Hello everyone! Been completely unmotivated for the last couple of days so not wanted to come and report that here... but I need to snap myself out of it, so maybe setting myself some simple tasks and being accountable to this thread will help me get back into my stride.

I'm trying to rewrite a journal paper after getting comments from my supervisors. So, breaking the tasks down, my first task is to draft out the abstract. Will report back when that's done.

And thanks everyone re the engagement! Actually we've been engaged for about eighteen months, I just don't always call him my fiance. We want to have a civil partnership rather than a marriage (make a statement about being equal, get away from all the historical/religious baggage around 'marriage' that we want no part of) so we're waiting to see whether the law changes to allow us to do that. At which point we'll have a big party!

Good luck with all of your work, hope you're all managing to do more than I am at the moment!

Morning to anyone still around!

Yesterday I didn't make as much progress as I wanted - distracted by other things - so today my goals are the same as yesterday!
1.) Work on rewriting journal paper
2.) Finish job application

Good luck with the work, anyone who's still working!

Morning everyone, and welcome Labpixie, hope the thread helps!

Espresso, glad you had a good holiday!

I took last Thursday and Friday off work, and then the whole weekend too - I think I really needed a bit of a break, I've been working hard for the last few weeks. And on Friday I'm going to visit my fiance for the weekend in the town he's living in now, the first time since he moved there - it's a seaside place so we're going to do all the holiday type things. So a short week and a sort of holiday to look forward to! Feel like I need it still!

Goals for today:
1.) Restructure and start rewriting journal article after comments from supervisors
2.) Start filling in a job application

I'd say it really depends on your discipline, and the nature of the research you're doing - some will require more focus on the literature, while others will be better if they get more quickly to the meat of the data. Have you managed to find any recent PhD theses in your field/area that you can look at? This can be a good way to understand what works well and what is really required in your own discipline.

I can get that for you - sending you a pm now.

Hello Linda! It is quiet at the moment... lots of people on holidays I think!

I haven't been around for a couple of days because I was working flat out on a journal paper and a job application and didn't even have time to come here! But both are done now, so I can relax a little. Or rather, not be going flat-out to get stuff done!

Met my supervisors this morning to discuss the journal paper I'd drafted, so my plan for the rest of the day is to write up notes from the meeting and then start redrafting the paper.

I've found similar too - large word counts are not intimidating at all any more, in fact being told to write something in 3000 words just sounds ridiculously short to me now! My first year upgrade paper was about 15,000 words and felt fairly long then, but was already easier than my MSc dissertation had been. Now, knocking out a journal paper of 6-8000 words is not intimidating at all - difficult still, sure, but it's the structure and content and getting the argument right that are difficult, the word count isn't at all. Just shows how much we change during the course of a PhD!

It's a question I've faced too - when I started my PhD my area was very under-researched, and I could only find one small study published anywhere internationally that was close to my area of interest. Now I'm in my third year and there are two high-profile research projects with masses of funding led by eminent researchers looking at exactly my question - but I've met the researchers at conferences, and we're busy preparing to cite each other, and our approaches are different enough that we complement each other rather than scoop each other. One of the high-profile researchers wants to set up a special issue of journal looking at the topic and has invited me to submit to it, so it's given me some great opportunities.

In fact, I'm really pleased about the development, because it means that what at the start of my PhD was an area nobody really cared about is now a mainstream area of research where I'll (hopefully!) be one of the first to publish results. And I don't have that nagging fear of people saying 'so what?' either!

But the main thing is to keep on top of the published literature, and to also keep an eye out for conference presentations too, so you know whose work to look out for and what approaches other people are taking.

Well done Espresso, sounds like you've earned a bit of relaxation now! Have a good time!

I'm not getting through my journal article as quickly as I hoped. It's going to be quite a good article when it's finished I think - I'm really pleased with the data and I just ran a few more tests and they strengthen my findings even further. But it's taking longer to write than I hoped. Oh well, I'll see how far I get tonight!

Morning everyone!

Only one goal today - get my draft journal paper written. There's a lot of it left to do (well, most of it!) but I have a very detailed plan, and quite a bit of it can be paraphrased from my thesis, so I'm hoping that it'll be pretty quick. I need it to be, anyway.

Good luck with all your work today people!

Are you planning to discuss the original model and why you think your new one works better? If so, I can't really see a problem with that - as long as you carefully discuss why you made every decision, and can point to some stats that support what you've done then it shouldn't be an issue, I'd have thought. (Of course, it really does depend on the field you're in, so don't take my word for it alone!)

But for example, if you've done a principal components analysis (or something similar) on your original 20 item measure and the results of that supported the new measures you've designed from that, or something along those lines, then that would look strong to me. Or even justification within the literature, if it's based on other people's empirical work using the same (or similar) measures and you can show that your decisions are based on something rigorous. I think you'd only really be in trouble if you'd just gone with an 'I reckon' kind of approach and ignored the stats, but it sounds like your results are stronger than that.

Thanks both of you, yes the conference was great! Very happy with how it went.

Sounds like you're both powering away there, great stuff. And I'm envious that you're off on holidays, I could do with some time off but it'll have to wait a while! Oh well, I'm off to a party in Bath this weekend (assuming I get my paper written in time) - only one night away but it'll be fun anyway.

Making good progress on my paper. Ready to start writing now, which is a relief - I might have to stop and do a few more stats tests here and there, but I want to try to get a load of words down today so tomorrow isn't such a slog.

Good luck everyone!

Hello everyone!

Back after my week at a conference plus a couple of days of burying myself in stupid piles of work. Haven't got time to read back and see what I've missed, so I just hope everyone's work is going well (and Button, enjoy your holiday)!

The conference was ace and my presentation went down really well - got to meet lots of people doing similar research to myself, and got friendly with a few people I cite endless times in my lit review, so that was fun! But the number of requests I had from people to let them know when I published something so they could cite me made me realise that I really need to get something out there, so now I'm writing up a fairly basic set of results as a journal article to send off quickly. My supervisors disappear for five weeks (!!!) next week, so I need to get a draft article to them by Fri/Sat to get comments off them before they disappear. And that's a huge and probably impossible task - I'm still running some of the data analysis!

So, goals for today:
1.) Run the series of tests I've already planned for
2.) Start adding content to the detailed paper structure I've already developed
3.) Well, getting some of the writing done would be good but we'll see if I run out of steam by then!

Bounces in, dances around the thread, delerious....

I just sent the first draft of my thesis off to my supervisors. Woo!!! Okay, it's only half written, and I still have lots of analysis to do, and it will all need a lot of rewriting, but still - that's 35,000 words of PhD thumping down onto my supervisors' desks! And if that's what 35,000 words look like, the full 80-odd thousand words don't seem nearly as difficult.

Now I'm going to lie down, and maybe think about pizza for tea, and then get ready to travel to my week-long conference in the morning.

I've done a third of my chapter rewrite so far, and now a friend has texted to say meet her at the pub, and I need a break... but that means leaving campus in less than half an hour to get the train back. Hmm. I think I need the break, so I'm prescribing myself an evening off and worrying about finishing the chapter tomorrow. I mean - my supervisors wanted me to email it today, but they're not likely to actually want to read it on a Saturday, are they? It'll be fine!!

Hope everyone else has plans for relaxation and recharging the batteries!