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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

#221

Post by psychomugs »

afr0ck wrote: post #134
croisillon wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My GF started working on her Master Thesis in 2011. A few things happened like moving to another city and some short jobs here and there. She was really dreading even thinking about it, constantly waiting for next year's updated statistics. Me trying to help also upset her, we were in a bad place in that respect. In 2015 she started going to a university help group but it still didn't really help. In 2016 I convinced…

Mind boggling. I wrote my Masters thesis in one week. Mind you, it's computer science (I did some work on distributed systems and contributed to the Kubernetes container orchestrator), the professors don't stress that much on the writing as long as you did a valuable work. However, I also saw that as a waste of time, so I was just trying to get rid of it asap and write whatever. It's shocking when I hear people procr…

Congratulations. Other people have other ways of allocating value to their work, of which the written thesis is a crucial component not external to it.

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

#222

Post by m3kw9 »

When you are a team of one, you are basically the team leader to yourself in charge of motivating that team. You usually get that at an office setting so that’s why it gets tough going at it alone. Fixing mental blockers is a good move as that is a huge blocker for you it seems. But don’t wait for the sky to clear to make some moves, do that Vomit writing thing to get you moving inbetween or whatever you can muster by setting very tiny goals. Just keep moving and you’d be surprised one day

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

#223

Post by TsukiZombina »

It sounds like you are not even trying, really trying. Obviously, you are going to feel guilty and anxious if you don't make any progress, so make at least a little progress, even if it's not the technical part or reading papers to get ideas, instead you taked 1-month vacation. If you hated it, just quit.

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

#224

Post by sharperguy »

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…

"[discussing his last exam] Last time I only failed by the narrowest of narrow margins"

"You what? You walked in there, wrote "I AM A fish" four hundred times, did a funny little dance and fainted!"

- Red Dwarf

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

#226

Post by psychomugs »

iamflimflam1 wrote: post #197
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…

It is extremely weird. Certainly my experience when I did my PhD was not a great one. Combining someone who was not mature enough to self direct with a supervisor who didn't know how to manage was a terrible combination. I managed to muddle through, and I did learn a lot over my time. But it's definitely ones of those situations that you back on and wonder what could have been achieved under different circumstances.…

I just finished last year in the US and your first paragraph sums up my experience.

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

#227

Post by abhayhegde »

low_tech_love wrote: post #121
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 finished my PhD with more than one year delay from the "normal" time because I also spent basically 2 years playing video games and not doing shit. Today I'm an associate professor with a nice job and good salary... so yeah, you can survive it! :) But seriously though, let me try to give you a couple of advices: first of all, the idea that you need to work on a project that gets you excited to get up from the bed i…

As a new PhD student trying to figure out a routine and framework for studies/work, this comment was incredibly helpful! Thanks for writing it out. Bookmarked.

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

#228

Post by psychomugs »

I've had similar funks throughout my PhD and thesis-writing experiences. It's hard to fish out the mantras that kept me going at those times (though I have backed them up in notes that I will revisit after some distance from the time), but a recurring one was:

I'm going to feel like shit whether I do or don't do anything, so I might as well do something

Discussing some issues with friends and/or others in your cohort will likely make you feel less alone than browsing other doomposts on r/GradSchool.

With writing in particular, I've recently felt handwriting to be the limit of my writing production, i.e. given a fixed length of time, my output will be independent of whether I wrote or typed it. The affordance of writing slows me down just enough to craft the same text I would've (re)^(n)typed on computer. Writing is also more expressive and makes it easier to forget about my butt in the chair.

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

#229

Post by Gemoto »

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…

Forgot who said it but 'shitty first draft' stop thinking start doing

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

#230

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]
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