Today and tonight, I worked on the outline of my dissertation.
This is an exceptionally detailed outline of everything that will go into the dissertation. It is currently at about 4 full pages, and I am not finished with the methods yet. I expect the complete outline will weigh in at about 7 pages.
You may not think that this is that important a step, but without an outline, I tend to wander about as I write, getting nothing concrete done.
I started into this outline at the request of my advisor. He prefers that dissertations be written as one complete document, 'book style', that can (and must) be read start to finish. Other advisors prefer the 'paper collection' style, where each chapter in the document is almost a stand-alone piece that can, ideally, be published without much additional effort. I originally started with the paper collection style, which is why I needed to redo the outline.
While strictly a stylistic preference, the book style allows the author to include everything done while working toward the degree. In my case, the book style makes more sense, since there are large portions of the work that I have done that led to the final product. That work would be more or less left out if I went with the paper collection style.
