Finishing My PhD with ADHD

In a long term project like a PhD, doubt is necessary, but not sufficient

Throughout this process I’ve tended to focus on what I think I can’t do, or my fears about ‘failing’, and much less on the things and times that I’ve enjoyed. Sometimes I worry that the doubt is self-sabotage, a way of avoiding the work, or even the responsibility, for the work. By creating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy ‘I’ perhaps absolve ‘me’ of both the need and the agency to do anything. At other times I think the doubt and fears are a learned motivation resource and technique. It is true that, on some occasions, anticipation of the crushing social and professional shame resulting from either quitting or failing my PhD has actually enabled (or forced) me to get down to some flipping work.

I think more generally, a more constructive and informed form of doubt can be a way of alerting me to issues within my work, perhaps the conceptual framework I’m building or my tentative analysis. This has frequently led to experience of enjoyment when realising that something isn’t right, or to flow when following up leads, or even downright joy when reading something that helps me put a piece of the jigsaw in the right position. I think maybe everyone needs to have some way of enjoying or valuing what they’re doing at any moment – perhaps because it is intrinsically rewarding, or because it will lead to things that are?

Rewards and me, a poor scapegoat

There are two important problems with the motivations of doubt, whether those which envisage fear, or engagement, or on relying too much on them. The first, and perhaps most obvious, is the miserable reality of experiencing both being repeatedly cattle-prodded by one’s Super Ego, and the feelings of dread that this elicits towards thinking about my research work. But the second is that joy, flow, intuition and satisfaction aren’t guaranteed, and often seem unlikely when a work session starts. I need normal, but appreciable, rewards to be attached to the workaday activities that this project entails. Satisfaction, rather than elation or excitement, perhaps?

That leads me to another difficultly I have in working on long term projects like this, which I’m just now realising. Increasingly I can see that, for motivation, I rely on the possibility of a ‘tadaa!’ moment, one which involves either helping someone else, presenting someone else with something interesting (or even just finished), and hopefully getting some praise, kudos or recognition. Once again though, the incremental nature of the work means that looking towards this form of reward is an unreliable source of motivation. This is because the stepping stones are too far apart, or too submerged to be a source of interest or appreciation from others. A further complication is the kind of focus that ADHD can bring when one is in the zone. It’s really hard (even from one day to the next) to move on to another aspect when the aspect last worked on is not finished, or has not received a ‘tadaa!!’ moment. Frustratingly the hyper focus and effort that this can entail can lead to bursts of work interspersed with periodic inactivity and loss of momentum. Even if those pitfalls are avoided, the feeling that I’ve neglected the other aspects of the work can still lead to a reluctance to look that part of the project in the eye, procrastination, wasted days, or a fixation with less important but more immediately rewarding work tasks.

Ass Power and Sitzfleisch are better than Perfectionism

The advice in some of the research, scholarly or self-help literature is to avoid targets or interim goals that direct us towards finishing things, and to focus on quantity of produce, time or engagement, rather than its quality. The assumption is that quality is a lagging indicator, an emergent outcome of time spent harnessing butt power or “sitzfleisch”

“Cultivate Sitzfleisch, but not compulsively. Good work habits are important to good work. One can have a grasshopper mind, moving from one subject to another – in my case international capital movements, foreign exchange, balance of payments, inter national trade theory, economic growth, the multinational corporation, economic history, financial history, financial crises – but one must spend long hours with each”¹

I’ve been reading a bit about music practice recently – as a late comer to structured music development. Jonathan Harman’s book “The Practice of Practice”², which is a really interesting survey of successful musicians’ ‘practice’ habits and, well, practices, has a similar concept called ‘Ass Power’, which he heard Nelson George talk about on the Sound Opinions radio show³.

In that interview Nelson outlines the idea that the most important aspect of practice is showing up and sitting yourself down, that in some way making sure that you *are* getting down to it, and spending the time. Harnum uses this as a way in to an elaboration of different techniques and ideas that might help us ‘turn up’. Some of these are perhaps applicable to scholarly work, such as:

• Changing things up – a new way of working, or adding a different challenge
• Leaving things ready for next time; and
• Lowering Your Standards(!)

I think I’m learning that a combination of the second two are more helpful for me. I mean, I *love* changing things up, and can spend hours working out new systems and processes that’ll ‘ensure’ success. Choosing the right notebook or note template, amending my Zotero workflow or template codes, perhaps moving from paper to paperless, and then back again. Maybe I’ll write more about ‘changing’ things later (one of the things that ADHD means is that nothing works forever, and learning to embrace that is a thing all in itself). For now I’ll say that in the day-to-day I’ve had more success by sticking (largely) to processes that I’ve been evolving rather than transforming, and by writing reflectively about those processes (as I am doing now) to help that process of evolution.

Leaving things ready for next time – and sitting down with low expectations

After one has read quite a few Academic Self Help books the good ones start to really stand out, because the simplicity, efficacy and adaptability of their suggestions start to win out over the others you’ve tried. Joli Jensen’s Write No Matter What ⁴ set out some advice about being ready for next time, and what a ‘good’, non-pathological set of lowered expectations might look like!

Being Ready

• Write a note to yourself at the end of a session, about what you’re going to do next time.
• Have a tidy desk and an organised set of resources (still working on this, but getting better)
• Habit stack – find times and places where the work is easier.
• Go somewhere – the office, the library, the cafe – do it there.

Lowering Expectations

• Have a vent file – a place where you can write fears, frustrations, express futilities and record negative feelings
• Set out an initial target for quantity of time. Joli’s minimum is only 15 minutes a day. There are plenty of days when that’s all I can manage, and some where I can’t even do that. But if Sitzfleisch is catching yourself in the chair, giving your research an opportunity to grab you, then sometimes 15 minutes will be enough to move you on, or to build motivation for more work.
• Elsewhere I’ve learned to split the time up if and when I need to, and not to feel bad that I’ve done 15 minutes and I need a break.

Where does this leave ‘reward’, and me?

I am more than capable of doing this – and more than capable of creating habits and practices which sustain engagement in big projects and achievements. I’ve done it many times, writing textbooks, research articles and editing books. This is just a bit bigger, a bit longer term.

The reward can be found in cranking the handle, both because of the satisfaction of beating the odds, the weather or my self-image, but also because only by cranking the handle, by sitting in the chair, are you in the game, when it becomes a game that you enjoy.

Next Steps, the carousel:

I’m still working on processes that allow me to work incrementally towards the different stepping stones involved in the project. I’m trying to develop mini-goals for individual sessions (another piece of music practice advice), but that is really, *really* hard when you’ve no idea how long things take. But I’m starting to wonder whether it’d be better to do a day on one aspect, day on the next aspect – in combination with ending a session by writing cues and questions that mean I’m ready for the ‘next’ time I’ll look at that aspect in a few days time. It’s sort of implied by the micro, mini, macro goals approach suggested by Harnum, more of which perhaps in the future.

1. Kindleberger, C. P. (1986). My Working Philosophy. The American Economist (New York, N.Y. 1960), 30(1), 13–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/056943458603000102 ↩︎
2. Harnum, J. (2014). The practice of practice. Sol Ut Press. ↩︎
3. https://shows.acast.com/sound-opinions/episodes/601fb097199cf528a44a1c32 ↩︎
4. Jensen, J. (2017). Write No Matter What: Advice for Academics. The University of Chicago Press. ↩︎