Here's an article about cognitive enhancers from the Guardian Nov 2007:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/drugs/Story/0,,2207210,00.html

I'd never heard of them before I read this but I can see the appeal. I took Pro Plus to get me through my A-levels *GEEK* but not since.

I too have a chapter due on 30th May... a popular day for deadlines. This is chapter two and my last one was late so trying to get it in on time!

Are you sure you're not telling yourself these things as excuses because you're stressed about the PhD? It is very stressful at times (...see my other posts this week, for example!) but giving up isn't necessarily the answer. If you give up your PhD and find that the grass isn't actually any greener on the other side, you might always think, "What if?" Maybe see if you can specify any problems with your PhD project that could be fixed to make you feel better and do those before you think about quitting. How far in are you?

Before I give you any advice I should warn you that as someone who's put my vocational (design) career on hold to do a PhD, I'm obviously biased! I think the very definite career outcomes you describe are self-imposed. A PhD proves that you have both the intellect and the stamina to design and carry out a research project you could use it to open doors to all kinds of things, related to your topic or not. If you could (almost) do the web-based job you describe now, then why won't you be able to do it when you've got a PhD?

Nope... you're not alone. I'm trying to get a draft ready to send off tomorrow (should have been submitted on Tuesday!)

Hi Pineapple... you shouldn't feel ashamed or embarrassed. The whole point of an upgrade is so that you can sort problems out before you dive headlong into a PhD. It's good that your supervisors have given you the feedback to be able to put things right now, rather than waving it past and letting you carry on in a direction that might not be quite right.

Sorting out the focus of your project will save you loads of time and possible back-tracking at a later stage when your time / funding / sanity is running out!

Dust yourself off and write report that'll knock 'em dead!

I have never been as enthusiastic about housework as I have in these past few months... I find all kinds of bargains on Ebay, constantly updating my watched items... I contribute to a multitude of, ahem, forums...

I have this all the time and I'm afraid I haven't really found a solution. My only advice - and I'm rubbish at applying this to myself - is to do something completely different. Does your filing system need sorting? Is there an article you've been meaning to read? Anything else PhD-related you can do to distract yourself for a while.

No it doesn't actually tell you how to write that fast (...it probably helps the book sell though). I've got another similar book by Patrick Dunleavy which is much more useful... although in terms of structure etc rather than how to become a 1000 words an hour writing machine!

I start of writing about 250 words a day, and re-write those same words every day until I feel the panic of the deadline and gradually speed up through necessity to about 1000 words per day, until the day before deadline I literally throw 2000 words onto the page and hand it in.

Guess which bit my supervisors usually like the best?

One of the (many) how to do a PhD manuals in my possession has an introduction called, "How to write a 1000 words an hour". Can anyone really write that fast? I had no idea it was possible!

Even if I'm very sure about what I'm writing, I don't think I've ever managed over two thousand words in a day. I hope I'll speed up as I get further on though.

Thanks for your advice... I do feel a lot better having slept for two nights in a row thanks to the tablets & things seem so much worse when you're sleep-deprived.

Thanks for your advice. However, before I got the most recent replies I did put it in my e-mail yesterday and now I really wish I hadn't! I usually just keep things to myself, so I feel really exposed and not at all relieved to have told them. I'm in my third year and I've never had problems before so I'm hoping they'll just see this is a blip if I submit my writing by Friday and explain at my tutorial in three weeks. In a way it's had the opposite effect to the one I had hoped for because now I feel like everything I submit will have to be near-perfect and I'll have to hide any problems. It made so much sense yesterday when I was minus a night's sleep and my head was completely fuzzy. Oh well...

My PhD is in the humanities but I didn't do an MA. I sometimes think if I could have done a piece of extended writing as part of an MA first it would have been less of a shock to be writing a thesis now, but it isn't causing me too many problems.

I should add the psychologically I feel fine about my project - very happy and positive on the whole which is why I find these physical symptoms bewildering. I've faced countless stressful situations in the past (in my professional career) and never experienced anything like this.

I'm sure it'll be much better when I've got more of my thesis written and it doesn't seem like such I huge task. In the meantime, I don't want my supervisors to lose faith in my ability to complete the project, so maybe I should keep it to myself?

Sorry to appear from nowhere on this forum and then be bombarding you all with my problems. This relates to my previous post about missing a deadline today. Part of the reason for this is that I didn't take the deadline as seriously as I should have done but my progress has also been hampered by physical symptoms related to stress - I painful neck / jaw (?!) and terrible insomnia.

Because I knew I was definitely going to miss my deadline today I didn't sleep at all last night and when I phoned my mum (a nurse who graduated with a PhD two years ago) she told me to go to my GP. I've now been given a low dose of diazepam to help me get back into normal sleep patterns.

How do you cope with stress and do you think I should tell my supervisors about this?