Greetings, Dissertation Demystified. This week's office hours have been posted on the calendar and they will be as follows: Wednesday 21st at 7 PM EST and Saturday, 24th at 2 PM EST. Keep keeping on!

We are 14 days into the New Year, and you bet this read will come in handy. As the New Year dawned, did you nobly resolve to dissertate every single day? Did you remember to vow to socialize less and turn off the TV early? Perhaps you also listed daily morning runs before breakfast to boost productivity? Did you pat yourself on the back for your new commitment to shaping up your dissertation or yourself? Not so fast. The bad news is that chances are, a significant 4 out of 5, you will give up by Valentine’s Day. Not my words, but according to research by researcher and scholar Marti Hope Gonzales, Ph.D., at the University of Minnesota. Good intentions don't guarantee success. However, there's hope! You can still set yourself up to be among 20% who succeed. Let’s keep those resolutions by embracing these year-round special tips, shall we? 1. Focus on Just One New Habit at a Time Before you jump into action, take time to plan. The main challenge most of us face is not a lack of goals; rather, it’s that we tend to have too many goals. The best way forward? Focus on one change at a time towards completing your dissertation. Developing new habits eats up your daily reserve of willpower, so don't spread it too thin. Break it down into small steps. 2. Boost Your Motivation Frame the goal in terms of what you will do rather than what you will stop doing. Take time to reflect on how this change complements your values and overall goals to enhance your interest as a doctoral candidate. "Do everything you can to keep your personal goals manageable and meaningful, and you will see the tasks become less aversive. 3. Monitor Your Progress Find a user-friendly way to monitor your progress on your resolution. It's easy to forget to follow through on a new habit, and unfortunately, that spells disaster. You can tack up an old-fashioned wall calendar or pick from the mushrooming Android and iPhone habit tracker apps to keep track of the progress made and celebrate all the small and big wins while at it.

Greetings, Dissertation Demystified. This week's office hour has been posted on the calendar. The office hour will be on Saturday, 17th at 2 PM EST. Keep keeping on!

Greetings everyone, I just published an article on qualitative coding on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/qualitative-coding-developing-common-schema-across-three-kotowski-esmdf. @Ian Anderson and @Lujain Saleh Since both of you are the closest to the data analysis phase, I think it is definitely worth having a read over. Everyone else, I highly recommend you read it as it will get you thinking about what your data and analysis needs are. @Stephanie Burke since your study is shaping up to be a phenomenological study, the section on Moustakas approach will be very valuable to you. Please let me know your thoughts and feel free to share/repost it on Linkedin.

Hello Dissertation Demystified members, and Happy New Year to you all! It's another chance to give those dissertations our best. Reach out with what you would like to discuss. Office hours for this week: Thursday at 2:00 PM EST, and Sunday at 11:00 AM EST. As usual, you are welcome, even if it's a quick pop-in. Have a great week ahead.