Welcome to a recurring UPS activity to help and motivate you with your writing!

We are meeting for an intensive 2.5-hour writing session first Wednesday of each month (except January, July and August).

Structure of the sessions: 

We will be following the Pomodoro Technique (The Pomodoro Technique — Why It Works & How To Do It (todoist.com)).

Each session will be structured as:

 

2:30 pm Settling and Roundtable for goal setting
2:45 pm – 3:10 pm  Writing
5 min leg stretcher away from screens
3:15 pm – 3:40 pm  Writing
5 min leg stretcher away from screens
3:45 pm – 4:10 pm  Writing
5 min leg stretcher away from screens
4:15 pm – 4:40 pm Writing
Roundtable to discuss what we wok

!! Please keep the times and if you plan to come during the event, please join during the breaks !!

 

Be prepared to make the most of these sessions (tips):

  • Plan the goals of the session

Prepare the writing goals you are planning to achieve during this writing session. It can be results that you already generated, Materials and methods, The aim of your work.
Optimally, you would have a very vague ‘draft’ with headers for the sections you intend to work on, tables and figures that you ‘re planning to discuss or some keywords can be helpful. Think of this preparatory stage as ‘everything, but the actual text’ draft.

Be as ambitious or as prudent with this draft as you feel comfortable. The more realistic and specific you are the better!

  • Avoid distractions

Within defined intervals you achieve a task, in our case writing. The aim is to pass through distractions (e.g. emails, notifications, you name it), and devote your full attention in a certain thing for very specific amount of time. The specific amount can vary for each person, but a happy average of 20-25 minutes is attainable for most.

There are a few ways to push through and avoid distractions, and most of them entail an analog notebook.

A few examples and suggestions:

    • If you already know your usual non-productive distractions, write them down beforehand and draw a line every time you catch yourself being distracted.
    • If you need to add a reference to your work, write REF instead to do it later when editing.
    • If you don’t know how to explain a certain thing, and need to read a bit more about it, just move on to the next, and make a note of this task for later.
    • If a number of tasks have popped in your head that NEED to be done BUT can wait for 20 min, note them and move on.
    • If you are stuck in a specific word, write down brackets/the second best thing/’connecting WORD’/’introductory statement’ and move on.
    • This list can go on… It’s tailored to the individual. The good thing is that you can plan ahead how you want to deal with your eventual distractions.

When it comes to using this method is important to write words unfiltered. The more you do this, the easier it will be to write down formulated sentences. It’s entirely a matter of practice, and how comfortable you are at writing. In the end of the day, it’s easier to edit a draft than writing one.

  • Prepare the workspace

Make sure you have everything you need to:

    • prepare your workstation (plugs, water, notebook etc)
    • mute devices/silence notifications that can wait for 20 min
    • if you work with music, have already the playlist ready to press play

 

Instruction written by Maria Sapounidou