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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

#231

Post by klenwell »

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 is legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder's technique, too:

Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but it’s a script. The hard part is done. It’s like a crappy little elf has snuck into my office and badly done all my work for me, and then left with a tip of his crappy hat. All I have to do from that point on is fix it. So I’ve taken a very hard job, writing, and turned it into an easy one, rewriting, overnight. I advise all writers to do their scripts and other writing this way. And be sure to send me a small royalty every time you do it.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-new-yorker-interview/j...

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

#232

Post by insane_dreamer »

It might help to seriously look at why you want a PhD and whether you still want it. There's no shame in going a different direction (i.e., drop academia for industry), if you find out that you have zero inspiration and it's not for you. Success is not measured in either having or not having a PhD. But if it's something you desperately want to have because of what will come after your PhD that can only be achieved with one, that can provide motivation to just push through even if you hate it. Either way I wish you success.

(PS. Don't let sunk cost be your primary motivation for finishing it.)

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

#233

Post by jdminhbg »

klenwell wrote: post #231
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 is legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder's technique, too: Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but…

I think this a role tools like ChatGPT will fill: spit out a crappy version of something that humans can edit later. It gets you over the hump of looking at a blank page, but isn't itself a deliverable.

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

#234

Post by xxr »

klenwell wrote: post #231
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 is legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder's technique, too: Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but…

“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.”

I'm sure that a back-and-forth with Julie Kavner and Dan Castellaneta doing those exact lines would still give me the biggest side-splitting laugh of 1996.

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

#236

Post by iamflimflam1 »

psychomugs wrote: post #226
iamflimflam1 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it’s any consolation, I do believe being in that situation has made me a better manager/mentor.

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

#237

Post by marttt »

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…

"There’s one solution that each and every book on writer’s block offers: write five words. Any five words. Follow this advice, Mr. Ashbery, and you’ll never have writer’s block again."

(From "Uncreative writing: Managing Language in the Digital Age" by conceptual poet and "word processor" Kenneth Goldsmith)

Edit: Oh, this historical paper is slightly different angle, but also relevant, helped me quite a bit:

Upper, Dennis. "The unsuccessful self-treatment of a case of “writer's block”." Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis 7.3 (1974): 497. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1311997/pdf/jab...

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

#238

Post by maxwelljoslyn »

brotchie wrote: post #203
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…

Amazing advice. This technique is what got my PhD thesis across the line. Word vomit and just concatenating together all my current work into a single LaTeX project. Once it existed as a single document and I could start to “see” it as a thesis, even though most of the writing was terrible, the momentum was there.

Currently writing my MS thesis. "Concat all my existing work into a doc" was my initial move as well, and I discovered I had written a little on almost every topic already. In some cases, had written lots.

That let me move to outlining and shuffling things around almost immediately, making writing about filling gaps instead of staring at a page. That in turn let me evolve my writing along with the codebase; now, in late January, I'm well ahead of schedule on written material (knocks on wood)

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

#239

Post by spetryk »

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…

I'd like to try this, but it's tougher when you're collaborating on a shared document.

For example, I collaborate on papers that always start out as a shared Overleaf doc. When I'm starting a new section, I just want to toss some ideas down on the page, knowing that the prose is terrible. I can really enjoy this phase if I know it's free of judgment. However, it's so much harder when I know that someone might open the doc in an hour and judge my writing before I get to edit it - or worse, if I see that they've opened the page while I'm in the middle of it, or god forbid see their cursor click around near where I'm typing. It's a lot harder to concentrate until they leave or start editing somewhere else. I end up taking a while to write each paragraph, planning & editing as I go.

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

#240

Post by zikzak »

jdminhbg wrote: post #233
klenwell wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is legendary Simpsons writer John Swartzwelder's technique, too: Since writing is very hard and rewriting is comparatively easy and rather fun, I always write my scripts all the way through as fast as I can, the first day, if possible, putting in crap jokes and pattern dialogue—“Homer, I don’t want you to do that.” “Then I won’t do it.” Then the next day, when I get up, the script’s been written. It’s lousy, but…

I think this a role tools like ChatGPT will fill: spit out a crappy version of something that humans can edit later. It gets you over the hump of looking at a blank page, but isn't itself a deliverable.

I plugged the elevator pitch of "my novel" and asked it to write the plot of that novel (I will never write it, I just like to think about the elements of it and have some notes and snippets) and it spat out almost exactly what I had written out as the longer form of the outline.

I laughed, because I knew exactly how original my thinking was going in. It was really funny (and depressing if I had a big ego) how close it was to my idea.

However, doing so allowed me to iterate a bit and I took a minor aspect of the plot (people don't always have enough to eat) and magnified it (the government is the only source of food and they use this to control people). It has made the story much more interesting (still not super original!).

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