If you find an answer to this I would love for you to share with me!

The more I seem to have on my to do list the more I seem to procrastinate?! Recently I have started trying to set daily goals as an incentive and been attempting to stop any facebook use other than at lunch time...

But I am extremely bad for procrastinating, especially in the form of taking on new unrelated to work/PhD projects which I end up spending far too much time on. I think trying to refocus and aim for something could help though. So any advice anyone can share I would appreciate too!

Morning all!

It must be daunting Batfink but the final push is always going to be hard and a lot of work. I reckon we would be suspicious if the final month was easy! Good luck with it all.

Teaspoon, unfortunately unpredictability in the PhD results in some to do lists getting rearranged sometimes. Congrats on getting half way through it anyway and hope you get your lit review sorted.

Today I hope to try interpret a little bit of data analysis I created yesterday and see if I can relate my findings to any other studies etc. Then I have a seminar at 2.30pm for the rest of the day at which my Supervisor is presenting so I am ready to take lots of notes on style etc so next time I present I might be able to impress him!

Good luck today and just think, only 1 day until Friday!

That must be pretty exciting to possibly be in the last week of analysis Batfink...? After all the hard work the end is almost in sight!

Button, sometimes you need to spend time getting other things out the way first then you can really concentrate! That is my problem, I end up worrying about all the little things I have to do rather than just getting some of them out of the way!

I think I almost achieved my goals yesterday, though I didn't arrange a meeting with my supervisor. Today I aim to tackle my stats and make note of any areas I am stuck and move on, rather than spend all day trying to figure out myself how to fix it. THEN I will arrange a meeting. I also hope to complete the diagram I started yesterday and decide the best way to lay it out for the final drawing.

Have a productive day everyone!

Congrats on the job Batfink! That is great news and hopefully the final motivation needed to get completed before christmas. What type of data analysis are you doing? I have currently been putting off mine for a while now as the task is so daunting!

Teaspoon, I am impressed with your weeks to do list... I also have one as long but realistically I expect to achieve maybe half! Good luck getting everything done and I hope your cells grow!

I am feeling much better today apart from the regret of missing out on a whole day of work. So back to it today! My main goal is to trouble shooting some statistics problems I have been having and if I cannot work it out myself I am going to force my Supervisor to see me at some point this week. I have definately not been asking for help when I need it but if I want to make any progress I need to bite the bullet. I also aim to map out a diagram I need to make for my thesis which I have been putting off for too long.

Hope everyone achieves their goals today - as Abraham Lincoln said "A goal properly set is halfway reached".

That sounds like a brilliant plan! Especially using a desk space to become part of the community, I think that is a very important to try get involved. I have just started my 2nd year of my PhD and it was only last week I made the effort to go to a social night and I met people who have been in the same building as me all that time!

I had a very large list of things that I wanted to achieve today and this week which has been thrown out the window after I started feeling ill yesterday afternoon... Turns out my body will not let me leave the flat today. I am hoping that I feel better enough by this afternoon to be able to at least finish marking lab reports I have from demonstrating and restructure my plan for the week now I am not in the office today.

Good luck for today everyone.

Welcome Teaspoon!

I would have appreciated knowing about this website from the start of my PhD so I hope you make good use of it!

My days haven't been as productive as I would have liked this week, I was demonstrating for two classes so between that and travelling I have not achieved what I would have liked.

So for the rest of today I aim to do some of my data analysis so I know how to approach it and lay out a plan of action to show my supervisor next week.

Hope everyone has a productive day!

Good afternoon all,

Hope everyone is being productive this week, the thread seems to be a bit quiet.

I have not had a good week. Since my 9 month assessment in June I have been struggling a bit, not only with my PhD but with things in general. I think I realised how little help my supervisor had given me and communication is extremely difficult and felt like I had hit a wall. So for a couple of months I have really been trying to re-motivate myself (joining this was one!) and trying to get myself out of the lull of work I was in. My supervisor would mention 10 different things he wanted me to look into but not give any incline to which to prioritise or deadlines to complete these. So I have had a very large to do list for a while and I feel like I am very unproductive yet I am at work all day doing tiny bits for all the big things. So on Monday my supervisor calls me into his office (after not seeing him for weeks and very poor email correspondance) to say he is concerned with my lack of process etc and he will be informing the University PhD monitoring etc etc. So since then I have been trying to be positive and come up with some ways to get back on track....

To cut a long story short, today I aim to make myself some deadlines and inform my supervisor of these. And of the fact that I much prefer working to a date deadline rather than being asked to investigate several areas with no completion date. I also plan to ask to have a proper meeting with him next week about my data analysis as I have no idea what I am doing and have so far been too scared to admit that or ask him for help.

Time to take charge of my PhD!

I hope everyone else is having a better week than me and getting things done!

Morning all,

Hope you all had a good weekend, especially if you managed to get xmas shopping started Button, good work!

Natassia, hope your seminar goes well tomorrow and same for your supervisors meeting Batfink. And I hope you are feeling better now?

Pjlu, it is comforting to hear that someone who actually sounds like they have more on than me is managing to fit in achieving PhD goals, it gives me a bit more encouragement that I can actually do everything that I am trying to do.

Today I need to update my lab book as I got 2 solid days of practical work done last week and I hate being behind on it. I also hope to have time to read and follow up on a very interesting paper I have come across, as at first glance it seems it could help me with my data analysis... Fingers crossed.

Good luck today everyone in achieving what you set out to.

Hello everyone.

Did you get your conference paper completed Batfink? It will be a very good contribution to the thesis so hang in there!

I have had quite an off two days, I don't know what has been wrong with me. In between demonstrating I have trying to do some new practical work and I am making silly mistakes that I would usually never dream of!

So today, I aim to finish 2 runs (almost at the end of 1) and prepare plates for tomorrows runs... without making any more silly errors! We have a post grad wine reception social tonight so maybe that is just what I need to recover from such an annoying two days.

Hope everyone is well and being productive!

Well I managed to create an A4 "to-do" list yesterday of both PhD related things and some personal things. I also ended up speaking to a new friend I have made about some of my current PhD worries to discover she is in the exact same position as me at the moment! So we have decided that we are going to try help motivate each other to see if we can help each other out and hopefully cheer ourselves up at the same time. So all in all quite a productive day I guess.

Good work on completing your funding proposal! Hope did the conference paper and data analysis go yesterday? Today I plan on spending the morning looking at my data and planning out how to structure my different routes of analysis before I am demonstrating in the afternoon! Hopefully then I will be able to make a detailed plan/set some goals to achieve by the time christmas holidays come around (6 work weeks to go?!).

Hope everyone has a good day and achieves what they set out to.

Hello everyone!

Back from holidays today and it has basically taken until now to sort and reply to emails and get my head back into where I was at before holidays! The conference was a great success, so glad I decided to help organise it even though it was a lot of extra stress.

I hope you are feeling better Button, which I presume you are if you are managing 4 part time jobs! I am very impressed with your ability to take on such a workload! Batfink, how did the job interview go on Wednesday?

Today I want to create a mammoth "To do list" and reconsider how to tackle updating my literature review. I realise I need to keep thinking about why I am actually doing my study and ensure that I know the important studies in my field. So lots of organising and sorting to do today.

Hope everyone is well and has a good day.

Good morning!

Good luck with the data analysis! I am currently in the same situation, been putting it off for ages as I know it is going to be such a big task. I am taking 2 weeks off after today for birthday celebrations and for a conference we have been planning so there won't be much rest!

However, I am determined to gather together some basic summary data of my data set and make a plan for when I am back from holidays. Meeting with supervisor this afternoon so lots to do before then.

Hope everyone manages to achieve their goal today! It is Friday after all.

Hello!

I am a newbie to this forum and coming across this thread has given me a slight boost in motivation. After feeling very disheartened after my 9 month assessment combined with supervisory and practical issues within my PhD, I have started my 2nd year on somewhat of a downer and have been looking for a way to snap out of it! I am hoping if I start using this one goal at a time idea it could be the way forward. Fingers crossed!