I am unable to sleep well as I am stressed about my PhD, as a result I wake up about midday and by the end of the day I feel i have accomplished very little if nothing, i have spent the last 20 days doing this...days and nights merged, into an incessant pattern of stress and non productivity ..

how do I break this vicious cycle ,am i just procrastinating, anyone have similar experiences , any advice is much appreciated.

cheers

I have suffered with this before and it's not nice. One thing to do is to make a list of things you have to do and things that are worrying you, that way you can visualise everything that is spinning round your head and start to focus on what you need to get done. Then on a daily basis you can say 'I'm going to do X' today, and then you can focus on that single task/issue, complete it and then cross it off your list. I read somewhere that being able to visualise and cross off tasks is a good way to clear your mind rather than having it all swimming in your head.

As for the insomnia, this is something that i have suffered with since my undergrad degree. I have a real problem switching off in the evening. Hot milky drinks are good to induce sleep, so you could try hot chocolate, horlicks or ovaltine before you go to bed. Having a soak in the bath before bed is also a good way to relax, avoid showers before bed as they tend to wake you up rather than relax you. Another thing to try is lavender oil, rub it on your temples when you are in bed.. i find this really makes me drowsy and helps me sleep.. even though it does make me smell like an old lady's handbag! Also do you do work in bed? If you do then this is a bad idea as it can stop your brain from switching off, its a good idea to keep your bedroom and workspace separate if you can so that your body doesn't associate your bed with work.

To start with it might be a good idea to take a bit of time off and get a change of scene to just chill out. Sometimes when I am in a rut I find it best to just ignore the work for a few days and either go home or visit friends somewhere to give me change to switch off and take my mind off things.

Hope this helps to some degree!

I can sympathise, Mira. I often fall into this spiral of non-productivity. I'm currently writing-up with a looming deadline, and I'm finding it very hard to get my work done. I'm more focused on failing, worrying about getting a job after I submit, and paying off student loans etc., than actually focusing on my work.

I can only suggest that you create an artificial deadline and set yourself one particular task, and just try to get it done come hell or high water. This is what I have done for this week: get 10,000 words done.

Also, I find procrastination needs a crutch - may it be the TV, surfing the web, talking on the phone etc. So cut off those distractions and suddenly your left with nothing but your work (unless you have kids...which you can't switch off).

I found this lecture to be helpful for general time management tips (it's mentioned in the accountability thread on this forum):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5784740380335567758

Know just what you mean, Mira. The advice Tricky and MissSpacey give is brilliant. It really helps me to make lists and tick little tasks off one by one (in the spirit of the Beijing Olympics, apparantly Confucius said it doesn't matter how slowly you move, a slong as you don't stop).

If you're having trouble sleeping (and I know what that's like), my advice is to find a friendly person to have a good moan to, whether a friend or the uni postgrad office.

I have both problems from time to time. They are both frustrating. Its hard to do good work when you are tired, I think that being tired makes everything feel worse! Everyone is different of course in their sleep needs and habits, but think about how much sleep you need and whether you are a night owl or early to bed/early to rise sort, and stick to that the best you can. There is a lot of advise out there about not working in your bedroom, so you think of it as a place of relaxation and sleep. Easier said than done if you have student accommodation--but its something you might think about, can you make sure your sleeping area is free of books, etc from studying?

Procrastination I think can set in when you feel overwhelmed--at least it does for me. I feel like--I simply cannot do this, so I DON'T!!! What works for me, as the others have suggested, is breaking the task down into smaller bites, and then finding a reward for myself for completion--like, work on this for two hours and then go get a nice coffee, or long walk, or take the afternoon off, etc...sort of like coaxing a stubborn mule into taking a few steps at a time! I think if you make your work day an 8 or so hour marathon its difficult--thats a long time to do the concentrated work of a PhD. Can you break up your work into two or three hour chunks and take some time off between work sessions?

And sometimes there is no answer but to simply force yourself and say DO IT! ( and then I end up on the internet faffing around!) 8-)

Tricky, Miss spacey and Juno - excellent advice indeed!

Juno, loved quote!! i am going to stick it on a postit and on my wall :-) how true that is.

not much for me to add from the great advice given to you already.

but i have been feeling like you for a long time. i have a deadline end of september, and i wake up everyday worrying how to work 12 hours to get my chapters done. but then K and Tractorgirl (from the acountability thread) gave me advice to stop thinking too much about being productive, and just set myself small taks to complete. like already mentioned having things to cross off, feels good.

so that's what i did yesterday. just told myself to do one little thing, just for 15minute. i even set a egg timer. when the timer went off, i got *into it* and carried on. 15 minutes turned into an hour. and then i told myself every hour i would take a break. sometimes i would work for a couple of hours before taking the break.

the trick is to tell yourself. that you *only* have to work for 15minutes. and then you can take a break and do whatever you want.
sometimes you will get into the zone and not want to take a break after 15minutes, other times you will want to take a break, and that is okay too.

so today, i just want you to try this little experiment.

visit this website, to track what you are doing every 15 minutes. it even chimes every 15minutes, you can check the box on the left side. and then write down what you did. if you were doing nothing, thats fine just log on saying *nothing* eventually psychologically, you will want to do something, no matter how small, just so you have something to record.
try it out.

i did mine yesterday, and usually i can only manage 1 or 2 hours of productive work. but yesterday, even though i took massive breaks throughout the day, more breaks than i worked. i managed to clock 5 and half hours of productive work, and checked off about 4 things from my list. they arent huge things, but somethin

http://davidseah.com/tools/ett/alpha/

this is the website.

so today. *just* work for 15minutes. and then log what you did during those 15 minutes, and take a break.. and keep doing that. even if it's work for 15 minutes, and take 30 minutes break to do whatever you want. and keep cycling like that.

yesterday i worked for an hour or so. took an hour break, then worked for another hour or so, took a nap for about 3 hours. then worked for a couple of hours. etc.
before i used to tell myself. right i am going to sit at my desk ALL day and clock 10 hours of productive work. i ended up only ever clocking maximum 2 hours.

now that i am getting used to taking breaks and not being so focused on staying at my desk all day, i find that i am more productive. i find that after the hour is coming close, i get bored and restless and want to take a break. before i used to punish myself and not let myself leave my desk.

so today, i am going to try to reduce the length of breaks. it's all about doing it slowly.

so today. your mission is to just work for 15 minutes, and then report back to us, what you actually did. everyone can manage for 15 minutes.

and to combat worrying is to engross yourself in something that takes your full attention. Dale Carnegie said we cannot think two thoughts at the same time. you cannot think of the statue of liberty and what you want to do tommorow. the mind can only think one thought, you can keep swapping between the two, but you cant think of both at the exact same time.

same goes with worrying, you cannot worry and work out a calculation at the same time.

i;ve been suffering from panic attacks and worrying for the past month! i do still worry, but then try to distract myself by just doing small tasks for my thesis.

i tell myself to do X and give myself a time limit of 15 minutes. if i dont complete it in 15 minutes, thats fine, i reset the timer again to give myself another 15 minutes.

the only thing that works for me, is to set myself a very small thing to do for my thesis. like i will write down:

make figure 1. and then set my timer for 15 minutes.
instead of thinking, restructure the entire chapter. thats too much for my brain and i get bored or disheartened even before i start. so i just focus on one thing at a time, tick it off and then move onto the next thing.

i hope that has helped(up) good luck! and its perfectly natural to feel like you. i feel like that alot! my main worry is that time will run out and i wont have finished my chapters. or that my chapters are not up to scratch. the only thing we can do, is work as much as we can during each day.

Hi,

I sympathise with you. I go through phases of sleeping long hours but the sleep doesn't seem to count for much. Then I'm very unproductive.

The thing that I found helped, which is very annoying, is exercise. If I do an hour or so before bed running, or do step aerobics or cycling then my body gets tired and I get good sleep, sleep less hours and am more productive during the day. Of course there are other benefits too...I have however spent the time since I left school ignoring these benefits! Sleep is my motivation for exercise!!!

I have a trampette, mini exercise bike and some step ladders which I use because I hate people seeing me exercise. It's worth a try right?

A

I concur with the advice given here. In my case I know this stuff but strangely don't put it into practice often enough. Ahead of trying some of these techniques, one trick I find useful (and is similar to what Tricky is saying), is to sit with a blank document and talk to yourself on screen, e.g. (what is the problem? why can't I get any work done? why can't i sleep at night?). Just type up whatever comes into your mind. It's the old trick of taking what's in your mind away from your mind and display it tangeably on "paper". Once you've done this, you can break up your various worries into separate compartments and develop plans for tackling each. It's a sort of self-therapy but it works suprising well.

Dear All,
Just wanted to say a very big thank you for your support for my question yesterday. I followed everyones advice and managed to write 400 words and do about 2 hours work, not bad after 20 days of complete non productivity!! i also went to the gym for an hour and am feeling good..

I dont what I would have done without you guys , I am so happy to have found this group .

i look forward to participating an helping others too..

thanks so very much again.

cheers
meera


p.s more to report tomorrow ..

Mira - hope the sleep is back to somewhat normal now. Went thro' both ends (insomnia and oversleeping) and neither was worth leaving go past a certain point i.e. I think it is great that you have recognised the problem quickly. I think if you follow most of the advice given already, you'll be fine but if it does continue, don't be afraid to get some medical help in terms of natural remedies as if you leave it go, it will get more serious. That said, exercise (get a cheap MP3 player and some kick ass chooons for the threadmill/rowing machines... Opeth's "Deliverance" is my choice), breaking your problems down to workable tasks, switching off at night (its best to leave it in the morning) and taking breaks (a few days, not the tea breaks!) are key.
For a real lift, go into youtube and look up Soulsavers and "No Expectations". If that doesn't relieve the stress, I don't know what will.

Dunno about ye, but some of the advice on this forum is f**king priceless ... would it be a good idea to get it all in one place as a "PhD 101" so to speak?

Mira - hope the sleep is back to somewhat normal now. Went thro' both ends (insomnia and oversleeping) and neither was worth leaving go past a certain point i.e. I think it is great that you have recognised the problem quickly. I think if you follow most of the advice given already, you'll be fine but if it does continue, don't be afraid to get some medical help in terms of natural remedies as if you leave it go, it will get more serious. That said, exercise (get a cheap MP3 player and some kick ass chooons for the threadmill/rowing machines... Opeth's "Deliverance" is my choice), breaking your problems down to workable tasks, switching off at night (its best to leave it in the morning) and taking breaks (a few days, not the tea breaks!) are key.
For a real lift, go into youtube and look up Soulsavers and "No Expectations". If that doesn't relieve the stress, I don't know what will.

Dunno about ye, but some of the advice on this forum is f**king priceless ... would it be a good idea to get it all in one place as a "PhD 101" so to speak?

ooops - sorry for the double post ... didn't get much kip last night:p

At a great gig so it wasn't the PhD causing it at least.

Keep the boat afloat people