I am no expert but I would have thougt that finance and economics both involve heavy amounts of programming.
Am I missing something here?

There is a lot of code already available for economics and finance. Are you having problems manipulate the code to address your research question or trying to reinvent the wheel? If I may ask, which area of finance are you interested in?

Hi Coarvi,
I know how you feel, I am also the only PhD student in our research group so I can fully sympathise with you when you say you feel lonely and there is nobody else who understands what you are doing. My supervisor (one of them) is the only person who understands what I am doing too. you are not alone - not sure if that helps?
I think a part of this being more than half-way through your PhD and going down the negative slope, as many do and may not admit and also partly becoming a mum. I am not a mum -yet- but when I am I would have so much other priorities in regards to my baby that I would not be prioritising my research. and PhD is hard, once you stop working for a week or two, everything piles up so much that you would just rather sit and look at it and think about everything that you can't do and can't understand rather than sitting down and tackling it. and this is also completely normal!
but chin up. like you said, at the beginning you felt you were the best PhD candidate and you still are. take a piece of paper and make a to-do list. write down every single concept/script you can't understand and make a timeline of what you expect of yourself to achieve by what day and what time. and once you do, tick it! tick so you feel blissful when you look back at that list of paper again - let it be a reminder of of your achievement.
and once you get your intellectual confidence back, you'll be on a roll and finishing your third paper.

Never let the fear of striking out, keep you from playing the game.

Good luck. you can do it, fellow PhD student.

Wow, good luck with that! I'm sure you'll be fine (it is so easy to be positive on other people's behalf...).

I am no expert but I would have thougt that finance and economics both involve heavy amounts of programming.
Am I missing something here?[/quote]

No, you are absolutely right. I just didn't expect it to be so boring... I expected to spend more time on writing. I never write. I have nothing to write.

I'm not doing anything complicated, but I am really struggling to make sensible analyses of the data I am supposed to use. Therefore I spend much time on "trial and error", a lot of time googling to figure out how to do the things I want to do, try something new... I feel I have spent a whole year on "we are almost finished, let's just try this first". A year! I am sooo tired of it, and it does not make sense to me anymore. Therefore I end up procrastinating,instead of writing more code...

Thank you. Yes, it helps.

Unfortunately this has nothing to do with being over halfway, or being a mum. I have been like this all the time, but it is getting worse now. I have kind of done what you suggest, but it does not work that well for me,but I will continue trying...

Well to me this sounds really straightforwards in terms of analysiing where you are.
You are finding things difficult but lack the interest in what you are doing to do what is necessary to proceed towards a successful conclusion of your PhD and your body is physically reacting to you forcing it to do something you really don't want to do anymore.

It sounds very much like the major blockage is your lack of interest. I would even go as far as saying that you appear to actively hate what you are doing.
You need to focus on that and forget everything else right now.
Counselling will not cure boredom so in my opinion that is probably a waste of time and money.

If you can't get over your hatred you will either fail to graduate or you will end up in a padded cell so deal with this issue right now and quit unless you can convince yourself of a good enough reason to waste more precious time.

Do you have a good reason to continue?

It's not to late to take on another PhD either but I would urge caution before you risk ploughing down the same path again.
I definitely think you need to consider quitting if you hate the PhD so much.

Quitting isn't failing. It's merely recognising that you are doing the wrong thing for you and finding another path in life.

Thank you for your honest advice, pm133. I went to a therapist and she basically said the same thing. There is no point for me to look for methods of avoiding procrastination as long as I dislike what I do so much.

I really needed to hear that.

You are welcome. This advice comes from personal experience so I know exactly what you are going through.
It is always good to talk to someone but formal therapy isnt usually helpful when you are feeling miserable or empty. In my opinion, the large increase in mental health problems is as a result of people forcing themselves to do things when every sinew of their being is telling them to do something else. The strange thing is that when people take a moment to be honest with themselves they largely know full well what they want to do but for some reason they persist in doing something else. It is a guaranteed way to have an utterly miserable life.

So what did I do?

I left permanent employment and academia after my PhD because both environments make me miserable. Instead I re-evaluated how much money i was prepared to live on and started my own leaflet distribution business to allow me to live. All my subsequent time is spent on am effort to build up skills in specific technical areas to give me a chance of creating a technical product or service. Within 6 weeks of leaving uni, I am now able to offer software design and programming skills and could start day trading in shares if I wanted to as I have taught myself enough accounts to understand what to do.

Money is very tight and there is no guarantee I will ever earn what I used to or even succeed in creating a product but life is absolutely great again and everyday I leap out of bed full of energy. The problem is my mother's constant negativity but I have learned to block her out.

So, instead of therapy I would urge everyone to listen to their bodies, obey what it is telling you, CHANGE what you are doing and give fewer fucks about what other people think. It is OK to have a PhD and deliver pizza leaflets for 10 hours a week and then to spend another 30 hours reading technical books for the love of it.

You are not like that alone. Believe that facing a big problem are going to make you big and able to face even larger problem in the future.
Thinkpositive that you are a great man. Remember when you are a baby, you even could not walk, but you tried and you failed, but then you tried again and again then you fell then finally you are able to walk. Finally you can run and you were becoming a teenager.
You cannot die because of your problem. You can do ot.
If you don't like your topic, believe me, what you need is not the topic. What you need is the ability to finish an impossible and unwanted mission. That is the outcome ypu need as a PhD later.
Think that you are special, think that how many percent PhD or PhD student in this world? I think it is only 1 percent even less than 1 percent. So, you are above average and you are not stupid.
I have a friend which was very struggle, even his supervisor changed 5 times but he can manage it until finish the PhD.
My suggestion is you should be optimistic and never compare your progress and work with other PhD student. Every PhD student has his own journey, has different problem, etc.
The most important is you make a progress every day, even it is may be below your prediction.

Allow me to add an advice from religiousperspective , if you are convenient, since nobody give this to you:

If you believe with God, it is the time to activate your emotion bumper: we believe our task as a human only working as hard as we can (we call it ikhtiyar), and the result is not our concern, the result is God's concern (we call it as tawakkal). If you have this kind of believe, you can keep optimist even you are in your top stress level, since you have a Great God, so even the problem is big in your eye, the problem is small in front of the Great God.

Just thought I'd give an update since I got some good advice here...

... I'm going to quit! I got a new job offer, and have spent the last few weeks thinking about what I want to do. There is still some small part of me who want to continue, but after discussing with my supervisors etc. I can't find enough support to go through with it, and quitting seems to be the best option. I just don't have the energy to continue. And right now it feels very, very good to say that this will soon be over.

Congratulations on making this decision and getting a job offer.
Your last sentence tells you that you made the right decision.
This was never about "failing" or "giving up".
It was simply about recognising that you were doing sonething you didn't enjoy.
It's great to hear that you feel so much better now.
Good luck for the future.

Hi Coarvi,

What's your update today?

I am currently in exact same situation but I can't quit for some reason. Pls let me know how life is like career wise? Do u ever regret about quitting your PhD? and do you think you could have made it if you would have pushed further ?

Thanks :)

I Would also love to hear an update from @Coarvi!
And I was also like to ask her how she managed financially when she was on maternity leave?

I understand you because I have the same problem. I don't even want to remember how many guides, articles, and videos I've reviewed trying to find the solution for my problem, but none of them helped. Now I'm on my road towards becoming more productive and I see my first results. I wish you to succeed and get a great desire to change your life — it's the only driving force.