WHAT IS IN YOUR DISSERTATION?

Determine the strength of your dissertation. How many strong chapters do you have? Can this material be expanded into a book? Will this material add to the record of material in your field of study?

WHAT SHOULD NOT BE REVISED?

What can be deleted from the book manuscript? Everything in your dissertation will not end up in your book. You have to determine what is filler and what is not. Discard everything that will not support the central idea of your book. Develop the ability to look at your dissertation with a critical eye.

HOW MUCH NEW MATERIAL SHOULD BE PUT IN?

Answering this question will determine whether you will spend 6 months or one year revising your dissertation. Do you have only one chapter that is useable? Will you have to research 12 new chapters? Is half of your dissertation useable? Will you have to do research for only three new chapters?

Sift through your dissertation with a critical eye. Can you determine the weak material in it? If not, put it aside a little while longer. You are still too close to it.

When you read it again, determine what quotations you will leave out. Is your idea for a book taking shape? What will be the structure of your book? As you can see, lots of decisions have to be made when you convert your dissertation into a book manuscript.

Therefore, rereading your dissertation is necessary. Rereading your dissertation with a critical eye is absolutely essential. This will keep you from devoting months to a project that cannot be turned into a book.

A good advisor will support you to grow as a scholar, while helping you navigate the dissertation process so you can complete easily. This doesn’t mean a good advisor accepts low quality work or bypasses the process. Instead, a good advisor helps you find solutions to your problems, while keeping in mind that the whole point of the process is to help you get your degree.

While there may be not truly “bad” advisors (though I’m sure some of you would disagree), poor advisory relationships are created when there is a difference in level of emotional match between advisor and advisee. In my experience, lack of emotional match is the biggest reason dissertation advisory relationships fail.

Lack of emotional match shows up when you need reassurance from your advisor, and s/he doesn’t return your phone calls. Lack of emotional match shows up when your advisor expects to meet with you, and you cancel at the last minute. Lack of emotional match shows up when you feel stressed and worried about what your advisor thinks of you, and this fear and tension impacts your capacity to actually get your work done.

Unfortunately, lack of emotional match happens quite often in advisory relationships. This may occur for several reasons. The first most common reason is that the graduate student selects the advisor due to the advisor’s status, rather than his or her capacity to effectively advise. The second most common reason is that the graduate student does not take ownership or direction of the dissertation process, and loses a lot of time trying to gauge what would please the advisor rather than focusing on getting through the dissertation process quickly.

If you are in the process of selecting your dissertation advisor, be sure to ask yourself questions like, “Do I like this person?” “Do I respect him or her?” “Would I want to be like him or her as a person?” Be sure to avoid focusing solely on your advisor’s accomplishments or achievements, because remember: those achievements belong to your advisor. None of that glory will reflect onto you if you can’t complete your dissertation and get your Ph.D.

If you already have an advisor, take care to treat this relationship respectfully, and to be clear about your requests and questions. Most advisors will try to meet your advisory needs, if they just know what they are.

Working well with your dissertation advisor is an important aspect of a successful dissertation process. The more you and your advisor respect each other and work well together, the better and easier your dissertation process will be.

This belief becomes very obvious in the dissertation process. It is widely accepted that it might take one, two, (or more) years to craft, execute, and analyze a dissertation worthy research question.

While this is common belief, it is incorrect.

Here’s why:

Most dissertations can be completed in a year or less, with two exceptions. The first (and most obvious) exception is when your study will require data collection or longitudinal research over a long period of time. For example, if your research design requires observation over a two year period, you won’t be able to complete the dissertation in a year or less. Makes sense, right?

The second exception to the year or less rule is if you do not work consistently on your dissertation. Similar to exercising at the gym, you must show up regularly to achieve any lasting benefits. You do not expect to work out once and remain fit for the whole rest of your life. Likewise, you can not expect to work on the dissertation in a random manner and believe you’ll finish quickly.

Aside from these two exceptions, though, you can be finished (or extremely close to it) with twelve months of extremely focused effort. Of course, some of you are putting in extremely focused effort, but there is one more thing missing: a defined plan.

If you don’t know where you’re going, you can not know when you’ll arrive. This holds true for the dissertation process, and for life. If you do not know what actions to take, in what order, success will elude you.

Remember, do not confuse time with quality. If you were going to be given $1million dollars for finishing the dissertation in the next six months, could you do it? (Probably.) Wouldn’t you be extremely motivated to finish, and do whatever it took to win the prize?

You very likely would.

Adopting that same mindset and approach to finishing your dissertation (whether or not you’ll win the million dollars) is exactly what is necessary to finish quickly.

Your dissertation should take as long as necessary to create a good quality paper. This will require less time than you think.

Keep yourself on track by asking yourself, each day, “What’s the fast track to dissertation completion?” and then take the next action that you can think of.