Anyone else fed up of trying to work on a bank holiday?
I say work- I'm not sure i've actually achieved anything yet. I'm not sure I can really blame it on the bank holiday either, I've been feeling pretty fed up the last few weeks. I'm writing up, I have 1 chapter done, editing second chapter and the rest still to be done, cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel, and to top it all I'm suffering from chronic illness which makes it hard to work sometimes. I'm sure the light at the end of the tunnel is getting dimmer.....
This started out as a lighthearted rant about the joys of working a public holiday, and instead turned into something different. Oops. Sorry guys!

If it makes you feel any better, you have company! I too am working on bank holiday, but considering the weather, i don't think we're missing much! :)

I haven't actually done anything yet, just warming up hehe.

Sounds like you've got alot achieved! I'm impressed :) Just take it hour by hour. For every word, sentence, or thought or piece of writing you read, you're one step closer to finishing. Concentrate on today, and not the big picture, try to do as much as you can within today. Pretend as if, tommorow your supervisor will ask you, so what did you learn today? tell me about chapter so and so.

I had to get up at 7am to emil something to my tutor before mid-day.
And now I have to start doing another paper and prepare a presentation for Fri.
The joys of academic life!
Do any of you guys with funding manage to take your hypothetical seven weeks off?
Sarahx

I sometimes have a tendency to wander, so i have my timer on my desk, and tell myself, to work 10mins on something, and then the buzzer goes off, but I carry on working on it, cause the ball is rolling.

It's a psychological trick. If i say to myself I ONLY have 10mins to read such and such, or write about such and such, and after that, the time is up, and i cannot spend anymore time on it, it really focuses your mind.

And I also have recently started telling myself, 'just think, you can learn alot in even 1 minute'. Like for instance, there are 25,000 protein encoding genes in the genome. It took me 30 seconds to find that out, and there you learnt something too and that probably took you 10 seconds.

And just think today is all you have, you can imagine, that you live and die in one day, and so you do as much as you can.

Whenever I get overwelmed by the huge task of writing the thesis, and it is a huge task, I take comfort in the following

"Today is all that you have. Organise the hours of this day, so that you make years out of minutes and months out of seconds"...


Charles Chaplin said "Nothing is permanent in this wicked world - not even our troubles". I have that on a post it on my wall, to remind me, that one day, today will be the past.

It's just frustrating- I'm sitting here getting nothing done, I'm tired, as I've not been well for a while, but as I'm not really able to work full time on my phd at the moment due to illness (I reckon i'm doing about 25 hours a week, but feel I should be doing more) three and a half years in, funding quickly running out, time is of the essence- I really can't afford to keep having these days where nothing gets done.

I know me too

okay, start the timer ...10minutes. must do something. you do the same...

report back what you have done at 3pm. you have 40minutes. you're time starts now. go!

then after doing something, anything that's related to your thesis, even if it's just free writing, and you're still feeling tired. take a break, take a nap. and then start afresh.

well i did some reading on some horrible analysis ive still to do, then started doing something, then about 5 min ago realised i'd just done it all wrong. oops
now im definitly tired.

well it's a start, you did "something" and that's what's important!
if you're tired, take a little break and then come back.

i read a paper and wrote notes on it, words verbatim interspered with my own ramblings = "1067 words". haven't quite fully understood the paper though, but it's a start. onto the next paper.

hey birdsandbees...i think the bank holiday has turned into a brain holiday! It started off ok for me - brain was working despite being fed up (and also, it's very quiet on facebook...almost as if I need reminding that everyone else is having fun!).
Since lunch I've been distracted by stupid jobs, have now been back at my desk a while and my brain is clearly not in the same room. Grr!
Hope your day is going better!