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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

#251

Post by spetryk »

Brentward wrote: post #242
spetryk wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

So write it locally in an unshared document and paste it into overleaf when you want someone else to see it? I don't like overleaf to begin with, but to feel this tied to it is a bit wild.

I've tried, but it only works well if it's the beginning of a project. Later on, it gets annoying to sync back and forth between copies as others work on it, since I like to see what I'm writing in the context around it.

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

#252

Post by red-iron-pine »

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…

That explains much of the Season 7 onwards...

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

#253

Post by red-iron-pine »

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.

> 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.

I would if I could, but schedules are schedules and stuff has to ship...

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

#254

Post by croisillon »

psychomugs wrote: post #221
afr0ck wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

they're not wrong though and I also wrote mine in about a month but yeah, people are different

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

#255

Post by m000 »

Did anyone actually bother reading TFA? Most comments are about writing a thesis. But OP is mostly complaining about not making progress in research that will end up in the thesis.

OP mentioned of an elephant in the room: not having any progress for the last X months. But there may be a second elephant that has gone unnoticed: OP may have already done enough to formulate and defend a coherent thesis. Or, the missing part isn't required to be as grand as the OP had imagined for their latest project, when it started.

Many people may have a strong sense of pride and want to finish what they start. But this is really one of the times one needs to push their pride aside and be practical, mostly for the sake of their mental health. I would recommend to anyone in similar position to (a) compare their research output with that of past PhD students in their group, (b) openly discuss with their supervisor the minimum requirements for approving their thesis.

Another practicality to keep in mind is that from a professor's perspective, a PhD graduate with a less than stellar thesis is preferred over a dropout student. Also, for PhD students interested in pursuing academic career, these days postdoc work is probably more important than a stellar PhD thesis.

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

#256

Post by deterministic »

Simply writing down the steps involved to solve a problem and then breaking the steps into smaller and smaller steps until they are ridiculously simple (as in “pickup the mobile phone” and “call #”) often helps me getting things done when I have way too much on my plate and/or the problems I am facing are too overwhelming.

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

#257

Post by siddbudd »

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 would love this to be turned into a text editor. You set up a target, e.g. 20K chars and start typing away. No formatting, no distractions. The program always just shows the current line, or even just the 10 characters, while previous lines fade out into black with no way to reveal them. Only after hitting the target is the entire text revealed.

Optionally with some reward animation/sound after every target/10 characters.

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

#258

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

croisillon wrote: post #53
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…

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…

I never finished my 4th year Honours thesis. It was just a point in my life where so much was changing - moving out of home, getting my first full-time job, etc. I already had my Bachelor's degree and life just.... out-ran it I guess.

Looking back now I feel a little bad but I honestly don't regret it. You kind of look back a decade later (it's been much longer than that by now, but I realized this a long while ago) and it just seems insignificant, like a past life. It doesn't actually matter in a sense any more, nobody cares about my degree.

It was a wonderful, formative experience at the time and I don't for a second regret doing it. It's just that life moves on and people change over the years, ESPECIALLY if they started university as young adults. I actually think there should be a hard limit on the time you can spend doing a Masters given what I've heard about them. Or at least there should be more sanely-spaced deliverables. I was lucky in a way that Hons. was only one extra year on my degree, so there was no swamp to fall into at least. I wasn't going to pay for another year and by that time I didn't want to do it anymore.

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

#259

Post by [deleted] »

siddbudd wrote: post #257
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 would love this to be turned into a text editor. You set up a target, e.g. 20K chars and start typing away. No formatting, no distractions. The program always just shows the current line, or even just the 10 characters, while previous lines fade out into black with no way to reveal them. Only after hitting the target is the entire text revealed. Optionally with some reward animation/sound after every target/10 char…

[deleted]

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

#260

Post by Fr0styMatt88 »

ttul wrote: post #186
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 functio…

Thank you so much for posting this. ADHD is not just 'young schoolboys behaving badly disrupting the class'.
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