I'm jealous of anyone with animals - I used to have a cat but he died (sob, sob), and now I'm renting an upstairs flat so no chance at all. But my cat used to be brilliant at eating spiders - I don't know why Sneaks' cat hasn't solved the spider problem for her!

Anyway, I've contacted my two host organisations so hopefully that will lead to good things, and I've reorganised my RefWorks filing system (still got a million references to put into each folder, but hey ho, it's a start).

I guess I should get showered and dressed now - sat down before I was dressed to check emails etc and got distracted into starting work! (Er, I am wearing my nightclothes, obviously, not sitting here in the buff...)

Heh, sounds like they're preparing for an invasion at your place then! Actually, it must be something to do with the weather, there's been loads of big spiders round my way as well.

Good luck with the work today, hope people manage to get useful amounts done.

Goals for today (a catching-up sort of day):
1.) Contact two organisations hosting my study about progress with data collection
2.) Write up notes on recent reading
3.) Sort out RefWorks references

Sneaks, and everyone else actually, everyone seems to be struggling - hope you all get enough done to at least feel more in control of it all. It's so hard to get everything done, especially when there are so many competing priorities - good luck all!

I feel a bit bad now, cos I'm going to say I've finished my report, and got it sent in by the deadline. Yay me! But I don't really want to jog around the thread cheering when you're all battling on still. But I suppose I did sit down at my desk ten whole hours ago, so maybe I'll quietly pat myself on the back. I did wonder if I'd ever get it done - been struggling with motivation for ages, and wasting so much time, so it's a relief to have actually got to the end of this task!

So, umm, keep going everyone! Have a nice present to keep you going! (gift) Imagine it's full of all those treats you really want...

Good luck Star-shaped! And thanks Skig.

One more section done. I just have two more sections to rewrite, some editing to do, and then adding references and checking formatting etc, and then I'm done. Unfortunately one of the sections is a biggie, but I'm still confident I can do all of this today.

Good luck Sneaks, sounds like a lot of work but the end is in sight now, so I hope you find that you can steam through it okay. And that you can find moments to unwind and release the stress in the middle of it!

I'm making reasonable progress on today's work so far. Should meet my deadline, if I don't slacken my pace.

Back to work now. Today is my deadline so all I'm doing is getting my report finished and emailed to my supervisors. Lots to do!

Thanks Ogriv, hope you get the proofreading done.

I've made some progress today, but still masses to do tomorrow. Probably have to get up at stupid o'clock to meet my deadline. Oh well, it has to be done.

Hello Ogriv and welcome to the thread! Good luck with today's goals. I find this thread really useful when I've got a deadline to meet!

Skig - I'm not usually worried about starting work late in the day, especially on a Sunday. But my deadline's tomorrow so I really need to get cracking!

Anyway, I'm making good progress. By which I mean, I seem to have got past the block that's stopped me finishing an awkward section of my report for most of this week, so it should be a lot more straightforward now - I hope!

Oh yes, I hope people have managed to do everything they need to do!

Once again, I didn't finish what I needed to do yesterday, and then I slept in this morning, so I'm only now sitting down to start work. I really need to sort my hours out, it's getting silly - I need to actually focus and get stuff done instead of messing around achieving nothing.

So, today I am going to finish the draft of my second year report.

I had a similar thing a little while ago, and I don't think this is as big a problem as it feels when it happens. Like others have said, it's very common, and it's unlikely that you'll be doing exactly the same anyway.

My research applies findings/approaches from one setting to a different setting that had barely been touched on when I started, but six months ago (half way through year 2) I found out that one of the leading researchers in my discipline was about to start a well-funded and large research project applying the same findings/approaches to a very similar setting to the one I'm looking at. I'm a lone researcher, even my supervisors aren't really looking at the same area as me. I worried at first, particularly because they're in a department that specialises in my methodology/theoretical approach, while I'm in a very different department. But I've spoken to a researcher from their team, and even though there are a lot of similarities I still think my work will be different enough not to cause a real problem. The sample is different, my approach is slightly different. It seems really unlikely that we'll end up with exactly the same focus when our results come out, and it's an untouched area, so there's room for both projects.

In fact, I think it's a good thing - while I was the only person looking at this, I did wonder if I was missing some really obvious reason why nobody else was bothering, but now this leading researcher sees value in it, I feel like I'm positioning myself to be at the start of a newly opening field at the start of my career, if you see what I mean.

Hope that reassures you somewhat!

I'm around today too. I've spent so much time procrastinating this week that I need to work today - and hard - to meet Monday's deadline for the next draft of my 2ny year report. Oh well, MrBatfink's away for the weekend so at least I'm not missing spending time with him to work! I want to get this more or less finished today, though, so I can take tomorrow off.

Oh dear, that sounds really stressful. Good luck with it all! Why do supervisors behave that way? It's like they've got no idea at all what we're doing, but they went through it themselves at some point, you'd think they'd have some kind of idea!

Morning!

Star-shaped, you're right, I don't need to feel bad about taking the occasional day off when I've been working through the weekends.

Anyway, I feel better now so will get lots done today. Working on rewriting my second year report - I'm just going to start at the beginning and work my way through, and see how far I can get in one day.

Hello everyone.

I spent yesterday feeling crappy and ill and lying on the sofa watching TV promising myself that any time now I'd get up and do something useful, and then achieved nothing. But maybe I needed a day like that. Except that so far today I haven't achieved that much either, apart from a bit of food shopping and making a few half-hearted notes for rewriting my second year report!

Oh well. Goals for the rest of the day:
1.) Do some washing up and cleaning so I can do some cooking later
2.) Go through all the easy bits of my second year report that won't take much brain power to redraft
3.) Book travel for attending conference in September
4.) Make ratatouille for dinner - yum!

Yay, my paper is written and has been emailed to my co-author. It's fairly rubbish and the discussion is a bit weak, but that just gives the co-author something to think about, after all! And I get the rest of the day off now. Going to sit in the sun, I think.