.Hi Reader!

Last week, life got in the way and I could not send the newsletter. But this week, we're back on track! (Indeed, getting back on track when we fail to meet our goals is a crucial "meta-habit" in a successful PhD). In this short newsletter, we flash back to a post that featured artist advice that is equally applicable to our PhD research. And a tiny practice to beat procrastination (a most common barrier to doing our best work).

Flashback: A Monday Mantra duo: The best advice about research that an artist never gave me​

(Tweet-length gists of past posts, so that you don't have to read through the whole blog backlog)

After I came across a commencement speech by acclaimed writer Neil Gaiman, I realized much of his advice to aspiring artists also applies to aspiring researchers. Here's the gist of it (more insights are transposed in the post itself):

Tiny practice: The Right Now List

(Small ideas or practices –told bluntly and without much background– that I only share with newsletter subscribers)

One of the top barriers to PhD productivity is procrastination. Have you ever found yourself with a big ugly task getting stale in your to-do list, repeatedly postponed because it is too big, too abstract, or makes you somehow uncomfortable? Try this: Pick up a post-it or a piece of paper, and write the first 3-4 simplest steps you need to do to start working on it – and then, complete those steps. So, if you procrastinate on writing an email to your supervisor about an upcoming meeting, the Right Now List could look like: 1) fire up my email app; 2) open a new message window; 3) write “Dear Prof. X”. The idea is that those steps are so simple and silly that even a master procrastinator cannot make excuses to not do those… and, once you check them off, you will already have momentum and will start doing the rest of the big ugly task, which will have lost most of its fearsome power.

After reading about this trick in David Cain’s Raptitude blog, I realized that this is basically what I do with the first 3-5 steps of my paper writing process: reduce the barrier of entry to writing a paper to the easiest (but still useful) steps – including getting some early feedback from co-authors. Now, I almost enjoy starting to write a new paper. Try this out with any scary, vague, or repeatedly procrastinated tasks/projects you have!

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May you never procrastinate again!

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