Hi all :)

This last couple of months I've completely lost motivation. I've taken to sleeping a lot and hoping somehow the PhD problems will magically vanish lol. I think I'm burned out and I'm not sure what to do do :( Still writing the Methods chapter and trying to recruit participants is a constant source of stress. I was wondering if any of you have some advice or experience to share about how you overcame this 'wall' I seem to have hit. Thanks! :)

Sorry to hear you are having a tough time, but you are in good company here. If you do a keyword search for 'burnout' you will see lots of good advice that has been given on this forum previously.

Hi lemonjuice!

I am sorry you feel this way.

I started with my fieldwork during the second year of my PhD, and although my project was developing great, I also burned out. The triggers were the same as yours: first of all I was recruiting participants and I had a very low response rate from a particular group, and I was feeling hopeless because there is only so much you can do. I was also feeling extremely guilty for lost data (which now I know it is fine, it happens). I was also very very tired from the fieldwork itself, and I was sleep deprived. (Sleep deprivation makes me a ticking bomb).

It was around Christmas, so I locked myself in the house just lying in bed for a while. My supervisor noticed my changed mood and he was very worried (although he was a bit guilty because he was criticizing me of not putting enough effort). One thing that I did during that Christmas was to write a conference paper, which cheered me up a little bit (it is an achievement that normally requires little effort).

Now, that I look back, of course it was not worth it! First of all, the responses of this group are not even that important, and my PhD is fine without it. If I could give an advice to my past self, it would be to think how I would analyse my data. Which brings me to the second burn-out.... Beginning of the third year, finally cleared all my data and organised them nicely, but had no idea how to analyse them.... I asked help from five different statisticians until I found someone who could actually help.

For example, I ended up using multilevel modelling. This is a statistical approach to deal with nested objects (such as children in classrooms or patients in hospitals). In this approach, number of classrooms or number of hospitals is FAR more important than nested objects (number of children or number of patients). If only I knew that back then....