Writing through resistance

This post summarizes my experience working on a paper that I feel passionate about, but was making AGONIZINGLY slow progress on. This was occurring despite budgeting and spending lots of time “trying” to work on it. This is the definition of resistance, so I decided to use the tools available at facultydiversity.org to tackle this head on and learn more about resistance and what I can do when I encounter this experience! More specifically, I used the ‘Moving from Resistance to Writing’ 90-minute webinar, and the 14-day free Writing Boot Camp as tools.

I kept noticing that when I budgeted time to work on this project, I felt nervous beforehand (largely due to thoughts like “I can’t believe this is STILL on my list!”). Other tasks (often easier and more immediate) bled into the time I set aside, and although I would successfully engage, read articles, make decisions about how to move forward, and begin to work on these tasks, the draft moved very slowly. Between writing sessions there were many guilty “I should go work on this” moments, but when I finally got to it, I spent time re-orienting myself, re-reading or re-working on something, and was not able to easily dive back into the project.

Well, the Resistance webinar (Skill #5) provided a lot of validation about why I was having this experience. It covered external barriers to writing that we all face (competing more immediate demands, particularly service, lack of support/community for writing) and internal barriers. A few include work-crastination (my specialty), avoidance, and limiting beliefs. Limiting beliefs include “I need huge blocks of uninterrupted time to work on this”, “I need to be inspired to write”, and “Writing is what I do when I’m done thinking.” This last one was huge for me. Shifting to the idea that writing IS thinking was tremendously useful. The rationale is simple: the more complicated our ideas become in our heads, the harder it will be to actually translate on the page, and the less reinforcing it will be. Having the work (ALL the work) take shape on the page makes it easy to jump in and out without effort. The webinar also covered 8 technical errors (behaviors people do) that inhibit writing progress. Well, I was making several of them regularly, not because I didn’t know better, but because stress about the task was leading to not-so-very-strategic behaviors. The two I focused on correcting were “You have no idea how long tasks take” and “Tasks you’ve set out are too complex.”

During the boot camp, I worked more regularly and systematically… and noticed that my expectations for myself (and what I wanted to accomplish in my daily time) were oh-so-unrealistic and unhelpful. I plan workouts based on my actual 5k time, not an Olympian’s – why was I doing this differently at work? 

So to review the impacts of working on this problem, using these tools…

Did this process revolutionize my writing progress, and make it easy to work on this project? No. Heck, no.

Did I get unstuck and start making more progress in less time? Yes.

Did I start logging time for tasks, acknowledging my actual priorities and time that I have and don’t have, and move back my writing deadlines as a result? Yes.

Did I spend a lot more time mapping tasks in my document, ‘showing my work’, and a lot less time redoing work? Yes.

Was it hard? Yes.

Ultimately I needed to connect with a colleague to break down smaller goals, benchmark together, and reengage with the reason I wanted to share our findings. I needed to cool it with the unrealistic expectations and work more regularly, more efficiently, and tolerate that it’s slow going in my current role. If I loved writing, and was amazing/efficient at it, I’d have a different role!

Jordan Cattie, Ph.D.