Thesis writing is no joke. Completing your thesis is not a 3-day task. It requires months of consistent work to be able to meet the deadline you have set for yourself. Are you worried about meeting the deadline and completing your thesis writing? Building a habit to write daily is the most crucial step to completing your thesis writing on time.
What habit must you develop to complete your thesis writing?
To avoid getting stressed at the last minute, the habit you must develop to complete your thesis writing is to write daily. Let’s be honest, there are so many tasks at hand each day and they never seem to end. As you finish one task, a new one pops up to take its place. It’s a vicious cycle. So, amidst the daily life chores, how do you develop a daily writing habit? We break it into the simplest steps to help you develop the habit.
Why is it important to Develop a Daily Writing Habit for thesis writing?
Writing is a craft that you need to learn and master. As Malcolm Gladwell mentioned in his book ‘Outliers’, you need 10,000 hours to master any skill. Henceforth, it only makes sense to develop a daily writing habit to improve your thesis writing skill and increase your writing speed. One cannot expect to write well if they don’t make it a habit. The road to thesis writing is long, you need to remind yourself of your goal, completing your thesis. Thus, your daily writing habit is the key to achieving this goal.
How to Develop a Daily Writing Habit for your thesis writing?
Now, that you know the answer to completing your thesis writing on time, the real struggle lies ahead. Habits are built with consistency. How do you go about building this habit? As long as you stay true to yourself in following these steps, with time, you can develop a daily writing habit.
1. Set a time to write daily
Developing a habit means getting into the routine of something. Hence, it’s essential to decide on a time that works best for you when you can sit down to write for sure. Maybe, you feel the most motivated to write during the early hours of the day or just before lunch. Assess your routine for a week to see when you feel the most motivated to write. Choose a time and stick to it to build a daily writing habit.
2. Set an achievable writing duration
As the Kaizen method suggests: start small, There’s such a thing called overmastering your goals. If you want to build a daily writing habit, it’s important to have easily manageable goals. Even if you feel like you could write for 10-15 minutes a day by being completely focused on thesis writing, there’s no shame to choose what works best for you. This in turn also helps you maintain a boundary by setting a finish time and obeying it. So, even if you have the motivation to keep on going after the end of your session, stop writing.
3. Set a prompt for writing
For instance, as we discussed above, you had the motivation to keep on going even after your writing session ended. Notes down ideas and what you plan on writing next. This serves the purpose of a prompt when you sit down to write the next day. Starting from a blank page can seem psychologically taxing. By leaving notes for your next writing session, it gives you the motivation to start writing the next day. By setting such prompts, you are on the path of developing a habit of writing daily.
4. Identify your source of distractions to eliminate them
To successfully build the habit of writing daily, you need to assess and identify triggers that cause distractions in your writing sessions. It can be a place that is not suitable for your thesis writing session or the clutter. Designate a place for your thesis writing and declutter the space. Don’t you also get reminded of tasks that may not even be that important when you sit down to write, to avoid getting distracted by such thoughts? Note any such task that comes to your mind and set it aside for later. Secondly, the place you choose to do your thesis writing, be sure to use the same setting every day to write.
One practical sub-strategy to this is to track your time. See our tips for time tracking in our previous post.
5. Set reminders for writing daily
Before your habit of daily writing is developed, it’s possible that you might forget it or lose motivation to start your daily thesis writing session. Here’s how you can set a reminder for yourself
– Set a reminder on your phone
– Mention it in your calendar
– Leave a sticking note in your writing corner
6. Hold yourself accountable
Keep a track of your writing each day, this could be in your journal or an excel spreadsheet if that’s more to your liking. Having an accountability partner is tried and tested method to go about. You can share your working goals and achievements at the end of your thesis writing session daily. Moreover, setting up a writing session with a group of friends who are also working on their thesis can be a booster to building your habit of daily writing.
Final Words of Motivation to help you develop the Habit of Writing Daily
If you wait for the perfect time to write, you’ll never write. There is no time that isn’t flawed somehow.
Margaret Atwood
Thesis writing is like navigating through the landmines of procrastination, but once you develop the habit of writing daily by following the tips we have mentioned above; your established habit is going to be the key to completing your thesis writing on time.