So we'll start, as always, with some questions about deep work. We did a pretty long opening segment, so I am going to be pithy. Of course, I've said that before. We'll see if that actually works out. All right, our first question comes from Clarissa. Clarissa says, I'm writing my dissertation, and I am struggling.

As a clinician by trait, I struggle with this phase in my PhD program. I'm somewhat traumatized by my advisor, who criticized my ability to write two years ago. I always received excellent grades during coursework, but now in dissertation phase, she is beginning to compliment me, but I'm still insecure.

I've hired an editor and a communication coach. I buy all the books on how to write a dissertation, but I still struggle with the writing process. Well, Clarissa, what I'm going to do first is de-emphasize the writing aspect of you putting together your dissertation. This is a-- it's a complaint I've often had about the rhetoric around dissertations that I used to voice a lot when I was early in my professor career, because I had a background in productivity advice.

I was asked to come to a lot of what are known as dissertation boot camps, where you get together a bunch of grad students at a school who are working on their dissertations. They all work together to try to get progress, and they bring in speakers. And I spoke at a lot of these.

And this was the point I often made. Stop making writing the only verb you use to describe working on a dissertation. Stop making the whole focus on, did I get my pages in? How often am I writing? How many hours of writing am I doing? Because when it comes to academic work of this type, 80% of the effort is thinking, figuring out what you want to say and making it something worth saying.

Now, what this actually means depends on the field. I mean, if you're in a more humanities-based field, you're doing philosophy or something, this really might be the framework you're trying to put together. If this is more of a clinical research-based dissertation, which sounds like might be your case, figuring out what to say is actually doing experiments, looking at what you discovered, coming up with better experiments, understanding the literature, figuring out the thing you want to say is 80% of the work and where almost all of the value comes from.

20% is just getting that down in a way that people can understand. The writing is a small part. I'm saying that, Clarissa, because I want you to feel better. You are not trying to get a Pulitzer for a book of fiction you're writing. You are not trying to pitch The New Yorker to do some long-form piece where what's really going to matter is the craft and the poetry of your writing.

No, what you're trying to do is take lots of deep thinking on something that's new and important and just express it in a way that people can understand. You need to be clear and you need to be grammatically correct. You need your writing to not get in the way of what you're really trying to do, which is deliver the idea.

So clear writing, well-constructed, simple sentences, good grammar, great. Everything else goes into actually figuring out what you want to say. So look, you hired an editor. That's fine. They can help you with the clarity. And that's all you need to worry about. Have them look at a couple of chapters, and they can, hey, you're using word repetition, and be careful with your commas, great.

They'll help you with that. Your writing will be clear. That problem is solved, and I don't want you to worry about that anymore. Again, you're not Joan Didion. You're not thinking, can I create poetry with my sentence rhythm? So don't worry so much about the writing. On the other hand, be very systematic when you think about, what do I want to write about?

Experiments, reading the literature, working over what you want to say, checking that with people. Does this make sense? Do you buy this argument? Let me just give you this argument in words. Do you buy this argument? Workshopping your ideas. Be much more relentless on thinking about what you're going to say.

And once that's right, again, the writing, when it comes to dissertation, is just, can I get this information from my head to your head without roadblocks wronged away? And Clarissa, I think you already can do that. And the editor will give you a little bit of extra confidence, but you're there with that.

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