Similar situation; two and a half years into the PhD and feeling burnt out. Been feeling like this for 6-9 months, with some good patches in between. Writing up my MPhil/PhD transfer was good and felt happy, but the bits after the 'good' bits always get me down - I end up feeling lost and not sure what to do/what to look at next in my research or how to move forward. Feel like I should take time off to collect thoughts, but I rarely do - when I do though, I end up completely forgetting about work and then coming back to the same old problems!

Just been to a medium-sized conference where I presented and it seemed to go down quite well (even though I still have reservations about my data and the content of what I was presenting), but since coming back I just can't get down to work and don't know what to look at. Feels massively frustrating, particularly this close to the Xmas break when I'll be forced to be away from the office.

Similar situation of anxiety & depression and also a history of it. I get good days and bad days, but bits of it every day. I also have drowsiness problems, and I've put on a lot of weight in the last 2.5 years due to moving around/walking less due to office-based research. My outlook is very negative at the moment, even with the excitement of Xmas looming since I'm worried that I won't have enough work done to graduate by the time I'm due to finish.

Keep in mind that you're not alone - even if everyone else in your office/group seems to be getting along really well, most have issues like this (and many, daily). Some are just better at bluffing that everything's working fine and going according to plan!

Definitely feel the same way as you, Splendins - Starting third year and feel no more cleverererer than when I started! That said, I did have an epiphany earlier this when I met with my supervisor to chat about my problems and discussing results, and then coming out of the meeting realising a whole hour had passed and it'd been spent mulling over the problem as a team.

I see my supervisor regularly around once a week so meetings usually last a half hour or less, and until now they've usually been spent either showing results or showing problems, and him giving me advice on what to look at ('e's the expert, I'm the apprentice' kind of thing) - This time, we were both tackling the problem and bouncing ideas off each other and trying to come to some conclusions. It actually made me feel like I was developing the science rather than just doing it, showing him the results and him telling me if they're right or wrong or what.

The development of me to that stage has certainly been gradual (taken 2 years to get here), but the process isn't finished. I haven't submitted journal papers yet (still don't feel clever/successful enough to do that yet), but feel like I'm on the way up the mountain. It's a long way off, but at least I have my hiking boots on now!

I think I read somewhere that postgrads/PhDs are good at dealing with failure. I guess it's not the most glamourous way of putting the PhD process, but I guess it sums it up pretty well.

I guess that from day one it's been set-back after set-back - though part of the problem with my research is that it's covering a number of scientific areas, and it's been quite hard for me to balance those and figure out whether some new research can probe and get some good results.

I've mainly used trial-and-error for trying new techniques or trying to get from A to B, and it turns out that where I thought I'd identified a good route, the tools aren't really there with which to connect A and B up, so I'm kind of on my back foot again. Seeing my supervisor later today to report back on this, so he may suggest just abandoning it (and writing up what happened and why it didn't work) or maybe doing some more testing to identify the limitations (which is what I've been doing since discovering that the method is not going to be much use).

I figure I'm just very unlucky (my judgment was sound!) and things which could have gone wrong DID go wrong. It's just frustrating that things rarely ever work, and something I'm still not accustomed to despite 2 years doing my research.

The dispiriting nature of continually failing tends to get me down - if I'd have known that when I started, I may have chosen a different 'type' of PhD or research. Being able to deal with it is still something I need to work on!

My viva is at least a year away but am going to save those questions now so I don't forget them!

Does everyone else just forget about it and move on?

I know research is (a lot of the time) about trying things which don't work and not giving up, but sometimes it's difficult to carry on trying!

How do you guys deal with set-backs or problems?

Recently I've been working on some aspects of my project that I thought would be possible to do, but I keep getting setbacks including data not working, then getting data working but unexpected results (that are obviously wrong) and now discovering that it's not going to be possible to do what I wanted to do with the model/tools I've been using.

It's been setback after setback, after each one been trying to understand why it didn't work and then attempting to fix, which I felt okay about because progress was being made. Now I realise that I can't do what I wanted to do and so I've lost a week's work and no real workaround to fix it this time. Sadly, I don't think my work on the issues and resolving them is going to contribute to my thesis, so it's just a avenue I tried to investigate which was fruitless.

I've been through problems like this before and recovered, but now I'm in 3rd year and can't afford to lose time at this stage and just want things to work and some useful research to get done.

No access for me either, I'm afraid!

I'd imagine that if you were aiming to stick around in academia an MPhil would make things tougher (after all, you'd be in direct competition with students with PhDs), but exiting to industry or another career would be more forgiving. I'm aiming to move to industry, so staying in academia is not a priority, though if I was actually offered a place or there was one available then I might feel different and consider it.

I already have a Masters' degree (my undergraduate MEng), so does the MPhil supersede that or would I have two masters (with one in research)?

Of course, I want to stay the mile and get the PhD, but I think my stress and anxiety about getting there will be significantly reduced if I know that at least I'll come out with something (even if my thesis goes horribly), as I hope I've done enough to warrant an MPhil if I submitted now (or with a bit more work).

Like many of the users here, I started off on the MPhil programme and recently got bumped up to the full PhD programme after successful completion of my transfer thesis and the transfer/upgrade process.

My question is: How do potential employers feel about an MPhil qualification?

I like to think that I'm now at the stage where, if I submitted my thesis, I could get an MPhil for my efforts, or if everything went horribly wrong in my final year that if I didn't get the full PhD then at least I could be rewarded with an MPhil. Amongst the others in my office, the opinion is that if you tried to get a PhD and got an MPhil, then it's a bit like a 'failure', which is a bit worrying - as if employers would see the 'MPhil' on your CV and consider that you're not a good researcher (i.e. not good enough to get a full PhD), rather than seeing the MPhil as a valid qualification in the field of research.

Does anyone else have experience or opinion?

I'd like to think that the MPhil is a perfectly fine qualification, and gives me some that even if I can't get a full PhD for my final thesis that I still have a safety net of a new qualification to show for my years of study and research!

Okay, slight update - I have my transfer viva in around an hour or so. Nervous! =S

I'm forever stalling. It usually comes in (around) weekly cycles; I have a good end to a week, take a day or two off at the weekend, then at the beginning of the next week I can't get started or go anywhere until near the end of the week.

I guess that when I have a day off, I force myself to forget about work and so don't think about it until 9am on Monday - At which point I lose my streak and so spend a lot of the day not knowing what (exactly) I should do from the big list of 'things to do'. I'm very concerned about using my time effectively, but I end up going the opposite way and spending so much time thinking about what I need to do (or starting something before dropping it within half an hour to move to something else) that I end up getting very little done.

I'm not very good at setting 'little' goals or recognising my achievements, so I end up getting very disheartened and depressed with (lack of) progress very easily. This makes me stressed a lot of the time and concerned that I need to make progress, so much so that I frequently get panic attacks with stress and worry. I doubt the validity of my work a lot, and don't have a great deal of faith with it.

What are the techniques you're using to deal with things? How do you deal with the depression?

I find Mendeley to be fantastic. I used to faff around with EndNote and Acrobat, but jumped on board with Mendeley in beta stage. It used to bug out a lot, but now it's out of beta and on a stable build, it's super. Annotating, highlighting and notes are quite good on there already, but I think they're looking at improving that functionality.

I'm just coming up to 2 years knocked off, about to have my transfer viva onto the PhD programme.

My project is very broad, and by virtue the questions that are being addressed are quite broad. Most of those in my office and research group are focussing on specific problems, whereas mine is more qualitative than quantitative at this stage. The depth I'd hoped I'd get into hasn't really appeared yet and I'm worried that I won't get it done in the remaining year (plus write-up) if it turns out I have to.

Anyone been in a similar situation?

I get a bit anxious when I see other projects heavy into the depth of one particular problem when mine is very broad and so involves a lot of hand-waving and diagrams rather than hard data, and makes me fear that there isn't the level of depth required of the PhD.

Picking which part of my study to look at in more depth is difficult as well, I've kind of covered all bases at the top-level and identifying some problems and gaps where the links don't quite match up, but I find myself flitting between various aspects of my project often and finding it difficult not having a particular, set problem to deal with so I know where I stand.

Who else has had a very open project with very little definition in the beginning? How did you manage it and whittle it down during the 3 years?