Make the summer count: achieving your goals
June-July 2009
Humanities Division
Course Pack
Workshop principles
getting organised is the key to everything
nothing works for everyone: disagreement is inevitable
sharing ideas works
you are not alone
there’s no magic bullet
the laundry is always with us
everyone needs down time
sometimes, something has to give
you have to start somewhere
nobody gets it right first time
Value of having a plan for identifying and achieving goals
planning gets it out of your head and onto the page
it means that nothing gets missed
you can review it and change it
you can track your progress and hold yourself accountable
you can communicate your availability to others and be assertive
it helps to balance competing priorities including leisure time
Summer 2009 calendar
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September
Setting goals
In the boxes below, set yourself some large-scale goals you would like to achieve over the summer.
What are the benefits to you of achieving these goals? / What are the consequences of not achieving them?
Are they reasonably specific and measurable? How will you know when you have achieved each goal?
Could you explain to someone else what each of your goals would mean in practice?
Within each section, which of your goals takes the highest priority? Highlight or underline these.
Masters/DPhil research (e.g. library/archive research, writing)
Academic-related (e.g. teaching, conferences)
Career-related (e.g. CV work, job applications, project proposals)
Leisure (e.g. time with family & friends, holidays)
Breaking down goals into tasks
The aim of breaking down your goals is to come up with a number of specific tasks that combined in sequence will
lead you to achieve the goal.
Once you have broken down your goals you can slot tasks into your schedule and balance tasks relating to different
goals. This will also help you to set realistic deadlines for the achievement of your goals and can be more effective
than setting the deadline first and working backwards from there.
This is the hardest part of project-management and the part that will require the most practice, but it is also the
part that will lead to the best pay-off once you have got into the habit.
Ideally, tasks should be grouped into 3-4 phases and lead to a milestone you can tick off on the way to your
ultimate goal. Setting intermediate milestones allows to you to track medium-term progress, pause for review and
revision of your plan and take a well-earned rest! Remember, no plan is foolproof – it’s perfectly normal to have to
revise your schedule and you can and should anticipate having to do this.
Milestone: an intermediate, measurable output on the way to your ultimate goal e.g. a chapter outline. A milestone is
a convenient moment to schedule a break and review/revise your plan.
Phase: a number of tasks clustered by theme; ideally, completion of a phase would be marked by a milestone
e.g. ‘reading and research’ phase marked by a milestone of ‘notes completed and organised’
Task: a specific, discrete, realistic, time-bound/scheduled activity or action directed towards a milestone. Can be
one-off or recurring. Tasks should be as detailed as possible – vagueness leads to non-completion of the task. It’s
useful to involve verbs and numbers in task descriptions e.g. ‘read five (not ‘some’) books’
Pre-task: the information you need before you can describe and schedule tasks realistically e.g. when will the
library be open? Which books and articles do I want to read? (these can be expressed as tasks if one of your phases
is a ‘planning and preparation’ phase)
Scheduling and balancing your tasks
Once you have broken down your goals into tasks and assigned a length of time to each task it should be relatively
straightforward to plug each task into your calendar week-by-week. If you find that the tasks added up lead you to
a deadline far beyond what is possible, you will have to go back and revise your task timings, trimming the noncrucial material according to your priorities. This is a very useful way of demonstrating to yourself the limited
amount of time you have, and should discourage you from being blasé about missing a scheduled task.

Remember, some tasks are recurring (e.g. making job applications) so you might do well to set aside an
amount of time every week when you address these. Other tasks might be best achieved when concentrated
into one large block of time to the exclusion of other kinds of tasks. It’s up to you how you manage your
schedule.

Don’t forget to block out any times when you are unable to work, appointments, pre-scheduled events,
holidays etc before you start diarising your tasks.

Don’t forget that you need to eat, sleep, shop, do laundry, run errands, meet friends etc – make sure your
schedule allows time for these day-to-day activities.

Some tasks are dependent on the completion of other tasks, so obviously, make sure you schedule tasks in the
right order!

Likewise, tasks associated with different goals can be combined e.g. teaching prep can be useful for research
as well.
Although you should work efficiently, do be realistic about what you can achieve in a day and be aware of your own
working preferences. Be as generous as you can in allocating time to tasks – it’s much nicer to be ahead of schedule
than behind. Set aside time in your schedule to review your progress and make any necessary revisions to your
timetable.
Discrete tasks associated with various goals should allow you to achieve some balance between a range of different
goals. E.g. you might assign mornings to research and afternoons to other kinds of activities.
** Keep your schedule close to hand and tick tasks off as you achieve them **
Some notes on writing
Writing is a unique kind of task in that it does not often fit cleanly into the ‘specific, time-bound, discrete’ task
model – it expands to fill the space available. If you want to be productive in your research you should be writing
something every day e.g. summarising notes and ideas or re-drafting chapter plans. If your goal is to write up your
thesis over the summer then developing good writing habits is even more important.
Writing is sometimes exhausting and can be hard to fit into blocks of time. It is especially difficult to know when you
are finished, as developing your arguments through writing often leads to new areas for exploration. Especially
when writing the DPhil thesis it can be very difficult to keep track of the micro/chapter-level and macro/thesislevel arguments. Some people panic when faced with a blank screen; others have no problem writing but find it
difficult to keep their writing under control.
The rewards of writing are equal to or greater than its difficulty: it’s all worth it when you see your thesis bound
and ready for submission!
There is not a great deal that can be done about the challenge of writing apart from recognising that it is difficult
and being correspondingly forgiving of yourself if you aren’t as productive as you think you ought to be.
Suggestions for managing the writing process:

Set yourself a manageable number of words per day as your target

Write early and often – you can write 10,000 words in a week, but it’s not likely that they’ll be very coherent

Use writing as a means of developing your arguments, not vice-versa

Set very clear limits to writing time – if one two-hour session during the day is all you can manage, then do
that. Staring at a blank screen is not productive and will make you feel inadequate.

Be aware of your writing patterns and roll with them. Is there a ritual you like to do before you sit down to
write? Does it take you half an hour to get warmed up? Do you need to have three different documents open
and a pen and paper to hand? Do whatever you need to do to be productive.

Build in ‘mulling time’ while you’re writing – let your brain do the busy work while you relax, and then when
the idea hits you, write it down immediately

On the first draft, don’t fuss over words or sentences – get your ideas down. You can always write [insert info
about X here] if you don’t have time to check the background details. This suggestion does not apply to
accuracy of references.

Have a detailed chapter breakdown to hand – even if you end up revising it it’s still useful for providing a
sense of structure
On revisions:

Set aside plenty of time for revision and editing – revisions will probably take as long as the initial draft.

The first draft you write for yourself; in later drafts you are always writing for a reader. When revising what
you’ve written, ask yourself what you are trying to say and how it relates to the thesis argument. Make those
arguments and connections clear.

For every paragraph or section ask yourself, ‘What’s this for?’
Lies not to tell yourself about writing:

I have to be in the mood/inspired to write

I have to wait until I have a sustained block of time available before I can start writing

If writing isn’t easy then I mustn’t be very good at it
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I can’t start writing until I know what I want to say
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What I write now will be my last word on the subject, so it had better be good
Useful resource: Eviatar Zerubavel, The Clockwork Muse: A practical guide to writing theses, dissertations and
books (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999)
Sustaining motivation and anticipating issues
Blind optimism can be a motivator, but nothing worth doing comes easily (except eating ice-cream) so consider
anticipating some of the things that might go wrong. If you equip yourself with strategies for dealing with
challenges you’ll be in a strong position to achieve your goals.
Everyone has down days and research slumps; the trick is not to let them throw you off your game. A balanced
combination of mental stubbornness and psychological perspective will be useful to you: determination to achieve
your goals matched with the knowledge that the world won’t end if you miss a deadline.
Often when something goes wrong the real problem is something different, so take time to think about why things
have gone wrong in the past and be ready to test out solutions until you find one that works for you.
Tasks take longer than you expected and you are behind schedule
Reasons might include...
Lack of self-knowledge: most people underestimate the time it will take to accomplish a task. Be more generous
with your task timing allocations or break your tasks down further until they can be fitted into your time slots.
Working inefficiently/perfectionism: your standards may be too high e.g. you think you need to read every word
of every text meticulously – admit you don’t have time to do this. Find ways of working more efficiently e.g.
banish email and Facebook if these are distractions, and stop looking up every reference that interests you.
Schedule is unrealistic in the first place: you will need to admit that you can’t do everything and limit your goals
until they are manageable.
You are not sticking to the schedule you made/ procrastination
Reasons might include...
Overwhelmed at size of task: you need to break your tasks down even more until each individual task is
manageable within its allotted timeframe.
Schedule does not match personal preferences: if you are a ‘reward first’ kind of person or you never get up till
11.00 despite setting your alarm for 06.30 there is no point in pretending you are not - revise your schedule to
allow for your work patterns.
Task-aversion: check that achieving your goal is actually advantageous to you and remind yourself why. You
might start with small tasks and work your way up to the larger ones once you are in a manageable work
schedule. Make yourself accountable to others for completions of tasks.
Burnout/loss of motivation
Reasons might include...
Fear of failure/feeling isolated: talk to friends and family about your goals, review supervisor feedback and
check that your standards are accurate and relax them if not. Remind yourself that you are in a process, not a
competition.
Goals no longer appear advantageous: revise goals or remind yourself why you started in the first place e.g.
have your original project summary stuck to your wall or a list of three ways your project contributes to
knowledge. Plan how you will reward yourself when you finish.
Exhaustion: take a break or take things more slowly. Burnout can manifest as stress, anxiety or symptoms of
depression. The Student Counselling Service is a very useful resource for graduate students feeling
overwhelmed. You can be referred through your college doctor or refer yourself at
http://www.admin.ox.ac.uk/shw/counserv.shtml
External factors such as...
Unanticipated factors such as delayed access to archives: some things will go wrong and all you can do is revise
your plan to take account of these as best you can. The more you consider your pre-tasks the less this will
happen but some things just can’t be foreseen.
Family and friends demanding your time: having a plan should make it easier to let others know when you are
and are not available and scheduling convenient times for relaxation and company. You may find it useful to
explain your goals to others and ask for their support and accountability. Don’t let others minimise your
achievements – take your work seriously and insist that others do the same.
Make summer count: notes