By Dr. Nolle Sterne

Q: Maybe it’s the new year, but I can’t seem to get going on my dissertation.

—Word Dawdler

A: Sounds like you’re dragging your dissertation manuscript in sorry tow behind you like an annoying younger brother. You’re probably doing the impossible already—on campus or online, like many other graduate students—juggling family, work, and school. Your academic struggles are intensified by the stresses of such multiple responsibilities and too often you’re slowed down to stop.

In my roles as dissertation and creative coach for graduate students and writers of creative projects, I’ve noticed some issues that can seriously inhibit, obstruct, or completely stop you. But take heart, remedies are available.

1. No Purpose? Remember How This Degree or Project Is Part of Your Life
Dream

You’ll resume and continue to work on your manuscript with greater consistency and less fading fervor if you answer this question in writing, as fully as you can. No fear, no shame, no self-deprecating disclaimers (“I know this dream of my doctorate [academic article, collection of essays, novel, cookbook, painting, tree house, symphony . . . ] is ridiculous!”). Keep returning to your answer, and add and change it until you’re satisfied that it reflects how you really feel. Read your statement over once or twice a day, preferably at the same times. The more you repeat your goal and intention, the more fuel and strength you’ll have to keep going.

2. Bewildered? Use Your Inner Mentor

Your Inner Mentor (IM), also called your Inner Guide, Self, Voice, Spirit, Higher Power, Soul, Guidance System, intuition, even your heart or gut, has more power than your chair, the dean of your school, and even the guy who issues your parking pass. If you think you don’t have your IM, you’ve already heeded it: when “something” doesn’t feel right about a certain person or event, when a “little voice” tells you to turn right instead of left, when the “right words” suddenly trumpet in your brain as you greet your mother for the first time in six months.

As you learn to use your IM more consciously, in meditation or just sitting and asking, you’ll see that it guides you to right decisions and actions. In your dissertation, your IM will help you arrive at your perfect topic, the one that excites you even when you feel buried in other scholars’ research. In your creative project, your IM will help you decide on the approach, the material to include, the next (scary) steps. With practice and results, you’ll use your IM for the steps in your dissertation and creative quandaries (and, if you choose, for everything else in your life).

3. Tempted to Quit? Stick With It

When you listen to your IM, continue your writing and creating, wrestle into submission all that information you’ve collected, and (barely) managing your countless other duties and responsibilities, you may be tempted to suspend your project. Of course, you’ve got unassailable reasons, like these classics I’ve heard from students:

• My family needs my attention.
• A break of a few months will clear my head.
• I’m going on that six-week seminar in the cruise ship in dissertation writing. Then I’ll really know how to continue.
• I’ll just clean out my study, the spare room, the garage, attic, basement, and storage shed. Then I’ll find anything I need right away.
• Geez, I’ve got to live and watch a little television too . . . .

Whatever your excuse, I mean reason, my advice is this: Don’t stop. Use your IM to crawl along. Do what’s in front of you. Start with the easy stuff, like transferring chapter titles and subheads from your university dissertation manual or setting up files for the chapters of your novel. It’s all gotta get done anyway. Just keep going. Even fifteen minutes a day will help. I repeat: DON’T STOP!

4. Family Rebelling? Orient Them

With the dissertation, as you may have noticed, your life changes mightily. You hole up in the library after work, eat on the run, retreat to your study all day Sunday, always look distracted, and never really listen when a family member talks. With other projects, if you’re really serious, your life changes too: you hole up in your study or studio or disappear to your favorite haunt for as many hours as you can get away. You scribble notes constantly on the pad or iPad fastened to your hip to capture all the gems of brilliant inspiration and nod automatically when a family member talks.

Your family may pretend not to notice, not be bothered, or ignore your lack of attention. But if you don’t do something, it will catch up with all of you and may get ugly, with volcanic eruptions out of nowhere. And they‘ll distract you even more from your project.

I’ve written before on two major strategies for dealing with family—that is, assuaging them. (See also the previous column, Stranger in a Strange Family, May 15, 2025.) A short recap: The first strategy is to educate them: sit them down and draw a vivid verbal picture, and with specifics. What is required of you? “A 200-page manuscript for the dissertation, like a book.” “A 400-page manuscript, for a published book. ” What kind of time will you need? “All the time I can devote.” What will you need in company? “No one but my laptop.” Tell them it won’t be forever, but only two years, and ask them not to hold it against you.

The second strategy is to bribe them. For your dissertation, draw another vivid picture of what will result: your better job, promotions, prestige, more business, new business, their resumed degree program, more family time, and mo’ money. For a creative project, be honest: tell them you can’t promise acclimation and money. But you can promise you’ll be easier to live with, you’ll have more vitality and enthusiasm for life, and later, after the manuscript is delivered to the publisher, you may even volunteer to take the dog to the vet or put up the storm windows.

And make promises for the future after the Big Project is completed: special dates, extended visits, vacations together, your helping them with their own special projects. If you must, give details: dinner at that new Michelin-star restaurant, tickets to the upcoming concert of your favorite medieval string quartet, that long-awaited cruise to the Inuit of Nunavut. Watch your family members smile—and cooperate.

5. Employer Bristling? The Secret, Again, Orientation

Apply the same principles as with your family, especially if your employer notices your distraction in meetings, constant note-scribbling, and too-frequent calling in for “sick” days. (I’ll write more about this topic in a forthcoming column.) Orient your employer early, educate, and bribe (in a good way). For orientation, arrange a private in-person meeting and describe (briefly) your dissertation or other creative project. Explain (briefly) how your degree or project will benefit the company. Then ask for what you need—understanding, released time, compact schedule. Promise you will continue to be conscientious in your job and will share your progress. Optionally, as you exit, walk backwards and bow. Now, no more stalling by reading this column. Get going in earnest: make a realistic schedule for working on your project, commit to it, and forgive yourself for small lapses. Climb back up on the horse. And remember—this dissertation-project is part of your life dream and you deserve it. With the fam and your employer on board, keep to your writing time like you would for the new season of “Dancing With the Stars.” Your feet will stop dragging, your mind will spring into action, and you’ll put in good sessions. And then, without guilt, watch the show.

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If you have a burning academic question you’d like Dr. Noelle Sterne to answer, send it to us here. This column relies on question submissions, and we would love to hear yours. Dr. Noelle will answer one question on the 15th of each month. You can read this article for more information.

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Dissertation coach, nurturer, bolsterer, handholder, and editor; scholarly and mainstream writing consultant; author of writing craft, spiritual, and academic articles; and spiritual and motivational counselor, Noelle Sterne has published many pieces in print and online venues, including Author Magazine, Chicken Soup for the Soul, Children’s Book Insider, Graduate Schools Magazine, GradShare, InnerSelf, Inspire Me Today, Transformation Magazine, Unity Magazine, Women in Higher Education, Women on Writing, Writer’s Digest, and The Writer. Noelle’s ninth story for Chicken Soup for the Soul appears in June 2025 in the volume Self-Care Isn’t Selfish. With a Ph.D. from Columbia University, Noelle has for 30 years helped doctoral candidates wrestle their dissertations to completion (finally). Based on her practice, her Challenges in Writing Your Dissertation: Coping with the Emotional, Interpersonal, and Spiritual Struggles (Rowman & Littlefield Education, 2015) addresses students’ often overlooked or ignored but crucial nonacademic difficulties that can seriously prolong their agony. See the PowerPoint teaser here. In Noelle`s Trust Your Life: Forgive Yourself and Go After Your Dreams (Unity Books, 2011), she draws examples from her academic consulting and other aspects of life to help readers release regrets and reach lifelong yearnings. Following one of her own, she is currently working on her third novel. Visit Noelle at www.trustyourlifenow.com