Walking on water wasn't built in a day

I am making lots of mental preparations these days for the dissertating process, because there is absolutely no question that I am going to have to change some of my work habits. As a person with somewhat OCD tendencies, I tend to want to keep my work divided up into neat little packets and finish one task at a time whenever possible. It's been a long, long road to multitasking for me, and I'm still particularly obsessive when it comes to writing.

At any rate, the Jack Kerouac approach to writing, in which I work like I've locked myself up in a cabin while hopped up on coffee and Benzedrine, is clearly not going to cut it for a book-length project. And it's going to get righteously in the way of my writing productivity in general.

Dr. McKinney's latest post over at Academic Coach has helped me realize that part of my trouble are the twin terrors that, if I let myself stop working, I'll never finish and that, if I start working, I won't let myself stop until I'm well past the point of exhaustion. This could be an exceptionally useful realization.