Hi all,

Have hit a really low patch tonight. Feel so frustrated at myself for my self-destructive behaviour and wondering if it will eventually stop me getting my PhD. Any words of wisdom would be greatly appreciated.
I did very well in my undergrad but never had normal working patterns...this is embarrassing, but I've never broken the teenage habit of getting out of bed late! Its a constant struggle to maintain early waking times. Towards the end I also worked in a bar which didn't shut until 3 am so my body clock was thrown completely off balance.
I managed to get a studentship for my PhD and because I did so well in my degree and was always very pro-active about my work I think I convinced the department that I was motivated enough to do this PhD straight away (I stayed at the same university).
I find myself now, however, with the same habits I had through university- erratic working hours, putting things off until the very last minute, etc. I have still managed to produce a fair amount of work but I can NEVER relax- although I can put off working all day I'm constantly thinking about it and feeling frustrated with myself. Tonight it all came to a head, I'm sending a chapter to my supervisor tomorrow morning-it doesn't have to be perfect but I really wanted it to be of a standard where I can say 'I'm happy for him to read this.' I know exactly what I have to do, its mainly organizational, but deep down I am still so scared of the work. I'm scared of getting it wrong so I put it off and put it off until I end up in this situation.
I have tried all kinds of different things. We have a postgraduate research office at uni and I used to work in there but I found myself just staring at the computer all day and then having to work at night anyway. I've read a few books- Jean Bolker's was extremely useful for a while. But I've hit a point when I realise that I either change my ways or I might not complete this, sheerly because I make myself so unhappy.
Is it possible to change in the long-run and maintain those changes? Has anyone managed it?

Thanks for making it through my essay.

I went through something similar (and have occasional relapses). Up until very recently I persuaded myself that I was a nocturnal worker and whilst there is some merit in this (peace and quiet and away from office distractions), it did nothing for my stress levels. I've found when my stress levels soar too high I get into a paralysis where I can't get anything done. So, like you, I really started to beat myself up about it. So I ended up sitting down with a piece of paper and writing "what do I need to do get this thing done, stop procrastinating, and get my stress levels down." For me, I found the answer was to get up early every morning, get to the office an hour or two before everyone and basically try to break the back of my working day before lunchtime. I'd then be left with 2-3 hours work after lunch. I'd write on a piece of paper my target time to leave the office today and that spurred me on to crack on with my work. A second rule I forced on myself was no internet browisng (unless defined as work) until I've completed my working day. Of course, you always think of things you'd like to browse on the internet as the day progresses, so i'd write them down when the thought occurred and return to them later.

I think I've learned the hard way that how you start the day will define the day. So if i start the day on the internet then I'll be on and off it all day (hence the outright ban). Likewise, if I lie in bed in the morning, i'll be lethargic all day. Anyway, with all these light early mornings its pretty easy to get up in the morning (I prepare all my things and clothes the night before, i even shave the night before - so all i have to do to get up is throw myself in the shower, get dressed, bowl of ceareal and out in 20 minutes). Sounds a bit silly, but i'm giving myself no excuses to rollover in the mornings. I should say that the transition from owl to lark is a painful one and takes weeks to fully calibrate your body clock. The key to resetting your clock is getting up at the same time every morning and your sleep patterns will fall into place.

The upshot of this rambling spiel is that if I can, say, complete a full working day by 4 pm, then I can go home in a de-stressed, contented frame of mind that i've done my work for the day and then embark on guilt-free leisure pursuits in the evening.

Anyway, it's sleep time for me. I'm a 6 hour sleeper and I'm up at 6.30 am. My tuppence-worth. Good luck!

======= Date Modified 22 May 2009 00:30:09 =======
Getting out of bed earlier will make you feel much better, plus most people are more focused in the morning so it could make you much more productive. With a bit of will-power this can be fixed in one day: even if you slept late the night before, you just set the alarm early and force yourself to get up. You'll feel tired but will fall asleep in the evening and wake up at a normal hour the next day. To stick to your new sleeping routine, it really helps to make it a set habit, and make rules like no tv or computer after 10pm.

Erratic work habits, procrastinating etc. are common but can also be fixed quite easily. There are different opinions on this but the best advice I could give you is to make a schedule. Do not be a binge worker--leaving everything until you feel guilty and time-pressured then binge working, repeating the cycle ad nauseum, is unhealthy. Make a schedule and stick to it. It's very effective to combine a schedule with goals too, and gradually increase the goals as it becomes easier to meet them. For example, "I will read/write from 2pm until 5pm and I will write 250 words per day". Increase the word count as it becomes easier. Keep a record in Excel or SPSS, or whatever program you prefer, and record your productivity each day. For example, if your goal is to write more, you could have columns for month, date, day, words written, project (e.g. Thesis), comments, and met goals (Y/N). Doing this will also teach you a lot about yourself. Works very well for me so I'd recommend trying it. Good luck!

great advice given by the two posters below! thanks guys. i too am like you, i wake up late and procrastinate most of the day and then feel guilty, and then only manage to do a couple of hours of work each day!

i'm gonna take the advice given below and force myself to wake up earlier. maybe we can do it together! lol before i used to wake up at 12pm!! but slowly slowly, got myself to wake up at 11.30am, then at 11am. and today i woke up at 10.30am. only cause the postman rang the doorbell. i was tired and wanted to go back to sleep, but forced myself to stay awake, so i read a book for awhile to reward myself for waking up early lol..., and then still in bed, i did some studying.

winston churchill used to work until lunchtime from his bed!

okay so tommorow i am going to aim to wake up at 10am! and i will set some papers on my night table so i can start working from my bed.

good luck to you keep_calm. together we might be able to break the owl - to early lark barrier!!! i too am a night owl, but want to start waking up early:p

Thanks to everyone who has replied,

Lara I'm relieved to hear there are others like me, and you're right- together we can do it! The problem I have is that if I set my alarm early I will often half-wake up, switch it off and go back to sleep. I'll then wake up a couple of hours later with no memory of having switched it off!
I got up at 10 today but only because, as I mentioned, I told my supervisor I would send him some work today and it was nowhere near ready. I've spent all day on it and it's still not ready- by which I mean there are half-finished sentences, notes to myself and no references :-s I've had to e-mail and ask if he will look at it next week. It wasn't a formal deadline or anything but I'm so annoyed at myself for not managing to get it done. Part of the problem was that I over-estimated how much I could do in a couple of weeks but if I'd worked solidly and planned I would have realised this before today. :-(

Sylvester you're right and I think I've realised I need to take my work habits more seriously. Which will mean no browsing and, Supergenius like you say, no tv or computer late at night as it just keeps me awake. I do already make plans, and your Excel idea sounds great, but I'm very bad at working out what is actually feasible, which means I don't get through my tasks and just feel rubbish again. I'm hoping that slowly, slowly I will learn!

God I sound like the worst PhD student ever!

Lara working from my bed has helped in the past lol. For a while I took Jean Bolker's advice and made sure I started writing first thing in the morning. I would wake up, then get back into bed with my laptop and spend a couple of solid hours writing. That worked well so when and why did I stop?!

Ok, so 10 am tomorrow we will both be up :-)

I'm not working tomorrow though- thanks to my habits I've not had a day off in two weeks, which is not helping my stress levels!

Thanks again.

Wow keep_calm, I could have written that post myself!!! I have a very bad habit of procrastination and leaving things until the last minute - like you, it worked fine at undergrad level where you could technically study for an exam or write an essay in 1/2 days if you had to! But unfortunately it doesn't work like that for a PhD...

I was ok for the first year because I had an overbearing supervisor who gave me weekly deadlines - which was kind of annoying - but in hindsight it was probably a good thing. Then when I transferred from MSc to PhD I got a different supervisor who apparently doesn't do deadlines, and doesn't even do regular meetings! From that point (end of 1st year) up until a couple of months ago (second semester of 4th year!!!) I wasn't given one deadline - a disaster for someone like me! It resulted in the least motivated and most frustrating two years of my life, no joke.

I tried to give myself deadlines (kinda worked), I tried giving myself a schedule (couldn't stick to it, even more depressing), making plans (ditto) and pretty much everything suggested by previous posters! Things like Joan Bolker's book are motivating for about a day, then it wears off! For me, anyway...

Ultimately it was last January when I got the mother of all teaching workloads and a fixed, immovable deadline from my supervisor (31st July!) that I managed to get it together - there is nothing like a bit of pressure to get things moving! Funnily enough, I'm way less stressed now than I was when I was procrastinating - probably because now I don't have time to worry!

Anyway, all that said I don't recommend it because I had to finish my research and write an entire thesis in a couple of months (nearly there though). In my experience, no amount of advice about motivation can actually get you motivated... However:

I definitely agree with supergenius and sylvester about getting up and getting started early - thankfully I have always been an early riser (and serious parking shortages at uni are my motivation for getting to work early!)

One thing that REALLY helped me is banning internet until I have done some work. And don't just say 'I won't open up the browser' - actually unplug it, preferably even turn off the modem if you are at home. I don't go on till lunch and then only to check emails, then knock it back off. I suppose that's harder though if you are at the stage of literature searching...

Finally, ask your supervisors to give you deadlines. If there was one thing I could do over it would be to say to my supervisor "what exactly do you want and by when" and then get them to make sure you stick to it!

Sorry for such a long reply! To answer your question, is it possible to change in the long run? I feel different now, way more productive and positive, but is that only because now I have a deadline? Will I go back to the same old me as soon as I'm no longer under pressure? I don't know but if you ever figure out how to change for good let me know!

And good luck :-)

======= Date Modified 25 May 2009 11:34:37 =======
Brilliant reply Rosy, thanks so much.



I read your reply last night and today I got up at 8 am and have been working hard, with no internet browsing :-) Apart from now, obviously! But this is a 5 min break and I had to say thanks for your post...oh dear, the excuses are starting already lol.



Seriously though, it seems like for all of us the internet is the no.1 distraction, so I will be doing my damndest to stay off it. Its funny, I often think about how hard research must have been before the internet (and google books!) but clearly it has a massive down side too! I can't come off completely as I read and write together and read tons, more than I could check out from the library, but I think with some will power I might be able to stop myself checking pointless bits and pieces.



I do have deadlines with my supervisor but they are very loose- my current one is 3 chapters, in any sort of state, by September- quite a long way to go! So I will ask if we can narrow those down a bit; say, hand in one in July and one in September. In between that I think I will send my work to him more. Even though he's quite laid-back I am terrified of disappointing him so if I say I will send something for him to read, even if its not important, I do try hard to get it to him on time (although, as I mentioned in my last post this didn't work last time!).



I'm hoping that this isn't another flash in the pan and that I've realised that, if I want to finish this thing and not go crazy in the mean time, I am going to have to stick to the rules.

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Hey KC! you're so very welcome!! and please you cannot have the title of the worst phd student ever, cause I currently hold that title!!! hehe :) seriously. i kid you not.

oh i'm just the same, i set alarms, and then turn them off, and sleep in lol. so for the past few days i've given up on setting an alarm, and just waking up "naturally" i tend to go to bed quite late like at 2/3am. so its a vicious cycle really.
but you've inspired me, so i am going to try to wake up earlier tommorow, and hopefully that will help me - i might leave my curtains open that way the sunshine light might "gradually wake me up " or something!

--
sounds like you did really well today. well done on waking up at 8am! that is VERY impressive!
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i agree with the posties below that internet browsing sucks up so much time. so i also tend to keep email checking and other googling to a minimum.

well i've made a new plan today. i say that alot. but this time i'm gonna stick with it. i have loads of viva questions to get through, and kept panicking about how many there are, instead of just going through them one by one. and i remembered a great advice given to me by alot of people on this forum (Which i used during my thesis writing aswell) -

basically in a nutshell, a journey of 10,000 steps starts with one step. and you climb a mountain one step at a time. so instead of worrying about the amount of questions i have to get through, i should just methodically go through each question one at a time, instead of setting unrealistic goals, that just leaves me disheartened. so thats what im gonna do now, like i did for my thesis, work on one question at a time, instead of jumping around like a mad person. i remember during thesis writing, i would work on a chapter at a time. and i would tell myself, i got X amount of time to do it, but things ALWAYS take longer than you think, and i used to panic and think, this is taking too long! but then calmed myself by saying, well i'm gonna have to eventually do it, unless i can stop time, i just have to get on with it, taking it one word at a time, one step at a time. and slowly slowly, things started to get "ticked off"

so make up a list of things you need to do, stick it on your wall, and just methodically work through them. dont get hung up on how long it takes. just work on it properly, and dont take short cuts, cause eventually you will have to get the work done anyways, so why not do it now.

im taking my advice, and have made a list of 20 viva questions ( i got a total of 100) but in order not to scare myself, gonna work on it in "batches". and will stick on my wall, and as i write zero draft rough answers for each question, will tick them off

also i love joan bolkers advice, about not worrying about the perfect answer or writing, just get stuff written down, even if it might be wrong, or crap, as long as its something, some mud to play with.

good luck KC! i'm with ya !!