Thesis Week Kit
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The week by chapter
On Monday, for each chapter you’ll touch this week: how many words, and the one section that has to move. One section, not three.
| Chapter | Word target | The one section that has to move |
|---|---|---|
If only one thing moves this week, it’s:
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Daily writing log
At the end of each day: what you wrote, and the word count. A day with zero words still gets a line; write what you did instead.
| Day | What I wrote or worked on | Words |
|---|---|---|
| Mon | ||
| Tue | ||
| Wed | ||
| Thu | ||
| Fri | ||
| Sat | ||
| Sun | ||
| Total |
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Logging “reading” honestly
“Reading” can mean an afternoon that moved a chapter or an afternoon that didn’t. Write down what you read, what you got from it, and which section it was for. If you can’t name the section, that’s worth knowing too.
- 2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: reading2:00 PM – 3:30 PM: Read Smith 2019, ch. 3, took 6 notes for section 2.4.
- 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: reading for lit review10:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Skimmed 5 abstracts for section 1.3, kept 2, added both to the outline.
- 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM: reading4:00 PM – 5:00 PM: Reread my own methods chapter, marked 3 places where it doesn’t match the results.
Your reading this week, the honest way:
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Sunday review
Fill this in with pages 1 and 2 in front of you. Be as fair to yourself as you would be to a friend in the same week.
What did you write this week? Count it, even if it’s less than you hoped.
Which section moved? And if one didn’t, what got in its way?
What did your reading give the thesis? One line per thing that helped.
Something you did this week that was harder than it looks:
The one section that has to move next week:
A slow week is still information. Write it down, plan the next one, and start on Monday.
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If you want this done with you
Whatcha Doing does the logging and the Sunday review for you. It asks you every 90 minutes what you just did, keeps your answers in a text file on your computer, and on Sunday reads the week against the plan you wrote and grades it out of 10.
Gentle mode. If you’re already hard on yourself about the thesis, set the report to Gentle: the same findings and the same score, with the judgement taken out of the delivery.
The download is free, and so is your first week: whatcha-doing.com.
Students get 40% off Lifetime on request. Email me from your university address and I’ll send you the code.