Hiya guys, rather than resurrect an old thread which is about 5 years old, I'm going to start one with the same topic, for the benefit of anyone who wants to submit his/her work in September or thereabouts. Anyone would like to join ? I know that we might not have the same study hours. For example, I tend to write during the day for about 2 hours. If you are interested, you can fill in your achievements for the week/day. Let's motivate ourselves to finish this year !

Hi Charliebrown,

This is exactly the post I came here searching for!

I would be interested to join in. I have unfortunately fallen seriously behind on my work and I need to find the motivation to get cracking on the the writing. I need to have a draft of my thesis ready by November. I think it would be a great idea to share our aims for the day and check to see how much we have accomplished. I am still working on my analysis at the moment but i would love to juggle 2 hours of writing alongside.

Let's get this PhD done with and move on with our lives!

Hi Monlulu, welcome to the thread !

How is your progress so far ? I've managed to write about a page a day for the last week or so. Not that much I would say. I am in the middle of redrafting a chapter and have a few other chapters to edit !

Hi there,

I am in! :) I've wasted my last two months for not accomplishing my own timeline. Two weeks ago, I only managed to write about 600 words, and the next week after that: none. Not to mention the readings, seminars to attend, and abstracts to write.

Hiya Lilybutterfly, welcome to the club !

We all have our good days and bad days ! I managed to write a page yesterday and right now am slowly chugging along ! I figured that if I keep on writing a page a day, I would be able to have about 150 pages in December ( keeping in mind if I work weekends as well ). Let's strive to do a bit a day, shall we ? :D

Hi everyone, so how's progress ?

Me, I'm chugging along slowly actually. Just managed about 3k words for the past 20 days. I really need to get more writing done. I had promised to send my chapter to my SV by the end of this week, but it looks like I might not meet the deadline...

just focus on the theme of the dissertation and make the outline then you can easily make your writing in flow

feeling awful as I have not done anything for 2 weeks now! :( This is due in September as well!

Hi politics student, welcome to the thread !

Me, I'm trying to get things done with my kids starting their summer holidays this week...argh ! Think I better disappear to the library next week...

As the Nike slogan goes...

'Let's do it !'

Hi all, Thanks for this thread.
I don't know how far along any of you are, I am finishing my first year of PhD, which was quite hectic juggling several part time jobs and a family (I am responsible for my young daughter in the afternoons, till my wife gets back from work).
Since I work as a lecturer in higher education, I was hoping to get some intensive work done over the summer while I have time off. Now I can't really concentrate most of the day and get random work done on the days I do schlepp myself to the university library. I do have some impending deadlines, as I have gotten accepted to two major conferences in my field, one in Sept. and one in Oct.-in one respect this is really good new, as now I will have to write up the papers that were accepted on the basis of abstracts, but I keep feeling like I have to do more research and it is sooo hard to just write it up...I hope its ok I just went on this rant, I would really like to have done my upgrade document (3 full chapters, according to my SV) by the end of Sept. I just don't feel productive and I wonder what you guys do when you feel like you've let go for a while?

Hi PhilofEd80,
Sorry for not replying earlier. I just came back from a break in England with the family.
To tell you the truth, I am trying to get some work done while looking after the kids at the same time. It's not easy, especially since it's now the school holidays in Scotland and all I seem to do is work at my laptop, get the kids something to eat, monitor them now and then and repeat the same steps the whole day. In fact as I'm typing this, my two-year old is trying to climb on my back !
I did set a schedule of doing one chapter per month but I'm afraid I've not followed that schedule. I'm freaking out a bit. I hope to wrap up this chapter in the middle of this month, then start redrafting the next chapter.
What I found positive is that after the short break, I seem to have a renewed interest in my work. And the beautiful weather in Glasgow has also helped in improving my motivation ( I may be speaking too soon ; the glorious weather in Glasgow never lasts for long...it rains most of the time !)

Hi CharlieBrown,

Thanks for replying. I am actually feeling a bit better too, and maybe it was the weather down here in London that gave me some energy. Luckily for me, our daughter is in full time daycare which means I have the whole morning and noon time. I have started to limit my time in front of the computer, which seemed to become less productive the more time I spent trying to write. Now I would decide in advance that I am giving it two hours, and stick to those hours, with the rest of the time spent on useful procrastination (cooking, cleaning, going to the gym). I've found that the two hours a day rule is helpful right now, especially for my mental preparation. I am much less anxious and have a more positive outlook. The two things I wish I manage to do more is read (I am writing is a philosophical field, so there is always more to read...but it is damn hard reading...) and be able to do some studying in the evenings after the little jewel has gone to sleep. Do you manage to to do that at all? any suggestions?

Goals for today- finish preparing presentation for tomorrow's departmental conference and get 400 words into the next chapter.

Hi PhilofEd80 and others too,

Two hours a day of writing , without any peeking into FB (!) is fine with me. In fact I have been doing that every day for the past 7 months or so. I try to maintain the two-hour rule every day, sometimes on weekends too.
As regards to reading, what I did was to read, summarise and write. I did that in my first year. It proved to be useful as I found out that what I read and paraphrased could be used in certain sections of my thesis.
I try to disappear to the library in the morning, when my hubby is around to take care of the wee bub. I have also tried working late at night when the kids are asleep but I'm afraid I could only manage at best another hour or two. This is because I myself cannot work so late at night...my cut-off time would usually be around midnight or so. But I reckon four hours a day is not bad at all (I'm in the humanities) !