Reflections On Writing Blog: Thoughts, Tips, and Suggestions

Conservation of Momentum

In physics, “conservation of momentum” refers to the basic principle that energy (like momentum) moves around within a system, but is never actually lost. In writing, momentum is a much more personal, emotional thing and it can be all too easily lost, especially for writers who struggle with anxiety-related writing blocks. Writing momentum is valuable in that your whole neurophysiology begins to resonate with the project on which you’re working. If you have worked on your project every day, or at least worked with some degree of productivity, the ideas about what to do and where to go and different options and different issues are much more clear and present in mind than they are if you have spent the last week focusing on seeing tourist attractions while on vacation.

For a writer who has been writing successfully for a long time, there’s a lot of momentum built up.  The body and mind of such a writer have deeply worn patterns of behavior that are relatively easy to reactivate after some time off.  For a writer who struggles with anxiety and who is prone to writer’s block—me, among others—breaks in momentum can be very difficult.

Over the last year or so, I’ve been writing about dealing with anxiety blocks—about how to get past anxiety to engage with writing in the first place. That’s a subject with which I have extensive personal experience, having struggled with anxiety-related writing blocks multiple times in my life. Indeed, this spring, I suffered some minor health problems—just enough to derail me for a time, and I stopped writing.  And then, having lost my momentum, and struggling with anxiety, I found it difficult to get back into it. I have been rebuilding momentum, though, and I hope to get my writing levels and consistency back up. It can be hard to get momentum, but once you’ve got it, it eases the process. It is good to conserve momentum.

What does momentum feel like?

In my experience, momentum feels good. Momentum is characterized by recent progress on a project, when both the project feels good and the progress I’ve made feels like progress (i.e., I don’t feel like I’m just spinning my wheels, even if I have just decided to throw away a weak draft). When you have momentum, you think about your project in the spare moments. If you’re running errands, having momentum means that you may have some idea about your project while standing on line at the store, or while waiting for the gas tank to fill, or while riding public transit. If you have momentum, you might have dreams related to your project—even dreams that offer some insight. If you have momentum, you can focus more quickly and precisely on a specific project and zero-in on the details and concerns of that individual project. 

By contrast, if you don’t have momentum, it’s more likely that you will scan a wide range of possible projects, and even if you pick one project as the one to work on, you will be thinking generally about the project, rather than focusing in on specific issues.  To be sure, thinking generally about a project is a good thing, and is an important part of the writing process—you need to have a big vision—but when you’re making progress—when you have momentum—that big vision is implicit and your other concerns can flow naturally from that driving force. 

Momentum feels confident, at least on the small scale: the confidence to take some action to move the project forward. This is a confidence built out of regular process and practice: if you have consistently made steps that move the project forward, it’s easy to feel that you can take yet one more step.

Momentum is neurophysiological activity

When you do the same thing repeatedly, your body gets used to doing it. If you spend a lot of your time thinking about one specific project or subject, then, not surprisingly, you’re more likely to think about that subject given a free moment.  In idle moments, your thoughts are likely to turn to something that has recently been on your mind.  This is especially valuable, I think, if it is a good thing and something you feel good about, because then you build confidence and comfort. By contrast, feeling bad about your project is a way to build negative momentum: if you force yourself to suffer through work, that is likely to build aversion that reduces motivation and ultimately reduces momentum.

Ideally, you can approach your project with enthusiasm, and then work on it regularly and build good momentum.  Lots of people do this. If you have ever talked with someone who is genuinely excited about their work, then there’s a good chance you’re talking with someone that has developed good project momentum. If all you ever think about is your work, you may be boring at parties, but it makes writing easier. 

Momentum does not require obsession, however. Momentum requires a good balance—enough work to keep re-activating the appropriate neurophysiology, but also enough rest to allow those physiological systems to rest and regenerate.  For many writers, good writing momentum is something that involves three or four hours of writing a day.  Writing is not generally a work-all-day task. It is, indeed, only one part of the responsibilities of an academic or a professional writers in other fields.

Conserve your momentum

It takes effort to get momentum going: the first steps of getting started are the most difficult.  Starting a project can be hard because you’re not sure where to go. You may have the enthusiasm that goes with new projects, but you have to battle with making many many decisions about the direction for the work to take. That takes a lot of effort. Having made those decisions, and having the whole train of reasoning relatively fresh in your mind is a large part of the momentum you gather. If you don’t take action to keep that momentum—namely working on your project every day or almost every day—you will lose the momentum and have to invest the extra effort to get started again.

Restarting a project, too, takes extra effort. If you’ve left a project aside for a while, you may need to refamiliarize yourself with it. You may need to reconstruct or refresh your vision of what you want to accomplish and how you plan on accomplishing it. Again, once you get moving, a lot of the questions become clearer when they are freshly considered.  

I want to acknowledge that there are good times to set aside a project for a little while, despite the loss of momentum, but those spots should be picked carefully.  In particular, it is often good to take a little time away from a project after completing a draft.  Stepping away from a draft for a time can give you a new perspective, which is useful. The momentum that I have been describing does encompass a perspective and focus that helps you produce work. But when it comes time to criticize that work, it is good to shift perspective—to see the work with fresh eyes, as the expression goes. That’s a break in momentum, but it’s less problematic because it occurs at a natural break in the process, so it’s less disruptive than dropping a project in its midst. It’s easier to regain momentum at such break points because taking a break is part of the plan. Still, even at those break points, it’s pretty important not to let too much time elapse before you get back to work.

Building Momentum

Building momentum takes effort, but it need not be some grueling torture. If you are currently stuck and have no current momentum, every little step you takes helps build it.  You’re writing nothing? Write an e-mail to a friend.  That helps build momentum. You can write social media posts but not your work? Write some social media posts and remind yourself that it is writing, too. And then try to write a sentence or two about your work. There are two keys to build good, sustainable momentum: (1) do something; make some effort; if yesterday was unproductive, try to do just a little today; if yesterday was productive, try to keep that level of productivity going; and (2) do it gently, so that it is a process that may be difficult but is not painful.

If you’ve lost your momentum, you can build it again with patience and persistence. And if you have it, value it and build on it. Writing momentum helps you write, but it takes effort to maintain it. Conserve your writing momentum by writing regularly.

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 17: Don’t get trapped by competing ideas

When I started this post, I was not thinking abut writer’s block or tips for dealing with it. I was thinking about managing the many things that compete for attention. But as I wrote about it, I realized that I was, in fact, writing about the way competing ideas can lead to writing paralysis in which the authors sits debating which idea to write about—an experience that can easily be recognized by many writers who are struggling to write. (I have written on this subject before.)

Recently I was talking with a writer who was bemoaning the many different things she had to say and commenting on how that made writing difficult. This is a common issue: for a lot of writers—myself included—many different ideas compete for attention. But, since only one idea can be put on the page at a time (or, at least, given my technology and abilities, I can only put one word on the page at a time. I assume you face a similar limitation), a lot of writing becomes a question of making a choice between competing alternatives.

I started this post thinking that I was going to write about gardening and how my relationship to gardening could provide insight into the practice of writing (because writing is the topic of this blog, after all). But as I began, several different ideas popped into my head, which made me think about another writer who was recently lamenting all the ideas that she wanted to put on the page, and the difficulty in moving forward in the face of such competing ideas. As I, too, was faced with many competing ideas, I thought I’d write about that.

Competing ideas can lead to doubt. If you have several different ideas that you could focus on, it’s possible to spend a lot of time debating which idea to write about, and that debate can trigger anxiety, especially if you criticize each potential idea in turn. Rather than getting trapped in vacillation, it’s beneficial to choose a single focus and work on that, even though it means setting aside the other ideas for a time. (For a time, but not necessarily for ever. After all, the sooner you finish writing about one of your many ideas, the sooner you get to move on to writing about the others.)

Association of ideas

Every idea can spark another (or more than one). Each idea is a pebble thrown into the stream of consciousness, sending out ripples in all directions. For me, the phrase “association of ideas” brings to mind my master’s thesis (though it was written 25 years ago), which was literally concerned with John Locke’s philosophy and his ideas about the “association of ideas,” and its role in Laurence Sterne’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman. Locke’s “association of ideas” was about how ideas can become connected for non-logical reasons, where I am more interested in ideas that do have some reasonable connection (gardening and writing, for example, are connected because they are both practices, and thus share some features). But even if we only make connections through reasonable paths, still, each idea can spark many new ones.

If we look at all the ideas that present themselves in response to a single idea, we see a vast web of connected ideas. That web can be viewed as an array of opportunities: every strand of the web might provide the focus for a piece of writing. But that same web of ideas can also trap us, just as a spider’s web catches a fly: we sit down to write, and then each associated idea that pops into mind ties a thread of distraction—a temptation that the essay move in a different direction.  In a short time, with the associated ideas multiplying, we are pulled in dozens of directions at once, and can become immobilized.

Spider web at Anstey Swamp, Rockingham Lakes Regional Park, June 2021 01

Making choices

When you’re pulled in different directions, you can get paralyzed: do I go this way or that? Am I going to write about this or about that? Getting paralyzed is bad. Getting paralyzed is unproductive, frustrating, and depressing. You don’t want to get paralyzed.

To avoid paralysis, you need to make a consequential decision in the face of uncertainty: which course of action will be best? There is a definite cost in making the wrong decision: if I invest my efforts into a project that fails in some way, then I have lost that valuable time. It is this dynamic that creates the paralysis: “I want to make the right decision, but I’m not sure which the right decision is!”

But focusing on the different possible directions to explore can actually obscure another decision: the choice between (1) choosing the best subject for writing and (2) writing on some less-than-best subject.  Every minute you spend considering your choice of subject is a minute that you don’t spend writing. In terms of developing a good writing practice and a good relationship with writing, working on a less-than-optimal project is the better choice. 

The difference in value and quality between a finished project based on idea X (the best idea) and a finished project about idea Y (the second best) is much smaller than the difference between a complete project and an incomplete one. If you finish a project centered on a weak idea, you still have a project to present. If you get paralyzed debating which will be the best project, then you don’t have anything at all.

Making a choice—however imperfect—gives you a better chance of success. And it’s more emotionally satisfying, too. The paralysis that comes from wondering what to write can be painful. There’s a famous quote that “writing is easy—just stare at a blank page until your forehead starts to bleed.”  You know who stares at the blank page? It’s someone who is paralyzed by many choices. Writers don’t stare at a blank page because they have nothing to say; people always have something to say! I don’t like to use universal generalizations, but I feel absolutely safe in saying that everyone has something to say. You may tell yourself that your ideas are not interesting or important (it’s easy to imagine people thinking that your ideas are uninteresting and unimportant); you may temporarily go blank when sitting to write; but you have something to say—probably many things to say. Paralysis comes from rejecting potential options or by vacillating between those options.  The writer who is pouring words onto the page doesn’t think writing is torture (at least not at the moment that they are pouring words onto the page).

Prioritize

To break the paralysis that comes with too many options, it helps to prioritize: which ideas do you care about the most?  Trying to prioritize can help provide focus.  Firstly, the task of prioritizing itself requires a certain amount of focus, and, if you do it, can also provide some momentum to move forward. Prioritization is facilitated by writing down a list of different ideas (trying to prioritize without making a list allows the prioritization scheme to shift around too much—it allows you to escape the choices that help break paralysis). When you start writing different ideas on the page in order to make a list of different potential topics, you are taking the first steps in putting various ideas onto the page. If a list of priorities is viewed as a to-do list, it can also help assuage any distress that comes from leaving a specific idea out of the text: if you have five important things to say, a list of priorities can help you remember that working on the first thing doesn’t exclude working on the second thing at a later time. A list of priorities as a to-do list is something of a promise to yourself to attend to the lower priority items as soon as you have finished with the high priority items: so you’re not neglecting things, you’re just focusing and planning.

A list of priorities can be a good writing exercise for someone struggling with writer’s block. Firstly, it gets you to identify in words the different ideas you want to discuss. Secondly, it allows you to cover a large amount of territory (each item in the list might be a subject for pages of writing). Thirdly, there is some emotional comfort in thinking that dealing with a single item on a to-do list is the most efficient way to deal with the list as a whole. Fourthly, a list of priorities is just a tool to help you get moving, so it doesn’t have to be perfect or neat—it’s not something to show other people.

Of course, there is some danger that writing a list of priorities itself becomes a significant task if you try to get it just right. Don’t go there! Make a quick list, pick the top item on it, and get to work. You can always change course later, but in the moment, it is crucial to pick one idea for a focus and work on that idea for a while.

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 16: Scholarship is valuable

My previous post—about weaponization of doubt—was written just a few days ago, while I started writing this post months ago.  I got stuck mostly because it had gotten bloated and I wanted to either cut it short or cut it into two pieces. I haven’t done that, but I feel like this is a related subject, and I wanted to follow up a little. Doubt is one of the big barriers that scholars face—uncertainty cannot be eliminated by empirical science—and if scholarship isn’t producing any objective, certain truth, then why is it any better than just making up random stories?  In this post, I’m not really addressing the philosophical question of whether or how research is better than fiction—that would take me more space than this long post, and I’m not sure that I could do a good job arguing the point. Instead, I want to accept that there is something that makes the works of scholars valuable, and talk about some of the other doubts that arise even for scholars who aren’t bothered by the philosophical/logical uncertainty suggested by the problem of induction (or by other critiques of philosophical attempts at “truth,” such as the post-modern challenges to the idea of objective truth.

The block: “My research isn’t important”

I’ve known more than one dissertation writer who was on the verge of quitting because they felt their work was so far divorced from the “real world” that it was essentially meaningless. The common notion that the “ivory tower” of academia is somehow out of touch with the real world is a big emotional issue.  If you believe your work is so esoteric that no one will care, or so narrowly focused that it will have minimal real-world impact, then you face a serious barrier to motivation: Why work through the frustration of research and writing to no effect? If your work doesn’t matter, why do it?

In this post, I argue that the value of scholarship is great enough to justify the effort and frustration.  This post is closely related to my earlier tip 11: You have something worth saying. In that post, I focused on internal doubt and feeling overwhelmed by ideas.  In this post, I’m looking more specifically at doubts about the value of academia and academic research.  The better you feel about academia and research, the easier it is to invest effort in it. And the easier it is to invest effort, the easier it is to develop a positive and productive writing practice. (Additionally, but off the topic of writer’s block, the better you feel about your work, the easier it is to write things that other people will appreciate…but that’s a separate issue, perhaps for a future post. Please let me know if you would be interested.)

Why do people think scholarship is meaningless or valueless?

There are several reasons that people come to think their scholarly work is meaningless. Some are external, for example, the scholar who worries that no one will read or appreciate their work. Some are internal reason. For example, when you learn something new, your old work may seem off-base to you. Or you think that your work is incredibly narrow, or too abstruse, or otherwise limited.  In this post, I am more interested in the internal question of whether there is any inherent value in research. If you believe in the value of your work, the size of your audience will be less important. (But as I suggest above, believing in your work will help attract an audience. Again—that’s a subject for a different post.)

The existential crisis

I have heard more than one scholar cry, “Why am I doing this? It doesn’t mean anything; it won’t help anyone; it won’t have an impact on the world. It’s all just mental masturbation!” If you have a cry of despair anything like this, it’s hard to move forward. It’s difficult to maintain motivation for things that seem meaningless (in the sense of having value within some larger framework, i.e., “my life is meaningful,” not in the sense of sense vs. nonsense).  Existential crises are hardly the exclusive domain of academia.  People in all walks of life can struggle with doubt that their life is meaningful, which can be a tremendous source of distress. The field of existential psychology generally argues that emotional health is highly dependent on whether a person sees meaning in their experiences (see, e.g., Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning). If you doubt that your research is meaningful—if you think it has no value—then it’s pretty depressing to work on it.

Why does the crisis arise?

There are many different reasons that people come to doubt their research’s value, and to try to address them all would reach far beyond the scope of a single blog post (and this is already a long post). Generally, however, there is some trigger that leads a researcher to think that their work isn’t valuable, which drains motivation and creates anxiety about the future.  I want to exclude from this discussion doubt about your abilities. Thinking you lack ability may make you feel your efforts are meaningless (“why bother, I never will do it right!”), but that’s not a critique of academia. In this post, I want to specifically focus on doubts about academia and research, and the idea that academia is so flawed that it’s meaningless.

What is academia?

In academia, ideally, we seek abstract objective truth—things that are true for everyone. Laws of nature. The sciences are, in a way, most emblematic of academia—seeking evidence by which we discover the operation of nature in a way that is generally true. A chemist looking for a compound with certain properties will assume that laboratory experiments reflect the general behavior of the compound. A computer scientist developing an algorithm will assume that the properties (runtime, for example) will be consistent with general principles. Even in fields where the very idea of objective truth is explicitly rejected, there is an underlying presumption that scholarly work—the use of evidence and reason—has some underlying general value. Even a Jacques Derrida, who wrote work far outside of scholarly norms and who questioned ideas of absolute objective truth, retains some underlying sense of right and wrong perspectives—after all, why argue against objective truth if you really believe that all ideas are purely subjective?

The limits of academia

The search for answers to questions or solutions to problems, however, is limited in many different ways.  There is the inevitable uncertainty—it’s disappointing to find out that academia rarely offers certainty. There are the political dimensions: academic institutions, like all institutions made of people, are made up of different people with different motivations, purposes, and desires, which creates the political reality of academia: your work isn’t evaluated in a vacuum, but rather by self-interested people. There are the practical dimensions of research: the ideal experiment may not be possible, and we’re forced to do projects that only make small steps towards that ideal.

The practical dimensions of research—our ability to gather and process information—force scholars to focus narrowly even when they are generally interested in broad questions. The grand and noble search for, e.g., a cure to cancer, a solution to homelessness, or the best possible economic policy, etc., gets reduced to one specific analysis of one specific factor among the many, in an attempt to produce research that contributes to understanding a larger whole. It’s disheartening to think that the one specific factor you’re studying is only one among many, and also disheartening to think that the one experiment only reveals a little about the large picture (and even perhaps only a little about that one specific factor).

The sense that research is meaningless is also partly an unfortunate outgrowth of the nature of research practice, or, more generally, a natural progression of human experience: as humans, we change and grow, including the things we value. And, in particular, we experience a big difference between novelty and familiarity.  It is said that “variety is the spice of life,” and “familiarity breeds contempt.” Both sayings address the general shift from new to known. With the new, we’re likely to focus our attention on the best parts, and not notice problems. With the known, however, we it’s harder to avoid problematic aspects. The product that looked so promising when you researched it, stops working smoothly. The journey that promised such fun when you set out, suffers through periods of hot, dusty, boredom. The relationship that starts with passionate love, ends in boredom or hatred. And the research that starts with enthusiasm, gets bogged down in details, bureaucracy, politics, etc.

The value of research

At risk of over-generalizing, I will argue that whatever the cause of your existential crisis, you can ease it by focusing on the value of research.

What is the value of research? Why might it meaningful to you? There are number of different possibilities, in two main classes:

  1. Personal value
    • you want to satisfy curiosity/learn
    • you enjoy it 
    • it provides career opportunities
    • it provides a sense of self-worth
    • it develops useful skills (e.g., critical thinking, communication)
  2. Value for others
    • it solves social problems
    • it helps others solve personal problems
    • it entertains/amuses/educates other people

Research, despite all its limitations, offers the potential for all of these. It is important to remember them when the practical and political realities of academia can easily make it seem like your work isn’t important. It is, for example, easier to believe that your work is valuable if you think lots of people will read it than if you’re thinking that no one will. If you’re find enjoyment in the work, or you think it will help you to a better career, then you may not need to think many people will read it (for example, a dissertation may have a big impact on a career, even if it only has a small audience).  The more dimensions of value you see, the easier it is to maintain motivation.  If you say only “I enjoy it,” that’s less motivation than saying “I enjoy it; it will help me have a good career; it will help me do work better; and it will help other people, too.”

Rediscovering value or finding it anew

It seems something of an irony that scholars come to view their work as meaningless when the basic work of the scholar is to understand and explain the world, and thus give meaning to the incomprehensible.  In the abstract, isn’t knowledge of the world valuable? And, more practically, isn’t knowledge useful?

In my experience, the people who enter academia are generally interested in and motivated by a search for a truth that has some personal or external value (or both). People sometimes set out in academia motivated by curiosity, trying to find answers that are personally valuable.  Many set out motivated by some altruistic desire to help people (e.g., to cure depression, or eliminate homelessness, etc.). Fame, fortune, and power are usually more common outside academia, so people who want them generally won’t end up in academia unless they also see positive value in academia. 

If you’re struggling with anxiety related to doubt about the value of academia, it’s important to reconnect to your personal sense of purpose: what is important to you? What value can you find in academia if you momentarily set aside the myriad frustrations and look to the most hopeful possibilities? Consider the different personal and social benefits that could follow from your in the most optimistic outcomes. Look back to the reasons you entered academia and ask whether they still are important to you. It’s possible that you have changed and grown and that, therefore, some other choice of career might suit you better—it is possible to have a good life outside academia even after investing years.  But, I think for most scholars facing the existential crisis, the initial motivations get obscured behind the many frustrating practical details of research.

Exercise: Why did you enter academia? What were your hopes and dreams then? Taking time to write about your original passions can help you reconnect with an early sense of purpose, and that sense of purpose can then provide support for developing and dealing with the practical limitations of academic research.

Narrowly focused projects

The well-known expression argues that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. In academia, good intentions generally pave the way to narrowly focused projects of small scope. (And such projects can come to feel like hell, especially if things go wrong.)  It is likely that every decision that you made  en route to your project was the best decision you could make with the best intention to produce the highest quality research. (Of course, you—like anyone—might have made some mistakes along the way, but your making a mistake is hardly a reason to think that academia is suddenly worthless (nor is it reason to think you’re not good enough). Making a mistake and having to fix it is frustrating—but that’s true in and out of academia, and you’re just as likely to make a mistake after you leave academia as you are while in it.)

Academia produces narrowly focused projects because, practically speaking, the best way to study things, especially to gather empirical evidence, is to focus narrowly. Without narrow focus, projects include too many dimensions and aspects for any sort of close analysis in any reasonable time. The world is vast and complicated, but scholars/researchers, as humans, have limited time. It is certainly more imaginatively powerful to do research that encompasses the whole scope of an issue—homelessness, mental health, market regulations, world hunger, Victorian literature, etc.—than to do something tightly focused—for example, an analysis of one specific market regulation and its effect on one specific product. But, pragmatically speaking, a close analysis of a specific data set using specific theories focusing on specific aspects of an issue takes time and effort both to execute and to explain to others (i.e., to write it up and publish). The larger the scope, the more time necessary.  Scholars who want to contribute to a research community have to make a choice to limit the scope of their work so that they can finish.

For those worried about narrow focus, it’s valuable to remember that research is a community effort to which scholars usually contribute by adding little pieces of work. Only occasionally does a scholar completely redefine a field in the way that Einstein did for physics, and it is even more rare that the full scope of such a revolution is recognized in its time. For the most part, scholars work within theoretical schools that have been developed over previous years, and they contribute details to more fully understand the implications of the theories.

It is this process of many scholars contributing to a community process that has led to the many benefits of research in sciences, social sciences, and humanities. (I’m not going to try to argue that research does lead to benefits—one the one hand, I think it’s obvious, and on the other it leads into a mire of evaluation: what counts as a benefit?)

Focusing on details can lead to losing sight of larger context

If you become narrowly focused on details of the project you have chosen, it’s possible to lose sight of the context in which it was created.

Exercise: Reconnect your current project with the motivations that inspired it.

What were your initial motivations? What inspired you? Were you motivated by curiosity? Was there some specific problem that you wanted to address? 

How far are you now from those previous motivations? Have you abandoned them? Or can you see how they led you to where you are now?

The size of your audience is not the only measure of value

One specific cause of distress for many scholars is the idea that their work is only read by a handful of people. Let’s acknowledge that it is often the case that work is only read by a few.  Does that necessarily mean that the work is not valuable? Many philosophers have been rejected in their own time but appreciated by posterity. In the middle of the 20th century, some scientists started writing about climate change. Was their work unimportant simply because it was largely ignored?

The fact that only a small number of people might read your work may be disappointing, but it is not an accurate reflection of its value. (As I mentioned above, a dissertation can have a big impact on your career even if only read by a handful.) A small audience can have large influence.

Conclusion

Academia is not perfect, but that’s no reason to assume that it’s not valuable. New ideas are accepted only slowly. Good research often depends on precisely the sort of narrow focus that limits its scope, and limits the size of interested audiences.  This does not mean, however, that the research is not a valuable contribution to a valuable communal exercise.  

If you have lost sight of the purpose and value in your work, it can be hard to maintain motivation.  It’s crucial to find again a sense of purpose. It’s possible that you won’t (in which case you should probably leave academia). But if you step back and think about your original purposes and the general aspirations of academia, I believe you can rediscover a sense of the value of research, and that sense of value can help you rediscover motivation. 

Hume’s Problem and the Weaponization of Doubt

In his History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell wrote something to the effect of “With subjectivism in philosophy comes anarchism in politics.” (I’m too lazy to go hunt up the proper quote, so this may be way off base, but my getting the quote right doesn’t change the basic argument here.) As someone who rejects objectivism in philosophy, who recognizes inevitable subjective elements in all reasoning, and who wants political stability as well as some element of democratic rule, this sentence struck me as problematic, even wrong. Of course, Russell lived through the Nazi era, when big lies were spread to create an alternate reality that inspired horrific acts of violence. I had not yet seen the weaponization of doubt employed by too many, but especially the big business interests and many political actors.

David Hume is perhaps most famous for his framing of the problem of induction. Induction is the process of making generalizations from specific examples. So, for example, suppose you are looking at trees, and every tree you see has green leaves. Induction takes those many observations and makes a general rule: “trees have green leaves.” The problem of induction is that there is no guarantee that future observations will resemble past observations. To Hume, this was mostly important in distinguishing what we know (with absolute certainty beyond doubt) and what we believe (with good reason, but only as a conclusion from experience, which is necessarily fraught with the problem that the future might not resemble the past). Unfortunately, this basic logical problem has become used to much effect (and, in my opinion, much harm).

Much of science proceeds, to some extent, on the basis of “the best-tested theory”—on theories that have been tested and passed those tests, but are subject to further testing. According to the theories of Karl Popper—a philosopher who developed a famous response to Hume’s problem—we can have some certain knowledge in science: we can know (with certainty) that things are false. Because we can know that things are false, we can test and disprove theories, and thus eliminate bad ideas.  This basic structure is common in many fields, where a “null hypothesis” is shown to be false (or at least highly improbable), and an “alternate hypothesis” is therefore accepted.

In the hands of reasonable people who are interested in discovering the truth, this basic structure allows for progress, and thus scholars develop a general consensus agreement about the basic facts. It is not a fully-determined consensus—there is debate and there are those who reject some or most of the consensus, but there is a general acceptance of most basic ideas.

But in the hands of those who have some agenda other than truth, Hume’s problem becomes a weapon to paralyze an enemy and seize power.

It has been widely reported that in the 1970s, scientists at Exxon identified the problem of global warming, and, seeing that such knowledge might hurt their business, the company developed a strategy of questioning global warming science. (It should be noted that Exxon was not necessarily at the forefront of this. For example, check out this article from 1965.) Hume’s problem makes it possible to question every theory, no matter how much evidence: “well,” you say, “that is suggestive, but it can’t be considered conclusive.” In many cases you can offer some alternative explanation. This has been happening less with climate change over the last several years, as evidence becomes even more overwhelming, but it used to happen much more often. I remember one man asking me “well, if it’s caused by humans, why are the polar caps on Mars melting” (implying, I presume, that the Martian polar caps melting showed some solar-system-wide force was at work).

But the most extreme weaponization of doubt that I have ever seen is the current GOP assault on the credibility of the American election systems. Let’s start by admitting that the American election systems are imperfect: there are mistakes made, and some of those mistakes may even impact the outcome of votes. That is why, in addition to systems for gathering and tabulating votes, there are systems already in place for checking the results of an election. Of course, these systems, too, are imperfect. 

Like any knowledge based on observation, the election-checking systems can always be challenged by the question at the heart of Hume’s problem: just because we haven’t observed something (vote fraud) yet, doesn’t mean we won’t observe it in the future (if we run another audit). What the GOP keeps doing, in calling for further investigation into the election, is relying on the basic logic of Hume’s problem. This is the argument that is driving the current audit of votes in Maricopa county: “sure, there were already multiple audits, but just because they didn’t find fraud doesn’t mean the fraud doesn’t exist; it just means that the audits didn’t look for the right things.”  Whatever checks you might carry out, you can make up some new claim and say “You haven’t proved this didn’t happen.” Case in point, the Maricopa county audit has apparently been looking for traces of bamboo to prove that fake ballots were introduced into the election count by sinister Asians. “Sure, you didn’t find any local interference, but what about the Chinese? They managed to inject thousands of fake ballots into the system to help Biden.” And, yes, I’m sure that no one has checked to see if the ballots were faked and forged from China” (And let’s just forget the fact that they did check that the counted ballots were from registered voters, and that no voter voted multiple times, so for the Chinese scheme to work, they must have somehow managed to make fake ballots only for people who were registered but who did not  vote without making any ballots for people who were not registered or who registered and voted.)

Hume correctly pointed out that we cannot prove with certainty the claims we make based on observation. But, while this is logically correct, when that doubt is used in bad faith to ignore the vast preponderance of evidence, there’s a big problem.

I’m no big fan of the Democrats; I think they have been too complicit in many of the worst failures of the USA during my lifetime. And, in my heart, I am conservative (not politically conservative, but actually conservative in that I would like to mostly keep things as they are—there are things that need changing, but let’s only change those things and keep all the rest). But in contrast to the Republican party, it can at least be said that the Democrats are apparently interested in truth, evidence, and data based on observations, all of which are really good things. During my adult life, it seems to me that the Republican party has consistently strayed farther and farther from the truth.  I only remember Watergate from a child’s perspective, but obviously the honesty of Nixon was an issue. And the GOP—at least some members of it—called on the president to step down when it became clear he was a criminal (and apparently, those people were willing to vote to impeach). The Reagan administration at least tried to cloak its work in theory—the Laffer curve was at least an academic theory promulgated by an academic. Stuff like The Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray at least tried to give an intellectual defense to GOP perspectives. I don’t think much of the way Herrnstein and Murray handle data (I think they confuse correlation with causation), but I would give them the benefit of a doubt that it’s just bad data analysis, rather than intentionally deceitful analysis. The investigation of the Clintons was a preliminary weaponization of doubt—it started with a supposed real estate fraud (Whitewater), but reached out in any direction it could to find reason to attack Clinton, ultimately resulting in Clinton’s impeachment for lying about his relationship with Lewinsky. There were no real limits on an investigation that said “we haven’t found any fraud yet, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. The second Bush administration lied about weapons of mass destruction and many other things, but they seemed to be trying to come up with realistic alternate hypotheses. But the GOP since is all about baseless conspiracies that no evidence set to rest. No matter how much evidence there was that Obama was born in the US, the birther conspiracy just rolled on.

GOP attempts to “find the truth” about the 2020 election are bad faith arguments.  They have nothing to do with finding the truth. They are weaponization of doubt to gain political power. Whenever confronted with actual evidence that there wasn’t fraud (like recounts of votes and audits of votes), the GOP answers, “well, you just haven’t found it yet.” It’s not a reasonable search for truth; it’s an attempt to gain political power by reducing people’s faith in the electoral system.

It should be noted that my primary interest is in finding the truth. The fact that I prefer Democrats to Republicans follows from my interest in the truth. I do not prefer Democratic policies because they are proposed by Democrats (Indeed, I loathe many Democratic policies). Instead, I prefer policies that are based on the truth, and then prefer the party that shows closer adherence to the policies that I would espouse. My objection that the GOP is arguing is bad faith is not based on my preference for Democrats, but rather on my observation that they are weaponizing doubt and engaging in intentional deflection, distraction, and disinformation. I believe in the truth. And that belief shapes my preference for politicians who respect and respond to the truth.

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 15: Don’t stack anxieties, or one thing at a time

One writer I work with sometimes gets stuck thinking about what needs to be said (written), and sometimes gets stuck thinking about style. These two concerns can stack on each other and amplify each other: feeling stressed about how to include certain ideas in a manuscript, her concerns about poor writing style get activated. Then, some awkward sentence or phrase comes up and she gets stuck trying to come up with a really good version of that one sentence. 

Insofar as dealing with anxiety-related writer’s block is concerned, a good first step is to try to separate out the different anxiety-provoking concerns, and to try to deal with those concerns one at a time, and especially deal with those concerns by focusing on one at a time. But I don’t really want to talk about the general dynamic of how anxieties can stack on each other, but rather about this specific case in which worrying about two important but independent dimensions of writing—content and style—slows progress and a writer can benefit from assigning those issues to separate drafts in the process of writing. 

In the long run, it’s good to want to improve writing style; it’s an issue worth some effort. But if the figuring out what ideas to include and how to present them is causing anxiety, don’t add to the pile of stress by also worrying that your style needs to be better. First, focus on getting the ideas down, however sloppy and awkward. Style comes later. If you’re struggling with writer’s block, the first thing you want to do is make sure you’re writing. Writing style only matters if you are producing and finishing works that you will give to other people.  First, get ideas into words on the page.

In the long run

Ideally, in a productive writing practice, ideas flow onto the page with enough ease that there is emotional space to think about both the message and the style.  If you can regularly write hundreds of words in an hour, it doesn’t really matter if you spend a minute or two thinking about style. It doesn’t even matter if you occasionally spend 10 minutes or more getting one sentence just right. But if you can regularly write hundreds of words in an hour, you probably also have some comfort with your own writing style, and probably produce decent sentences a reasonably large proportion of the time without even worrying about style. Once it’s relatively easy to write a decent sentence, you can focus the vast majority of your efforts on the content, which presents difficulties enough. (Mature drafts nearing submission are when style gets focused attention.)

In the short run

In the immediate present, if you’re struggling with anxiety-related writing blocks, it can be useful to throw off concern for grammar and style or ideas about “good writing.” Style is secondary and can be added after the fact, so, as a matter of process, it can be set aside for a time. Without good ideas, however, there is no reason to write in the first place, so work on your ideas. (You have something worth saying.) The first, most important thing is to get your ideas into words on the page. Throw aside any concern for writing well. Just focus on the ideas and on finding words to express them. That is task enough.

It is very hard to get ideas into words. It is even harder to organize those words into some narrative that can reach a reader. Crafting a meaningful narrative is frustrating and anxiety inducing: What is the best order in which to present material? What material should be included or excluded? There is no “right” answer to these questions, so there’s plenty of anxiety to be found in choosing between two different alternatives. 

If you insist that the narrative also meet stringent stylistic standards, you add another difficulty and additional stress. If you’re struggling to write, the place to start is with just getting the ideas into words. Take that one first task alone. Add on the other levels of concern later.

Drafts

Some writers can produce good first drafts. Most writers don’t. Most writers should write “shitty first drafts,” as Anne Lamott famously said in Bird by Bird, her book on the process of writing. It’s reasonable to think of different drafts as taking on the different tasks that I mentioned in the previous section.  There’s a first draft in which you just get your ideas on the page—that’s a messy, disorganized exploration whose purpose is to get a sense of all that could be discussed and what needs to be discussed and to get a sense of the scope of the project. Next come one or more drafts to work on structure, presentation, and cleaning up the argument, an exploration and refinement of structure. For example, Eviatar Zerubavel , the author of The Clockwork Muse, a book on writing practices, describes his process as typically including four total drafts, with the middle two dealing with content and structure. Eventually (but sooner rather than later, it is to be hoped), you move toward a final draft in which you can concern yourself with cleaning up and polishing the text, with an eye towards style.  By splitting up the different tasks—by allowing the first drafts to be about ideas (but not about structure or style)—you can reduce the immediate anxieties, which gives you a better chance to focus on one task and which, hopefully, allows you to set aside anxiety-inducing concerns.  If you remind yourself that you will have a later draft in which to work on style, you can focus your attention on the flow of ideas, even if you think that the sentence you just wrote is terrible. “I’ll fix that later; for now I stay with the ideas,” you can tell yourself.

Limiting your field of view

For me, at least, when anxieties pile up, I get overwhelmed. If I deal with one anxiety at a time, it’s a struggle, but I can deal. If I’m focused on only one thing, I can stay on track. When I entertain many different anxieties, however, I get bogged down. My attention is drawn first here, then there, disrupting any flow that might be developing. If, for example, I focus on the stacking of anxieties during the process of writing, I am drawn to discuss one set of ideas. If, on the other hand, I start focusing on the relative value of substance over style (which I did in an earlier draft of this post, and which I may discuss in a future post), I am drawn in a different direction. This division of my attention can increase my anxieties, as I have multiple demands to satisfy, and it also can take time to even make a choice of which direction to pursue (as well as the chance to second-guess that choice).

By limiting my focus, I reduce the anxiety-inducing issues that I deal with, and that helps me keep my anxiety in control. Sure, there are things that I need to do to make this essay better (as well as many other anxiety-inducing things in life in general), but at least for a few minutes, I can say “OK, I just want to focus on the way that a misplaced concern for style (or more generally, concern for multiple things at once) can interfere with the writing process by triggering multiple anxieties.

Some thoughts about taking notes on reading

A few days ago, I was asked for advice on taking notes on readings and I realized I didn’t have any clear advice to offer beyond: take notes! But that’s not very insightful and doesn’t add much to the discussion—the querent already knew that she wanted to take notes, and wanted something more specific about how to do it, so I’m going to commit myself to some suggestions in writing (and if you think I’m wrong, feel free to let me know!).

First, however, as is my wont, I will take a step back from the specifics of “how,” to look at the question of “why?” 

Why take notes?

Notes help you remember; they help you organize your thoughts; they help you focus.  All of these things are themselves contextually dependent. What you want to remember depends on the context. There may be times when you’re trying to do a wide review of literature in a field, at other times you may be interested in summarizing a specific work in some detail, and at yet other times, you may have a more specific focus on some theoretical or methodological issue. There are times that you are reading a work for a first time, and are trying to sort out the basic points, and other times where you are re-reading a work from a new perspective. In each case, what you want to get out of it, and therefore how to take notes changes. (I’ll note that there are some times when you might read without “taking notes,” such as if you’re looking for a specific quote to use.)

Contextual efficiency concerns

Taking notes takes time and effort. As with all tasks, we have limited time and effort available, so it’s very important to use available resources efficiently. Taking notes is valuable—so valuable that it’s usually worth dedicating time to it. Taking notes, however, is not so valuable that it should interfere with other, more important tasks. In particular, it’s crucial that time spent taking notes does not take away from time spent writing.  Therefore, it’s necessary to suit appropriate note-taking to the context, to achieve efficiency. To illustrate this point, I want to discuss three examples from my recent experience that illustrate different concerns.

1. Writing a book review.

Recently, I posted a book review on this blog (Write More, Publish More, Stress Less), and that post basically developed from taking notes on what I saw after a first review led me to want to write a review. I started just by skimming the book and looking more closely at a few parts. I didn’t take any notes then, but I did think that I might write a review. Then I went through the book—again pretty quickly, taking notes to mark the places that I liked best and wanted to discuss in my review. Those notes gave me a skeleton of the details that I would cover in my review.  In this case, the notes could almost be viewed as a rough first draft or outline of my review, and, indeed, they got revised into the review, so I no longer have a record of those notes. They have served their purpose and I no longer need them.

2. Preparing for a lecture

A professor preparing for a lecture might take a similar approach to the one I used in writing a review, in which the notes become the outline for a draft of the lecture. The professor would want to focus the notes on their relation to the main points of the course. Rather than simply trying to get the main ideas of the reading, the professor might want take notes about how the different parts of the reading agree or disagree with points made in other lectures or by other readings. This kind of note-taking is not just reflecting what’s in a text but also analyzing and interpreting that work for the specific context of the course. If, for example, a course is on Victorian Literature, it might still be appropriate to engage with a reading that is about Modern Lit, but that uses an analytical method that could be applied to the Victorian work. 

3. Reviewing a body of unfamiliar literature

A scholar reviewing a body of literature in an unfamiliar field would have different note-taking and reading strategies.  In the first two examples, I talk about making notes about one specific work to which there is already some level of commitment. The dynamic changes when trying to manage a whole bunch of work. In this case, there is less of any preconceived focus guiding the note taking. There is some preconceived focus—whatever reason led you to choose this body of literature should influence the note taking (and the reading)—but mostly the point is to get a sense of the different arguments and ideas being used, than to make the readings serve a specific purpose in the same way that I was focused on writing a review or the professor was preparing for a specific lecture. In this case there is, on the one hand, greater range to what might go into notes about any one reading (because the focus hasn’t been limited by specific purpose), but also greater need to be concise and highlight the most important parts because of the greater number of different sources on which notes are to be taken. In a general review of material, it would be ideal if your notes could capture all the important issues in any one reading (which takes more time), but at the same time, it would be ideal if you could review a lot of different readings in a short time. Therefore, a balancing act is necessary.  My suggestion in this case  is to go through a process of review and focus: first, just review all the titles and authors, to get a sense of the general field (reading a title offers a lot of information, at least if the title is well written); second, select some that get a closer review, reading the abstract or introduction, perhaps; finally, only a few are selected for full reading. At each step you can takes notes. Even the titles you don’t pursue might get a brief note of what you saw and why you didn’t pursue it. The same is true at the abstract/intro stage: even the ones you choose to set aside get a brief note. Only the ones that get close reading get more substantial notes. And even with the more substantial notes of the readings you examine most closely, there must be a careful parcelling out of time. After all, even if you were trying to do an unbiased review of material in a field, you still had a purpose that guided that review, and to achieve that purpose you probably need to do more than just do the review.

The dilemma

Notes of readings can help you learn, but notes also take time away from other tasks.  While it is important (indispensable) to read the literature, it’s more important to actually write the papers for which you were doing the reading.  Learning from others is necessary, but is no substitute developing your own vision of how the world works and what is important. Spending too much time with readings takes time away from developing your own ideas.

Suggestions for taking notes

  • 1. Be careful of the time you spend! Taking notes takes extra time. Be careful not to fall into the trap of saying “I can’t start my own project until I finish reading and taking notes.”
  • 2. Focus on the big picture.
  • 3. Skim the whole and maybe look closely at the introduction and conclusion before you start taking notes.
  • 4. Be careful not to get sucked into details. Details are fascinating, but they distract from the big picture. Still, a detail can be useful if it helps you contextualize and remember the main message or themes. Also, details take time.
  • 5. Note the major theories and scholars who receive the most attention, to get a sense of how the reading fits into the larger discourse.
  • 6. Limit your notes; don’t attempt to get everything. Most scholarship is very dense and filled with crucial details (good scholarly authors try to leave out stuff that isn’t important). If you look closely, you can get sucked into any number of different rabbit holes of value: looking at methods, for example, you can examine and explore variations and alternatives, and the discussion of how different methods suit a specific research question is neither trivial nor insignificant.
  • 7. Note the greatest strengths.
  • 8. Note the greatest weaknesses.
  • 9. Write briefly about how it helps your own work.

Conclusion

Notes help improve the quality of your reading, but they can be a trap.  They can distract you with details and divert your attention from your purposes. A scholar needs to be able to read and make sense of the literature in their field, and remember what they’ve read. But more importantly, a scholar needs to keep producing and developing their own perspectives and insights. It’s good to read and take notes on your reading, but it’s far more important to be developing your own work. Therefore, when taking notes, use it as an opportunity to refine your own ideas. Notes are not taken only to help you absorb the ideas of other people, but also to use the ideas to help you with your own work. Consider the purpose for which you are taking notes: why are you taking those notes? How will they help you? If you lose sight of your own purpose and your own projects, notes can be a big distraction and delay t your own work. If you take notes with a specific purpose in mind, those notes will be more useful in achieving that purpose.

Questions, confidence, and building a list of projects

Back in January, I posted about my thought process in response to a question I had about the Georgia runoff elections. My intention was to illustrate both the crucial role that imagination plays in developing research and ways that imagination combines with analysis to generate myriad hypothetical explanations, each of which could be examined and researched.  This post is partly following in those footsteps, but pays more attention to the emotional elements in this process, especially with respect to questions that arise in the process.

As you can see from the title, I’m trying to pack a lot of different ideas in here, but the basic message is that the process of research moves forward by generating a variety of possible avenues of exploration and by choosing one of those avenues. If you recognize that dynamic, you can benefit from it. A crucial part of that approach is the element of confidence needed to make choices in the face of uncertainty. The researcher needs to be able to see a wide array of different possible questions in order to develop a robust argument that can withstand reasonable criticism, but also needs to be able to choose specific limits to each project without any objective logic to determine them. Such limits can be frustrating—they can feel almost arbitrary, or at least arbitrary with respect to purely intellectual issues—but, from a practical perspective, they allow completion. From the perspective of a long-term research practice that wants to produce multiple publications (as expected of professors), these different limits suggest new projects; each acknowledged limit indicates a project that tries to move past that limit. 

A “trivial” question

This post was partly triggered by the recent Super Bowl, in which Tom Brady won again. Brady has won the championship an amazing  7 times in 19 seasons, more than 1/3 of the possible titles in those years.  According to much of the sports media, Brady is the GOAT (Greatest Of All Time) in football—that he’s the best player ever at the game’s most important position. When I started thinking about that first, I wondered where he stood amongst the wider realm of GOATs: which GOATs are the greatest GOATs? Is Tom Brady greater than Babe Ruth? greater than Serena Williams? It’s a question that could be viewed as trivial: how important is it, really, to identify the GOAT? At the same time, it’s the kind of loose question that could spark research by leading to more detailed questions about how to measure greatness across fields. That question depends on having some idea of how to measure greatness within one field. Which sparks more questions, for example, how do we weigh the peak performance of a player vs. the long-term contribution? How does a player who was really, really great for a relatively short time (Sandy Koufax, Penny Hardaway, Kurt Warner) compare to someone who was just very good for a very long time (Warren Spahn, Jason Kidd, Eli Manning)?  And more questions: how do you measure peak greatness? How do you measure long-term greatness? Drilling into any of these questions leads to yet more questions. For the researcher, this can be a bonanza of different potential projects.  Or at least could be, if the emotional element is in place: if you tell yourself that a question is trivial, you’re not going to work on it. (I’m not going to be doing significant research on sports GOATs because the questions aren’t sufficiently important to me.) Some questions are trivial, but assuming that a question is trivial too soon can mean ignoring potential courses of research.

Confidence

Partly this post was sparked was sparked by feedback a writer received on a paper, particularly the phrases “It might have be useful to further discuss…” and “it would have been great to further explore…” Phrases like this are reflections of the process of discovering additional questions: every time we commit ourselves to a new sentence on the page, we offer a target to criticism (but wait…is that true? Every time I commit to a sentence? Are there exceptions?…). Whether or when to answer such questions is largely a negotiation between the author and the audience, taking into account the specific context. It means different things to a student receiving a grade on a paper (that will not be revised) and an author responding to a revise-and-resubmit. 

I titled this section “confidence” because the key factor, in a way, is in having the confidence to make decisions of whether and when to pursue these further questions. At any moment in time, there is a limit to what you can do. And in writing, there is almost always a word count limit, sometimes formally stated, sometimes implicit. Therefore, choices must be made: which avenues do you explore and when? Confidence is a necessary guide: without confidence to make your own decisions, you wander aimlessly in response to the most recent stimulus; with confidence, you pursue your own goals and are not swayed by others telling you that your work is trivial.  If a question is important to you—if you’re passionate about seeking an answer—that may lead you to ideas that are important.

Sports Analytics

When I was in college, the whole idea of sports analytics was still relatively obscure. Sports teams didn’t have entire analytics departments; there were no sports analysis websites; there weren’t sports analytics conferences hosted by prestigious universities. Such questions weren’t viewed as particularly important by most involved in sports, and those who didn’t care about sports quite naturally didn’t view those questions as important.  Today, of course, sports analytics are a huge industry, and therefore consequential to the many who are involved in sports (though people who don’t think sports are important probably still think that sports analytics aren’t important).

But, when I was in college, sports analytics was just beginning to burst on the scene. The baseball writer Bill James, for example, who started self-publishing his analytics work a few years before I entered college to reach out to a relatively small group of statistical analysts, was starting to gain popularity. James had had the confidence to pursue his work despite the extensive scorn it generated (especially in the early years). James, his colleagues, and those who followed, built sports analytics into a huge industry simply by pursuing questions they found interesting.  James would ask simple things like “is batting average the best way to judge a player?” or, more generally, “how do we identify good players?” And he explored those ideas, exploring and developing different analytical methods, revising and refining or even redefining his theories and techniques. He, and the many others who joined that pursuit, simply kept saying “it would be great to further explore…” Indeed, James’s writing often included statements like “when I have time, I want to do a better analysis of X.”

Getting questioned

Choosing to pursue a question takes confidence, particularly if others doubt or ask questions. It’s harder to maintain motivation if someone tells you that your work is worthless or uninteresting, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you tell enough people about your work, some will find it worthless and uninteresting. It’s not all that uncommon for scholars (particularly graduate students, I think, though I have no empirical evidence) to start to think that their work is so narrowly focused that it is essentially worthless. Questions are inevitable. The question is what to do with them, and confidence is key.

Practically speaking, the scholar faced with a question can do one of three things: they can ignore it; they can pursue it; or they can get bogged down by it. The third can be a big problem. Pursuing questions can take a lot of time and effort. Ignoring questions can actually be good because it allows continued focus on one specific project.

Putting off questions and building a list of projects

When I speak of “ignoring” a question, I don’t necessarily mean entirely ignoring it, but rather temporarily putting it to the side so that it doesn’t derail or delay a current project. Often such a delay can be explicitly acknowledged in writing: every “it would be interesting to explore…” question can be treated with a sort of promissory note by writing “It would be interesting to explore __X__, but that is outside the scope of this project.”  Such a response can deflect reasonable concerns by presenting them as the practical choice of a scholar with limited resources (and all scholars have limited resources, especially time): it’s not that you ignored the problem, but that you made the choice to set that concern aside for a time.

From the long-term perspective of a scholar, each of those deferred questions can serve as the seed for a new project. If your system of evaluating football greatness has trouble comparing value across different positions, that’s a project. If your system has trouble comparing across eras (“How do we compare Unitas to Staubach to Montana to Brady when the rules of the game were different?”), that’s a project.

Conclusion

Imagination is a double-edged sword for a researcher: it offers so many questions for further exploration that paralysis can set in. It takes confidence to choose to pursue questions that others view as unimportant, and to set aside questions that others view as important.  Still, all questions provide the potential seeds for future projects. Every limit you put on your current project suggests a future project. For someone considering a career as a researcher, it’s valuable to see that dynamic: the question you ask yourself and the questions of others can be viewed as possible future projects rather than flaws in your current work. Every research project has limits or it never gets finished, so it’s crucial to be able to accept questions as limits to the current project even if those questions are obviously important and relevant. I often say that one of the most important phrases for scholarly writing is “but that’s outside the scope of this project,” but at a deeper level, it’s not just about the phrase but about the perspective that it represents. Projects do have limits; it takes confidence to move forward despite limits and doubts. Building a list of future projects from current questions can help build confidence that you are acting responsibly as a scholar or researcher.

Book review: Write More, Publish More, Stress Less!

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice.
Dannelle D. Stevens
Stylus Publishing, 2019

I have often considered doing book reviews on my blog, or book recommendations on my website, but have not done so because I have trouble giving positive reviews. I’m critical. Even those books that I like best are limited enough that I can’t give a review without discussing negative stuff.  In addition to being critical, I also want to respect the work of others: I don’t want to give someone a low score, so I generally don’t do reviews. (But if you the reader would be interested in seeing me review something, let me know!)  In this case, however, I like this book so much that it’s very easy to recommend to scholars who are struggling to write.

Write More, Publish More, Stress Less! Five Key Principles for a Creative and Sustainable Scholarly Practice. shares many of the ideas I think crucial, and uses them and does a great job of developing them into guidance for scholars. 

Just starting with the title, I was excited about this book. The subtitle’s phrase—“sustainable scholarly practice”—is one that I have used often in my own writing. A quick review of almost anything I have written about writing will show the importance I place on the view of writing as a practice. I usually talk about “healthy” and “positive” practice, but often use “sustainable,” too.  More recently, I have been writing about dealing with anxiety-induced writing blocks, so the main title’s “Stress Less!” is also in line with my current interests. The idea that a scholarly practice is “creative” is also an idea I have discussed recently in this blog. 

The book’s five key principles are:

  • Know yourself as a writer
  • Understand the genre of academic writing
  • Be strategic to build a sustainable writing practice
  • Be social
  • Explore creative elements in academic writing

Each principle was accompanied with excellent, detailed practical suggestions that present scholarly writing as a practice that encompasses a wide range of different but related activities.

To single out one aspect among the many that I like: Stevens talks about scholarship as a conversation, which is a central perspective of my recent book, Literature Review and Research Design: A Guide to Effective Research Practice. She repeatedly cites another book that frames scholarly writing as a conversation—They Say/I Say by Graff and Birkenstein—which  I also like.

Following the five main principles, the book dedicates several chapters to different kinds of writing projects—personal research journal, book reviews, conference proposals and presentations, journal articles, and books—all of which offer good advice. After those chapters is one of the chapters I like best: the chapter on handling a revise-and-resubmit (with first author Micki M. Caskey). Using feedback well is a crucial part of scholarly writing, but it’s also an area where emotions run high, and many people struggle. A harsh comment can trigger paralysis. Caskey and Stevens provide good perspectives on how to approach feedback, and excellent detailed suggestions for analyzing the feedback and planning a response. This is the best advice on using feedback I have seen, including what I have written on the subject in this blog and in my books.

This is an excellent book, and probably can help almost any scholar trying to get their writing going in the face of pressure to publish. It offers a detailed view into the many activities that scholars pursue in order to succeed in academia—a real sense of the fabric of a productive academic writing practice—which makes it an excellent long-term resource for graduate students thinking about academic careers. 

Having said all that, I will offer a word of caution. I would hesitate to give this to someone struggling with anxiety. For some, I think it could be overwhelming. For me, at least, I would have found it overwhelming earlier in my career, and even now it triggers the social anxiety that was the main cause of my leaving academic institutions to work privately (with a relatively small number of people). There is great advice in here that, if followed, would definitely would lead to less stress in the long run, but if I were giving this to someone struggling with anxiety, I would be cautious to frame it as a toolbox—something from which to draw ideas when needed, without necessarily trying to use everything in it at once—to guard against getting overwhelmed by all the different suggestions.  

Dealing with writer’s block, tip 14: Grab low-hanging fruit

When it’s time to write, what do you work on? My previous post considered different kinds of writing and their value to the writer, even if they are not directly contributing to the text of some draft that will be shared with others. I want to follow up on that idea about different ways to contribute to the process of writing, again in much the same vein as the previous: it is valuable to recognize all the actions that help in the creation of a written work, both those that directly impact the work and those that contribute indirectly. For anxious writers, fear that time is being misused can lead to vacillation about where to expend effort, as well as anxiety that time is being ill-spent. Ironically, such vacillation takes time and energy away from writing (“I don’t know what to do!”), and can contribute to future anxiety (“I didn’t get anything done because I was feeling lost, and now I’m even farther behind!”).

Let’s take it for granted that the ideal is for a writer to sit down, immediately focus on the most important project, and write productively. But what do you do, if you don’t match this ideal?  Do you say “I need to try harder” or “I need more self-discipline” and then grit your teeth and try again tomorrow the same thing you did today? As I have suggested earlier, “try harder” isn’t always the right strategy, especially not for people who generally and regularly demonstrate self-discipline throughout most of their lives, but struggle with writing due to anxiety. In this post I am going to consider the choice between working on immediate productivity and working on long-term growth.

Immediate use vs. long-term growth

Speaking generally, in many skilled activities, there is a choice between applying the skill directly, and working on building the skill/ability. For example, consider a competitive runner: sometimes—at a track meet or race, for example—they directly apply their ability (i.e., they run a race); other times—during training—they engage in many different activities—weight-lifting, calisthenics, study of nutrition, etc.—that will help them when it is time to run. Or, for example, sometimes a musician performs to an audience, and sometimes they play scales, study music theory, etc. to build skill. 

A writer, too, benefits from separating the performance from the practice. There are absolutely times when it’s most beneficial to try to add to a manuscript that you will give to someone else for review. But there are also times when you benefit from activities that don’t directly contribute to any manuscript but that do help you develop your ability as a writer.  Seeing this potential benefit can free a writer from anxiety in making choices of where to work. A whole range of activities can help develop a better practice. Perhaps the most valuable is time spent writing to develop ideas and explore, but many other writing tasks can be helpful in the long term, especially if you start to view those activities as being part of writing practice.

All kinds of writing are writing

Writing, the skill, develops when it is used, and especially when it is challenged. This means that all writing can be an opportunity to become a better writer.  Writing a text message to a friend, writing tweets, writing e-mail—these common activities are all writing, and they all contribute to your skill and ability as a writer.  At a most basic level, this is neurologically inevitable: if you keep putting ideas into words on a page/screen, you reinforce the patterns that do that. This benefit may be small, but it is real, and just for this reason alone, it’s worth remembering that all writing contributes to your ability as a writer. There is a potential related emotional benefit: recognizing these simple and easy actions as writing, might counter the idea that writing is terrifying/terrible, peeling away at least one contributor to anxiety—you may still say “writing my scholarly work is terrible,” but at least you could say “not all writing is terrible,” or even, “I enjoy some kinds of writing; maybe I could learn to fear scholarly writing less.”  

Obviously, not all types of writing contribute equally to your ability. Basically, the easier it is, the less growth you get from it. Writing “see you at 6” is going to improve your ability about as much as walking to the refrigerator will improve your long-distance running ability.  In terms of building skill, the greater the challenge, the greater the potential growth. In terms of reducing anxiety, however, and building a long-term, positive practice of writing, the emotional dimension of those easy tasks is important. For the writer who has gotten overwhelmed by anxiety, it can be calming to have experiences with writing that do not cause anxiety.  If you struggle with writing anxiety, remember that all kinds of writing are writing and are part of your writing practice and can help you develop a better relationship with writing. For the long-distance runner, walking to the fridge offers little benefit, but for the person recovering from an injury, that walk to the fridge can be an indicator of potential future growth.

Recognizing benefit

To even think about the “most beneficial” course of action raises the difficult question of how to measure value. One particular issue is the question of the time frame in which to maximize that value. Loosely speaking, are we measuring benefit over a short time or over a long time? 

Consider, as a thought experiment, a writer who has to submit writing every day, and whose work is entirely judged by word count. Let us assume that this writer currently produces 1,000 words/day. And further, let’s assume that, instead of producing any writing for submission, the writer can spend a day doing skill-building exercises, that will increase future productivity by 20%.  If we judge this writer over a time frame of only one day, obviously it’s better to write 1,000 words than to do exercises and produce nothing. Similarly, over two days, the writer who writes both days produces 2,000 words, while the writer who takes one day for exercises and one day to write produces only 1,200 words.  In this example, the break-even point for doing the exercises is on day 6, after which the writer who did no exercises and the writer who did exercises on day 1 have both produced 6,000 words. In this example, the writer who took a day off for exercises is more productive over any period longer than six days.

This example demonstrates the fundamental potential in investing time and effort into improving your ability to write. The precise numbers in the example are simplistic, but the principle is important: actions that help you develop a better writing practice are increasingly valuable over longer time frames.  If you’re just thinking about the next week, you have less incentive to step away from your manuscript to do some writing exercise than if you’re thinking about the next year.

Valuing improvement

It’s overly simplistic to measure writing output in terms of word counts, but it’s also useful for this discussion, because it allows us to focus on issues of writing practice rather than on evaluation of writing quality. We can think of word count as an indicator of anxiety level.  Let’s hypothesize that a writer with no anxiety produces 1,000 words/day, and that the greater the anxiety, the fewer the words produced, and that there are some writers so anxious that they produce 0 words/day. For writers who are overwhelmed with anxiety, any slight reduction in anxiety corresponds with relatively large improvements in productivity: going from 0 words/day to 5 words/day is significant, and should not be scorned just because 5 words/day is small in absolute terms. In emotional terms, it’s the difference between utter paralysis and beginning to act in the face of fear!

This is worth stressing, because so many people struggling with writer’s block will dismiss real progress because it’s not enough progress. I’ve worked with many writers who, though they have been unable to write for months, get frustrated that they “only” wrote a few sentences. Yes, it’s true that you’re not going to build a prolific writing practice on the basis of one sentence a day. And yes, it’s frustrating to perform at a level far below expectations. But if you’re thinking about building a healthy practice, you have to be practical enough to value real improvement. Moving from 1 word/day to 2 words/day is real growth to be valued, even if it’s not what you’d like.

In dealing with anxiety-related writing blocks, you want to find every little thing to celebrate, and try to peel away as many layers of anxiety as possible. Focusing on growth keeps you from focusing on low productivity (at current).

Grab the low-hanging fruit

Beating your head against the most difficult tasks is not necessarily the best choice.  Don’t scorn activities that you can accomplish and even celebrate in a small way. Free writing, email, and other small tasks may not directly and immediately address your current projects, but if they can help you reduce anxiety and stress, they may contribute to your overall productivity. Of course, for them to reduce anxiety and stress, you can’t beat yourself up for doing them.

Small tasks that are easily completed—low-hanging fruit—can help you remember what it feels like to succeed as a writer, even if it is only small success, and even if it’s not what you hoped for. 

Conclusion

In the long run, you want to develop a writing practice where your efforts are rewarded with the manuscripts you need. If you battle with anxiety, that might seem inpossible, but with the right practice and perspective, you can reduce anxiety and improve productivity. There are many different activities that can help you improve your writing practice but that don’t immediately or directly help with your current manuscript. Remember the long-term goal of healthy practice when deciding where to put your efforts: sometimes it’s worth investing your time in some exercise that won’t help immediately. Maybe that’s some free writing that doesn’t lead anywhere, maybe it’s writing an e-mail that has been nagging at you but has nothing to do with your main project, or maybe it’s even some debate in social media. Such activities can help you reduce anxiety and develop a more positive relationship with writing, even if they don’t help with your current project. That social media argument doesn’t contribute to your manuscript, but it does practice your skill in presenting arguments—a skill needed by scholars. That e-mail can be an experience in writing despite anxiety, providing a model for the experience of writing despite anxiety. The free writing helps bring many new ideas into sight, and some gems might be found amongst the dross.

In short, sometimes it makes sense to work on relatively easy tasks that do not directly help you move your difficult task forward, but that do help you develop a better writing practice and relationship with writing.

In Memoriam, Jean-Pierre Protzen

On January 10, 2021, Jean-Pierre Protzen passed away due to complications with COVID-19, two days after he lost his wife to the same cause.  JP was my dissertation advisor, and one of the most positive and supportive people in my life.

Jean-Pierre Protzen
Jean-Pierre Protzen (image from Berkeley’s College of Environmental Design website)

JP is best known for his work on Inca architecture and masonry, but our relationship was based on his role leading the design theories and methods (DTM) program in Berkeley’s Architecture Department, which he had taken over following the 1989 death of Horst Rittel, whom JP referred to as a mentor.

It is almost 30 years now since I first met JP, as he was often called by those who knew him.  In the fall of 1991, I applied to the Design Theories and Methods program in Architecture, despite knowing little about architecture. I was working as a software designer with a student of Horst Rittel and JP, and in discussing software design, he often brought up theories he had learned in his program, and those theories seemed very much in tune with my intellectual concerns.

When I applied to the program, JP took a chance on accepting me. He continued to believe in me for the rest of his life. He was always supportive and appreciative of my work. He was also accepting of my personal limitations—I struggle with self-doubt and anxiety—and encouraged and showed patience, which I badly needed. I cannot overstate the value of his support. I struggled with my dissertation, and JP supported me. 

At UC Berkeley, where world-renowned scholars are common, JP belonged. Despite his intellect, he, like too few others, was intellectually humble. He listened, understood, analyzed, and criticized without trying to impose his agenda or ideas. To me, his analyses and insights were sound. To be sure, many of those he credited to Rittel or others, but it takes great intelligence combined with humility to competently weave together myriad sources into a coherent story and then give the credit to others. The feedback he gave me on my work was on-target, and consistently helped me move forward and improve my own work. 

In the years I worked with him, I never noticed JP trying to promote himself. He pursued ideas that interested him, rather than advertising his own place; his motivation was interest, not self-interest. With me, this manifested as a focus on the work we did together, and not the work for which he was best known. I hardly ever remember him talking about the Inca while I was a student. There were maybe a couple of years that he used an Inca example in the Architecture 130 course that I helped him teach, but he did it to illustrate concepts in Design Theories and Methods. Later, I helped him edit the archived notebooks of archaeologist Max Uhle’s work on Inca sites in Peru’s Pisco Valley, but aside from that, when he was working with me, he was always focused on the work that I did, and never on the Inca work that was truly his greatest interest and enthusiasm (at least at that point in his life).

I will not try to write a biography of JP; others can do that better.  I just want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation.