- Hey everybody, it's Dr. Guy
of TheDissertationMentor.Com
and author of "The Dissertation Warrior,"
and I just wanted to give
you a quick shout-out
regarding this question I've been getting
a lot this week about goal-setting.
How do I set goals for my dissertation?
And the other, sort of, secondary variant
of this question, which
is, every time I set goals,
it feels like things don't work out.
And even the third
variant of this question,
which is, whenever I sit down
to do the dissertation work,
things just feel entirely overwhelming.
It feels to me like
every dissertation writer
has a five-month plan.
It's like, in the business
world or something,
I think they tell you,
"Have a five-year plan."
Dissertation writers
have a five-month plan.
They say, "You know what,
by April, I'm gonna have
my lit review and my
methodology chapter done.
I'm gonna have IRB approval,
and then, I will be ready
to collect my data and
finish my dissertation."
And, of course, as time goes on,
things don't work out as expected.
So, I would like to talk about
goal-setting in three ways.
I wanna give you a general overview about
my opinions about goals and
how I orient around goals
and how I would like to offer that perhaps
you you could adopt this way
of orienting around goals.
Number two, I wanna talk about,
and two and three,
actually, I wanna talk about
two different styles of planning
that you could engage with.
So, first, regarding goals,
I think that goals in general
are, is not a great way.
Goal-setting is not a great way
to go about orienting
around tasks in one's life.
And this is largely because
the way as a culture,
at least here in the United States,
I can't speak for everyone here,
but there's many within the United States
that we approach
goal-setting in such a way
where if a goal doesn't work out,
we just leave that goal behind
and go pursue another goal.
It's like, it's very similar
to Near Year's resolutions,
where you say around the
beginning of the year,
"I'm gonna get in shape,
I'm gonna look really good
in this summer whatever,"
and things don't work out.
And so you abandon that goal
and move on to another goal.
This is different, though, than a calling.
You see, goals, to me, are, you know,
"I wanna go and I wanna do
these tasks that I think
are gonna orient me more towards
this happy life that
I would like to have."
But a calling is something where
there's great pain if you leave it behind.
My calling in my life
is to help other people
become all that they possibly can be,
to alleviate pain in other people.
And so it's obvious why I work
with dissertation writers.
Dissertation writers, there's
a lot of pain involved
in going through this
process and in being ABD,
All But Dissertation, for
a long period of time.
It's like the feeling of
being stuck is one of the most
painful things a human
being can go through.
And I want to help people
like you do better.
So, that's my calling in life.
And if I didn't follow
my calling in my life,
how are things gonna feel?
Guys, not living out your
calling is like living hell.
It's living the worst.
Many of you have been
through dire circumstances
in your life, and often,
those dire circumstances
are tied to plans that have been postponed
or hopes that have been lost.
And so, if we orient around
our dissertation process
in a goal-setting mindset where,
if we just miss this goal,
we'll go make a new goal
and pursue it later.
There's not an acknowledgement
of what's on the line here.
If you did not finish
this dissertation process,
there would be a hole in
your life, most likely.
You would have a regret.
And, I've said this before in many places,
but if you go to old folks
homes and you volunteer,
you hear about regret.
And so my goal, my hope for you,
my calling, let me say it that way,
my calling for you, is
to not live with regret.
So, orient around this
dissertation process as a calling.
So that's the mindset piece.
Now let's talk about
the practicality of it.
There's two ways that I
would like you to think about
goal-setting, calling-setting, (laughs)
whatever we wanna call it.
Short-term tasks that we orient around.
Drop the five-year plan,
drop the five-month plan.
Instead, think about your five-day plan.
Over the course of the next five days,
how many sources are you
gonna get into your hands?
I would say the bare minimum,
the par, is five sources.
You're gonna get five scholarly articles,
hopefully from a great database.
My favorite database is ProQuest.
It's like everything
under the sun is there.
Precise results in the search.
I love ProQuest.
So, five articles that you could obtain
around the topics that your
purpose statement deals with.
And then, from those five sources,
can you go and can you annotate,
can you highlight them, can you draw out
and discover the main
points, the main ideas
that are in each of those articles?
And the most basic of
those, I'll give you three,
is look for definitions,
descriptions, and examples,
concrete examples of things.
Definitions, descriptions, and examples.
Over the next five days, can you do that?
One article per day, and
annotate, note-take, out of those.
But more realistically,
and this is the final note
that I'd like to leave you on today,
is, what's your five-hour plan?
I mean, chances are, if you're
getting this video right now
or if you're watching it,
if you're watching this
as it releases, you're probably getting it
on a Monday afternoon or so,
and there's some daylight left, perhaps.
There's some waking time left.
So, what are you willing to
do in the next five hours
to make your dream come true?
Are you willing to work for 15 minutes?
And that's enough.
What's your five-hour plan?
Every morning, when I sit
down to start my business
for the day, I think,
"What am I gonna accomplish
in the next five hours?
What are the things
that I'm gonna attend to
in the next five hours?"
And it's not overwhelming,
'cause it's just five hours.
It's not five days,
five months, five years.
It's just right now.
What do I have the energy to do right now?
And if I can rise up my energy,
how can I do that so I
can attend to those things
that are gonna bring me happiness
in the best way that I can today?
And a note about happiness.
For me, happiness is living
out my calling, every day.
And so I challenge you to think about,
how does your doctoral degree
relate to your calling?
And go live that today, as
if it was your life's calling
to finish this thing.
Because after this thing, there's
something waiting for you.
The people that you will serve
after you finish this doctoral degree,
they're waiting for you,
and they need your gifts.
So go help them, by
finishing something today.
Good luck.
It's Monday.
Rock your Monday.
