Gina J. Hiatt, PhD Profile and Articles

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1). The 3 P’s: Perfectionism, Procrastination, and Paralysis
Do you set your standards high, but always feel like you've failed? Learn about the 3 "P's" and end the vicious cycle that keeps you stuck and ineffective.

The Vicious Cycle
Perfectionism, procrastination, and paralysis – one often leads to the next, in a vicious cycle, especially on large, long-term projects with no clear deadlines. Let’s look at each part of this cycle, and explore some concrete steps that you can take to disrupt the cycle.

2). Get It Out Of Your Head And Into a Mind Map
Do you ever feel like you have some great ideas, but when you sit down to write them, they're not so great? Or even worse, you can't really get a sense of what the ideas were? In one of my graduate student coaching groups we have been discussing the difficulty of translating partly formed ideas into words on paper. One technique that makes use of a normally underutilized part of our brain is called "Mind Mapping.

3). Tackle Big Projects with Action-Item Lists
“I know what I need to do; why do I need to write it down? You may have fallen into the trap of thinking this way. And hey, if it works for you, that’s great!

I find, however, that many people with too much to do, or with large projects looming in front of them get into a state of complete overload because they haven’t prepared themselves by keeping very simple action-item lists.

4). Is Time Your Enemy? Conquer Time with an “Unschedule!”
Time can be your friend or your enemy. For many people who have “free time” to accomplish long-term projects or writing tasks, it is a merciless tyrant. It is just too easy to allow the slightly harder task to slide, as you fill in your day with the humdrum and the emergencies.

The Enemy You Don’t Know CAN Hurt You

In Procrastination: Why You Do It; What to Do About It by Jane Burka and Lenor Yuen, the authors suggest that procrastinators (which I’m convinced means most of us) have a strange relationship with time.

5). Junior Faculty Balancing Act: Teaching, Part I
My website poll of 96 junior faculty members has an unequivocal winner. The poll asks, "What is the hardest part about being a junior faculty member?" Over a third of the respondents chose "Teaching takes up so much time" as their response.

Exactly How Time Consuming is Teaching? Surveys of how professors spend their time indicate that professors as a group, from junior to full professors, spend 29-30 hours a week at a minimum on activities related to teaching.

6). Are You Setting Yourself Up to Procrastinate?
Are You Setting Yourself Up to Procrastinate?

"How can I stop procrastinating?"
This is by far the most frequent question that I get from graduate students and professors. As a dissertation and tenure coach, I’ve come to realize that everyone in academia, whether writing a dissertation, completing an article, or doing research, struggles with procrastination.

7). Eight Principles of Successful Non-Profit Web Projects
Building a global online network between multiple stakeholders can be a daunting task. Especially when the primary challenges have less to do with technology and more to do with human emotions. This article boils down three days of meetings with three leaders of best practice web portals into eight simple principles for successful large-scale web projects.

8). Fear of Publishing and What to Do About It
You’re almost done with the whole article. You should feel relieved. Instead you feel like you’ve written a bunch of junk.

It’s funny, though. At other times you’ve felt that you’ve written something worthwhile.

Now, however, you feel the urge to read several more articles, add more footnotes, edit it some more, or check your email. Anything but wrap it up and send it in.