Writing is probably the most important part of your PhD. Without the right texts, no papers, no articles, no thesis. The longer you spend on writing, the longer your PhD will take. It is that simple!
So it is very important that you have great writing skills, to be more specific: that you are an expert in writing academic texts and writing a thesis, which is a huge task. The skills required are different than the skills for writing a dissertation for instance.
Two ingredients that will help you to become a better writer.
– writing schemes
– clear deadlines
What are the important parts of a writing scheme?
The most important: make sure you have a writing scheme! If you don’t have a scheme, there is nothing to measure how you develop. You won’t have any idea of your progress. Make sure you have a scheme. It is very unrealistic not to have a writing scheme.
– You don’t need big chunks of time, if you give yourself 15, 30 or 60 minutes a day will be enough.
– Make sure writing is in your daily to-do-list.
– Short and regular periods of time will be the most effective.
How do you introduce clear deadlines?
Deadlines only work if they are serious deadlines. Deadlines that aren’t serious are deadlines you will play with and probably alter, which means the deadlines are basically not effective.
So make sure you have real deadlines and that your deadlines aren’t ambitious but realistic.
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