My clients often space their coaching sessions about 2-4 weeks apart. In between sessions, I have them send me a weekly e-mail update of what they have accomplished.
A couple of my clients are working on writing projects right now. And some weeks, their updates are less than enthusiastic. They are discouraged by their progress.
Here’s a different angle on reading that doesn’t feel like real research.
You might spend a lot of time reading with a particular project in mind only to discover that nothing you read is going to end up in what you are writing.
Although that feels like you wasted several hours reading stuff you didn’t need to read, it was actually time well spent.
If you hadn’t read those articles, you wouldn’t know that they weren’t relevant. You would probably have spent time and energy worrying about whether you could really call what you are writing “finished” until you read them. The emotional effect of worrying about it would be equal to or greater than the actual time spent thinking about it.
More importantly, there were good reasons you had those articles on your Must Read list. Even though you have decided that they are not relevant, reading and thinking about those articles has clarified your writing project.
Sometimes the impact of an article on your work is positive, and it gets cited. Other times, reading and thinking about an article helps you clarify that this is not the direction you are going in. The fact that you don’t actually write about that part of the research process in the final product (and thus don’t cite this work) does not mean that reading the article was irrelevant to the development of the project.
It is normal for some weeks to feel crazily productive and other weeks to feel like you are walking through quicksand. If you are making progress, no matter how slow, it was a good week.
Want some help?
If you think having someone in your corner, helping you make plans and set priorities, cheering when you have a great week, reassuring you when you feel like things are moving too slowly, and reminding you that what you did this week really was productive, that’s what I mean by “coaching”.
