Today I am starting a 20-day productivity challenge as part of Academic Writing Month 2014. This coincides with a heavy month over at Estoria Towers including our second annual colloquium, this time in Oxford, and a postgraduate workshop to be led by Christian and me at the UAM. It might seem that such a busy month is a crazy time to do a challenge such as this one, but I hope that it will help me to keep focused on my thesis and won’t allow me to just do project stuff all the time. Taking into account all of the others things going on this month I have decided to count the 20 ‘working’ days of November, rather than the full 30 days of the month – a girl needs time to buy skirting board, ring decorators, take the cat the the vets, run a Rainbow group, (occasionally) do the ironing… you know.
Charlotte Frost, the academic and blogger who came up with #AcWriMo, based on #NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) has outlined various ‘rules’, so here goes:
1. Set yourself a goal.
My goal is that I will complete one to three hours of work on my thesis on all 20 working days this month. This can include transcribing, reading and writing, and if I miss a day due to other work-related issues I must make up the time on another day. One to three hours may not seem a lot of time, but this is an extremely busy month project-wise, so let me off. My goal is to be a good way into (or have finished – yeah right) transcribing the sections I have identified from the various witnesses for the case study section of my thesis.
2. Publicly declare your participation and goals.
If you are reading this then… yeah.
3. Draft a strategy.
Charlotte’s blog states this involves getting in supplies.
Check.
N.B. My shopping does not always resemble an Asda advert, and this stuff is not all for me. Honest. However, in the name of #AcWriMo I am prepared to take one for the team. The completion of this thesis is one of the outcomes of the project you know. (Altruism is not dead.)
4. Discuss what you’re doing.
I will commit to writing a weekly blog post on this topic to shame me into sticking to my goals.
5. Don’t slack off.
Moi?
6. Publicly declare your results.
I will declare my results in a blog post at the start of December, which I shall dub ‘Academic Wine Reception Month’ – I can see the hashtag now #AcWiRecMo. ‘Academic Orange Juice Reception Month’ has neither the ring nor the appeal.