i love an outline - i'm definitely on the record with that! but also it can be really hard to outline text that isn't written yet, especially if you're the kind of thinker and writer where those activities happen concurrently.  a community member (shout out to katie!) introduced me to this "inquiry based" outline and i'm obsessed! basically, the idea is that you start to structure your argument with the main questions that you have around your central argument, and you use those (and follow up!) questions to start to section out parts of the writing.  you can use the clickable and fi ..read more

there is a lot that goes unsaid and untaught in the world of academic writing. i feel that most advisors/supervisors/director of graduate studies/even some first year seminar leaders take the stance of "you should already know how to do this" or "i'm sure you've learned this before". as someone who works with writers all around the world at all kinds of universities in all sorts of disciplines: NOPE. it is much more rare that i meet someone who was given a comprehensive toolkit for academic writing than someone who was given nothing. so, if you are trying to figure it all out, you are definite ..read more

a question that has come up a lot in my one one one sessions lately is how to get through all the reading. and how to make choices about what to read at what time. even more acutely, i’ve come to realize the pressure that having a "to read" pile at all can present.  there are two ways to approach a problem like "i have too much to read": filter out the list to determine the best things to read rearrange whatever you need to to just.....read it all, even if it increases as you keep going  and a lot of my own advice in this community is about the first suggestion - how to find an ..read more

How to ask for feedback, different kinds that you can ask for, common tricky feedback styles and more! This coaching call from my community is all about how and why you might want to ask for feedback, and best practices for getting what you want! get the transcript here ..read more

I’m Dr. Bailey Lang, founder of The Writing Desk. I provide writing and editing services for businesses, schools, and individuals, including graduate students. And today, I’m here to talk about why you might, or might not, want to work with an editor for your dissertation. I’ve wanted to be an editor since I first learned editing was a real job. Still, it took a detour into corporate marketing and a Ph.D. program in rhetoric and writing studies before I decided to make that goal a reality.  What does an editor do? An editor’s job is to help you, the writer, produce the best possible ..read more

so, i'm on the record in MANY places as being a big fan of the pomodoro method. but, the technique as written has a few drawbacks: 25 minutes can feel VERY short sometimes you can and/or want to focus for a longer stretch of time sometimes the break is too short! and as it happens now, in 2022, i ran across this video on ye old social media. the video is short (2ish minutes) but here's the gist of the flowmodoro technique - you don't count down the time to a break, but you count up the time you're focused. so you sit down to work, start a timer running up (like a stopwatch) once yo ..read more

if you’ve been around the thrive phd universe for a minute, you know that i started this whole business because i felt left out of so many conversations and spaces in grad school. my body, my brain, my community - we all needed a LOT of care to get through the dissertation process and at times. in the best cases, people understood that my chronic illness, and my brain that tended toward anxiety, had different needs and they left me space to care for myself. but in the worst cases, my yoga practice was viewed as a luxury, my time in therapy an indulgence, and my boundaries around work one of ma ..read more

I've been reading a book called Burnout: the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. It's pretty good (although explicitly geared towards female-identifying people), and one of the main ideas is that: Just because you resolved the stressor doesn't mean you've dealt with the stress.  Think about it this way: imagine you've seen a lion. Your body goes into fight or flight mode (or it freezes), and your whole system is flooded with a bunch of chemicals and hormones to make sure that your body and mind act in a way that will keep you safe. If you fight the lion or flee from it, all those h ..read more

Sometimes, I have a bad week. And nothing really *happened* I guess, just the slow hum of more Pandemic Time. I've been jokingly referring to my mood as a Pandemic Pout, but you could also call it "hitting a wall", "reaching my limit", "throwing a big ole temper tantrum".  And even though I've built an entire business around helping people learn how to rest and feel less guilt and shame about it, I still fought myself all week. Here is just a small sampling of the unhelpful things my brain threw up at me this week! Your pandemic is nothing - very little has changed! You're being a ba ..read more

It happens with almost everything, at least for me.  There's the first blush of: I WILL NEVER LOVE A SYSTEM FOR KEEPING MYSELF ORGANIZED LIKE I LOVE THIS SYSTEM. TOGETHER FOREVER.  And then, we hum along in a sense of comfortable companionship, the system remembering my tasks, me feeling grateful for the system and putting in the work to keep it functional.  And then, sometimes, my attention starts to wander. A new system seems quite attractive! My old system just doesn't have the same spark that it used to! It's not you, Bullet Journaling, it's me!!!!  But I've learned now ..read more