One cookie now or two cookies later

Yesterday I was talking with my friend about some difficult issues he was having related to raising his son, and in particular with respect to a complex decision where there are clear pros and cons on either side of the equation. On a certain level, of course, it's laughable to ask me about raising a child, since I've none of my own. But philosophy is philosophy; some wisdom is always worthy.

When we were talking, I was thinking of him and his son just as people like those I often help--which is to say graduate students. He's a smart guy, but his son is eight, so you can't quite talk through ideas the same way with an eight year old. "But there has to be a simplified parallel that he would understand," I finally claimed.

And there is; it's a classic one. I think that Daniel Goleman's book Emotional Intelligence says something to the effect that those who, as children, choose two cookies later over one now, tend to be more successful as adults--successful in most measurable dimensions, in terms of career, social life, etc. I don't know if Goleman's assertion is true, but it is clear to me that the one cookie now vs. two later is a model for many of the things we face in life.

My friend was concerned with some issues of social responsibility, but also with his son's social community, too. He felt a conflict between large-scale social responsibility, and a desire to care for his son and to give him opportunities. Two different value systems were coming into conflict.

As I was out running today, I was thinking that the one cookie now vs. two cookies later paradigm is a good one for talking about the complexity of issues, and for showing how we can be faced with questions whose answer is not clear, or which inevitably involve some sort of compromise.

Suppose you're offered one cookie now vs. two later. One good first question might be "how much later?" If you only have to wait one minute for the two cookies, it seems like a no-brainer. Similarly, if you are going to wait a decade to get the two cookies, it seems pointless not to take the one right now. Somewhere in between these two extremes, we might logically presume that there is a point where it is hard to decide.

In exploring the complexity of the question, we can also note that the reward offered for waiting (the two cookies) can be altered--maybe it's three cookies later, or ice cream and a cookie later instead of just a cookie now.

These are terms, I think, that an eight year old could understand. On the other hand, getting an eight year old to see the point, and to accept it may be unlikely. After all, this is difficult for adults to manage.
Some decisions are like the one cookie now vs. two cookies in one minute decision: it's easily made. Most are not.

When we're writing, or when we're managing a project, or when we're trying to decide whether to support an institution (like my alma mater, the University of California at Berkeley), we're faced with questions that are much more closely balanced. Yes, the University builds weapons of mass destruction; it also harbors and supports some very good progressive thought. Yes, the university sports programs are problematic in many ways; they also do some good, and buying tickets to one game won't really make a difference. Yes, you want your son to be able to have communal activities with friends, including ones that you enjoyed as a youth; you also want your son to be able to make socially responsible decisions that promote peace, justice, etc.
Or, to take this out of the realm of my friend and into the realm of the writer: we might offer this similar paradigm:
shitty draft now vs. good draft later. How long do you wait for the good draft? A shitty draft now may be far superior--if, for example, you have been told you must submit something immediately or be dropped from your program. Sure, at such a moment it would be nice to have a good draft, but often we feel that the draft we currently have is a shitty one.
The answer is never clear. Laurence Sterne, author of Tristram Shandy, once wrote that a bad letter in good time was better than a good letter late (though he said it more elegantly than my awkward paraphrase, I have lost the original quote and the reference to my source--I think it was from a collection of his letters). But if you submit a bad draft to a publisher, you may be rejected out of hand, hurting your future chances, while waiting longer would have meant a better reception.

Sadly there is no clear answer to many of the problems that we struggle with (which may help explain why we struggle with them). I believe that the more clearly we can see what is involved in choosing the different alternatives, the better we can make a choice that will serve us well.

Well, the logic sounds ok, but I wouldn't want to try to convince anyone of the wisdom herein--least of all an eight year old.

Framing effects, reason and planning

Nobel-prize winner Daniel Kahneman, along with his primary collaborator Amos Tversky, and many colleagues showed that we do not always reason "logically".

For example, a patient faced with a life and death decision is more likely to choose a treatment that has a 90% survival rate than to choose one that has a 10% fatality rate. But, of course, a treatment plan with a 90% survival rate has a 10% fatality rate: the two are identical. The only difference is in the framing: one is framed in terms of life (which is positive and desirable) the other in terms of death (undesirable).

In terms of motivating ourselves, and in terms of doing good work, I think that results of this sort emphasize the importance of choosing positive framings for how we see our project. The same project can be both boring (during much of the work) and exciting (at the moments when the work comes together and progress is made), etc. How we choose to frame it can affect our plans with respect to the work, and can affect our mood, and therefore our ability to work (at least to the extent that I believe that we work better when we're in a good mood).

We want to work on building a positive framing for how we see the project and for framing the project outcome, and let that serve as the primary focus. We want to be able to plan for the worst cases, and we want to have the ability to respond to unexpected obstacles--we don't, in short, want to be naive, imprudent or impetuous--but generally we want to focus our attention on what we are trying to create and how we are going to bring that into existence. We want to frame our analysis of our past behavior and results in terms of how we can learn to do better in the future. Such framings are more likely to contribute to active plans and less likely to create negative emotional drag.

There isn't just one way to look at the world. The same thing can be seen in different ways: the glass is half full and half empty. What the results of Kahneman, Tversky and their colleagues show is that the two different framings have an effect on plans (and on emotions, too, I speculate, though I don't know if that is a reported result). That is to say that if someone tells you "the glass is half full" you are likely to make a different decision than if someone tells you "the glass is half empty;" the fact that you make a different decision is indicative of a potential emotional effect of the framing.

Defining personal space

Just some random musing--I don't, at least as I start writing, have a conclusion.

A writer told me that I had been helping her set boundaries, especially with her committee, and that it was helping. Which seemed odd to me, because I couldn't remember ever talking about setting boundaries with her. I do remember talking a lot about having a sense of purpose, about believing in herself and her bringing out her own voice and about tapping in to the things that she felt most strongly about, and then to use that to tell her committee what it was that she wanted, and to use what they gave back as much as it was useful to her and not to get stressed about the parts that weren't useful, but just to stay focused on her own sense of purpose.

I understand, in retrospect, how these things can be seen as boundary setting issues.

But I guess I was thinking of them in a different way. We can define spaces--actual or conceptual--in two ways: in terms of distance from some central point(s), or in terms of boundaries. These can accomplish the same thing, but they don't act quite the same way.
Sometimes we have clearly delimited boundaries--between nations, we find rivers often are used to determine boundaries; a vegetarian sets a clear boundary between what will be eaten (everything but meat) and what will not (meat); religious fundamentalists tend to set strict boundaries.
Sometimes boundaries are not so clear: where is the clear line between music that is too loud and music that is not? Where the line between a photograph that is over-exposed and one that is not?

I like to think in terms of centers--in terms of principles--more than I like to think in terms of boundaries (though, as I say above, both are useful). Boundaries limit our ability to adapt and negotiate. I feel like when I'm focused on the central issue that I'm concerned with, then I can allow various changes in the periphery without sacrificing the central principle that is important to me. When I have a boundary set, it's harder to give it up in a compromise, even if that compromise allows me to attain a central goal.

To choose a stark example, we might look at the biblical commandment "Thou shalt not kill." This is defined in terms of a boundary: there is a clear line marked--the line between killing and not killing. The guidance derived from this boundary is clear. But that clarity can be problematic: what if you are faced with the option of killing one person to save the lives of hundreds (or thousands or millions...)? The boundary definition creates a dilemma: death will ensue, and to some extent one will be responsible, but the boundary rule pushes one towards allowing the individual to live. We can recast the same idea as a principle: strive to preserve life. This principle sets no boundary, and in the case described above, it clearly guides the user: one life is taken to save others. Perhaps this is a bad example, because the question is very tricky and loaded. Obviously this is the sort of justification that the Bush administration used to justify torture: "well, we don't want to do it, but our higher principle excuses it."
Nonetheless, I still find it powerful (without being reprehensible) to work from principles. In the case of the writer I was talking about at the beginning of the post, all the things that she saw as being a matter of setting boundaries, I saw as a matter of her developing a good understand of her core principles and her trying to apply them. She's thinking about it in terms of setting boundaries that keep her from accommodating her committee when it serves her ill; I'm thinking about it in terms of her clearly identifying what she wants and then clearly asking for what she wants to get from the committee. I guess I like being able to see it both ways and to think about it both ways.

I guess, also, I'm a little disturbed when I see how the use of reasoning from principles, instead of boundaries, can allow terrible justifications. But the flip side is that boundaries are also used to terrible ends--such as the boundaries set by certain cultures that allow the exploitation or destruction or oppression of another culture (e.g., the clear boundary that defined Jews in Nazi Germany, or the clear legal boundaries that defined who was "colored" and where "colored people" were allowed to go in the Jim Crow laws of the US).

Well, both ways of looking at things can cause problems, I guess, so it's best to understand how we can define spaces--in our lives and in our discourse--in two different ways, and having those two ways helps greatly.

Another thought: it had been kicking around in my mind, but hadn't popped out. How are categories defined? What makes a category? How is membership in a category determined? The classic, rationalist view is that categories are defined by a boundary, but cognitive science research (esp. by Eleanor Rosch and her colleagues) shows that conceptual categories are often structured around a central prototype (a model, paradigm or exemplar) and not defined by boundaries. Studies of semantics show that the usage of words is typically defined in terms of central models that are then extended to new meanings (cf. Lakoff, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things). So, in terms of how we think about the world (and in terms of how we might want to set up an argument about the world), we need to understand the difference between defining concepts in terms of boundaries or in terms of centers/prototypes.

I'm not going to try to draw this together into any meaningful conclusion.

Conceptual Change

"Problems cannot be solved by the level of awareness that created them." This quotation is typically attributed to Albert Einstein. Wikiquote has no attribution for it.
A similar thought, also attributed to Einstein is
"Insanity is doing the same thing, over and over again, but expecting different result."
Wikiquote attributes this to Rita Mae Brown, from Sudden Death, Bantam Books, New York, 1983, p. 68.

I've been struggling with changing my patterns of thinking. I was working on a project recently and kept running up against blocks that I have run up against time and time again. My challenge has been to rethink my response to the blocks and to re-imagine the very nature of my work. If I don't change how I respond, I'll end up with similar results to those I've had in the past.

This is the coach's challenge: how does a coach get a performer to perform more effectively? The answer: get them to do things differently. For me, what I typically work with is trying to envision the project in different ways, and to see the different spaces in the project that can be effectively approached with useful tools.

This is, I suppose, partly a left-over of what I learned in my Ph.D. program, which had been set up by Horst Rittel, a design theorist--that is to say, a philosopher who studied the process of design. Rittel argued that there were basically no simple, easily defined steps in design processes, and that there were no grand schemes to follow to guide the designer to his/her goal. Instead the designer had to work towards an uncertain goal, one that shifted as the designer came to see new aspects of the problem, and the best one can do in terms of applying methodologies, or specific techniques, was to find places where those techniques could be used to forward the project without assuming that they would lead to an answer.

Because I don't think that we can prescribe methodologies very well, and less so, the larger the task, I tend to try to look for ways to re-envision the task at hand so that it can be seen as a series of smaller related tasks.

At the same time, because there is no over-arching methodological framework to guide the designer/writer, it is important for the writer to seek an overarching vision of the project's goals, to provide the framework to guide efforts.

I had a writer once tell me: "I'm stuck, but I only have six months to finish my project, so I don't have time to learn to work any differently." But I think that kind of thinking eliminates the chance that I can really help: I can't force someone to work with a whip. I can't even entice them to work with kindness and positive support. What I can do is help the writer see the project differently; I can help a writer see positive opportunities to develop his or her interests and abilities.

Having said these things, I now have to go back to the paper I'm writing, lest I let the momentum slack (thus falling into one of the traps that I fall into). And I want to jump into the revision (the third complete rewrite of the 8 pages since Wednesday) before I start to think how hard it is to revise.

What's the point of research?

Yesterday I was writing about the vast unconscious and how it is important to try to bring the premises we reason on into our conscious, reflective mind.

One point which is not often considered consciously is the basic point of research. What is research, and why are we doing it? What is the value in it?

The answer is not simple.
We often think in terms of a correspondence theory of truth--I had a friend tell me that science was to "discover facts"; the fact that he had (and still has) a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley reveals how this theory of truth is accepted by even those with a great deal of education and intelligence. As a natural scientist there is great value in seeing the research project as one depending on a correspondence theory of truth, but as science deals with the quantum world, and many different aspects of physics, correspondence theories become more and more problematic.

If you are working in the social sciences, in literature, history, the arts and many other fields, the idea of a correspondence theory of truth will serve you less well.
The very idea of a correspondence theory of truth--indeed, the very idea of truth--has been challenged by many philosophers of reknown over the past century. Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida are two famed exemplars of this general debate. It would be considered naive, I think, at this point to attempt to work with such a vision in some fields, unless one were well-prepared to acknowledge and rebut the arguments of those opposed to correspondence theories. In the absence of a correspondence theory, one must seek some other theory on which to base research--undersanding other theories of research, e.g., hermenutics or phenomenology, can help bring focus to the purpose of research.

By bringing into conscious discussion the premises on which you base your research, and on which you write it up, ou being to develop a basis on which your whole work can be structured in a coherent fashion. By understanding what the purpose of your research is, and by understanding what you are trying to show, and how you hope to show it, you build a framework for presenting the work, and for working in the different pieces necessary to make the research proejct work as a whole.

I can't answer the question of what research is for you, because I think that different kinds of research will have different purposes. If you can give a clear purpose for the work, it can often help stay away from questions of epistemology--for example, if you assert that your research is intended to help clinicians work with a certain population, you don't need to worry about theories of truth. Or if you are going to develop an algorithm, or some technological device; or if you're doing any of a number of things, you can focus directly on your immediate purpose.

On the other hand some projects have a much more difficult time stating a purpose. For example a history. What is the purpose of a history? Especially we might ask what is the purpose of a history, when we know that histories inevitably reflect the historian's concerns? Having an understanding of what the purposes of other writers in history can help--how are these other writers grounding their work and giving it a sense of purpose? We can always present a history as a cautionary tale, or an educational study that helps us understand situations that we want to ameliorate. Or we could take a history as a story that educates us about a population: what are these people like and why? In that context, we might look at a piece of evidence as suggestive of ideas and attitudes that we have no direct evidence of--thus we might look at a bureaucracy and its policies as indicating or suggesting certain motives. We might not be able to substantiate the existence of the motive, but we can still infer it and indicate how the evidence is suggestive. Such techniques might please some and infuriate others. But my main point returns: as we make ourselves consciously address the question "what's the point of research?," we begin to have answers that can help us structure our research and writing efforts. To the extent that we develop a scholarly understanding that generates a theory of research, we can save ourselves from losing time wondering what it is that we're trying to do, ad we can also give ourselves an understanding that helps us explain our intentions to others--and sometimes a good verbal explanation can really change how your professor reads your work.

Plagiarism

I was accused of plagiarism by a teacher in my junior year of high school. I had not plagiarized; I had not read the book I was accused of plagiarizing, nor any articles by the author. I had simply turned a phrase similar to that of the author, I guess. But the thing I never understood, quite, was what the point of plagiarizing was. If all you're supposed to do is report what some other writer said, can't you do that easily enough by paraphrasing? Directly copying a large piece of writing always seems so tedious. Writing, to me, seemed hardly more difficult.

To me how one uses a piece of writing is always individual--unless one is simply repeating what the work says without thinking about it or challenging it. I guess I would say that one ought to be thinking about the things you read, but that's not always what the educational system calls for--it is often enough to simply repeat without understanding.

If the way that you use a work is interesting or original, then there's no need to plagiarize: you can give credit where credit is due and still take credit for your own addition.

If you're pursuing your own voice or your own sense of purpose, then you benefit more by trying to understand the things that you read and by challenging those ideas. The process of critical thinking and checking your positions against the ideas of others is the foundation of clear thinking and clear communication.

I didn't really have much to say today about writing; at least nothing I'd like to say in this blog. I thought about writing about plagiarism because this blog has had a spurt of activity viewing a blog entry that I wrote about Emerson's quotation "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." Part of the traffic was driven by searches for "writing an essay on Emerson's foolish consistency...". And that made me wonder whether I am being plagiarized by some college or high school students looking for an easy cut-and-paste essay (I suppose cutting and pasting is much easier than copying by hand).

Generate your own ideas. Make up your own thoughts and theories. Challenge accepted wisdom. Rely on logic and evidence rather than on what you are told by others or by what you have read. These things are all the classic hallmarks of great science. Which is of greatest use to you? To repeat what others say? Or to pursue new ideas? There are pros and cons on each side.

George Lakoff's suggestions for finishing a dissertation

I take a lot of notes and write a lot in many different files that get put aside for one reason or another. I was going through old files recently, looking to see what had been forgotten. Among other things I found some notes that I made to a dissertation writer about four years ago. The notes reported a conversation I had had with George Lakoff, professor of Cognitive Science and Linguistics at Berkeley.

Lakoff makes six points. Following the six points are the notes that I wrote to the writer, who had written a complete draft that had been deemed unsatisfactory by her committee.

---------
(Aug. 2004) Yesterday afternoon I ran into a professor I used to work with.
He asked me what I was up to and I told him I was helping people who were trying to finish their dissertations.
He offered me his advice of what he tells his students: and here it is in a nutshell--three main points and three lesser points. I may have forgotten something, but most of what he said agreed with beliefs I held anyway (I was his student, after all).

Here are his recommendations:

1) It’s not you. It’s just a piece of work.
2) It’s just the first step.
3) Tell a story

Additional suggestions:
1) make it so it can be your book
2) make it 200 – 250 pages
3) avoid jargon

For a moment, I want to just focus on point 1 in the first list: It's not you. The dissertation is just a project you're working with. You've worked with it longer than any other project in your life, but it's just a project. If you wrote a five page paper and thought it needed to be rewritten, you'd rewrite it. But with the dissertation there's the thought "I spent four months writing that draft/section/chapter." The dissertation is still only a project. Suggestions about the dissertation are not a reflection on you, but rather on how to change your project, so that you can get it done.

You have grown and learned during the process of writing. The efforts that went into writing that draft have shaped you, have helped you grow. If all the copies of your dissertation were destroyed and you had to write it from the blank page, you still would not be working from scratch but from a wealth of knowledge gained through the project. And that wealth of knowledge would help you write a new version better.

Well, thankfully, you don't have to write from scratch, but still, don't let attachment to the products of your past labors stand in the way of taking advantage of what you learned from those labors.
------
That note only really addressed the first of the six points. But points two and three deserve equal discussion. The last three points--the lesser points--are mostly self-explanatory.

I don't want to get into too much writing here, since I want to go back to seeing what the excavation of the depths of my disk drive has to offer.

Briefly, then. Point 2: The dissertation is just a first step on a career. Whether you are writing to become an academic (as Lakoff assumed), or writing to gain a credential, the dissertation is only a step in a career path. Take the step quickly. Point 3: I don't know quite how to interpret this, or to paraphrase it quickly. This is probably a gross injustice, but: Give the work a sense of direction and flow; guide the reader through the discussion in a way that helps the reader see the scope of the work (just as in a story, we can follow the whole of the work).

Parables

In the Literary Mind, Mark Turner argues that narrative, and parables, are fundamental structures that govern human thought. Below is a passage from Turner's book. I've touched on this same passage in a different post, but I'll repeat it here:

"Story is a basic principle of mind. Most of our experience, our knowledge, and our thinking is organized as stories. The mental scope of story is magnified by projection--one story helps us make sense of another. The projection of one story onto another is parable, a basic cognitive principle that shows up everywhere,...
"Parable is the root of the human mind--of thinking, knowing, acting, creating, and plausibly even of speaking."

From one perspective, academic work is the job of creating parables: it tells stories that are meant to be projected onto another.

When we think about parables, often we may think in terms of the simple parables, like those in the Bible. Usually such stories are boiled down to a single idea--the moral of the story--though often such stories are complex and not easily simplified (e.g., is the prodigal son a story of forgiveness, a story of letting go of jealousy, or is it a story of contrition?).

When writing an academic work, it can help to boil the work down to a single core statement and use that to organize the material, because that core provides focus.

But that core can be hard to identify. One way to identify a core might be to think of the work as a parable: what does this story teach us about other stories? I'm not sure what the parable of the prodigal son is supposed to teach, but I see that its point is to suggest something about more general sets of behavior. It is not intended only for those who are in a family where one son goes off, ends up herding swine, and then returns. It is intended for a more general range of experiences.

So in what way does the parable of your project work?
If you're doing a study using inferential statistics, the parable is obvious: the statistics are meant to make inferences from a smaller population (the sample) to the population at large.
If you're doing qualitative work, or doing any sort of work that isn't quantitative, the parable might not be obvious. For that matter, it's possible that you haven't even thought of your work as a parable at all.

Thinking of a complex subject as a parable in a particular dimension can help organize complex material. So, for example, one might be looking at the interface between a specific group of people--(e.g., a racial/ethnic group, an occupational group, etc.)--and how that group interacted with a set of general bureaucratic systems. That story could become a parable about how people respond to bureaucracies, or it could be a story about how bureaucracies count people. It could be any number of other possibilities, but just taking these two, we can see that they organize the material and the focus of the writing differently. They both provide opportunities for the writer to mention the same material--e.g., material about the creation of a specific bureaucratic procedure, or newspaper/newsletter reports from the press within that group--though with aim to tell different stories.

Or, to take another example, one might be looking at the history of a local delicacy and how globalization of markets affected that delicacy. Does that become a parable about market operations? does it become a parable about policies of globalization? is it about food? about local culture?

Choosing one of the possibilities creates a focus and leads to structural requirements. Choosing one of the possibilities is not meant to eliminate discussion of the others, nor is it meant to exclude the other possibilities--maybe you can see that your study is a parable on many different levels and you want to try to convey that. Nonetheless, it can help to choose one as a focal point to guide the structure, and then to work in the other stories as sidelights to the main point.

I have spoken of using a parable as a perspective to help focus the complexity of the dissertation. But it worth keeping in mind the points I made at the beginning of the post: The second was that academia is in the business of making parables--of taking specific stories and using them to illustrate general positions (this is the basic issue of induction: making a generalization based on specifics). So what does your story tell about other stories? The first point was that we think in terms of parables. I know there's a lot of different ideas of how we think, different theories of cognition/psychology, so you may not accept this premise, which is why I listed it last. The fact that academia uses parables is a direct observation of academia, and it does not require the cognitive theory. I, however, find that theory an interesting and instructive one, so I like to explore what it means.

Keep On Message

A writer asked me today about how the stuff written for the introduction had turned out a lot like the stuff written for the abstract. This seems to me to be about right.

Politicians talk about staying on message--which typically means repeating the same simplistic argument over and over. As writers we don't want to talk to our readers as if they were fools, so we want to be careful about repeating ourselves too much, but that being said, it's also important to stay on message--to keep saying why you're writing and how the work relates to the main questions that you want to address. To some extent there is a level of redundancy built in, but on another level, it's not so much redundancy, as a rephrasing of an old idea in a new context--because each time you are returning to a large guiding idea, you are doing so in the context of a different section of the written work, and therefore, sometimes you are talking about the main idea in the context of one idea, or one set of data, or one time period, etc., and sometimes you are talking about it in the context of a different idea. Each time you mention the main point--each time you are "staying on message"--you are rephrasing it with different linkages, so that you are reminding the reader that what you're doing is looking at the new idea in the context of the main message.

And there is no clear guidance on exactly when to do this, or how much to stay on message. You want to make sure that your reader can easily follow the main point, so that their energy isn't lost trying to stay on track and they can follow the subtleties of the argument. At the same time you want to make sure that you're not repeating yourself so much that the reader feels like you're talking down to them. And the right balance of this will be different for different readers. Nonetheless, you're looking for some balance of this, and therefore your choices will seem fraught with difficulties: "did I do too much?", "did I do too little?" When working with a point of balance, one can (obviously) fall off on either side at any moment.

The Order of Things (2)

Every large paper needs an introductory piece that tells the reader what to expect. This introductory piece gives the reader an overview and tells the reader what to expect. But because its purpose is to give the reader an overview and to tell the reader what to expect, it also gives you, the writer, an overview and tells you what to expect. It is a sort of plan for the rest of the work.

The first draft of an intro can be written much more quickly than the first draft of any of the later chapters, so it's a small task, and therefore a good place to start. It's just a draft to be moved through quickly to help organize your thoughts. That organization then informs the first draft of each of the chapters that follow. It's true that in writing the first draft of the later chapters you will see the arguments in greater detail and depth, and that that knowledge could help you write the introduction, but it could just as well help you re-write the introduction.

But for this schema to make sense, you don't want to spend too much time on the first draft of the introduction, you want to move through it quickly and use it to help you plan the rest of your writing.

The Order of Things

In what order should one write the different parts of the dissertation?
Is there a best order in which to write your chapters?

One simple answer is to write everything at once. But that's a problematic answer for several reasons. It's an answer that makes most sense on the large-scale, in terms of your time and project management over the course of months. On the scale of how you spend your day's writing time, you'll need to focus on one piece.

Another simple answer would be to say that there is no simple answer to this--that each situation is different and each writer's task order will be different. This simple answer is not based on simplistic reasoning, nor on a desire to evade the question, but rather on premises suggested by Horst Rittel, who suggested that the design process could not accurately be described in terms of a sequence of phases, but rather at any time the designer might be called upon to engage in any number of different tasks. (I would have to digress through several paragraphs here to give a more detailed discussion of why I think Rittel's premise is relevant to the question of which chapter to write first; I am not interested in writing those paragraphs right now, however, as I would rather keep my focus on the question of which chapter to write first.)

Neither of those two simple answers is satisfactory, because they don't really provide enough information to help a writer plan out their writing practice.

One thing to do is consider the structure and type of the dissertation, because different structures will present different issues to the writer. The structure of a dissertation describing an empirical study is different from the structure of a dissertation examining a body of literature, or describing a history. But I don't want to go into the details of any specific type of dissertation, rather I want to talk about my first simple answer a little more.

Basically, I think that writers should try to write the whole thing at once. What do I mean by that? Instead of thinking about getting one chapter done and then moving on, I like to think in terms of cycles of review and revision: you should have at least two or three in the course of writing your dissertation. For each cycle you want to bring all the chapters up to an equal level of development and sophistication before going back and trying to rewrite any one chapter.

The way I see it the really difficult things about the dissertation project are 1) the size of the project and 2) learning to develop your own voice and express your own view of the world.

The two points are related: the dissertation is a larger project than most dissertation writers have ever undertaken (and the same is true, most likely for the average writer of any sort of thesis, whether for an undergraduate degree or a Master's). The challenge is not writing a sufficient number of pages--most students have already written enough pages over the course of their academic career--the challenge is making those pages all work together. Making them work together depends on our developing our own coherent vision of the project--a sense of purpose and our own voice about what needs to be said.

Writing a dissertation is a project that extends over a long period of time, and if you're writing throughout that period you're going to learn a lot about your project. And in learning, you will come to see the project differently than you did in the past (that's what learning is), and therefore what you have written in the first chapter you wrote may not match with the last chapter you wrote. Therefore, it is my opinion that one try to bring the whole project--all the chapters up to the same level of completeness, and once you have done so, then you start reworking all the chapters, using the insights you've gained through the process of writing.

For empirical studies, you have to propose first, so you obviously can't write all the chapters to the same level of completeness before your propose, but you can write the first three chapters together (Intro, LitReview, Methods).

The question that prompted this blog entry was from a writer who is writing up an empirical study, and who has a book that suggests that one start by writing the literature review. My first response--noted above--is to disagree. My third response (no, I've not forgotten the second--I'm just mentioning them out of order) is to note that there are many different ways to accomplish a project, and I know the author of the book has a good deal of practical experience working with writers, so there's got to be some value in the suggestion; it may well have worked for many people. My second response is that my experience shows that many writers can fall into the literature review trap: getting lost in the whole literature and not knowing when to stop with the literature and losing their own voice in the attempt to discuss the voices of others--it is this, I suppose that is my greatest worry on the practical level: unless one writes the literature review in the right frame of mind, one can lose one's own voice (see my previous comments on the literature review).

The insights that one gets from writing the introduction and methods chapters of the proposal for an empirical study help inform and shape the material in the literature review. Of course the writing of the literature review also helps inform the writing of the introduction and the methods.

It is my working presumption that anyone embarking on writing a dissertation has already done significant research and should be able to write a scholarly draft using the material he or she already has. This does not mean that the writer won't want to to do more reading and research during the course of writing, but just that writers should start writing, and thereby start the process of developing cycles of review and revision.

Now, having said that I don't believe in any one right way to start, I will say that I recommend starting by trying to write a draft of an abstract or an introduction or something in between. The abstract and introduction are both condensed descriptions of the whole project--therefore in writing an abstract or introduction, you're actually also writing a plan for what you're going to do and write in your project as a whole. So you start by writing and abstract/introduction/plan of action, then you go on to try to write other chapters, then as you learn through the writing of the other chapters, you go back and revise your abstract/introduction and plan. This plan that you develop is aligned with your own voice, and when you have a plan it's easier to avoid getting lost in the literature review.

That's my take on it, but your mileage may vary. As I said earlier, it's quite possible that the insights of the other book, though different from mine, are, in fact, a viable way to proceed.

Significant to whom?

This is a brief follow up to the post on significance from a few days ago.

Then I mentioned different levels of significance as places to look for significance. What I want to add has to do with the inherently personal nature of significance: significance is a matter of perspective. Different people have different ideas about what is significant. This can be worth remembering when it comes time to write.

I was talking with a writer today about the significance of her work. And when she had stated a personal sort of significance for her work, she commented that she didn't feel like she could use that significance for her paper. I agreed but it seems to me that it's one thing to recognize why something is important to you, and another thing altogether to try and convince others of that significance.

If you can recognize a personal significance for a work, that may be a good reason to motivate a project, even if you're going to try to present it to others as having a different kind of significance.

On one hand, having this split significance--the story you tell yourself, and the story you tell others--could be interpreted as hypocrisy. On the other, the fact that you are motivated for personal reasons doesn't mean that there isn't a reason that is truly significant to others that may be important.

For example, many environmentalists espouse vegetarianism because of the high environmental cost per calorie of meat as compared to the environmental cost per calorie of vegetable. The fact that a person is vegetarian for environmental reasons doesn't mean that another person--one who believes in animal rights, or one opposed to killing, as suggested by Buddhist principles--cannot appreciate to value of the vegetarian's behavior. The fact that the environmentalist and the Buddhist place the major significance on different aspects of the vegetarianism does not mean that either of the motivations is somehow corrupt.

When we're working on a writing project, it may make sense to recognize that the significance that we find in our own work may not be the most significant aspect of the work in the eyes of others, and it may make sense to focus attention on the significance that others find in it. Writing. after all, is about reaching other people, and reaching them doesn't mean blindly remaining intent on your own purposes, it usually means trying to connect with their purposes. And that's not hypocrisy, that's respect and perhaps empathy.

The Introduction: APA recommendations

I was looking back over what the APA (American Psychological Association) Publication
Manual has to say about Introductions in preparation for a meeting with a writer tomorrow. As an aid to my own understanding, and because I need something to write about here, I figured I'd just make a few notes about what they say. I think these notes, while not entirely applicable to dissertations that aren't structured around an empirical study, provide some good insight into what readers are looking for--for what the APA thinks is worth asking for in introductions.

As an aside, the APA Manual also has a good section on what to put in abstracts (pp. 12-15) that is also worth reading, even if you're trying to write an introduction, because an introduction and an abstract are attempting to do very similar things: they are where the reader starts; they are what draws the reader in.

Ok, so I'm using section 1.08 of the 5th edition of The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, pp. 15-17.

The APA Manual breaks section 1.08 into three parts, which, if we want, we can also take as a basic outline for an Introduction--each part of the Manual's section 1.08 corresponds to a section of the Introduction. The three parts are titled: "Introduce the problem;" "Develop the Background;" and "State the Purpose and Rationale." The character of each part, I think, is basically apparent from the title of the section, but these section titles wouldn't really work as section titles in an actual introduction. Instead, one might have sections titled "Statement of Problem," "Background" (or "Literature Review"), and "Purpose and Rationale of the Study."

The first section, "Introduce the problem" says:

Before writing the introduction consider

• Why is this problem important?
• How do the hypothesis and the experimental design relate to the problem?
• What are the theoretical implications of the study, and how does the study relate to previous work in the area?
• What theoretical propositions are tested, and how were they derived?

A good introduction answers these questions...and, by summarizing the relevant arguments and the data, gives the reader a firm sense of what was done and why. (p. 16)

We can see in that terminal phrase--"what was done and why?"--a call for an explicit statement of purpose. At the least, I read it that way; regular readers of this blog have probably noted that I talk about sense of purpose a lot.

The four bulleted questions do not necessarily represent sections of the first section of the introduction (the "Statement of Problem"), but they could be, because that section is setting up all that comes after, and before getting into the details of a literature review, one wants to give the reader a complete sense of "what was done and why", so that the details of the literature review are framed in terms of the purpose of the project.

The "Develop the background" section opens with the sentences "Discuss the literature, but do not include an exhaustive historical review. Assume that the reader is knowledgeable about the field for which you are writing and does not require a complete digest" (p. 16).
What this means to me is: keep the details down, except with respect to those details that are directly related to your study. For example, if you are using a two variables, you need only discuss details of those variables that are related to how the two variables might interact, and not details about how each variable interacts with all other variables. (I think that last sentence doesn't really make sense; I apologize; I want to move on.)

Finally, the "State the purpose and rationale." Have I ever said anything about the value of an explicit statement of purpose? Ok, so here my claim is seconded.

Anyway, if you happen to be writing an APA paper, taking a look at section 1.08 of the manual can be of great help: it provides a model for what is expected.

If you don't have a manual of your own, and don't want to check the library (it's only two pages of reading), it's worth thinking about what the three tasks assigned to the introduction by the APA: "Introduce the problem;" "Develop the Background;" and "State the Purpose and Rationale." How is your paper going to accomplish these three things in the introduction? I think that every academic work wants to do something of the sort in its introduction, whether we're talking about the introduction to a chapter or to a book/dissertation. The introduction is where the foundation is laid for the rest o the argument; it is akin to the statement of axioms prior to the beginning of a logical proof. The introduction says what you're looking for, how you're going to look for it, and what kinds of evidence you're going to consider. This is a paradigm that any paper can follow.

If, for example, one is writing a paper in history the introduction might say (1) what the temporal parameters are, and what kind of development you're looking at (whether those are changes in a population (e.g. US expatriates in the 1920s), a process (e.g., agriculture) or type of object (e.g., furniture)), (2) what is your philosophical/theoretical lens (how do you define the task of the historian? Are you e.g., a Marxist theorist)?, and (3) what general primary evidence you will be using (actually, this last may be unnecessary for many fields like history or literature where what is considered acceptable evidence is so well accepted that no discussion of it is necessary).

Like yesterday, I think I could say more, and maybe will, but not right now, got other things to do...

Significance

I had a writer today ask me about finding the significance of her work.

Thinking about it, it seems like significance is context-dependent, or rather viewer-dependent. What counts as significant depends on point of view. We all, I imagine, have memories of feeling a deep significance in somethings that we just wouldn't worry about now. Those are situations where our view of significance changes; they should give us some insight into the basic truth that the significance that we place on something is not the same that others will.

That being said, I think that we can recognize a number of different levels at which we can find significance for a work, or at least these levels are levels at which we can seek to find significance.

Personal Significance. The obvious first place to seek significance is for yourself. If you don't feel that a work has any significance, then it can be mighty difficult to persevere, especially at the times that the project seems difficult. This is the sense of purpose that should drive the work. There are different types of personal significance: there is simple interest and curiosity; or, by contrast, there is also the personal significance of the crusader. There are probably other flavors of this, but I don't want to pursue that too far.

Academic Significance. As an academic writer, an obvious place to look for significance is within the academic community and the academic discourse. Are there publications that address similar issues as you hope to look at? Are there any publications that call for the kind of research that you hope to do? Are there authors whose work might be supplemented or challenged by your work?

Political Significance. An academic writer might also be concerned with the possibility that their work might shape political discourse in some way. There's some overlap here with the next type of significance.

Practical/Policy/Protocol Significance. Does the research tell us about the way we do things? If we carry out a research project, what does it show us about how we do do things--are we doing them well? And is there any way we could do them better?

Are there other types of significance I've missed? Quite possibly. In truth I'm rushing a little o get something written after missing yesterday, but I don't really feel like spending a lot of time on this right now. Hence, a short post; but better a bad post on time than a good post late.

Avoiding a Battle of Wills

I don't advocate getting into a battle of wills with your faculty committee; it makes the process much more difficult. But at the same time, it's important to be able to adhere to your own sense of purpose, and your own sense of what the project ought to be.

This is one of the most difficult pieces of the dissertation project to manage: how much of your vision are you willing to sacrifice to the demands or suggestions of your committee? How much do you want to respond to instructions of your committee when they call on you to do work that you would not have done?

The answer, of course, is not simple. It's always a matter of judgment calls. First off, is that comment that says "include a discussion of X" or the one that says "cut out section Y"--are those comments demands or suggestions? You have to judge with respect to your committee. But I think it is easy for a graduate student to forget that sometimes professors ask questions or make suggestions because they want to help.

I remember clearly being stopped part way through my qualifying orals. I don't remember exactly what the subject was, and I'm not quite sure which professor it was who spoke first, but she said to me something like "We're asking the question because we're trying to help you plan your dissertation, not because we're trying to find out a weakness." So one thing to ask yourself when looking at those comments is, are they demands or suggestions?

The next thing to do is to examine whether or not that comment really helps. And to do this, you have to have a good idea of what you're trying to accomplish with your dissertation, because without such a sense of purpose, how can you determine whether the comment helps or not? It is crucial to put aside any resentment at being ordered around, and just examine the suggestion on its own merits: if the suggestion helps you--and I emphasize 'you'--that doesn't mean that you'll be able to recognize its value immediately; you have to give the idea at least a little chance--though only within the crucible of your scholarly analysis. Some suggestions really do help. If you can see that a suggestion helps, then you want to use it.

Some suggestions don't really help. These ones you need to figure out how to manage. One good tactic is to simply ignore them. If you turn in a completely revised draft that's significantly different from the previous one; if that draft incorporates some of the suggestions that your professor made; and if that draft is focused, coherent and generally complete in its structure, then it is quite possible that your professor will evaluate that draft on its own merits, and not on the basis of comments written some months earlier.

Another possible strategy is to use the handy "that is outside the scope of this discussion." I was talking today with a Berkeley Professor of education who was telling me how he had shown a draft to a friend, how that friend had taken him to task on a certain issue, and how he had decided to respond by putting in a footnote that acknowledged the difficulty and said "but that is outside the scope of this discussion." As he said to me: one does not wish to appear ignorant of the subject, or the issue, but opening the discussion is like opening Pandora's box: all sorts of problems come out. His "Pandora's box" is parallel to the rabbit holes that I was talking about. But he's right, in a way: going into that discussion actually does create many problems, and given the desire for concise and focused work, even exploration of interesting subjects is something of a problem. We may be able to convincingly respond to a suggestion by writing a paragraph that acknowledges a body of material that is relevant, but is outside the scope of the study.

It's possible that the suggestions I have made above can help resolve the great majority of problems with comments and suggestions from your committee that you find difficult. It seems to me likely that this strategy, repeated over a couple of cycles of feedback and revision, might be successful in avoiding direct conflict. If you are able to respond positively to some of the suggestions, that always helps defuse difficulties related to failing to respond to all of the comments.

Framing (2)

Sarah asks:

I'm looking back at my text and thinking to myself "I have 9 pages of revised single spaced text (with several more to follow) and no where in here do I feel I have shared with my reader why this long digression in detail is important."

When should we tell the readers about our framing? How often do we need to remind them of it? What are some graceful and tactful ways of doing this without it feeling out of place?

The most important place for framing is right near the beginning. It seems to me that you want your reader to know the general purpose and context of your work right from the start. As I said yesterday, this framing is related to the sense of purpose, and I have previously (on Aug. 18, in a post titled "Sense of Purpose: Explicit statements") noted how these explicit statements of purpose are placed in the preface--that is to say the first piece the reader is to read. This is true for the entire work, and it's true for pieces of the larger work: as you begin a new section, you frame that section within its context.

You might start an entire work saying "Our goal is to trace the history of X, in order to better understand what X is like today." Or maybe "The goal of this work is to trace the history of X, in order to provide an example of the general process Y." Or, to take an example from a book I revere: "The following essay is written in the conviction that anarchism, while perhaps not the most attractive political philosophy, is certainly excellent medicine for epistemology, and for the philosophy of science." (From Paul Feyerabend's Against Method. The italics are Feyerabend's.) Of course, when you start a work, the need to frame it is greatest.
When you are beginning a section of a larger work, you want to frame that section in terms of the larger work. This can be done by explaining to the reader the transition and flow of the work. For example: "This section discusses issues related to a specific aspect of X." Or "Having defined the basic parameters of X, we will look at some of the effects of process Y on X." Or maybe "In order to discuss X, we need to take a look at what came before X; therefore we must first examine W, which will serve as a foil for X."
To return to Sarah's question, as you open those nine pages, do you reference the main question of your study? Do you reference the section that comes before those nine pages? Do you discuss what will follow those nine pages? If not, then I suggest adding a couple of sentences to tell the reader right up front something like "The history of the ABC commission played a crucial role in the development of the 123 department, which set the general parameters for who would be counted as receiving DEF benefits." This kind of statement only comes at the beginning of a section that is, in a way a self-contained unit in the larger work. This kind of framing requires your having a sense of actual purpose for including the discussion: why did you choose to include this discussion in your work? What does this specific discussion--whether it be a discussion of an event, of a theory, of a term, a person, etc.--what purpose does this discussion have in the context of the larger work?

Beyond that opening statement, I think that you want to start to work framing in through the use of simple sentences later in the section and at transitions within the section. As you start to wrap up the section you want to say to the reader stuff like "this detail that we just discussed is one of the key factors in stuff that I'm going to tell you about later," or maybe "this detail is one of the keys in understanding the stuff I discussed in the previous chapter."

Good methods of framing often rely on mentioning what has just been discussed or what will next be discussed in relation to the current section: how does this section relate to what comes before and after? What is the transition and what the logic? If you just finished discussing theory A and you're currently discussing theory B, how do those theories compare to each other? Are they in conflict or in agreement? where are they alike and where similar? If you framed the previous section well, then you can frame the current section in terms of the previous section. If you are trying to frame the current section with respect to what will come next, it helps to make some reference back to the main question, too.

How often do you need to remind the reader? I think the answer to that is: whenever the link starts to seem tenuous. I know that's not really clear. But what I'm thinking of is that sometimes, as we write about a subject we've been thinking about, it is easy to make leaps of reasoning and follow them--those are the places the reader gets lost. So, if you're working to tie your chain of reasoning together so the reader can follow it, then a lot of framing will naturally develop.

The most important framing of all is in your head: you, the writer, need to be able to explain to yourself what role a given section serves in relating to the main question of your work. If you are framing the ideas yourself--and you write about the things that you see the importance of--then the ideas will naturally come out framed.

If you want to show, for example, how the development of enumeration practices in government, business and charity, led to an entire segment of the population suffering from a series of problems, then each discussion of government policy, of business practice, of theory, etc., will naturally be imbued with framing because you, the writer, will be motivated. If you discuss a government commission, it will be because that commission had an impact in some way; if you discuss a theory, it is because that theory shaped some aspects of the phenomenon you're studying, and so on.

As a final note, the hardest things to frame are things that you need to include to satisfy others. In my dissertation, I was primarily interested in ideas of science and the practical implications of these ideas and how to improve on those ideas given things that we've learned about human cognition. But I included discussion of architectural aesthetics largely at the prompting of my committee; I was interested in the aesthetic questions, and I had a lot to say about them, but it was not quite as directly germane to my main sense of purpose, and so framing it was very difficult. One can't just drop the material in and say "oh by the way: here's 20 pages on some tangential issue," or at least it doesn't feel confident. I guess in such situations, I would recommend making sure that you have a strong vision of what you would like to include, and then it becomes easier, at least, to encapsulate difficult material, or to maybe work in little bits of it in unobtrusive manners, perhaps as a subtheme.

Framing

Internet phenomena fascinate me. I certainly don't study them, and the general study of such phenomena (and the consequent understanding that would come) might well avail me, but it's not really my bag. I'm more interested in thinking through ideas related to writing and communication and how to do it.

One thing that I notice in internet phenomena, especially internet searches is how quickly things come to be taken out of context, or how the context gets lost.

For example, there is a page on the site Technorati that
presents the matter of my blog in an odd way. While it does basically represent what is going on in my blog, context is lost. Look, in particular, at the section "what this blog is about", which uses the labels of my posts to create a display of topics. The four topics that dominate the list are consistency, emotions, practice, sense of purpose. And I do talk about those often. The problem is that what is completely lost is the framing I provide at the top of my blog: "Seeking insightful perspectives on writing, dissertations, and projects in general." I talk about consistency, etc., but in the context of writing. I'm not writing about emotions; I'm writing about the role that emotions play in writing.

This notion of maintaining the framing is a good one for writers to keep in mind. When presenting a long and detailed exposition to readers, it behooves the writer to make sure that the framing is well done, so that the reader understands and can readily remember why the details are being discussed.
But having once framed something in the context of your main topic, you do not need to talk about your main topic explicitly. After all, we want to assume that our readers are not idiots and they can remember our basic purpose.

The framing is crucial: without it, our meaning is lost on the reader.
The framing is set by your sense of purpose: your sense of purpose is what sets your focus, and it is that focus which determines the scope and direction of the work.

Sense of Purpose: explicit statements

I had been pushing a writer to produce an explicit statement of purpose. Part of my motivation to do so was guided by my sense that if we have such an explicit statement to guide us, it will help us achieve our goal. (This is a principle frequently expressed in self-help books: a written goal is a goal that is supposedly more likely to be fulfilled.) I like the explicit statement because that statement can help shape all the rest of the work: we can then test every sentence in terms of that explicit statement.

But the writer asked whether such a statement was appropriate in the field of history. Not being a historian, I don't have a house filled with history books, but I did pull three "histories" off my shelves. The notes that follow are what I wrote to the writer.

I think that every author can benefit from clearly stating a purpose for their work--something that contextualizes the study, something that tells the reader what to expect, and how that piece fits within a larger world, and takes significance in that world.

I don't tend to read "history", per se, at least not what I would recognize as the product of a university history department, but I picked a few books off my shelves to see what perspective they give me on this.

Book 1: A Green History of the World by Clive Ponting
from the preface: "There are many books about...I feel strongly that there is a need for a book that looks at..." or to render the quote in full:
"There are many books about the current state of the environment and the prospects for the future but few probe very far into the past or explore the extent to which the environment has shaped human history and none covered the ground and asked the questions that seemed to me to be important. I feel strongly that there is a need for a book that looks at world history from a 'green' perspective."
I grant, of course, that it is a mass market book. But there's a clear explicit statement of purpose that contextualizes the work of the book in terms of our present situation and the purpose of the book in that situation.

Book 2: "A History of Western Philosophy" by Bertrand Russell, clearly we don't want to count Russell as a historian, but still...
The opening of the preface:
"Many histories of philosophy exist, and it has not been my purpose merely to add one to their number. My purpose is to exhibit philosophy as an integral part of social and political life..."
Again, a clear statement of purpose.
He closes the "Introductory" chapter with a statement that also expresses purpose and a sense that the purpose of the history is to serve a present goal--the final paragraph has these statements: "Social cohesion is a necessity...Every community is exposed to two opposite dangers...The doctrine of liberalism is an attempt to escape from this endless oscillation....Whether this attempt can succeed only the future can tell."

Book 3: "Mechanization Takes Command" by Siefried Giedion (an art/architectural historian of some reknown)
From the first sentences of the Preface:
"In 'Space, Time and Architecture' (1941) I attempted to show the split that exists in our period between thought and feeling. I am trying now to go a step further: to show how this break came about, by investigating one important aspect of our life -- mechanization."

When it comes right down to it, I think that an author is missing a very important opportunity if he/she does not tell the reader what his/her purpose is. Explicitly sharing your purpose with the reader--even through the use of a few short paragraphs in a preface--gives the reader reason to read on.

Readers of the blog have probably seen my past concern with sense of purpose and finding your own voice. Being able to state, in shorter and longer forms, a sense of purpose, a reason that the work is important, is what brings in the reader. I have here picked "history" because that was the field of the writer, but I think that this is a general thing: the academic writer should attempt to inform the reader of the reason for the book.

It is worth noting that in all three cases I looked at, the explicit statement of purpose was very close to the beginning--in the first paragraph, or even the opening sentence of the preface--which is the first text in the three books in question. Each of the three authors placed an explicit statement as very nearly the first thing the reader would read. If we assume that this is not a meaningless formalism, we might ask ourselves what would motivate the author to place such an explicit statement right at the beginning of the work. And we might ask: why not put such an explicit statement at the beginning of the work?

One can learn from books in different ways. I talk with a lot of writers who learn topical issues from the articles and books they read, but they don't learn about writing from those articles and books. By looking at a book to see what choices the author made--for example whether there is an explicit statement of purpose--we can start to think about the choices that an academic writer makes, and what choices seem to work when you read them.

A final note: if you look at a dissertation as a model, you will pretty much find an explicit statement right at the front of the dissertation: it's called the abstract, and, as far as I know, every dissertation is required to have an abstract.

A Sense of Futility

At some moments, in some projects, and in some lives, there are moments where we are faced with a sense of futility.

I was talking today with a friend whose work ethic has always impressed me, and whose passion for many projects has led him to many creative works. He had recently finished a project--a book that he had been working on in relation to his work as a teacher (and vendor) of a software package. The book had met with a cold reception and he was struggling with a sense of futility: it makes no difference if I try, he exclaimed.

I've had something of the same sense recently with this blog. There are moments when I look at the hundreds of posts and for all the effort, I've only ever heard from a handful of readers--four, or five. I wonder about the value of the effort. On the other hand, those who did contact me were appreciative. And maybe it's worth it just to have helped even one person.

One way to look at the issue of futility is to consider whether the activity is itself inherently worthwhile. I can find rewards for the efforts on my blog on a number of different levels. Some of those rewards of writing would be found in positive response from readers--which, as I noted above, is not overwhelming. But I can also find rewards in learning to write better, in practicing my writing, and in practicing a practice, and in struggling to refine and improve ideas that come into play in the work that I do.

When we're struggling with a sense of futility, I think that it comes from an overly narrow focus on the potential aspects of a situation. To follow on the example of this blog, I feel the futility when I think about the value of the blog to others. But when I think of the value of the blog to myself, then I have a more positive view: working on the blog has helped me learn.

Hypothetically a dissertation writer might find a sense of futility attached to a work--perhaps because some critique they received was harsh and belittling. Actually that's not so hypothetical: I know it happens all the time. But the work may be valuable to other people. And of greatest importance, you can ask whether the work has value for you. Chances are that you, as writer, started out with a sense of a question that interested you, or a cause that motivated you, is there some way to re-connect your work with that sense of interest or motivation?

By focusing on aspects of the work that do feel important, one can get around the sense of futility. With a dissertation or thesis, it can always help to remember that completing the work will lead to a degree, so the project is not inherently futile and meaningless if you can compete the work. Usually, though, knowledge of the degree is not sufficient to overcome any writer's block that arises from feeling a sense of futility. That's why it's so valuable to be able to connect with a sense of purpose that is internal: a desire to grow, a desire to face challenges, and a desire to share ideas that are personally important.

Sucked In

How easy is it to get sucked in?
How does it happen that one gets sucked in?

We usually think of getting sucked in to things that we don't want to do, but that are tempting. How does it happen? We get sucked in to watching TV and we get up an hour or four later feeling worse for it, usually. We get sucked into one too many drinks, perhaps, or one too many hands at the blackjack table, or too many bon bons, or books or whatever kind of temptation we fall into.

But do we only get sucked in to things that are bad for us? My experience is that I can be sucked into many activities. Some days it's hard to get started writing or to get started on an editing project, but I find that once I'm involved in the work, it's not nearly as difficult as I anticipate. The interest inherent in the work will take over if only I give it enough chance.
Part of making it happen, I think, is having low expectations (which is very different, of course, from having low standards) for the moment. I don't expect to solve all my problems, or even to solve one big problem; I expect only that I will give it an honest effort for a little while. Often I can get started on writing something by saying "I'll just jot down quick notes." That, indeed, is the case with today's blog: I was resisting writing it--telling myself I would do it later--after all, writing a whole blog entry might take thirty minutes, or an hour even, if I get caught up in it. But "I'll just jot some quick notes so I won't forget what I was thinking about," and here I am, a couple of paragraphs in.

I read an article recently (sadly, I have no link and no citation) that described a recent study that showed that people were poor at anticipating how much they would enjoy things, finding both that people often enjoyed things they anticipated disliking, and that they disliked things they anticipated enjoying. I think work is something that we often anticipate disliking, and so we avoid it. But we often enjoy it, once we start.

Recently I decided that I wanted to work on reading music (which I do a very poorly and slowly), and decided to spend fifteen minutes a day practicing reading music with a metronome. I do have a trouble starting, but when I do start, I often find myself working for longer than I planned, just because the challenge of working on it sucks me in: I want to master it, or at least get better at it--mastery, I think, would take several hours of practice a day--a friend who was a professional musician told me once that he had to practice six hours a day to be able to play what he needed for his gigs. This is a worthy comparison: the writer can productively spend fifteen minutes writing--especially with practice. But to master a project, it will take the writer hours every day, for weeks or months.

Another important factor in getting sucked in is to feel that the process in which you engage is one that serves a purpose for you. And is not one that you feel you are doing out of some externally imposed obligation. If you feel that a task is worthy, then engaging in that ask will actually have a self-reinforcing factor: you'll feel good for having accomplished something, and that will be conducive to working more. On the other hand, if you are feeling that a task is only an external obligation, there is a constant resistance due to your sense that the task is not meaningful, but is only being done for someone else.

Anger at having to do the task probably isn't helpful in getting sucked in; anger is draining. In the long run it would be nice for the writer to have the experience of getting sucked in and of having the task of writing and research be so fascinating that you do not only get sucked in on the small scale (where you start working for a short moment and that stretches to several minutes or hours) but you can get sucked in on the large scale (where you start to view the opportunity to work as an actual temptation).