My whiteboard project-tracker
One of my favourite tools in my home office is my whiteboard. Today, I want to talk about how I use a whiteboard to keep track of writing projects.
One of my favourite tools in my home office is my whiteboard. Today, I want to talk about how I use a whiteboard to keep track of writing projects.
This post is about the ‘Handbibliothek’ (German: hand library), that part of the library where frequently-used books are shelved easily ‘to hand’. At your writing desk, you will need to build a personal Handbibliothek that will be exactly calibrated to your individual research project.
Longtime readers of the blog will know Research Degree Insiders is a big fan of time off — there’s a whole category of posts tagged
Writing has technical aspects, sure. You need skills, and training. And you need to be organised and disciplined about keeping up with deadlines and juggling projects. And writing has physical challenges, you have to sit and use your back and wrists and neck and eyes. But, you also bring your weird, inner, non-rational self to the desk when you write. The inner self that has views about what music you can listen to, or that you need to enact your writing rituals before typing a word. There are good reasons why you might like what you like, but a lot of it just is personal preference, and that is totally a great reason to take it seriously.
There is no one ideal posture that you should take and maintain for the full working day. Instead, the best posture is actually a series of different positions. At home, you already have a range of furniture and spaces available to you, so it’s easier to switch it up. Changing how you sit every so often, even if it’s just moving chairs every few hours, can make a huge different to your comfort and mobility. Move from the desk to the sofa and back again, or out to the balcony. Stand at the breakfast bar, or use that treadmill or stationary bike in the living room.
Often, we feel we should wait to feel ‘inspired’ to start writing. We want to wait until we feel we are filled up with ideas and certainty and energy to write. And yet, as Boice found in his research, turning up regularly and ‘just writing’, whether or not you felt inspired or had time or were ready, could make someone nine times more productive.
A PhD is often inspired by a particular vision–either your own passion project or a passion project of a more senior researcher. When you pitched the thesis to funders and your faculty, the project was going to be a sweeping, world-changing, life-changing research idea that would proceed without any hitches. And then you have to deal with real life.
This one is going to be a lot of messy thinking aloud about the place of writing and self-care. There will be Latin and Greek! There will be Lorde and Foucault! If you don’t like theory, run very fast in another direction. If you do like theory–this will be a bloggy exemplar of thinking with, not a tight conclusion, and I’d love to talk to you about it!
Lots of people are suddenly having to transition to working from home at the moment, and responses have been mixed. I’ve seen both a flurry
Research Degree Insiders doesn’t normally do guest posts, but this was a special exception. While I have worked in jobs across the university sector, academic
