Successful Students Write Early
3 January 2021 2021-10-25 20:11Successful Students Write Early
Peter Alkema When I run my writing workshops, I ask who is busy with a final report. Then I ask those people if they wish they had started later than they did.
No one does.
No one ever feels they started writing too early. And I can vouch for this from my own personal experience and I want you to develop the same successful habits as I did.
As soon as I finished my proposal and had it accepted, I set up my final report document. I set out the five main headings and put some of my literature review and introduction together from my proposal.
Stephen Covey teaches about the principle of thinking with the end in mind and what this did was to bring that end goal all the forward to the start of my study and psychologically I knew that despite all the ups and downs of the next few years, the final report document is what I would be working towards.
Every time I thought I could go and make some progress on my final report I did so. Each section of your final report is the destination of those tracks, so keep them moving throughout.
There were many weeks and months I didn’t even open this document but by the time I actually had to sit down and focus completely on getting my final report done, I was much more confident about the contents and there was much less that I had to keep on my mind and worry about how well I was writing it down, because I already had, and this was the benefit, to me, of writing early.
Writing early definitely helped me finish my degree and it will help you finish successfully as well.
Now take action: It doesn’t matter what stage you are in. Assess the status of your final report and see where you can make some improvements. Have you set out the main sections? Have you put some useful content into relevant appendices? Have you copied in your proposal introduction and literature review? These are actions you can take right now to help you be successful by writing early.
