Heya all, hope you are all ok. I just am on the verge of finishing - well kind of. I am just editing my chapter drafts. My supervisor has given me some back because they are just so badly written. So i have the weekend - until 11am monday to get these drafts re-done and sorted out. But do I give a damn... NO - i came home had dinner and am settling down with a nice beer. I just do not care. I really do not. Why not? Why do I not care about urgency anymore?! The fact that it was a bad draft in the first place and the fact that it needs to be redone should surely be enough to motivate me? What do I do? Shall I work tonight? Shall I work tomorrow - shall i bother doing it? At the moment I really don't care about quitting and would happily walk away. Well no I wouldn't. Just tell me how to get it together. I just dont think I can handle this lack of motivation and lack of focus. Any advice/help etc would be muchy apprecaited :-)

Think of it this way...if you get your head down, you'll get it done and the pain will be over, at least for a while, and think...this time next week you can focus on something that appeals to you!

Gosh there's a bunch of sad/unmotivated people at the moment! Sounds like tonite is a write off - enjoy your bee(s), don't feel guilty, and have the night off. Then get back into it - you only have to suffer the week-end, get the chapters redone, then you can move on! You want the PhD, right - so I'm afraid you do need to do some work. I had to do a redraft of an article I'd written recently, which I thought was pretty good, but my supervisor made me rewrite it. I hated rewriting it and was resentful - but after I was done, she had another look, was happy, and it was much better. They usually do have good reasons for torturing us...So just get into it!

...says me, who's procrastinating my being on this forum...

Yup you are right! I am going to have some breakfast and get on with it. I need to get this done.

See, all you needed was a night off and a beer.
Don't whip yourself so hard !

You sound like you work best under pressure !

Morning EE, I'm having the same "urgency disassociation" which is not helpful given the insane amount of writing I need to do. Also spending the weekend making chapter changes, which I'm sure should be easier than the slog to get the the chapter draft stage. Unfortunately this is my first main chapter and I have months of similar weekends ahead. At least you're nearly finished!
Hope today is more productive for you. You must have worked incredibly hard to get this far, so I'm sure you can squeeze another weekend in. Start by writing a list of all the corrections, then do the easiest first and take great satisfaction in crossing each one off the list.
And don't forget to put a beer in the fridge so it will be a chilled reward this evening :-)

Grrrrrrrrrr I am slacking again - i will get this chapter done by 6pm otherwise i will not be able to get a pizza for dinner and will have to stick with pasta...... its not a treat but its the nearest thing... :-(

Aye, and no sauce - just plain floppy pasta !

C'mon......you can do it !

Just think.....Peperoni MMmmmmmmmmmm, slurp drool.

agrh this one chapter is taking longer than i thought. I ended up getting a chinese cos i was annoyed and needed i walk. i just am hating this so much! Hope you are all doing good :-)

You might be hating it, but at least you're doing it! Keep going! Me, I'm writing a summary of all my field work for my sup - wasn't even on my list of things to do and is taking me all week-end. Am soooo far behind my schedule...

Week-end's half over - we'll have done our reespective bits by the end!

Hello,

I can completely relate to this post. I have almost finished my thesis. I was supposed to hand my final draft in on Friday, but as usual didn't quite make the deadline. I gave 5 chapters in and said I needed 1 more day to do the rest even though there is loads to do, including some analysis(!). But instead of actually finishing the thing tonight, I have decided to sign up to this forum and write a reply to this post! I have lost all motivation and really don't care anymore. You may think I am silly as I am almost there, but I just can't face looking at the thing again!

I can't really give you any advice. Though it sounds like you are like me. In which case its best to set deadlines with your supervisors, as I have to make you actually do the work. Yes mine might be rather unrealistic, but hopefully at some point this evening I will get "the fear" and start doing some work!

Hope you get it done. At least you have not left it to Sunday night like me!

Hope you both got your respective chapters finished! Unlike me, who went out and drank beer and played pool instead of studying...sigh...and so am getting further behind as I keep going on this task, on a Monday morning when it should've all been done yesterday....

Still trying :-(
Hate it but gotta do it - dont know if i should take a nap inbetween this one and the next one or if i shud work straight through....

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I'm with you on this. I have virtually no motivation at the moment :(

I'm kind of getting worried that someone here in the office is going to tap into the amount of crap stuff I'm looking at on the internet as evidence to show my real lack of motivation and degree of procrastination! :(

You've done really well though- so close to the finish if your just editing chapters!! I on the other hand am trying to get all of/most of my result chapters done by the end of July- just isn't happening at the moment!!

I'm thinking of just working away from the internet to get stuff done. I'm just really bad in my internet searches and I'm easily distracted by stuff on the internet that I want to get- ie iphone!! :S

I'm doing some very tedious transcribing at the moment (just plugging in a last bit of research into the virtually finished thesis) and reward myself with Internet searches. I make a bargain that if I transcribe the next 2 pages I can search for a couple of minutes, then onto another couple of pages, and so on.

I've used the same technique with writing, to agree with myself (split personality or what!) that I'll work on the next thing on my massive to-do list, then when that's out of the way I can do something fun. And so on.