Pivotal Choices Coaching

Transforming Your Dissertation into a Book

When a former client emailed that she wanted to return to coaching, I was pleased and intrigued.

What might a client who had finished her dissertation and had been published in several journals want to accomplish?

As most academics have discovered, she had learned that finishing the dissertation is the key to the academic world, but it’s just the key.

The demands that face the new academic are enormous.  Teaching may be a new experience, with the classes they have taken themselves being their only model or training.

What this one former client wanted was help in negotiating the writing of her book, the book that she had planned some time ago would come from her dissertation. 

On the face of it, transforming a dissertation into a book would seem rather straightforward.

The dissertation is a draft, but that’s all.  And a very early draft.

To submit a book for publication requires writing not only a proposal, but usually a sample chapter.   To write that chapter may require a focused revision of the new and fresh idea from your dissertation plus a refocused view of the audience, one wider than just your advisor and committee.

Finally, and most importantly, to write a book while teaching requires that you decide how much of a priority this book will be.  It will never get off the ground unless it is not just important, but urgent.  If it is urgent, you will work on it when you are at your best. And you will write every day.

It is possible to fit the reshaping and rewriting of your dissertation into your very full life. 

The pivotal choice for you is to decide that you will put this writing in the middle of your desk every day, first thing.

If you have a project that you’re trying to pull into view for yourself, I hope you will get in touch with me.  I can help. And go to my website (www.nwcoaching.com) to sign up for my Smart Tips e-newsletter

Nancy
www.nwcoaching.com
nancy@mentorcoach.com

A Hopeful Choice: Happiness at Harvard through Goal-Setting

Serendipity struck last night.  As I was clicking on my TV remote, putting off the choice between writing or sleeping, I happened on "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central.  At that moment Jon Stewart was introducing Tal Ben-Shahar, author of the book Happier and instructor of the most popular class at Harvard—a class on Positive Psychology.

In his book Happier, Ben-Shahar emphasizes goal-setting and the effect goals have on changing one’s life. 

Jon Stewart, ever the cleverly entertaining cynic, poked fun at the concept of a Happiness course with its overtones of self-help. Stewart asked if the class is popular because it’s easy.

Ben-Shahar held his own, showing his witty side as well as that of the scholarly researcher.  He said that his class conveys the research and science behind the emerging field of positive psychology and also helps students improve the quality of their own lives.

Experience tells those of us who have taught college students that students need to find meaning in the academic process beyond the notion that one day it will all be over.  In the middle of exams, papers, and required readings, it’s easy to feel isolated and anchorless.

Ben-Shahar says that having goals demonstrates hope, or in his words, “the belief that we are capable of overcoming obstacles.”

To illustrate, Ben-Shahar compares life to a journey in which you’re walking along with a knapsack on your back until you come to a brick wall.  Do you turn back or “throw your knapsack over the wall, thus committing yourself to finding ways of getting through, around, or over the wall?”

The first difficult choice is setting the goal.  Throwing your knapsack over the wall takes faith in yourself, but even more importantly, the willingness to make a commitment.  This is what I will do.  I will find a way.   

The brick wall is a pivotal choice.  You can commit to scaling that wall or turn back.  Committing to a specific, stated goal makes it easier to keep going.  And surmounting that brick wall bodes well for overcoming additional brick walls in your future.

Makes sense, right? And so obvious! Or as Jon Stewart said to Ben-Shahar about positive psychology and also about Ben-Shahar's teaching positive psychology at Harvard, “It’s a fascinating subject and one I can’t believe you’re getting away with.”

To see the Tal Ben-Shahar video clip, go to
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/most_recent/index.jhtml and click on the box for the Tal Ben-Shahar video.

I’d love to hear your reaction to Tal Ben-Shahar.