Working :)

Soooo I re-read choice bits of my 'how to write a dissertation in 15 minutes a day' and it has helped me enormously!

I cannot emphasise how much I love this book!  I was dreading work and felt completely overwhelmed by it all.  And then I read a lovely section saying just try and freewrite rubbish for 10 mins a day.  And you might think, '10 mins?!  But that is not enough!' and she would say 'Ah.  But 10 mins is infinitely more than nothing!' and she is quite right.  And by that standard I have managed to sit and work uninterrupted for two sessions of 10 mins :)  I am very pleased with this.  About to go and do another session in a minute; I do ten mins and then have 20 mins off(ish).

I am also writing down every single time I go to play on the internet while I am working.  It is apparent that my concentration span at the moment is about 40 seconds long.  No, I am not joking!  Every minute I have a physical compulsion to click on the internet.  I have now disabled my internet by pressing my wireless off button, which is at the top of my laptop so I have to physically reach up to it to turn it on, and it is worrying the amount of times my hand twitches to do it!  I am an actual addict.  So this goes to show why I never work.  By writing it down I manage to do something with my twitch (!) and also look back and realise how many times I avoided skiving in a ten minute session AND hopefully see the gaps between each compulsion grow...  Arf I am in a mess!

My plan is to pootle on with the ten mins a day thing until Saturday, when DB and Bean will be safely in the South and I shall have three whole days to work, uninterrupted.  On these days I shall aim to to 2 pages of writing.  I can do this over however many hours I want, but when it is done my time is my own.  I shall also endeavouir to write before I do anything else, which is how I used to work before I had bean.  I would get up, get coffee and toast, sit at my desk and start work within about 20 mins of waking up.  these days I have to shower, dress (! such an inconvenience getting out of one's pj's), look after Bean, get him to the childminders and THEN finally, work.

I shall also write EVERY day bar one.  Even if it just for 10 mins.

It doesn't sound like much but, as nice lady whose name I forget says, it is better than the nothing I have done for the past two weeks!

Anyway, my ten minutes are calling!

x J

Ah-ha ha ha - second chance

I haven't necessarily buggered up my deadlines :)

If I work hard (and don't go South for bbq) I might be able to have a rough frist draft done for when we go on Holiday still.  It won't be as cushty as it was, and it won't be handed in as polished as I would have liked but all the chapters might be there, and a decent working biblio...

This is good news indeed!  It is very motivating because if I can hand in then I would be able to go on holiday knowing that my hols are at such a good time - in a dead space I wouldn't be working in anyway as my Sup is busy reading.  If I miss that deadline then when i go away will ADD to my deadline, it will be wasting time. 

So.  Better crack on instead of being on here talking about motivating it all is, or on twitter?!

x J

Twitter?!

Er I am now on twitter...  I think!

I can be found at  @jayney (I think, if that is how it works).  I set up the account in 2008 (!) when it was pretty new and just received an alert about it and looked it up and woohoo, what a nifty name!  Would never in a million years get such a good name now.

Anyway, I think that is how you find people, I set it up to go with the blog so...  will keep it as I do love a good mini-rant.

x J

Beginning of the END: Let's Finish this Bastard!

RIGHT friends.  This is IT.  This is the beginning of a whole load of pain and the END of the PhD for me.

I am forgoing all pleasures (apart from chocolate, crisps, wine and tv...  and my family...  and reading...  er not foregoing anything then) to complete my PhD.  Starting from TODAY!  Today!  Strike while the iron is hot.

Obviously I am not working now as I am procrastinating by writing this instead :)  One thing at a time though eh?! 

I was thinking yesterday and I felt very low.  I feel like an utter failure in various areas of my life, (all expect being a parent, I work bloody hard at that) and yesterday I just stood near the cooker and just felt so incredibly lost and down and trapped.  And I realised I was actually heading toward depression again, so something in my life had to change.  I realised I needed to get away, to move to the South asap!  I needed to get a life, to be happier and not so lonely and stressed.  I could work more then, more people would be around to look after Bean and love him, whereas here it is only us.  We should move after our holiday I realised, and then I would have until Dec to hand in, as the only reason I am submitting in Nov is so we can get to the South in time for Bean's Birthday.  AND I would be closer to my Sup, he only lives an hour away from that area, rather than 7 hours away!  I was very excited!

And then I realised oh dear, if we moved we would have a holiday in the middle of moving which would suck.  I would hand in in Dec, around Bean's Birthday and New year - and would have to travel 7 hours north to do that ALONE.  I wouldn't have a study down South as we can only afford 3 bedrooms and DB would have the spare one for his work.  We would have to find new permanent proper childcare and I would like Bean to move to a nursery next instead of again with a childminder and THEn to a nursery when he is three.  Too much upheaval.  Moving will be tough on him and instead of working MORE when we move I would like to be able to be a constant for him and help him adjust and make new friends.  Take him to the beach etc. 

I also realised that I would still need to complete even when we moved.  I would just be procrastinating because I have realised I do want to finish, I just don't know how and don't have any confidence to do it.  My friend emailed me yesterday to say she had submitted and that for the past yaer she had been a workaholic and never knew how hard submitting wouold be :(  This fills me with dread; I am the opposite of a workaholic!  I do not work anything like enough. 

I have also been spending too much time concentrating on the miscarriage and trying to make new healthy babies.  I am not getting pregnant and this depresses me.  So I have decided, even though it is the one thing in the world I want more than anything, to stop until Sept/oct and I have finished my first draft.  this is a Very Grown Up decision and puts my PhD at the forefront of my life, where it should be.  It has taken too long to realise this and in the meantime I have buggered up my deadlines by faffing about and wasting time.  But I have realised now, and have a new motivation that comes from an internal desire to succeed more than anything.

I do hope that now I have found this drive it will help carry me through.  However, I know that first of all I have to take control of myself and make myself work.  Through good times and bad, I need to sit at my desk pretty much every day, even if some days it is only for half an hour.  Losing momentum and being away from work is anathema to my creativity and progress.  I must work and think about working more often than not.  If I have a chance I should be working, even if for only half an hour.  Not big plans to work 3 hours of a nighttime etc, that is depressing.  Just keep working.  Which is why I am here today.  I am going to work now while DB is out at the shop with Bean.  Then we will go out for lunch and do family stuff for the afternoon.  Then at 5 I will ask DB to sit with Bean while he has his tea and do his bedtime and I shall work from 5pm to about 7.30.  This is work I would not have done normally.  Then I shall spend the evening with DB.  Tomorrow I don't know if I shall be able to work, my sister is coming for a roast dinner at 5pm and will stay till tues am.  This is an odd one but I made the plans before I started to be a Proper Worker :)

I am also NOT going to go South for a naming bbq of my neice-in-law.  This makes me feel like an arsehole as obviously it is a big family affair and I know I will always regret not going.  But my Sisterinlaw was keen I didn't go if I needed to work as it was only a very informal thing but then was dead chuffed when I said I would go :(  this makes me feel like an arsehole.  However, however,  we will move down forever quicker if I can work and live just up the road!  And if I stay here for FOUR days all on my own, I can be a proper worky person and get the momentum going that I need and, as of now, want.  I could make up so much time in those days.  especially, and this is a killer, as my childminder is off for two whole consecutive weeks after this one.  OMG.  What will I do?!  I will have to work during Bean's nap times and in the evenings.  I might be tired, but if I see progress, if I start seeing actual words on pages, and pages into chapters - won't this be profoundly exciting?!

So the plan is thus:  Work as and when I can.  Really, as and when.  Free time is not free, it is Work time!

Work hard this week and when DB and Bean go South so the two weeks off from the 6 Aug are copeable and you can enjoy that time with Bean. 

During those two weeks, when he sleeps you can work so momentum is not lost and progress is still made. 

Then work for the holiday, so you can go on holiday relaxed.  Getting the first draft done for then is now looking doubtful (twat) but see what you *can* do.  Words on pages, pages into chapters :)  Incremental progress is still progress.

That is the 13 Sept and about 6 weeks away and about all I can focus on for now.  It all becomes rather vague and fuzzy after that as I don't know how much I will have done to go away.  I guess the lit review, methodology and possibly the Intro too.  But concl and refs, abstract and appendices and bla bla will still need to be done. 

TBH just having the lit review done will be an immense achievement.  Shit and then I need to re-write the discussion.  It never ends!

Anyway, generally I feel better, I do.  Just being motivated, caring is quite a Thing.

x J

72 words :)

Yep.  I wrote 72 words! 

Not much, but I opened the bugger, found my place, and wrote stuff. 

Tomorrow I will do better!

 x J

Fucktits

Bugger I am meant to be finishing this chapter tomorrow, and am I?  Am I 'eck.

I have barely written anything.  I have to work hard today but would say that I am not feeling very well today.  And I have no motivation at all, as per.

I wish someone would say I don't have to do this any more.  That no-one would mind if I don't get the PhD.  And then again I wish someone stronger than me could motivate me.  I am fairly weak willed and sort of hedonistic - I don't make myself do things I don't want to do.  Like, I won't read a bad book to the end; if I think it is shit and I am not enjoying it I stop.  And generally in life I lack motivation to see things through to completion.  I get bored and wander off!  When I realise I can do something, or have achieved what I wanted to I am happy to stop, I don't feel I have to prove anything. 

And so it is with this.  I have done a PhD - I have planned, organised and completed my own research - I have written it all up and everything.  As far as I am concerned I have done what I set out to do.  Now it is phase III - writing up the shit around it for the benefit of every bugger else.  I don't care, I know what to do.  It is a drudge.  A nasty, nasty drudge.  I *know* in the long term my life will be better with the PhD, I know this and yet I just don't flipping care.

I am having a tantrum because I don't want to work.  Somewhere I have to find a far more grown up part of myself and make myself work :)  Maybe have a little deadline... 

Today I shall try to write 250 words.  Think small and achieve... 

x J

Struggling to be Arsed

Arf today I have done some but not much work.

I am so very cross.  I am really cross actually.  What a twat.

I tell you why I haven't done much.  Because it is really easy.  I have in front of me the exact notes I need to complete a substantial chunk of the chapter.  And I know just where the notes are for the next section, and the next and then it is done.  It will take me no time at all, once I get into it.

And I know this and so I am taking the piss, just faffing about when my poor Bean has been in childcare for four days this week and I have missed him and not wanted to take him...  and yet this isn't enough to motivate me :( 

I suppose I am cross with myself out of principle.  Why didn't I write this stuff up?  It should be easy and would be relatively painless if I did it over a few days.  Instead, in my head, the evil child within me just thinks 'well, meh, I will do it all next week, no problems.'

I don't have anyone to tell me off, except me.  Uni have no tabs on me, my sup trusts me to do what I can when I can...  and I am just sat here unable to work.  No one would notice or care whether I finish this chapter next week or not.  And unfortunately, I don't care either.  I hate this PhD, I want it gone, I want it out of my life.  But I don't want to do the work!  I am so distracted; I am the queen of procrastination.  I have no self discipline.  I have no focus or drive.  I plod along, slowly slowly and think 'tomorrow will be better' but it isn't.  Today I have 15 mins before I finish to get Bean and then won't be able to work again until Tuesday (am away for the weekend, can't wait). 

But then again, I just know in my heart that I haven't fucked up as such, I have just wasted time.  Wasting time is no crime and actually I have done some stirling work after apparently time wasting - there is a lot to be said for giving time for the subconcious to mull things over.  No, really.  I haven't missed a deadline, and the deadlines I have set are, indeed, my own.  So maybe I should be pleased that I am working at all, when technically I am suspended from Uni on sick leave and am in therapy for fuckedupishness.  I have deadlines I don't have to have, am cross on some level that I am going to overrun it (although I do have time to spare, with current deadlines I intend to submit 6 weeks early) which does show some level of caring and motivation, and anyway, the world will not end.  I also know that secretly I am thinking about not going to the South at the beginning of august because I don't want to be there when certain other people are, or share a bedroom with DB AND Bean (we don't sleep is just awful) and would rather spend the four odd days up here on my todd catching up on work eating.

So I am sneakily ok.  Still crap effort though, and obviously am worried that if I don't work in this time, when I was *sure* I would work hard, then who is to say I will work well next week or if I miss the South trip? 

I dunno.  Anyway, I am leaving my chapter in a grand place, it is easy to write now and hopefully next week I shall return from my weekend refreshed and re-motivated.  Am not going to beat myself up but am going to skip away from work, get my darling boy and have a wonderful long weekend :)

x J