Quote From ywan459:
Your post reminds my past PhD time. I was in a similar state. At the beginning and middle of the research, I barely talked someone, and I was under a huge pressure to produce something worth for publications. You should seek some external helps for being "not social-able". I just would like to add a bit regarding to "almost no progress". It is common to see a PhD candidate is lost in their research. They cannot define/state what their findings are. I do believe you produced some results, or made some progresses in your field. You need take a week to work out what you have achieved, and try to talk to your supervisors. Tell them you are in the middle, or towards the end of your PhD, you have sorted out an informal report of your current state, findings etc. They also need this doc to catch up, and give you a final mission which might be a big result later. This informal report also could becomes your thesis later. When you doing the actual writing, this note is very helpful for organizing the content.
I was doing some minor extensions to published works, but did not document them, and I lost enthusiasm on them since I was not able to come up with something new worthy to be published.
I am not organized, and keep jumping between ideas without completing any of them. I am good in understand things and re-analyze works already published, but I have a problem in coming up with new ideas, especially with lack of guidance and encouraging from my supervisor.
I hope it is the case as you said, but these days I have the anxiety that I will never complete my PhD. I will do an informal report of what I am trying to do these days, and see what will happen.
For being non-social, it is an inter-related issue, I guess, since not able to successfully communicating with people makes me some what depressed and affect my academic productivity, and my lack of productivity makes me less confident and relaxed to talk to people.
Thanks for replying.
