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I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

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Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#181

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

theshrike79 wrote: post #48
scrappyjoe wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is genius. Anecdotally I’ve seen a high correlation between procrastination and perfectionism. Once you have a vomit draft I can see how the perfectionist bent suddenly works in your favour.

When coding I have a rule: "first make it work, then make it pretty". The MVP can be a complete spaghetti piece of crap, just make it work. When it works, you can iterate on making it elegant. Oh, and if you work for a Corporation, don't tell them it's done when the crappy MVP finally works. You're still "working on it" if they ask. Otherwise the spaghetti crap will end up in production.

My teammate says he does this. Writes everything three times, and is careful not to let _anyone_ see the first two, lest somebody tell him it's "good enough."

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#182

Post by bruce343434 »

cf141q5325 wrote: post #108
Schroedingers2c wrote: post #41

A question to the community: I find it a bit weird how as an undergraduate you have no idea what a PhD is like. At the same time, no-one really tells you. Everyone just says "research is quite different to doing an undergrad degree". I have not encountered any educational little seminars or support systems that basically tell you: look, this is is what doing a PhD is like, this is what you generally are expected to d…

Its not about efficiency, it is an exam situation.

what is the exam?

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#183

Post by hrnnnnnn »

KVFinn wrote: post #2

If you're not just making slow progress but literally unable to make a single bit of progress, my goto strategy is similar to what writers call a vomit draft. For writing it conventionally means means writing words without stopping to plan or edit, no corrections allowed, the rule is you just have to keep typing, no matter what. It's about something being better than nothing, creating momentum, and also avoids being…

"Write drunk, edit sober."

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#184

Post by cptnapalm »

shikshake wrote: post #27

Hey, I'm the author of this blog post. I didn't think anyone would even read it, let alone post it on HN. To be honest it's a little scary how many people are seeing this post since it's basically my 2am anxiety-fueled cry for help. But it's also motivating reading all these comments from people who've had similar experiences and are offering encouragement. I'm reading every one of your replies and they're giving me…

A friend of mine took something over a decade to get around to doing his. So, don't despair!

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#185

Post by hansbo »

lordswork wrote: post #175
KVFinn wrote: post #2

If you're not just making slow progress but literally unable to make a single bit of progress, my goto strategy is similar to what writers call a vomit draft. For writing it conventionally means means writing words without stopping to plan or edit, no corrections allowed, the rule is you just have to keep typing, no matter what. It's about something being better than nothing, creating momentum, and also avoids being…

This sounds like great advice. In an attempt to see if it works for me, I thought I'd give it a shot, so I set a timer for 2 minutes and started typing a response without a real idea of what I was going to say. I'd say it's pretty effective, but I do tend to fill in a lot of meaningless content as I think of what to write next. I guess the next iteration of edits can trim that out though. I could have used this in th…

Nicely done! Not sure I could tell this was not just another HN post if you didn't explicitly say so.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#186

Post by ttul »

annie_muss wrote: post #12

Here's my thesis procrastination story: I remember sitting in the explanation lecture, 18 months before the deadline for my undergrad thesis. Even then, I was nervous about handing it in on time. So I did the usual things, made week by week plans, asked my supervisor to check in with me etc. Of course, as a serial procrastinator I didn't come close to sticking to the plan. I fiddled around with a few things but didn'…

This 100%. If you understand what needs to be done, you want the long term goal, and yet you still feel severe emotional pain when trying to engage in the work required, it might be ADHD. I highly recommend to anyone who struggles with procrastination that they go see a doctor or psychologist who can assess them for ADHD. And, yes, it takes a skilled professional to diagnose you.

Take heart: “ADHD impairs the functioning of highly intelligent people, so the disorder can be diagnosed in this group. A population-based birth cohort study of over 5700 children found no significant differences among children with high, average, or low IQ and ADHD in median age at which ADHD criteria were met, rates of learning disorders, psychiatric disorders, and substance abuse, and rates of stimulant treatment (Katusic et al., 2011; Rommelse et al., 2017).”

https://www.adhdevidence.org/ics#diagnosed

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#187

Post by jurassic »

It’s okay to quit. The academic world has exploitation baked into it so it’s rare for people to be told that directly by those benefiting from your continued participation, but it’s okay to quit. If the thesis is making you this miserable you might not be cut out for research, and that’s okay. There are many other easier and more economically fruitful ways to spend your life.

I quit my PhD and it was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. I came pretty close to killing myself (no exaggeration) during my PhD because of how much shame and humiliation I felt about not succeeding at something for the first time ever in my life. I made regular visits to the rooftop of my lab building at night where I would sit crying and trying to work up the nerve to jump off. If that’s how you’re feeling, just leave. It’s not worth it.

If you can find your way into tech you’ll soon be making more than all your professors without having to spend another decade or more going through the hazing process known as the tenure track. The grass is most definitely greener.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#188

Post by DSingularity »

Fell wrote: post #123
augustk wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Make it work 2. Make it right 3. Make it performant (if too slow).

I disagree. 1. Make it work 2. Make it performant (always, but within reason) 3. Clean up your mess to prevent future mistakes I claim that "if too slow" can't be judged because you almost never have the slowest possible target device.

I disagree with all of you.

Make it work. Then make it maintainable. Then polish it to make it more ideal.

When it works it can be spaghetti and lack testing and filled with hacks. After you make it maintainable it can still be less than ideal — some hacks here and there in leaf functions but things are localized and understandable and non-brittle (ie good testing coverage, design which has appropriate abstraction, refactors to promote test ability, no more spaghetti etc etc). Then in the final step you polish the stuff to gold (ie use better solutions or improve performance). It is the only way.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#189

Post by frob »

When I was writing my thesis I had one rule that kept me going: one page a day. Every day I had to add at least one page to my thesis. It could come from text or charts or a table or the bibliography or wherever, but that page count had to go up every day.

Some days, I added a paragraph that spilled over onto the first line of a new page and that was that. Other days, one page became five became 20 as I hit a rhythm. It was always about giving myself that chance to hit it off for the day.

Re: I've procrastinated working on my thesis for more than a year

#190

Post by yonz »

shikshake wrote: post #27

Hey, I'm the author of this blog post. I didn't think anyone would even read it, let alone post it on HN. To be honest it's a little scary how many people are seeing this post since it's basically my 2am anxiety-fueled cry for help. But it's also motivating reading all these comments from people who've had similar experiences and are offering encouragement. I'm reading every one of your replies and they're giving me…

I see your ted link and i raise you my favorite one about creativity and procrastination https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_urban_inside_the_mind_of_a_mas...

I for one appreciated reading this post and as you can see below there are a lot of well off people who have had similar experiences.

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