MGMT 8910M Week 1 Discussion Post Example

Week 1 Discussion: Why the Last Big Document Stalled

Thirty Pages and an Empty Analysis Section: A Discussion Post Diagnosing Why a Capstone on Spare-Parts Inventory Stalled, Tracing It to the Order of Work and to Weekend Bursts, and Setting One Rule for the Dissertation

The Stalled Document

My master's capstone was a study of how a regional equipment dealer set reorder points for its spare parts. I abandoned it at page thirty after redrafting the introduction six times, while the analysis section, which was supposed to hold the results of the reorder simulation, stayed empty.

The Diagnosis

The introduction kept moving because I did not yet know what I was arguing. Every time I read a new article on inventory policy, the framing seemed to need adjusting, and so I adjusted it. But the argument could not settle until the analysis existed, because the analysis was where I would find out whether the dealer's reorder points were too high, too low or roughly right. I had arranged the work so that the part I kept rewriting depended on the part I never started. The order of work guaranteed the stall.

The second half of the diagnosis is about how I wrote. I worked in weekend bursts: long Saturdays when I could produce eight or ten pages, followed by two or three weeks of nothing. Boice (1997) compared writers who worked in binges with new professors who wrote in brief daily sessions, and found that the binge writers produced far less overall, received fewer acceptances and listed fewer ideas for writing. My bursts felt productive, but most of what they produced was another version of the introduction. Silvia (2007) makes the same point in practical terms: writing is scheduled, like teaching, rather than waited for.

One Rule for the Dissertation

My rule for the dissertation is a weekly page quota of five pages that only moves forward. Pages count only if they are in a chapter I have not drafted before, and revisions do not count toward the quota. The introduction will stay as a labeled placeholder, a half page saying what the study is about and marked "to be rewritten after chapters two and three," until the literature review and method chapter exist. Writing sessions will be one hour on weekday mornings, four days a week, which is the pace Boice's moderate writers kept. Buehler et al. (1994) found that our forecasts of our own finishing dates run early even when we remember earlier tasks overrunning, so I will check the quota against my actual output after four weeks and adjust it to what I really produce.

Reply to Janelle

Janelle, you describe your stall as perfectionism, but your example, rewriting the literature review because the method changed, sounds more like the order-of-work problem. Did the method change because the review kept growing, or did the review grow because the method was unsettled? The answer might tell you which chapter to hold as a placeholder.

Reply to Victor

Victor, your rule of writing whenever you have a free evening may reproduce the burst pattern Boice describes, since free evenings come unevenly. Would a fixed session, even thirty minutes, on three set mornings be easier to keep? You could test both for two weeks and count pages.

References

Boice, R. (1997). Which is more productive, writing in binge patterns of creative illness or in moderation? Written Communication, 14(4), 435-459. https://doi.org/10.1177/0741088397014004001

Buehler, R., Griffin, D., & Ross, M. (1994). Exploring the "planning fallacy": Why people underestimate their task completion times. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(3), 366-381. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.3.366

Silvia, P. J. (2007). How to write a lot: A practical guide to productive academic writing. American Psychological Association.