Are you getting in the way of your PhD?

Have you ever had that moment at a BBQ or social function where a relative or friend says: “Wow – you’re so smart. I could never do a PhD!” I don’t know about you, but the internal dialogue that would inevitably start up in my head would go something like this:

“Yes. I AM smart. It’s about bloody time Uncle Tim noticed that.

But hang on a second Inger. Are you as smart as John – the  one studying Malaysian history using Foucault? He  gave a great presentation the other day didn’t he? He’s only been doing his PhD for half a year. I have to graduate next year and I clearly haven’t read as much as him – or understood it as well.

Shit!

Calm down woman. You know you can write really, really well. Everything will be ooh-kay. Breathe.

…

But maybe writing well is not enough? Maybe the examiners will see through my act? They’ll notice that I don’t really get the post structuralists. Oh God!

I need another sausage”

If we are to believe the management and self empowerment literature, how we think about the world determines our actions in it. Limiting self beliefs like this can stop you from achieving your goals (in my case it explains why I gained 17kgs while studying!).

Obviously I finished my PhD despite these limiting self beliefs and most people do; you can talk yourself out of them if you try. The more damaging Limiting Beliefs are the ones which lie ‘out there’ – by which I mean in academic circles and in popular culture. Because they don’t seem to be coming from inside you, it’s easier to trapped into believing they are true.

Here are five beliefs about the PhD which I encounter time and time again in my work. Are any of these lurking in your head?

1) Only the smartest people finish their PhD

One of my favourite TV shows is The Big Bang Theory which features three PhD graduates as main characters. Most of the humour comes from the premise that, although the boys are super smart and endearingly quirky, they don’t have much common sense. Shows like this reinforce the myth that people with PhDs are so intelligent that they are somehow alien from the rest of us mortals.

Sadly we only have to look around our own faculties and departments to know this isn’t true. Success in academia depends on more than ‘smarts’. Sometimes it is as basic as being in the right place at the right time or managing your professional networks well. I have seen highly intelligent people fall by the wayside because they got sick of the slog and were smart enough to realise they could make gazillions outside of academia.

2) I’ve always been a great student. PhD? No problem!

Success in undergraduate study does not guarantee success in research degree study. A lot of people refuse to believe me when I make this grand statement in workshops, but it’s true: people have actually studied what makes some grad students succeed and others fail . They have come to the conclusion that a complex mix of social and psychological factors are at play.

If you think about it, success in undergraduate study usually comes from following rules and passing exams, which don’t teach you to be creative or innovative – or develop your emotional maturity. The upside is that you have probably acquired these skills elsewhere: in your professional working life, from hobbies, from parenting and so on. People who come to a PhD later in life often benefit hugely from this ‘other’ knowledge.

3) My supervisor is the foremost expert in his field. I can’t lose!

How do I say this and not get sued? Just because someone is at the top of their field does not mean they are a great supervisor. If someone is at the top of their field they are probably going to be too busy to spend heaps of time reading your work – or soothing your fears. I’ve even heard of supervisors (not in my institution) who have deliberately delayed their students’ studies in order to get more results out of them.

The good thing about being in academia is that there are many ways to access the knowledge of these ‘stars’ without having to be in their orbit. You can read their papers, meet them at conferences or email them questions. If you are lucky they might peer review one of your journal papers. Stars are great examiners because if they like your work they can really help your career. So don’t worry if your supervisor is not a star. Do worry if they are inexperienced – but that’s a topic for another time!

4) Writing a dissertation is just like writing a book – yes?

No.

A thesis is a peculiar kind of document which is meant to demonstrate your scholarly competence, not to entertain. Popular non fiction draws the reader into another world; it doesn’t spend time convincing the reader how smart the author is. Pick up any popular science or history book and you will see the difference immediately. Gone are the brackets containing references. Gone are phrases like “The literature suggests…”. Even academic books are an unhelpful frame of reference; it’s rare for an academic book to contain a whole chapter dedicated to methodology for example.

Besides, thinking you have to produce the definitive tome on some subject or other is daunting. Better writing models for your thesis can be found by reading journal papers in your area. By all means write a book – but later, when you can put (PhD) after your name on the cover.

5) I’ve never heard of anyone failing their PhD, therefore it can’t happen.

I’m not sure about the US, but you can fail your PhD in Australia and the UK. It only happens to about 1% of people so it’s unlikely to happen to you (especially if you are the kind of student who bothers to read The Thesis Whisperer!). However, despite the fact that failing is unlikely, about 5% of people have to do major revisions and be re-examined. This can mean up to a year of extra study with all the hassle and pain that suggests.

Can you think of more beliefs about the PhD which we might be carrying as ‘excess baggage’?

Related Posts

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Confirmation – not as big a deal as you think it is?

Reflecting on fugues and research design

The finish line

This is a guest post by Geof Hill, who trains supervisors and coaches research students. Here Geof offers advice for supervisors and students in the last stages of candidature.

It’s exciting when the individual parts of the dissertation start to come together to produce a coherent argument. But seeing the argument in its fullness also sets the groundwork for self doubt in the student. They ask themselves ‘Is this really worthy? Is the work making a sufficient contribution?’

Recently I was really taken aback by one of my student’s feelings of  ‘impostorhood‘[1] as he approached the finish line. This is his way of describing the doubts about his dissertation and whether it was worthy of being a PhD. What would the examiners think when they read his work? Would they think it was good enough?!

I don’t remember this feeling from my own doctoral candidature; I think I was overcome with the frustration of continually finding more and more spelling and citation errors. It was hard for me to relate to the fears being expressed by my student.

First I tried to encourage him with what I thought were consoling thoughts: examiners don’t set out to fail a dissertation. On the contrary, many examiners believe that the fact that a dissertation has got as far as completion is a demonstration of determination and ability. Next I tried to bolster his confidence by identifying what I saw as the hallmarks of his investigation; what I thought others would recognise as his contributions to knowledge.

I had read the dissertation from start to finish and pointed out the areas that needed correction. Sometimes I had highlighted places where he needed to add more explicit statements - to explain to the reader what the particular sections of the dissertation were trying to do. I did not intend reading and re reading it over and over again. I was worried that each time I reread it, I was becoming less and less objective. My familiarity with the work helped it to make sense for me.

Despite my reassurance it was not all plain sailing!  I may have even said: “Which part of ‘this is ready’ don’t you understand?” I guess what we settled on was a form of mutual patience. I realised what we needed was an outsider to read it – to see what they made of it as a ‘critical friend’.

So we hunted around and found an obliging colleague who agreed to be that objective reader. I had been a reader for my colleague’s doctoral student some months earlier, so this was a form of payback. This reinforced for my student the value of building up a network of interested colleagues. This network is an important part of the research process: you will always need to have colleagues read your work. The  new reader gave us both the assurance that we had not been lulled into a false sense of reason. He reassured us that not only was the quality of the dissertation there, but that it was easily recognised by an independent third party.

As a supervisor, you can build up quite a deep relationship with your student. You see them in their highs and lows. Despite this I think you can still be taken by surprise with some of the strong mood changes that are associated with the final months of candidature.

I tried to maintain a more positive buoyancy rather than impatient curtness – however many times I heard my student’s doubts. In hindsight I guess I was falling back on my effective parenting skills. There are certain parallels between parenting and supervising which some supervisors may not have thought about. One of these is the ability to listen without judgment. I developed this special kind of listening skill when my five year old went through a stage of continually wanted reassurance from me[2]. Regardless of how many times he expressed his fears, I heard them as if it were a first time.

The approach taken with a student falls short of unconditional love, because there are clearly signs of a good dissertation, but the level of patient listening and repetition of positive messages, necessary to put their fears to rest, are perhaps the same.

Eventually the dissertation was printed and packaged off to the examiners and this gave way to a whole new horizon of emotional roller coasting of wishing, and waiting, and hoping and praying! (apologies to Burt Baccarach)

---

[1] Yates and Chandler (1998) have suggested that the idea of impostorhood  began with he work of American clinical psychologist Dr Pauline Clance (Clance & Imes, 1978)

[2] Effective Parenting suggests that when a young child expresses uncertainty or anxiety about a situation, rather than tell them not to worry you reflect what you are hearing from them and this acknowledges that you have recognised that they are anxious.

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The top 5 #phdemotions

Last week I read a Thought Catalogue blog post entitled Five emotions invented by the internet and laughed so hard I snorted the coffee right out of my nose and onto my computer screen.

I have certainly experienced “a vague and gnawing pang of anxiety centered around an IM window that has lulled”, but this one was my favourite:

The state of being ‘installed’ at a computer or laptop for an extended period of time without purpose, characterized by a blurry, formless anxiety undercut with something hard like desperation

Who hasn’t felt this way when working to deadline but unable to overcome the urge to check email/twitterfeed/facebook/google scholar or whatever? There’s something wonderful about discovering others share your own nameless fears and anxieties.

I started to wonder: what new emotions does a PhD make possible? I explored this idea by writing some new PhD emotions and testing them on my PhD student twitter followers  like so:

Irrational feelings of love for academics you have never met because their work helps you in unexpected ways #phdemotions

For those of you not into twitter, the hashtag (#) enables users to make a ‘conversation’. Anyone who included the #tag allows their tweets to be read as part of the same ’thread’. As I hoped, other people followed my lead and started to post their own #phdemotions and a minor meme developed.

Later I nerded out and did a content analysis of sorts to see if I could develop a PhD ‘mood-o-meter’ from all this twitter action (aren’t you lucky my employer pays me to do this sort of stuff?).

According to www.hashtag.org there were 130 tweets containing either #phdemotion or #phdemotions from last Friday to this Tuesday. After massaging similar emotions together I counted a total of 71 distinct emotions.

Now to work out which ones seemed to resonate the most with the audience. If a person really liked the#Phdemotion someone else came up with they could retweet it (add it to their ‘stream’ for others to read) or @mention it (have a conversation with someone else about it). I counted these and added a multiplier if the emotion was both retweeted and mentioned.

Using these scientific (*ahem*) measures for popularity, here are the top 5 emotions made possible by doing a PhD (at least, as determined by PhD students who happened to be on Twitter between the 14th and 18th of January):

1) Elation when you realise you know more than your supervisor about your topic and you feel brave enough to argue about it

This was an amalgam of tweets by @scientistmags, @soilduck @choloe_kitten. It’s not that surprising that this is the most recognised emotion since ‘scholarly independence’ is meant to be the goal of PhD study. I was happy that a positive emotion came out on top

2) Fear of being ‘found out’ as fraud, not really knowing enough/being smart enough to be Phd student (@orientalhotel)

Otherwise known as ‘the imposter syndrome’ (thanks @boredpostdoc) this is apparently common in PhD students. As well as possibly being related to self esteem and perfectionism, this emotion could be the by product of the nature of PhD study itself. As the old cliche goes: “The more you know, the more you know what you don’t know”.

3) Unexpected admiration of your own writing

This feeling happens to me sometimes while editing my own work. Apparently it resonates with others too. As @orientalhotel remarked:  ”That was me yesterday reading my own chapter and thinking, ‘yeah good point self’”. Usually it applies to text you wrote a year or so ago when you weren’t as confused.

4) the “I’m a genius! Why hasn’t anybody thought to do that before?” moment before people point out the obscure paper you’ve not read (@boredpostdoc)

This emotion surely captures the essence of the PhD emotion rollercoaster. Closely related to the emotions described by @wolowic who commented: “xperiencing the manic tidal waves of success and complete failure. good & bad stuff happens unbelievably close together!”

5) Misplaced smugness after photocopying/downloading loads of stuff but not actually reading it (@orientalhotel)

Or as I call it ‘Obsessive Article Collecting’ (OAC). This one got a fair bit of discussion, mostly of the ‘me too!’ variety. I definitely suffered from this one during my PhD, which is why I wrote the post “Are you addicted to your PhD” – which also talks about a possible cure.

There were many, many other great #phdemotions it was a pity to stick to the top five. Happy to do a second top five next week if people are interested.  Do you recognise any of these or have a #phdemotion you would like to share? Let us know!

Why you might be ‘stuck’

In high school I had a history teacher who would talk about the second world war like he was a German soldier. At first his performance was funny. In his hands every victory by the allies became a loss; every weakness of the allies was celebrated and German losses were lamented.

But as the year went on and we learned about the extermination of the Jews, I became increasingly outraged and confused. My teacher seemed to regard these atrocities lightly and have perverse admiration for the German war machine. Was he some kind of escaped Nazi war criminal, or merely deluded?  I began to dread history classes, but I didn’t say anything because – well – it was not my place to question the teacher.

Photo by David Niblack

One day however I couldn’t take it any more and finally put my hand up. I asked him why he thought the Germans were so great. Surely the Allies weren’t all that hopeless. They had won the war hadn’t they? By way of an answer he started telling us his story of fleeing from Europe with his parents at the start of the war. Then he told us he was a Jew.

I realised I was being treated to a fiendishly clever teaching strategy. He was showing us that all history is a story told by someone for a particular purpose. He finished his lecture by asking us: “After this how do you know anything said by a teacher is true?”

This question hit me right in the stomach. I was 16, but (sadly) this is the first time I realised a teacher could consciously choose – or even be forced -  to lie. Simultaneously I realised how conditioned I was to believing teachers unquestioningly. I can honestly say this moment changed my life. I felt liberated. I didn’t have to believe my teachers anymore!

But, for the rest of high school I found learning exhausting and sometimes deeply unsettling. Reluctantly (I was 16 after all and wanted to be thinking about boys at that point) I started to question everything  anyone told me – including my parents. Did they know what they were saying was true, or only believe it? Were they trying to trick me?

Prof Jan Meyer, professor of education, would say that when I realised that teachers could lie I encountered, and crossed over, a ‘threshold concept’: this insight once grasped was unforgettable. It made me see the world in a new and transformed way.

As is common with this kind of learning, before I crossed the threshold concept I had been ‘stuck’, unable even to give voice to my questions. After I crossed the threshold the insight I gained was integrative. It caused other knowledge I had been exposed to fall into place; knowledge about history, the school system, my place in it and even the nature of truth and belief, good and evil. But this changed knowledge led to a changed self and was therefore troublesome. Learning was  no longer routine, but question filled and uncertain.

Being ‘stuck’ is a common experience in doing a PhD, which often manifests as a difficulty in writing. Sometimes it is hard to know why you are stuck, or how to get over it. It could be that you are facing a  threshold concept without realising it.

Researchers Margaret Kiley and Gina Wisker have studied ‘threshold concepts’ in PhD study and came to the remarkable conclusion that certain PhD threshold concepts are consistent across all disciplines. These manifest as a common set of struggles:

• Struggle to understand that a thesis is a claim or defense – not just a collection of work you have done or a way of proving existing beliefs.
• Struggle to be able to articulate a position on ‘the literature’ or locate  the work you are doing within it
• Struggle to develop a theory or a model which allows the findings to be used, or applied to other cases

But I think threshold concepts can be more modest, mundane affairs.You may become stuck because you need to unlearn certain ways of doing things.

For instance, a research student wrote to me after my post on Scrivener thanking me for a sudden insight. He used to be a computer programmer. He realised that he had become ‘stuck’ because he had unconsciously approached research writing in the same way.

He had been trying to plan out all his chapters before writing them as he would a program. As a result he was becoming disheartened at the size and difficulty of the task. My description of myself as a messy writer suddenly provoked a simple, but powerful, realization: he could write ‘chunks’ of his thesis, without necessarily knowing what was coming next.

In grasping this he has realised something important about the whole process of research. Sometimes you don’t have to know what the outcome of a process will be – you just have to do it and see what happens.

It is hard for a supervisor to help a student through such a block because they are not always visible in the student’s behaviour. As the psychologist R.D Laing put it:

He does not think there is anything the matter with him
because
one of the things that is the matter with him
is that he does not think there is anything the matter with him

A lot of the advice on doing a PhD does not recognise these conceptual blocks. Many treat doing a thesis like a project which has to be ‘managed’, not a difficult and troublesome learning process.

Research degree learning involves encountering and changing some deeply habitual ways of operating and thinking. The project management approach doesn’t always work. Unfortunately, when it doesn’t, it’s all too easy to blame yourself for not working ‘efficiently’ – when this isn’t the problem you need to solve.

Even if you recognise the problem, crossing a threshold means you will probably encounter ‘troublesome’ knowledge. For our computer programmer the realisation that a thesis must be written ‘messily’ will not be easy to live with. Writing messily means you produce a lot of excess which has to be pared back.

I think the idea of ‘threshold concepts’ helps us think more positively about  ‘being stuck’ . Being stuck can be a sign you are becoming aware that you are, as Jack Mezirow put it, ‘caught in your own history’. A good way to move forward is to ask yourself: “Is there anything I need to unlearn?”

Is your computer domesticating you?

This week I started using ‘Scrivener’ for writing my research papers. It’s a word processing program which has been on the Mac for some years, but only now is being developed for the PC.

It took less than 5 minutes to start loving this program. In a single morning I had a decent draft of a paper, which can sometimes take me weeks. I wasn’t at all surprised to read in the bio of the developer that writing this software was part of his “struggle to put together a PhD thesis” because I think it fits reseach writing like a glove.

This got me thinking (again) about the connections between research thinking, the actions required in research writing and how the computer shapes both – mostly invisibly. The Philosopher Michel Foucault claimed (and please forgive the drastic simplification those of you who are steeped in the subtleties of Foucault) the way we think and act is always shaped by the action of other people and things. These other actors have the most influence on us when we think they are not acting. The bird who sits in the cage even when the door is open has failed to notice the cage anymore; the bird accepts its imprisonment not as an action of a cage, or an owner, but as a simple fact of existence.

So it is with Microsoft Word I am sorry to say. Using Scivener has made me realise why I find writing research papers so damn frustrating. Put simply, over the years Microsoft Word has ‘domesticated’ me. I think and do things the way it wants me to and it is cramping my style. Since it’s top five thursday here’s five ways in which this is happening:

1) I don’t think like a typewriter

I haven’t studied this, but I’m pretty sure when the first word processors were developed they modeled the action of typewriters – a series of ‘blank’ pages waiting to have words stamped on them. But a typewriter is not like a human – it doesn’t think as it writes.

If Microsoft Word conceptualises a document as sequential paper sheets which you ‘stamp’ words on; Scivener sees your writing as a loose collection of fragments which can be modified and reassembled as you go. When you are done you can ‘compile’ the fragments to produce a linear document.

This is an elegant idea which recognises that it is extremely difficult to write complex document like a thesis ‘straight’. It’s helpful to start by working smaller pieces in parallel and then work out how they go together.

2) It’s hard to be messy in a clean way

As I write I have ideas – some of them don’t relate to the bit I am writing at that specific moment, so I often ‘jot notes’ on my documents as I go. At the moment I use the comments function in Word to do this, which makes my documents look messy. In fact, so messy that I often turn the comments off just so I can see what I am doing.

But – out of sight is out of mind and the ideas can easily get lost when they are invisible. In addition, the format of the comments is uncomfortable to read. By contrast each of the Scrivener fragments I write has metadata attached to it where I can jot to my heart’s content.

3) It’s hard to change my mind

I am a ‘make a mess and then clean it up’ writer. I write, rewrite over it, insert bits, inadvertently repeat myself and change my mind. The simple length of pages in Microsoft Word makes it exhausting for me to write this way because I am always scrolling up and down chasing errant bits of text. Sometimes whole sections have to be moved around – in moments of tiredness accidentally deleting things can be a problem.

Scrivener solves this problem by showing you the fragments as a ‘tree’ diagram with folders and subfolders. You can easily drag a fragment up and down in the ‘tree’ to change where it appears in the running order. If you accidentally delete a piece of text (and here is a stroke of pure brilliance) you can fish it out of the trash folder.

4) Research is not just about words

Research writing involves analysing information, synthesising it and crafting it into new forms. Information appears in the form of words, diagrams, tables and images. Often I want to see these as I write so I can do the analysing and synthesising as I go.

Mr Thesis Whisperer recognised my problem awhile back and kindly bought me a second widescreen monitor, which he cleverly rotated to resemble a piece of paper. I write on this screen and have my flotsam on the other.

But in Scrivener the miscellaneous ‘stuff’ I have can be ported directly into the ‘research’ section of my document, so it is always attached to the project I am working on. Scrivener does the work of remembering which articles or images are pertinent to the piece I am working on and I can use a split screen view to see any of this ‘stuff’ side by side with my writing. I imagine this will cut down on the amount of PDFs I print out.

5) Death by Feature

Microsoft Word is old and has been suffering feature creep for some time. There’s just so many bells and whistles now; I don’t know how to operate half of them – or even what they are for. The designers of Microsoft Word get credit for the fact that I can still turn out documents without understanding most of the program.

My point is that it may well be that everything I am moaning about can be done in Word, but it’s hard for me to find out how. There’s far fewer buttons in Scrivener – therefore much less to learn. It’s a much more restful writing environment, which helps me find the creative head space I need.

So that’s my rave review. Scrivener for PC is still in Beta release so some of the functions have yet to be turned on and it’s a little buggy, but so far I’ve been careful with my backups and haven’t lost any work.

I like the way the developer is modest about his work and recognises that no one writing program suits everyone… what’s your favourite writing software? Are there tweaks which you can recommend which might mimic what programs like Scrivener have to offer?

An open letter to social media

The following is a book review in the style of the McSweeney Open Letters to entities that are unlikely to respond. If you are not really a Twitter devotee you could insert Facebook or email – any digital application which connects you to the crowd and sometimes gets in the way of your work.

Hi Twitter

It’s me, @Thesiswhisperer. I’ve been wondering for awhile if we need to break up.

It’s not that I don’t love you. You know that I do – you have only to count the Tweets. I think the problem is that I love you too much.

I love you because you connect me. When I am looking at you I feel like I am inside other people’s minds. When I read the tweets of others I consume their thoughts and ideas. This is a kind of intimacy I didn’t even know I craved before you came along dear Twitter. And, as a highly social primate, I can’t get enough.

But it’s more than your powers of connection which makes me love you Twitter. Before you came along the internet seemed like a vast mountain range. I found web surfing frustrating and exhausting. I couldn’t consume all the internet had to offer me in an efficient or enjoyable way.

That’s where you filled yet another need Twitter. By following people who I am interested in, I find out what they are reading and usually it interests me too. Before I knew it I had found a series of tracks through that vast digital Nepal. With your @ mention function I started to have conversations with these mountain guides – and even friendships.

It’s nice to know next time I go to London there are people I might meet for a coffee and a chat. When other Twitter lovers visit my city they might drop by my office, or come to my lectures. I have you to thank for this expansion of my professional and personal life Twitter and I am grateful.

Because of you Twitter, I feel like I have an identity in that digital space which I didn’t have before. I am @thesiswhisperer as well as Dr Mewburn, Inger or any other name which others might call me. While being Inger is still undeniably special, I think I enjoy being @thesiswhisperer more than being Dr Mewburn. Dr Mewburn is far more serious; she has RESPONSIBILITIES. Thanks to you, Twitter, I finally have a working knowledge of the post modern condition of multiple identities – and it feels pretty good.

Most of the time.

The problem is Twitter – I have to eat. My family has to have a roof over its head and my son has to be educated. Therefore I have to have a job. While I happen to love my job, working can sometimes be less fun than being with you. A lot of my work involves writing, which, let’s face it, is not a very social activity for my primate self.

When I work on a screen you are always there, in the background, tempting me with your connectivity. I find you hard to resist Twitter – even though I know that sometimes you are not good for me. That’s why, lately, I have been wondering if we should break up.

But there might be hope for us yet Twitter. @Jacqueskosky gave me a book called “Hamlet’s Blackberry” for my birthday, probably because he was worried about me. Mr Powers understands my problem with you: excessive connectivity is making it hard to produce and nurture my own ideas.

This book has helped me to start to work through our problems Twitter. Did you know that Socrates had a suspicion that the newfangled invention of writing would be bad for thinking work? Mr Powers told me that Plato, who was a younger man, disagreed. Plato wrote about Socrates because he believed that writing enables ideas to leap across time and distance. He understood that thoughts recorded on a scroll enabled us to reflect on the ideas of others who are not physically present.

But Socrates had a point. The Roman power broker Seneca, some 400 years later, struggled with the distractions of living in the big city where there were so many books to read – the very same problem you make for me Twitter. Mr powers told me that Seneca found solace and focus in the act of writing – but I feel this is not the answer for our problems. Writing is already in our relationship and it doesn’t seem to be helping that much.

According to Mr Powers, after Gutenberg developed the printing press the problem of text distraction only got worse. When you read ‘in your head’ you are able to have new thoughts about the ideas in the text. This is why monks always read aloud: reading silently was frowned upon as weird, or even seditious. I imagine that was a hard time for scholars like me Twitter – libraries would have been noisy places.

Later, in Shakespeare’s time, busy people used a kind of erasable notebook to create meaning and order amongst the bustle of city and literary life. Mr Powers explained to me that a notebook or journal is a way of ‘curating’ ideas - bringing them into a relationship with each other. It seems to me Twitter that you don’t do this particularly well. All the ideas you present have the same importance – it is hard to drink from a fire hose.

I might use a notebook, write about my ideas and read in my own head to create focus, but no matter what my good intentions might be, Twitter, the urge to spend time with you remains. This is where, Mr Power claims, I must take up Benjamin Franklin’s technique of ‘Philosophical denial’. Ben Franklin liked the ladies – “venery’ (or sex) was high on his list of things which distracted him from his work, along with drinking. So he made up a set of guidelines for his life, one of which was temperance or avoiding excess.

So, my darling Twitter, my new year’s resolution is to temper our relationship by following Mr Powers’ advice. Most days I will only see you after 3pm – unless I have idle time on public transport to fill. Don’t worry about this time we will spent apart – I’m sure it will make our relationship stronger.

Yours with great affection

@thesiswhisperer