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[indianalitchick]

I will be starting my dissertation within the next year or so and wondered how others managed to work full-time and write. 

[sarahanne]

Much depends upon you and knowing when you are most productive. I'm morning person. I don't mind getting up at 4 am. I like the quiet. My children are sleeping. There's no television or music playing.

My best piece of advice is to establish a routine and stick with it as best you can.

I write for two hours. Take a 45 minute walk. Get the kids ready for school. And, I try to squeeze in another 30 minutes of writing.

For me, the evenings are too hectic because I'm tired and the kids need me.

One other thing. My classmate worked a full-time job. She wrote during her lunch hour. She would write at a diner or fast food place. A male grad classmate got a job as third shift hotel night auditor. After he completed his audit, he could work on writing his diss.

It's doable. You just need to know what works best for you.

[zharkov]

Rule one, don't have a high stress or high profile that takes too much time and energy.  The ideal is to have a 35-40 hour/week job that you can accomplish in about half that time. Use the slack time to do bits and pieces of your work, as long as the job-job gets done. It helps to have a supportive boss, of course.

Rule two, don't do any volunteer work, don't serve on the board of the Y, do stuff for PTA,  do church stuff, etc. etc.  Everything like that gets moved to post-PhD.

Rule three, find a good block of time. For me, it was Saturday from breakfast to dinner, when I went into my job-job office, which was very quite on Saturday. It helps to get away from home distractions.

Rule four, back everything up, then back it up again.  For example, back up your work on a thumbdrive or CD everyday, AND email yourself a copy to a gmail account (say).  Nothings wastes move time than having to do things over.

Good Luck!

[indianalitchick]

My job is as a dept. coordinator at a university, and in addition to the administrative duties I have to teach 24 credit hours/year (I work year-round).  I'm going to try to arrange my schedule so I only teach MW or TTh so I have the other days to write at work.  I'm great at making schedules but never stick to them ("Oh, there's always tomorrow...").

[fiona]

Writing the same time of day, the same block of time, is a strategy that works for many people. Just tell everyone that you have a daily appointment from 2-3 in the aft, or 6-7 at night, and you can't be disturbed. They'll think you have a weird medical condition, and that's fine.

And/or--Set yourself a daily quota of pages. Make it 3 pages a day, which isn't hard to accomplish. If you go over 3 one day, then you have a cushion. If you write just 1 page a day, you have a book-length ms. in a year. But you MUST write every day. Do not take off for weekends, vacations, or anything.

I wrote a lot of my dissertation by hand on buses and trains, between jobs. I carried a tape recorder with me, too, if I had ideas or brilliant sentences that came to me. I kept note cards with me at all times. That's not ideal, but ya do what ya gotta do.

There is NEVER an ideal block of time, and you're more efficient if you have less time and more drive.

[oldfullprof]

I managed to write my dissertation (sociology) mainly while teaching 4-4 over two semesters.  I had done my lit review, interviews, and gathered quantitative data the summer before.  I was on campus all day four days a week.  I usually wrote about two pages in my office each campus day before teaching, and about four pages on Fridays, when I didn't go in.  I often wrote four pages on Sunday too.  I wrote like crazy over Thanksgiving and Christmas, and finished up during Spring break   My quantitative analysis chapter, I wrote in one sitting over several hours.

I think I used the Fielding Institute's guide to writing a dissertatioin as a model.  Made it easy.

[figee]

I think I've posted this before, but to get a PhD realistically you need to work about 4 hours a day, five days a week.  Obviously this varies from person to person, but its a fairly good rule of thumb.  I used to do it in two hourly blocks, or would alternative with a word goal of 2000 words per day.