It's hard to form clear goals when several cooks want different things from the PhD broth. I have two supervisors who regularly contradict each other, Sup A saying, great, I like this angle, go with it, and Sup B saying what are you thinking going down this path? Each of them have their own hobbyhorses, and I have mine. The only way I've found to deal with the frustrating blessing of their differing opinions is to remind myself that it's MY PhD. I tend to agree with the one who is closer to my own opinion, I like his style more, so I adjust the work to his standards and not the naysayer's. The naysayer is great for pointing out problems, but I don't have to take all her advice. I do however find myself blaming her when I'm not getting anywhere, thinking that it's her fault for imposing impossible demands. I've got 4 months left, and I am finally starting to feel comfortable in this good cop bad cop arrangement, simply by embracing the status quo. Everybody needs a scapegoat sometimes.

As long as you can motivate your decisions and state to all three, this is the goal I've set, you're all giving me different advice that is useful in its own right, but to reach my goal I can't accomodate everyone. If you don't do this, it's more likely you'll lose the plot and start to hate your PhD. It's hard to protect your developing intellectual property in this way, especially when you want to listen to everyone's advice. But you have to keep it yours. You could even talk to all three, saying you're not sure how to deal with their feedback when they're all focusing on different aspects. This should at least elicit something from them about how they see themselves in the pecking order and make them aware of each other's different points of view. But don't give up! At least not until you've really tried all you can to patch things up and make it work for you!

In my place citations do not count towards your final word count. Technically they're not your words, so why count them? This is to say nothing of the pain of adding up all your citations, but even if you get a rough count of what you're citing you can be more liberal with your overall estimate of how many words the paper actually is.

I have to quote large sections of newspaper columns and several stanzas of poems etc, if this counted towards my final word count, I'd never get to say anything. So no, I don't think it's cheeky in the slightest!
Best of luck.;-)

ah the final stretch...
it is in sight for me too. i just counted on my fingers (humanities...) how many months left and a jolt of fear went through my body. 6! 7! I'm working on securing that 7th month for myself but it is still unclear. I have 2 draft chapters, 1 to go and 1 to rewrite plus intro and conclusion.

In the last month, I've had two different people say to me: Finishing in February, eh? Sure that's loads of time. AND Finishing in February, eh? God, that's right around the corner!

Aah! It is in sight but what an action packed route it will be, finishing drafts, submitting and correcting and then the dread public defence.

My motivation is at an all time low and even though I know I have so much to do still, I've spent the last few days making lists and trying to tick stuff off them, but have not really done the serious work I need to do. Today though, I decided that I was wasting time by thinking about how I don't really want to work at all. The new motto is Work like an intellectual horse for the next month and finish a draft of Ch 3--then I can go on 3 weeks holiday and come back rejuvenated and ready to round it all off.

That said, trying to dupe myself into hard work with verve is hard going. I want to enjoy what I'm doing again and just can't seem to get in the groove. Any tips on keeping motivation up would be much appreciated. I definitely want to finish this thing and move on to the next thing. There's not a bit in me that wants to quit, I just want it to be over with and have done it well.

Hmm, think I might be ready to do some real work now! Good luck everybody!

Most of my fellow Humanities PhD students work between 32 - 42 hours a week. 6 hrs a day sounds good to me. Don't forget that you're actually working more than the 6 productive hours you mention. Thinking about your PhD is a kind of work too. If you haven't already begun to do so, soon you'll be thinking about it all the time. All the time might be an exaggeration, but at some point it will feel like that. Checking email and filing notes, articles etc is work too.
If you like writing more (and lots of people only consider writing work) you'll do more hours when you start writing and all will balance out.

There is always somebody whose working hours and habits will make you feel inferior. That girl who starts at 8.30 and leaves at half five might be envious of your more nonchalant approach. Many people also sit at their desks and do nothing for hours. You might get more done in 6 hours than your neighbour will in 9 hours.

I also wish I could maintain extremely steady hours and habits but I've never been able to work like that independently, unless there's someone expecting me to be at my desk from 9-5. One of the best things about doing a PhD is that you can work when you can work and not when someone says you should.
I recommend the book 'Writing Your Dissertation in 15 Fifteen Minutes a Day' by Joan Bolker. Find what works for you and don't let anyone make you feel you're doing it wrong.

The university is closing its doors on Christmas Eve at 5 and we're not allowed back until the 5th. All week I've been rationing books to take home with me so I can finish a paper I'm presenting in January. I'll never read all of them and I want 7 days off at the least. I've felt my productivity slipping for weeks and know the 'about to explode' feeling well now. Last Christmas though I took 3 weeks off and felt crazy for a few days at my family's until I could finally relax. The break was great though, but it was so hard to get back into work in January. hence cutting days-off down to a week this time. Hope everybody gets some kind of break without too much guilt! Ho ho ho!

Glad to see there's other people suffering from the lameness. About a month or so ago I was feeling extremely stressed out, knew I wasn't going to make my next chapter deadline and couldn't even really muster the energy to care. I've since reassessed the overall length and breadth of my project and decided to kill some chapters I do not think are really necessary. Tomorrow I'm presenting the new plan to my supervisors and hope they take to it. (Fingers crossed). After the worst of the stress I'm feeling a fair bit better but still having trouble getting back into it. I always think it's so hard to go from relaxation or forced relaxation back to the general swing of things. I think that doing a phd not only takes hard work (and that damned discipline I hear so much about) but creativity and you have to recharge the batteries every so often. That's harder and also really important when it's freezing and gloomy outside. Let's all stop kicking ourselves and try to find something enjoyable about not being able to work the way we think we should. Surely they're all lying when they tell us never to stop working??

Hi,i'm relatively new here, been reading posts for a while and have found some of the advice quite useful and sympathised with many of the shared gripes and troubles others have written about.
I have 5 days to write a detailed plan of the next 2 years of my life and my dissertation. I had longer, but was paralysed by the dread and seeming impossibility of having any clue what I'll be doing in a year's time. I'm starting yr 2 of 3 and now and need to start producing chapters at a steady rate. My supervisors are finally satisfied that I am well-enough situated in the various disciplines of my interdiscipl. subject and have requested a 'narrative description' the next 2 years and what each chapter will be about.

So do any fellow humanities PhD students have advice about plotting out imagined chapters? I have a general idea of what I'll deal with in each, but don't feel it's specific enough to put into a convincing narrative. Any books/methods that have been useful to others? How long does it usually take you to produce a chapter? What pitfalls have influenced your usual level of production? Many thanks in advance!

First of all, congrats on getting so far. I started my PhD in English etc. in February of this year, and can hardly imagine how far I've yet to go. My personal dream is to win the lotto and become an independent researcher, and we should all have a dream, despite the harsh reality of academics.
Just wondering if you'd tell me a little bit about how drastically your research changed from the beginning up to submission. I'm starting to see my work go in a different direction and it's a bit scary.