it somewhere else and remove yourself from the dissertation context you’ve created (i.e., stop drinking the tea, turn off the lofi tracks). This context should be reserved for only periods of deep work on your dissertation and should be free from distractions. 

3.    Balance deep work and deliberate rest.

There is something special about dissertation guilt. When you have that looming deadline, and the associated burnout of writing it during a pandemic, any minute you are not working on it feels like you are burying yourself deeper. As spoon theory would say, you only have so many spoons in a day (spoons representing your limited physical/mental energy to do things), and for many people even getting up, dressing, feeding yourself, and preparing to write can take up multiple spoons, leaving you with only a few left for the day. And then the guilt of not working on the dissertation? That might also eat up another spoon. And the lingering pandemic? Well, let’s just say we’ve all taken a hit to how many spoons we can have at one time.

You cannot do good work if you do not have any spoons, and the way you get spoons is by practicing something called deliberate rest (a take on deliberate practice) in between periods of deep work (a more well-known concept, read more about it here). There is a great article about deliberate rest here I suggest you read, but I’ll give you my own take below.

Your brain will tell you that unless you’re working on your dissertation, you are not being productive. It might even scoff at the idea to add something else to your “to-do” list, such as resting. But I’m here to tell you that you need to incorporate rest when writing your dissertation so that you can focus and get your writing done. The rest you need is not distraction— it is not checking your social media, answering emails, or making more to do lists. Many people think that rest is not working on your dissertation, but “idleness is not rest” as John Lubbock once said. You need to identify the activities that help you feel restored and energized. Making that’s taking a walk, maybe it’s gardening, or maybe it’s watching Pokémon unboxing videos online. Whatever wacky hobby brings you joy, you must build into your schedule. Otherwise, the crushing burnout of the world and the immense pressure of the dissertation will leave you sitting at your desk, staring at the screen completely empty with nothing left to give. 

Be strategic about how you incorporate rest periods and breaks. If you feel the absolute need for deliberate rest, take a hit on the dissertation writing schedule for a few hours, and come back after. Otherwise, you’ll probably spend those two hours getting nowhere (and perhaps even more frustrated than before). Also, if you feel like you are at an impasse or stuck, take a break. There is a long line of research suggesting that breaks can facilitate “incubation periods” which help to reformat information, reduce mental fixations, and promote creative problem-solving. It could be that if you aren’t exactly sure what to make of a finding, a well-placed shower break may give you an aha! moment about how to proceed. 

4.    Make a goal of writing two sentences.

For the days that you are having a really hard time mustering up the discipline to recreate your dissertation context, and meet that four-hour benchmark, change your goal to showing up and writing two sentences. That’s it, that’s all you need to do. Tell yourself that as long as you make your new tea in your new mug, light that dissertation candle, open up the document, and write two sentences, that’s all you need to do. Then, you can decide to chug the tea, blow out the candle, and call it a day. Or you can decide to keep going. Chances are, you’re probably going to keep going, because often showing up is the hardest part. 

This idea of making a goal of showing up, rather than completing more costly goals is not a new idea, but it’s one that works, perhaps even more during a pandemic. Stress is known for handicapping our cognitive resources and hitting our motivation where it hurts, and during the pandemic, stress is always present. Getting off the couch to your writing desk to keep chipping away at your dissertation, when the world is still on fire, is really hard to do. Luckily, stress research can help us.

Research on stress has found that there are two elements that factor into how we deal with stress, one being the magnitude of the stressor, and the other being our own judgments of whether we have the resources to meet the challenge. If you are burned out, even simple things can feel a lot more stressful than they otherwise would, because you don’t have the financial, emotional, or social resources needed to deal with it. Enter the two-sentence goal.

If your only goal is to show up and write two sentences, the challenge becomes more manageable with fewer resources. You are no longer looking to meet a goal of a productive four-hour writing block, but instead, have broken through the first hurdle of showing up for yourself (sometimes the hardest goal of all). Once you’ve done that, you can create a new goal. Maybe write another two sentences, or 12 sentences, or round out the hour of writing. If you tell yourself that you only have to write two sentences and can quit, you are more likely to overcome the hard part of getting started. 

5.    Use technology to feel connected.

At this point, most of us have spent more than a year separated from our friends and family. In such isolation, it can feel even more alienating to spend long hours alone working on your dissertation. To make it feel less like solitary confinement, check out options like Coffitivity, that plays ambient cafe noises to make you feel like you’re in that cafe (this can be part of the dissertation context you create!). I’ve also used Youtube channels, like Chilled Cow, that play lofi music with an optional chat. Although I barely read the chat, seeing the tiny movement in the corner of my eye reminds me that there are thousands of other people out there, probably trying to get work done just like me. I’ve always found it comforting to know that although most of us are still living by ourselves in quarantine, we are still united. 

6. Momentum is your ticket out. 

Nothing is worse than staring at a blank screen or trying to write what may become a 100+ page paper when you’ve only gotten a few pages in. The reason this feels so terrible is because human beings are great at seeking out information and evidence that can make us feel crappy about ourselves. When you’ve got 5 pages of outline and scrap writing, your brain may think “this is all you have?” And then the anxiety can kick in and cripple us.

The more you can sit down, create your writing mood, and get writing down, the more momentum you will gain, and this can slowly begin to motivate you more. It doesn’t even have to be good writing, in fact, the first draft should be noticeably awful. But your job is to get the ideas down and figure out how the ideas will be structured and supported. Editing always comes later, as will many revisions. But if you are continuously writing a sentence, scrutinizing it, and editing while writing, you are killing the momentum you need because you will spend 1 hour writing one paragraph. Your brain will then look back and whisper to you, “How will you ever get this done? And with so little spoons?” But if you have written a few pages, knowing they will need some love and attention later, you will help yourself to recognize the progress being made. 

 I briefly mentioned editing while writing as a momentum killer, but here are some more you should avoid.

• Fancy to do lists. If you like remaking lists, trying different colors, etc. unless this is deliberate rest for you and you feel energized and restored, find a premade template, tell yourself it’s good enough, and move on.

• Reading empirical articles during writing time or trying to find the citation of that one paper you read. Just leave a (CITE) and move on. You know the literature, you’ll find that one citation, and odds are you might remove the entire paragraph all together. This step can come later, but do not let something that should be in your “pre-writing stage” (a term borrowed from Kristin Sainani in her scientific writing mooc course, which I highly recommend) interfering with the time you should be actually be writing.

• Stop rereading what you wrote, and keep moving forward. So many times I caught myself rereading paragraphs I liked to get to the ones I didn’t like, just to go back and reread from the top. You have to stop yourself from doing this because odds are, you aren’t gaining anything. To help you move on, I highly recommend using the highlight/background color of your text to prevent you from rereading what you’ve written. For example, just do something like this. 

7. This is not your life’s work. 

Unless you are Dr. Jill Biden, odds are that no one is going to comb through your dissertation, trying to identify every typo or missing hyphen. Use spell check or use text to speech to have your computer read it back to you and catch the obvious errors. But at some point, realize that your dissertation will never be perfect. This is why they say, “the perfect dissertation doesn’t exist” and instead, note that “The best dissertation is a finished dissertation.”  More recently, people have noted that whereas your dissertation once signaled your life’s work and contribution to society, now it is a piece of paper you write to get another piece of paper. From someone on the other side, let me just say, this is true. The most anyone will read is the title of your dissertation, so maybe spend some time making it as stellar as possible. 

If I still haven’t convinced you that you are probably more critical of your dissertation than the world, remember one thing. Your dissertation will have a date of 2021, and the world will know what you had to go through to get there. So, take a deep breath, recognize the challenge in front of you, and give yourself what you need to get the work done. 

You can do it :).

P.S. Use reciteworks.com for a free reference check, and for those missing dois, click here to automatically find them across the internet. 

(A special note about this list: My goal of writing this list was to add pandemic-specific advice that helped me through writing my dissertation, but this list is not exhaustive. Importantly, advice such as staying networked with peers and taking care of your mental and physical health is critical advice for any year.)