From Blank Page to Finished Essay: How to Harness Productive Struggle

In this episode, I dive into how to harness productive struggle throughout the essay writing process.

Writing essays can be overwhelming, with countless opportunities to feel panicky and unsure.

This episode is packed with practical strategies to turn your struggle into a powerful tool for writing better essays.

I’ll help you recognise and overcome unproductive struggle, adopt a growth mindset, become a master problem solver, and take care of yourself during the writing process.

Whether you're grappling with understanding essay questions, planning, or editing, I’ll guide you step-by-step from blank page to finished essay.

This post originated as a podcast episode which you can listen to below or search for episode 162 of the Chloe Made Me Study podcast. Or, if you’re more of a learn-by-reading student, carry on for the rough-and-ready blog version based on the podcast script.

Welcome to episode SIX of this six-part series all about how to write better essays.

Episode 157, shared the 5 simple, essential requirements of every first class essay.

Episode 158 shared how to use the PEEL method to write powerful paragraphs.

Episode 159 was all about my simple technique to stop the tangents so you can actually answer your essay question (and achieve high marks).

Episode 160 was about overcoming the big barrier that’s stopping you from achieving higher grades.

Anddd last week, episode 161, was about how to unlock higher essay grades with a nifty thing called Bloom’s Taxonomy. So be sure to check these out if you haven’t yet.

This week, we’re going to look again at the topic of productive struggle – something we looked at in more general studying terms in episode 156. But this time we’re diving into how to harness productive struggle specifically throughout the essay writing process. Because writing essays can be daunting as hell. There are a million potential opportunities to feel overwhelmed and panicky and unsure. So this episode is FULL of practical ways to turn this struggle into a tool you can use to write better essays. Let’s go!

Recognising unproductive struggle in your essay writing

Let’s begin by identifying what unproductive struggle looks like in essay writing and how it differs from productive struggle. Productive struggle is when you engage with challenging tasks in a way that promotes learning and skill development. It's about persistence, problem solving, effort, learning from mistakes and pushing through discomfort. Feeling stupid and slow but carrying on anyway until you make progress and reach a breakthrough.

On the other hand, unproductive struggle happens when you’re facing tough times in your studying but they do not lead to meaningful learning or growth. You feel overwhelmed and stressed, you see struggle as evidence of your own lack of ability, you make mistakes but aren’t able to learn from them. Unproductive struggle can lead to frustration, a sense of failure, crappy results and disengagement from learning.

Have you ever stared at the blank page of your essay document, the cursor blinking at you, taunting you, and felt so overwhelmed and ill-equipped that you just can’t start?

Have you ever put off working on your essay and procrastinated in every way imaginable because you lacked confidence in your ability to write a good essay?

Or perhaps you’ve started writing and then become so overwhelmed at your lack of progress or your mountain of potential material that you’ve frozen, unable to make any progress?

These are all signs of unproductive struggle.

Let me introduce you to Sarah, a psychology student I worked with earlier this year. Before she came to me, Sarah had to write an essay discussing the impact of social media on teenage mental health. Sarah was super interested in the topic but when it came down to working on the essay, she found herself in unproductive struggle. She struggled to manage the vast amount of possibly relevant material and she had so many ideas that she couldn’t work out how to narrow them down to just 2,000 words. She avoided the task more and more, or she’d sit at her desk with her essay document open but somehow hours would pass without the word count increasing. Sarah ended up writing her essay in a last-minute panic and the result was a rushed essay with a low mark that didn’t reflect her hard work and passion. I had a coaching call with Sarah where I taught her lots of simple strategies to adopt a more productive struggle approach for her next essay.

Transitioning to productive struggle

So, how do we move from unproductive to productive struggle in our essay writing? Here are four core strategies to adopt.

#1 Understand that struggle IS learning

Embrace the idea that struggle is a natural, unskippable part of learning. Every time you face a challenge and work through it, you learn and grow. You build resilience, knowledge and skills that you can then use to make better, faster progress next time. So struggling to study for, plan or write an essay is not a sign of failure or a sign that you’re not a good student. Instead, it’s a welcome sign that you’re doing higher education right – you’re pushing your boundaries and developing new skills that will help you write better essays in future.

#2 Adopt a growth mindset

A growth mindset is the belief that your abilities can improve with effort and practice. This is super key for your essays. Instead of seeing your current highest essay grade as the ceiling of your ability, a growth mindset helps you realise that you can smash through that limit by developing your essay writing skills. So, if you’re struggling with an essay, instead of thinking 'I can’t do this,' try thinking 'I can’t do this YET.' This simple extra word makes a huge difference in how you approach challenges – seeing things you’ve not yet achieved as possible rather than impossible.

#3 Become a master problem solver

To engage in productive struggle you need to be scrappy. When faced with problems in your essay process, such as not knowing how to structure your paragraphs or not knowing how to be more critical in your analysis – you need to hunt for solutions until you find something that works. This might look like trying different techniques for planning and writing your essays. You might need to try different productivity hacks to find what works for you. You might have to reach out for support – clarity from your tutor, support from a study skills coach, a pep talk from a friend. The key to productive struggle is that you keep trying and don’t give up.

#4 Look after yourself

Productive struggle is uncomfortable and stressful so it’s important that you find ways that work for you to engage in self care. Without it, you’re going to struggle to engage your resilience and problem solving skills. So take regular breaks. If you’re feeling completely stuck with an essay, take a break to do something that will fill your cup and then come back to the problem with fresh energy. 

Using productive struggle throughout the essay writing process

Now, let’s talk about how to use productive struggle at different stages of the essay writing process – from blank page to finished essay. I’ll share practical things you can do at these different stages, and I’ll walk you through more of my example with Sarah, the psychology student, to help you apply the learning to your own essay writing process.

1. Understanding the essay question

Common challenges at this stage stem from a struggle to understand what is being asked. The question may feel unclear or the guidance confusing, you may find it difficulty to identify the scope of the question (what to include or not), and some of the terminology may be confusing, whether that’s unfamiliar subject terms or alien academic jargon e.g. what on earth does it mean to ‘critically assess’?

Productive struggle at this stage requires you to really get stuck into breaking down the question and guidance. Read everything multiple times, line by line. Highlight words you’re not sure of, note down any immediate ideas you have, look up unfamiliar terms in your course material or on Google. Productive struggle means not giving up until you have a super clear grasp of the question – otherwise you’re likely to shoot yourself in the foot later by writing an essay that’s not fully aligned.

For Sarah’s next essay, she was tasked to ‘critically examine the effects of childhood trauma on adult relationships.’ She read through all the guidance and, although the guidance didn’t specifically tell her where to find the relevant material, she engaged in productive struggle to go through her lecture materials and textbook chapter titles to find the most relevant sources.

2. Studying the relevant material

Two common issues here are: 1) becoming overwhelmed at the sheer volume of material that could be included and 2) engaging in the material at a surface level, which will slow down your essay writing process later.

Productive struggle at this stage requires you to push through the discomfort of this overwhelm, knowing that it’s a very normal process to feel like there’s way too much material. You’ll want to engage at a deeper level, adding your own thoughts and ideas about how your course material could be used specifically to answer your essay question.

For Sarah’s essay on the effects of childhood trauma on adult relationships, she started by examining lots of different angles to the question – the different types of adult relationships and the different types of effects. She organised her notes and ideas and persisted through the moments where she felt tempted to just go clean the bathroom instead.

3. Planning the essay

Common struggles here include trying to work out what is important enough to be included and then trying to find a coherent order for your ideas. This is where it’s common for students to fall into unproductive struggle – making plans, scrapping them, making more plans and then scrapping them again. Yes, you want to map out your core arguments, but you also need to drop the perfectionism and understand that your plan needs to be flexible. You’ll likely include ideas that need to be cut later and you’ll likely find gaps later that you need to fill. You also want to not be too precious about the order at this stage. Everything can be moved around once it’s on the page – don’t try to do this in your head!

For Sarah, she found herself struggling with the scope of her essay. She found SO much material that she started to question her approach. After trying to work it out by herself for a bit (a core part of productive struggle), she did the right thing and reached out to her tutor for clarification on whether she should try to cover every type of adult relationship and possible effect on them of childhood trauma or whether she should narrow her focus. Her tutor advised the latter, that Sarah should cover fewer ideas in greater depth, to give her word count to go to the depth required to do a critical examination.

4. Writing the draft

A big issue here is writer’s block, and then the self-doubt that comes alongside this. You might get stuck and have no idea what to write next. You might doubt whether what you’ve written is any good which leads you to delete whole sections and start again, or to simply shut your laptop and run away for a few days. You may know what you want to write but struggle to get the words onto the page, unsure how to structure your ideas in a clear, formal, persuasive way.

The way to engage in productive struggle during this stage is to shun perfectionism and embrace one of my favourite essay writing mantras – the first thing you write will be shite. Sarah wrote her first draft by focusing on getting her main ideas down in simple language and short sentences. She highlighted sections she wasn't sure about and added comments to herself to revisit things later. She persevered through those discomforting thoughts that what she was writing was naff, telling herself that she’ll smarten things up in the edit.

5. Editing the draft

Editing can be a real struggle for a lot of students. You might find it hard to spot weaknesses in your arguments, structure or language. You might find that editing just makes you doubt yourself more so it’s easier to just avoid it (though you know you shouldn’t). You might find it really tedious and boring and want to just say ‘screw it!’ and submit it how it is. But it’s a sign of productive struggle to push past the discomfort and tedium to really refine your writing so you can achieve higher grades. 

Sarah took a break between writing and editing to rest and refill her cup, then she got down to it. She found it worked to pretend that she hadn’t written the essay, that she was reviewing someone else’s work. This helped her to separate her own self-worth and judgement so she could engage in productive struggle and push through the proofreading stage to then submit something she’d be proud of.

6. Learning from feedback

Productive struggle here may require you to push yourself out of your comfort zone and ask for more feedback from your tutor, or go back to them and request more detailed feedback or clarification on some of their comments so you can work out what to do differently next time. This can feel pretty terrifying and therefore some students might slip into unproductive struggle, failing to learn from feedback and failing to improve their skills between essays.

It’s taken me a while to view feedback in this way, and I do still have a wobble every now and then, but now I try to see feedback as a gift – if it is said in a kind way. Imagine having food stuck in your teeth – wouldn’t you rather someone tell you than let you walk around with it all day? The same goes for your writing. Embrace feedback as a chance to improve.

By engaging in productive struggle throughout, Sarah was able to write and submit a MUCH better essay. So much so that her marks increased from 58% to 73% in just one essay. She carefully reviewed the feedback from her tutor, line by line. For example, her tutor told her she could have spent less word count describing and explaining the effects of childhood trauma, freeing up more words to hit those higher level skills of analysis and evaluation. As Sarah took my Write Better Essays programme six months ago, she made a plan to learn from her feedback and go back to the relevant resources and parts of the training to improve those skills.

Summary

So there we have it. Essay writing IS challenging at times, but you can choose whether to let those challenges overwhelm you and leave you stressed, doubtful and achieving grades that you’re not loving, OR you can lean into these challenges and embrace productive struggle. Yes, it means pushing through and past some discomfort. But you know that pushing yourself out of your comfort zone is how you grow. And that struggling productively is going to make you not only a better student, but also a more calm and confident one. Oh and it will massively improve your grades too.