The Writing Checklist: A First Draft

Inspired by Atul Gawande's The Checklist Manifesto (which I wrote about a few weeks ago), I have lately been thinking about all of the points where breakdowns occur in my writing workflow. It's become clear to me that there are two major failings in that process:

1. I know what I should do to ensure a successful writing session, but I don't do it.

2. When I feel overwhelmed, I redirect myself to another activity. I fear that frustration with any single part could build, counterproductively, into resentment towards the entire dissertation. 

These are pretty common issues for most professionals, regardless of field, and there are endless Lifehacks to address them. I've used a lot of them, in fact: web blockers, the Pomodoro technique,  and task managers to organize larger projects. These all work excellently, if I use them. So my checklist is an attempt to commit to the process. Just as surgical or flight checklists ensure that doctors or pilots don't forget a routine (but vital!) step in their process, my new checklist is just a reminder not to forget the obvious and essential...

Like Gawande recommended, I kept the checklist succinct. Rather than enumerating the various ways I must eliminate distraction before beginning to work--namely, disabling the WiFi--the checklist nudges me to address my environment and not cavalierly believe that I will resist the pull of the web. Likewise, I didn't specify what made a goal reasonable or meaningful, because that is contingent from day to day. I just need to remember the importance of setting goals and meeting them, and not be delusional about what it's possible to accomplish. 

I will pilot the checklist this week and report back on my experience!

I Spoke Too Soon

Right after applauding my resilience on Monday, I came down with a nasty cold. I may have emotionally weathered the weekend with aplomb, but apparently it was a physical bomb. My immune system could not handle all of the stress, I guess.

Needless to say, I made little progress this week on my dissertation. I will just write it off as a loss and begin again in earnest on Monday.

Have a great weekend!

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Resilience

This weekend was supposed to be my tropical Puerto Rican vacation, my reward for enduring February, my chance to see my parents for the first time since September... and it was foiled by a snowstorm. Standing there in JFK's Terminal 2, all I could think was, "(wo)man plans, God laughs." We were stranded in New York City until Saturday afternoon, which was not the worst fate, but our new itinerary created logistical problems. For starters, we were wearing short sleeved shirts under our light coats and it was 27 degrees outside. I spent Friday wearing a sundress over my jeans, adding an extra layer to my (already bizarre) ensemble. We also had no place to stay, no plans, and, frankly, no extra money in our budget. 

Somehow, despite all this disappointment and uncertainty, I remained incredibly calm. We booked a hotel room using Hotel Tonight (a great app that I highly recommend), got ourselves on the AirTrain, the E train, the D train, the 1 train, and checked ourselves into the hip Nylo on the Upper West Side. I began texting friends and family, trying to arrange a dinner for Friday night. I made a plan for the day, including a visit the archive, lunch at Lombardi's, and a walk to the Lower East Side to load up on sweets at Economy Candy. Even with the looming question of whether we would actually get back to Pittsburgh on Saturday, I tried to make the best of our little adventure. We had a great time, saw some of our siblings and siblings-in-loves, and eventually made it back to this Appalachian icebox with a bag of candy and two dozen bagels. 

I confess that I did tear up once, when we got to the hotel that first night and it hit me that I wasn't going to wake up in San Juan the next morning. Yet I never broke down sobbing. I did not shake my fist at the sky and protest the injustice of it all. Even more shockingly, I did not angst over our plans or lack thereof. I embraced the variables and the messiness and all of the potential logistical failures.

Even a year ago, it was unthinkable that I could hold it together in such a situation. When I called to tell my family that we would not be joining them in Puerto Rico, father praised my "mature" response. Although I was flattered by his compliment, I think it's more accurate to say I was "resigned." Graduate school, particularly working on the dissertation, has made me more resilient. The process is inherently uncertain. You tentatively propose a topic and an argument that you suspect will be fruitful, but could lead nowhere. You dig through boxes looking for documents that might have been archived, but that just as easily were thrown away. You apply for grants and fellowships that you may or may not win, that would facilitate or limit your ability to conduct your research. You travel to archives, live out of a bag for weeks at a time, and constantly find yourself at Walgreens buying items like Q-tips and postage stamps that you believed were non-essential. And that's on top of that omnipresent and oppressive question faced by every dissertator: "Will I actually manage to pull this off?"

Apparently I have learned to roll with the punches, to shrug off the unexpected and accept that things aren't always going to break my way. That's a pretty valuable life skill, and further evidence that getting a PhD, while a questionable career decision, is the best life decision I ever made. 

Listen to Ben Franklin

My goal for this week was to transition towards a workflow that more equitably balances research and writing. More specifically, I had hoped to draft at least a page or two of my first dissertation chapter, which will be on the 1946-47 Jewish Welfare Board survey conducted by Prof. Oscar I. Janowsky. Yet somehow it is now Friday, and I have yet to write a single sentence. The past few days were spent getting organized, and I find myself with at least another few hours worth of prep work to do before I can feasibly begin writing.

I did not expect that this process would require so much preparation. As I have written about before, I'm pretty meticulous with my database, my notes, and how I organize sources. When I sat down to draft the chapter outline, however, I became overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of sources that I have on the JWB Survey. Over the past few months of research, I tagged all of the documents in my database that are related to this topic with "JWB Survey," and so I can quickly and easily call them forward and view them in isolation. Furthermore, I can organize all of the documents tagged "JWB Survey" by the year they were authored, because "19XX" was the other consistent tag I applied. That still leaves me, however, with hundreds of documents from 1946 alone! I now realize that I need to review all of these documents (briefly, quickly, expeditiously, stat!) and add more specific tags such as "Survey Committee Minutes," or "Field Visits to Centers," or "Progress Reports." My chapter will progress chronologically, and so by adding these tags I will be able to quickly isolate only those documents that were written at the moment I'm writing about--for example, in the lead-up to the survey, or later while conducting the survey, or  from after the survey was completed, etc.

I'm trying not to get frustrated or anxious, and to instead focus on the adage from the ever pithy Ben Franklin: 

“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

I'm telling myself that this is not productive procrastination, but rather a foundational step that will yield exponential benefits when I actually begin writing. Hopefully next week.

Research Trip Recap

My ten-day visit to the Center for Jewish History was incredibly productive. Despite being in New York for two weeks, time felt limited and I took the "smash-and grab" approach to archival research. I know I generally grabbed photos of relevant and valuable documents, but it will take me a few weeks to read through them all in detail and see if my first impressions were correct.

I photographed around 1500 pages of Annual Agency Budget Files from the records of the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York (UJA-Federation). This humongous collection was just recently processed, and I'm one of the first historians to go through and see how JCCs like the Y of Washington Heights Inwood, Educational Alliance, and Bronx House negotiated annually with the Federation's Distribution Committee. This process was highly regimented throughout the 1950s and '60s. Executive secretaries (god bless them) saved all the important paperwork related to the application, including agencies' initial budget proposals, the Distribution Committee's announcements of annual allocations, and thorough accounting worksheets for each fiscal year. These files are thus a great way to ascertain the health of each individual agency throughout the tumultuous years of the urban crisis, because they report figures like: membership numbers; income from dues; number and kind of programs offered; number of full- and part-time staff; and size and condition of facilities. 

While incredibly rich, these budget materials are also dense and tedious. I am going to have to give myself a crash course in accounting, which is a foreign language to me. I've always been better at spending money than keeping track of it! Ideally, the experience will familiarize me with organizational budgeting, which is a useful skill to have. 

I'll end with a pitch for the American Jewish Historical Society archivists' excellent blog, This Can Go Back to the Archives, which chronicles the processing of the UJA-Federation records. Susan and her team highlight some of the most dynamic and intriguing documents from the collection, and I'm always surprised by what they dig up!