I'm having serious issues regulating my work time. My thesis seems to want itself written between 10pm and 1am, and I can easily churn out work during this time, whereas during the day I'm easily distracted, demotivated, and fuzzy brained. This would be fine if my part-time and teaching work wasn't happening during normal office hours three days a week. Is there any way I can retrain myself? At the moment I just don't sleep much on days when I'm working, but this makes working in a call centre even more hellish than it is to start off with!

One of the big pluses of doing a PhD (assuming you have a supervisor who lives in the real world) is that you can choose your working hours. Like you, I am a night owl so tend to wander in at lunchtime and then work deep into the evening. I hear what you're saying on teaching - I have to teach at 9am on a couple days of the week, but this is manageable if I take power naps during the day.

It's just a case of getting to know what works best for you and using that strategy to get you through.

I'd be ok if I could just shift to working at night, but it's doing 9-5 at work three days a week that's causing my problems. I really want to find out why I can only work at night: is it that I have the guilt of a whole day's procrastination behind me, or because the busybusy distraction part of my brain gets too tired, or because it's dark, or because I have motivation to work (I often do "if you reach the next 1000 word mark then you can go to bed..."? I kind of want to trust myself not to do any strenuous work all day for maybe a week (like just organise my notes or my bibliography) and then only start hardcore work at 9pm and see what happens.

I'm the same i.e. can often produce best work between 10pm and 1am ish. I've been like that since my A-levels (age 16). I'm also a night-owl and feel pretty alert then. But also, I think because the rest of the household are in bed, I can concentrate without any distractions.

I can think of two options.

1) You timetable in nap periods during the day, or negotiate to have less intense work earlier on. This depends if you are able to sleep easily during the day.

2) Maybe you are doing too much and need cut back on some of it. Probably quite difficult if you are struggling to survive, but it may be necessary if you are able to maintain your stamina in the long run.

alicepalace, I'm the same. For me the guilt of not working during the day pressures me to do work at night but then like you I often have to work 9-5 weekdays in my job. It may sound a bit sad but to 'force' myself to do work in the daytime I'm setting a timer for 1/2 hour with the internet conenction off. Then I give myself a short break, search the net etc before starting another 1/2 hour timed session. It's a bit military like but maybe it'll work for you??? Good luck!

Because I work part-time too, I also do a majority of my work in the evenings / early hours. I always feel guilty about it - but, if I don't work - I don't eat. And although I don't know how long I can sustain this work pattern - the other option is not really attractive. No way out (except thesis submission).

I know for a fact I'll be up until about 2 tonight - and then rising for a seminar tmrw.

I really need to get rid of my internet connection I think! I'm really bad at napping, but I wonder if giving myself easier work to do in the daytime, rather than just procrastinating and then getting the fear later on might be the answer. I'm really ruled by my body clock: I can only get a decent workout done at about 5pm, no matter how hard I try to train myself for the morning.

alice,
I'm similar in that it often takes me a lot of guilt of not having worked in order to finally start working, usually when it's late.
something that helps for me is making deals with people. not with myself, cause I'm not hard enough in enforcing it towards myself . I arrange to meet people to work, like, each on their own project but at the same place. makes it harder to let yourself be distracted if the other is keeping up the deal! cutting out the internet helps, too. I find it easiest to keep internet time down when I plan specific times for it, rather than just "not now, not now, not now, ahh, well, perhaps just for five minutes, can't hurt can it?..."

alicepalace, i think it has little to do with work patterns more to do with guilt. i recently stopped working and took six months off work to rescue my research which has been struggling. i find that when i did 3 days a week at work, i'd do my thesis in the evenings - say 2 or 3 hours and then try to concentrate for say the remaining 2 days and put in some work in the weekend. what i found difficult was keeping up with my line of thought. i'd get a good idea, and then its time to go to work or prepare for teaching. nowadays, even though all i do is study, i find that i struggle to be up early. i normally work on my thesis between 12 pm and 2am and get up at about 11. I guess for me, my work pattern is influenced by motivational issues, having fallen so many times and an ever critical supervisor. so when i wake up i actually feel tired - another day repeating the same chapter. the day i move on from this chapter, no doubt i'll be up at 6am if necessary.

regarding your being unable to sleep, chose a time that works for you and your situation. its all you can do and avoid the temptation to compare yourself with others. is there a chance you could get up early, say 4ish and work til eight then go to work. i tried that when i worked and my thesis haunted me less during the day. i could enjoy my day at work and work for about two hours after work, making the hours i'd normally put in if i didn't have to work at all.