Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
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Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#2Interesting read but the author's thoughts were all over the place.
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#3Interesting read but the author's thoughts were all over the place.
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Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#4I think this should've been two separate blog posts.
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#5Incidentally, this describes what I believe to be the great difficulty of PhD research. You have to take a topic you find interesting and read all possible related work in it, which tends to result in significant scope creep as you realize just how much there is that already does you want to do. Having exhausted your initial energy and excitement for the project, you have to force yourself the remaining 20-30% of he way to the finish line to get that work to a publishable state.
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#6I think this should've been two separate blog posts.
Looks like this was a newsletter by the author, not a blogpost
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#7Interesting read but the author's thoughts were all over the place.
There is something to be said about scope creep here
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#8Incidentally, this describes what I believe to be the great difficulty of PhD research. You have to take a topic you find interesting and read all possible related work in it, which tends to result in significant scope creep as you realize just how much there is that already does you want to do. Having exhausted your initial energy and excitement for the project, you have to force yourself the remaining 20-30% of he…
Oh man I feel that in my bones.
Any advice on how to mitigate this?
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#9I feel for this a lot, but it's because I don't want to actually write code or build something if there is something workable already out there.
Maybe I lack imagination or curiosity, but it makes it difficult to come up with an idea and follow it through.
Re: Sabotaging projects by overthinking, scope creep, and structural diffing
#10Incidentally, this describes what I believe to be the great difficulty of PhD research. You have to take a topic you find interesting and read all possible related work in it, which tends to result in significant scope creep as you realize just how much there is that already does you want to do. Having exhausted your initial energy and excitement for the project, you have to force yourself the remaining 20-30% of he…
Oh man I feel that in my bones. Any advice on how to mitigate this?
I worked at a chair for 12 years - in that time I've seen a lot of PhD students go through this.
If it helps anything at all: It's normal. At this point, you've already proven you're smart and knowledgeable. Now, the universe wants to see if you can also finish what you've started. That's the main thing a PhD proves: That you can take an incredibly interesting topic and then do all the boring stuff that they need you to do to be formally compliant with arbitrary rules.
Focus on finishing. Reduce the scope as much as possible again. Down to your core message (or 3-4 core messages, I guess, for paper-based dissertations).
Listen to the feedback you get from your advisor.
You got this!