Do you even know why you’re reading?
You’re listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. I’m Dr Rebecca Roache. I’m a coach and a philosopher at the University of London, and week by week I’ll be drawing on philosophical analysis and coaching insights to help you dump perfectionism and flourish on your own terms.
Hello everyone. This episode is brought to you by the second cold of the season - or perhaps it’s the third. I have two health-related settings. There’s the teaching term setting, where one bug merges into another and I sniffle my way through, trying not to infect the people around me. And then there’s the rest of the time, where I am never ill - although I’ve probably just jinxed that now, haven’t I? Anyway. I hope you’re all doing better than I am, and that you’re staying cosy if you’re in the northern hemisphere, or doing fun summery things if you’re not.
I want to talk to you today about a particular sort of getting-stuck-with-writing. It’s been on my mind a lot recently because I’ve been this particular sort of stuck for … a couple of months, actually. And, at the same time, I’m encountering students who are stuck in similar ways while they’re trying to write their essays. This mode of being stuck begins with a lack of confidence that you’re qualified or informed or knowledgeable enough to write about whatever it is that you’re meant to be writing about. You don’t really know which way to turn, writing-wise. You don’t know how to approach whatever it is that you’re supposed to be writing about. And so, instead of just immersing yourself in the problem - brainstorming possible ways forward, zooming in and working out exactly what’s needed to move forward, talking it through with other people who might be able to help you see a way through - all of which, for differing reasons, can be uncomfortable when you’re not confident that your ideas are coherent - instead of doing any of those things, you decide that you need to do more reading instead. You stop writing, and start reading. Which is a seductively satisfying solution, really, because it feels like you’re working - I mean, in an obvious sense, you are working - when what you’re actually doing is a respectable-looking form of procrastination. You’re getting more informed about the thing you feel inadequately informed about, right? Every minute you spend reading is an investment in your future writing, when you get around to it, which you definitely will, just as soon as you know enough, which won’t be for a while yet. And it wouldn’t do just to wade in and ignorantly start throwing your intellectual weight around, would it? I mean, how arrogant! No, you’re going to wait until you’re ready, and that way, anyone who reads what you end up writing is going to be impressed at the thoughtful and knowledgeable way you’ve approached it.
Now, I’m not sure this problem really existed a few decades ago, before it got so easy to access articles and other resources online. I mean, I’m sure it did, but on a smaller scale. I’m showing my age here, but I can remember, in the days before online journal access, needing to read an article that it turned out was housed in a medical library that I’d never visited before - I didn’t even know where it was. Getting access to the article involved a trek across campus, as well as all the faff of working out where I needed to go and whether I’d be able to get access and whether I’d be able to use a photocopier once I was there because that was the only way I’d be able to take a copy of the article away with me. That sort of meant that there was no checking out a possibly irrelevant article from another discipline, on a whim, just to see whether there might be anything in it that you might need to know. But now, of course, we can sit at a desk many miles away from the nearest library and access, in seconds, hundreds of books and articles that are tangentially relevant to what we’re trying to write. There are huge benefits to being able to do that, obviously. But there are problems, too. The potentially relevant resources that we can access in this way aren’t literally infinite, but they may as well be. There’s more of them than any of us is capable of reading in one lifespan, so it’s a task without end. And doing it feels seductively, dangerously like self-improvement. We’re becoming more widely-read, and hopefully wiser as a result. But, of course, none of this gets our bloody writing done, does it?
Now, there’s a balance to be struck here. Obviously you need to do some reading. If there’s an existing literature on the thing that you want to write about, then you need some familiarity with that if you want your writing to make - to use Joli Jensen’s term from my interview with her back in episode #93 - a contribution to the conversation that’s already in progress on your chosen topic. Come to think of it, you need to know what the conversation is even about before you can contribute to it, and that’s something that requires a bit of getting-up-to-speed. This is true of conversations in the wild just as much as in scholarly ones. If you want to join in an ongoing conversation between a group of people, you need to spend a few moments listening before jumping in, so you can get a feel for what it’s about and where it’s headed - and you need to do the equivalent when you want to join a scholarly conversation. But just as you wouldn’t stand there for hours before joining in the real-life conversation, just to make sure you know absolutely everything there is to know in order to ensure that your contribution is going to be relevant and appropriate - because that would count as a ridiculous amount of over-preparation - you need to have a feel for what counts as over-preparation when it comes to joining a scholarly conversation too. So, how do you learn to tell the difference between the sort of preparatory reading that helps ensure your writing project will be of a reasonable quality, and the sort that is procrastination in disguise?
Well, here’s my advice. Writing is not a two-stage process, where first you do all the reading, and then you do all the writing. Where doing the reading is level 1 of the game, and only when you defeat the knowledge boss are you able to level up to the writing. (Sorry for that metaphor. As I said at the start, I’m not feeling 100%.) Whatever it is you’re writing, it’s not merely a response to whatever it is you’re reading. Your writing and your reading are responding to each other. When everything’s working as it should, you start off by writing for a bit, and that helps you formulate your sense of what the project is and it will probably throw up a load of questions, like, Has anyone already written about this particular issue? Come to think of it, what is this particular issue? What was written already and when? Has anyone responded, and what did they write? What are the contentious issues and what are the issues that everyone in the conversation seems to accept, and how does this relate to the questions I’m interested in addressing? And then, armed with these questions, you can go off and do some reading, and your reading is guided by the questions. When at least some of your questions have answers, you can go back to the writing stage, revisit your idea for your project and maybe tweak it a bit - perhaps you’ll realise that part of it rests on a misunderstanding, or perhaps you’ll realise that something you regarded as a really minor, trivial issue is actually a huge can of worms, because that definitely can happen. (Did I ever tell you about the time when I tried to write a footnote and as I was writing realised it was actually an entire project in its own right?) So then you’re back writing again, with version 2.0 of your research question, until you find the questions piling up again and you decide to go and do some more reading, and so on.
You might notice that, when I described that back-and-forth between writing and reading, I said, ‘You start off by writing for a bit’. Which can be the opposite of what feels appropriate - a view that’s encouraged by the way we’re taught. Start with writing - really?? Students on taught courses attend lectures and seminars and do the assigned reading before they’re given essay questions to answer. An unfortunate side-effect of that culture is that it encourages a mindset of ‘I’m not worthy to write about this topic until I’ve done all this reading’. Like doing the reading is an initiation ritual, or an apprenticeship. When you’re an undergraduate student and you’re about to write an essay on a topic that you’ve never studied or even thought about before, it kind of is - within reason. It’s sensible to do a bit of reading to get up to speed. However, a lot of research projects aren’t like that. Often, we’ll come up with an idea for a new research project ourselves. It just occurs to us, based on whatever contact we’ve already had with the relevant topic, that maybe there’s something in this that we could write about. Our idea might be hazy to start off with. There might be lots that we’re unsure about. We might have a sense that we’re not ready to write about it yet, which is understandable given the initial haziness and uncertainty - and so we dive into the literature, for all the wrong reasons. You’re diving into the literature for the wrong reasons if you’re doing it without having specific questions you want to find an answer to, if you’re doing it because who are you just to swan in and start throwing your opinions about on this topic you know hardly anything about - you need first to immerse yourself in all the stuff that’s already written and absorb knowledge and wisdom in a general sort of way.
That’s a problem. Immersing yourself in the literature with nothing more than a vague idea about what you want to write about ends up making you feel less adequate and knowledgeable and competent, not more. I’ve seen this with students who are trying to write their dissertations. I’ll ask what they want to write about and they’ll say things like, ‘Oh, something about fake news’ or ‘Probably some stuff about time, I dunno’, or ‘Ways people deceive each other’. What they usually do next is tell me all the stuff they’re planning to read so that they can get a clearer idea of exactly what to write - at which point I tell them to stop and do some writing before they immerse themselves in their reading. The reason is that having such a poorly-formed idea of what they want to write about makes it very hard to be selective in the reading they do. Everything looks potentially relevant. And if you get stuck into reading stuff in those circumstances, it’s just overwhelming. You can’t possibly do justice to all these many angles. The more you read, the more you realise how little you know, which makes you feel even less qualified to write about your topic, which makes actually making a start on the writing even more difficult - and so you do some more reading, and so it continues.
To avoid this, I advise students to start writing at the earliest opportunity. As soon as they have a vague idea about a topic of interest, basically. Just write. Write about why you’re interested in it, what questions you have about it, what the problems are. You’re not trying to come up with anything well informed or clever at this stage. It’s a brainstorming, clarifying exercise. You’re trying to turn your vague topic of interest into something more focused. You’re trying to generate questions that you need to answer. It’s scary doing this, I know. Nobody wants to open a blank word document and start writing potentially stupid nonsense - I mean, I know you’re not going to do that, but I know you think you will. But there are other, less scary ways you can start writing. You probably have friends and family members who ask you what you’re writing about, and you might be in the habit of giving them vague dismissive answers. Instead, try to answer their questions sincerely. Try to articulate what you’re interested in and why, what questions you have and why you think you have a contribution to make here. You can do this in an email or a social media post or even in conversation over coffee or in the pub - though you might want to take some notes if you do that. You could even - and I realise this approach probably isn’t for everyone, although I find it extremely useful myself - treat it as if you’re in an exam. Give yourself 20 minutes or 30 minutes or however many minutes to sit down and just write about the topic. You’re not allowed to look stuff up or check anything. Just write. I like to do this by hand, with my computer keyboard and mouse out of reach so I’m not tempted to go online, but do whatever works for you. You’re writing in order to think, in order to clarify what it is that you’re interested in, and in order to come up with specific questions you need answers to. So, someone who starts out with the thought that they want to write ‘Oh, something about fake news’ might, after getting some of their thoughts down in writing, realise that they want to explore the ethics of sharing misleading yet reliable-seeming information on social media, or whether doing so is equivalent to telling lies, or whether the very idea of ‘fake news’ implies that there is such a thing as non-fake news and whether that’s true and if so what it involves. And those more specific ideas generate questions that they can explore, and help them be more selective when they decide what to read. For the person interested in the ethical questions, any literature on how to conceptualise fake news is secondary; and for the person interested in the conceptual questions, the ethics stuff is secondary. Honestly, I can tell you from personal experience, and from the experience of guiding dozens of students through this process, that 45 minutes of brainstormy writing on a topic you’re interested in can make you clearer, better informed, and more confident in your abilities to tackle your writing project than weeks of directionless reading.
Now, if you’re listening to this and thinking: ‘But how exactly do I turn my vague ideas for a project into something more specific and clear?’ I can recommend a brilliant book that goes into detail about this and really walks you through the process, with exercises to do along the way: it’s called Where Research Begins by Thomas S. Mullaney and Christopher Rea. I have plans to get the authors on the podcast for an interview, so stay tuned in the coming weeks for that.
Back to that question I asked earlier: how do you learn to tell the difference between the sort of preparatory reading that helps ensure your writing project will be of a reasonable quality, and the sort that is procrastination in disguise? The answer, I think, is to avoid directionless reading if your main priority is to get something written. Don’t get me wrong - I love directionless reading, and you’ll often hear academics grumble about being so busy that they never get to do much of it. Directionless reading - that is, reading for any reason other than trying to find answers to specific questions arising from your research project - can be wonderfully satisfying, and it can be an important part of keeping in touch with why you enjoy your subject. However. Don’t kid yourself that directionless reading is going to help you get your writing project done. If you’re trying to get that writing project done, then any time you start reading, you need to have a clear idea of why you’re reading. What specific question do you need to find an answer to, and why do you think this particular book or article is the place to find it? If you can bring yourself to write that down and take the time to articulate the question you want to answer through reading whatever it is, then big fat bonus points for you - you’re on fire and that deadline will not know what’s hit it. But if, when you ask yourself why you’re reading, you don’t have a clear answer, or if the answer is something wishy-washy and anxious like ‘I just don’t feel ready to start writing yet’ or ‘I don’t know enough about this topic’ or ‘I feel like I need to read a bit more first’ - back to the writing with you. You’re wasting your time. The sense of comfort you think you’ll get from reading is not what it seems. You’re going to end up feeling even more small and lost in the face of the increasing amounts of stuff you’re reading. Take a deep breath and write.
Right. Let me close by saying that, although I believe everything I’ve told you in this episode is right, I know that the fear of diving into writing is real. For all the time I spend telling students to stop reading and start writing, I don’t always take my own advice. As I speak, I have about 400 browser tabs open, many of them to articles that I’ve looked up for all sorts of vague reasons that don’t have to do with any go-getting attempts to answer specific research-relevant questions. I know that’s exactly the opposite of what I should be doing, and if you find yourself doing the same thing, practise some self-compassion. This isn’t easy. It might help to approach it like mindfulness. You know how we’re always told not to expect too much of ourselves when doing guided meditations - that we should avoid thinking ‘oh god I’m doing an inhale when she’s said to do an exhale and did she just say to visualise a nice beach because I’m thinking about the fact that my knee is itchy and wondering whether I can mindfulness it away or whether I need to scratch it, I’m RUBBISH at this’ - which is what I default to, if I”m not careful. Instead, we’re told, when we notice our mind wandering, we just non-judgmentally guide our attention back to the beach or the breath or whatever it is we’re meant to be thinking about. Do that here, too. If you don’t notice you’re engaging in directionless reading until you’re hours deep in it, don’t give yourself a hard time. Instead, give yourself a high five for noticing what’s happened, and change course. Never expect perfection. If I could leave you with just one thought here, it would be this: that comfort you’re hoping to find when you tell yourself that maybe you’d better spend a bit more time reading first, you’re actually going to get from writing. So, dust off your actual pen and actual notebook, if you can find them. I believe in you.
I’m Dr Rebecca Roache, and you’ve been listening to The Academic Imperfectionist. If you enjoyed the episode, please subscribe on whatever podcast app you like to use. I want to help as many people as I can with these episodes, and I’d really appreciate it if you’d share the podcast with any friends who you think might find it useful, and if you’d consider leaving a review on your podcast app. If you’d like to support the podcast financially, you can do that at https://www.patreon.com/AcademicImperfectionist. For more information about me, the podcast, and my coaching, please visit the website - https://www.academicimperfectionist.com. You’ll find links there to The Academic Imperfectionist on Twitter and Facebook too. If you have an idea or a request for a future episode of The Academic Imperfectionist, please drop me a line, either via my website or by tweeting your idea with the hashtag #AcademicImperfectionist. Thank you for listening, and see you next time!