Motivation, or lack thereof
November 3, 2009The dissertation work continues in fits and starts. All the books (Write Your Dissertation in 15 Minutes a Day!, etc.) say that the key is consistent, daily work – even just a little. I believe this – I really do. It’s just that there are days when the almost-2 yo is screaming and screaming and screaming, and the 4 yo is bugging and whining and bugging and whining, and the laundry is piling up higher and higher and higher, and the food…is not being prepared.
And motivation, such as it is, just up and leaves the building.
Today is one of those days. I’m rapidly running out of time to meet my latest pushed-off deadline, and I’m fairly certain my advisor is reaching the limits of her patience with me. There’s actually some progress on the conceptual side of things, but I hit a snag about two weeks ago (which happened to coincide with having to scramble to get the kids their (round 1) H1N1 vaccinations and deal with a serious car issue (misdiagnosed fuel line leak)), and I’m having a hard time getting back up to speed. Or, you know, getting back up.
In the meantime, I’m still letting the TV raise the kids, still wondering how to fill all the interminable hours with them, wondering what to do with myself and my life…
I have good days – ones when I am bursting with have some energy and can actually accomplish things I set out to do – but these dull, darkish ones seem to be in the majority, even now.
big big hugs from across the ocean. i can understand the dark dull days. i am hearing you.
i feel your pain!
as someone who has finished a dissertation (and graduated with a ph.d) here’s my advice: it will get done. just do what you can, when you can. your advisor is probably used to tweaky grad students. just don’t be terribly worse than the others and you won’t even register on his or her radar as being a problem.
while “write consistently” is actually excellent advice, the extra pressure of it may be counterproductive for some folks. the other thing i learned is you can’t wait for inspiration. sometimes you have to sit down surrounded by mounds of laundry and just write a crappy paragraph, one you can fix later if needed. another thing that helped me is “parking on a downhill slope”–i always left off at a place it’d be really easy to pick back up at…finish a sentence and then bullet point your next couple of ideas and voila, there’s where you start next time, i.e. by turning those bullets into sentences.
good luck!!