At last the end of my PhD beckons, hooray! Unfortunately, that means that I have to go through that most gruelling of times, writing up my thesis. I find it very difficult to keep concentrated - my attention wanders to a thousand other things I’d rather do, from reading the news to browsing the Dope to playing games and so on. I’d write a sentence or two, then feel compelled to read/write/do something else. Going back to the word processor takes a major effort. Furthermore, apparently my brain is so vehemently opposed to the writing up process that I keep coming up with cool ideas for further research - research that won’t happen until I finish the writing bit. Do you have any tips on things I can do to keep focused?
And if you have any stories about your own experiences, do tell!
My most effective advice: Have your adviser line up a one-year sabbatical gig elsewhere. Nothing like knowing she will be unavailable after Date X to keep you from screwing around too much.
Congrats on being so close: I defended my Ph.D. in 2005 and the final stretch was a KILLER! I, too, suffered from “closure terror.”
Up to the last month in the process I had been prolific and focused and when I hit the spot you’re in I had to re-think my approach and process. Where I had been able to write and edit for eight or nine hours at a stretch, I had to switch to a “chunk it 'n reward it” system. It was as if I had suddenly contracted severe ADD and I had to change everything. Ths is what worked for me:
Going to a comfortable place that had no internet access or other distractions (i.e. the park) with just paper and pencil. This is how I generated the new material I had to write (I would go home and transcribe it afterward).
I wrote out a schedule of rewards. For example, one hour of uninterrupted editing would be rewarded by 30 minutes of mindless 'net cruising; two hours of tackling the footnotes meant I could take myself out to lunch with a mindless novel.
Exercise, in the form of long walks with my dog, helped quite a bit.
Disclaimer: IANAD and I had a legal prescription. Low doses of Xanax helped me keep massive anxiety at bay and allow me to focus for an hour or two.
Feel free to PM me if you need some encouragement!
Short bursts. Don’t worry about accomplishing anything in a given sitting, just write for a little bit and know that you’re always moving closer to finishing.
When my Mom was working on her dissertation, they moved, and when my husband who was Oh so helpfully giving them a hand packed up all her papers, I honestly thought she was going to hit him. Poor Sod,… he didn’t know any better.
IMO, keep the dissertation as short as possible. My dissertation was about 85 pages total. Other dissertations in the same department (different advisers) went as much as 300 pages. The mechanics of managing that many pages is a pain in the neck you don’t need. One other person who earned his doctorate during my time had an extremely short dissertation. Most of it was photocopies of the journal articles he had already published. As I recall, that dissertation was well under 50 pages, possible under 20. His PhD is just as valid as the 300 page dissertation ones.
Some of the long dissertations had detailed descriptions of the construction and operation of custom built apparatus for doing the experiments described in the dissertation. I would argue for making those descriptions into separate documents, included by reference. Yes, it’s two documents instead of one, but the “apparatus description” document does not have to be written to quite the same standard. IMO.
Check with your adviser and committee to see how much you can get away with shrinking your dissertation.
As far as techniques to keep focused on writing - you’re asking the wrong guy! More seriously, if you’re at this stage you should know what works for you and what doesn’t. Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. E.g., there will still be plenty to read on the SDMB when you get back after your final defense. Since you’re asking the question, you may be less than 100% sure how you can avoid distractions. That’s OK, it’s an eternal question as new and better distractions come along. Try setting a time limit for writing one particular chapter and see how you do. If you’re avoiding work on that chapter - hop to another chapter that holds your interest more. Also, your dissertation should be good and something you are proud of, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to be good enough to get you through.
Also, keep multiple backup copies of your dissertation in different locations - and on different computers. You really do not want a single disk failure to wipe out even one day’s work.
I wish you the best of luck! It’s a tough road, but you’ll get there!
According to my supervisor, I have to work on my references; he very politely made me understand that he thinks there are too few. As of now there are 40ish, and I reckon there should be about 50 when I merge in all the individual chapter and make my revisions. But he asked me to look at the thesis of the last guy he supervised before me, who finished about eight months ago - he had more than two hundred! He suggested I go at the very least for about 80. That’s going to be a problem, because I cannot just refer to stuff for very simple things - I’d feel like I was linking the Wiki page for “The” the first time I use that word. It would be too visible. And I cannot go and stick a paragraph at the end of the Related Work section saying “oh, and here’s a bunch of other interesting stuff” and add 30 more.
Of course I understand there is a fair way to do that, like, say, adding references to related articles by the same authors, but that has a limit.
As for length and material to prepare, actually I got through the more technical chapters relatively quickly - about three, four months overall. I still had the same problem, and had to write in a very “bursty” way, but I knew the stuff inside out, having lived more or less inside it for the last few years. It’s the non-technical writing that gets me bad. I must have wasted a good ten days in June dithering, postponing, finding excuses like “I’ll read this article first”, “I’ll meet with my supervisor first” and so on. Not good, I’d have finished by now.
Sounds like you still have to work on your introduction (also the last thing both Mr. hunter and I wrote in our respective theses), which will give you lots of scope for more references. You really can add references for just about anything in the introduction, and if you still need some you can write a page-long history of your topic to start out with. (e.g. “Feyman first postulated X in [1], and [2], [3] also mention the possibility of X. However, the first work to really set the groundwork of X was [4], though [5],[6] quickly followed with further implications…” etc.) It’s really legal to do that. The best theses I’ve read have “tutorial” sections like that to introduce someone who knows nothing about the topic. (Still, it’s kind of weird to require a whole bunch of references, I must admit.)
When I was writing my thesis, I at times had to resort to a) disconnecting my ethernet cable (I didn’t have wireless then, but turning off wireless would have the same effect) and b) uninstalling all games on my computer or at least putting the executables in obscure places. This didn’t stop me from procrastinating, as obviously it’s pretty easy to connect up the ethernet again, etc., but it did give me that extra hoop to jump through to procrastinate that was often good enough to remind me I WAS procrastinating and that would stop me.
What was most important to me was to set a date by which you MUST be finished (for graduation, starting a job, etc.) because then you will just get done by then even if you have to pull all-nighters for the week before. One of my friend’s advisors used to say, “There are two kinds of theses: perfect theses, and finished theses.”
Any advice for how to manage when your adviser has been on sabbatical for over a year?
I’m at the same stage, though just of an MA thesis, and, well, that’s the reason I’m here, surfing the web. It depends greatly on your discipline, of course, but here are some suggestions I’ve gotten from other people:
Write in either a much bigger or smaller font than TNR 12. I like smaller, as it’s a pleasant surprise when you finally enlarge it. For some people, seeing 12 new pages appear fairly painlessly is psychologically helpful.
Keep a chart of when and how long you worked, keep track of variables (music or not, location, time, etc.) and try to rack up a “high score” of minutes.
Write with other people, either tossing ideas off each other or just silently, giving each other moral support and keeping each other from goofing off.
Keep it short, as mentioned above. Scientists can of course keep it much shorter than humanities people, but there’s no PhD+ degree for people who write 550-page dissertations. An MA student in the year before mine wrote a 240-page masters thesis, and everyone agreed that was insane, especially as he’d just have to write it over again for his PhD.
If you must munch, have healthy, low-cal snacks on hand. I’m a muncher, and I could gain 20 pounds so easily just from eating M&Ms while I work. (A prof I had in undergrad told us she gained 10 this way. She also confessed to not showering for four days at a time.)
Try to live somewhat like a normal person. Get exercise, eat real meals, get dressed every day. I can judge my psychological state by how late I shower in the day, and how I eat. When I spend an entire day in my pjs and snacking on Cheerios, I might feel like I’m not wasting time but I usually accomplish far less.
Oh, and make use of your university’s counselling centre, if you need to. We have a guy who specializes in thesis completion, and he’s very practical, not at all psychoanalytical.
Good luck! May it go better for you than it is for me!
Well, ultimately, what will have to keep you focused is that you don’t want to have wasted the last 6 or so years of your life. Sure, the ABD PhD will get you a little bit ahead, but not for long. Eventually people will want to see just “PhD”.
I find that I write better when I keep the number of variables to a minimum. By better, I mean faster, clearer and more focused. For instance, I have a list of songs that I write to, and I’ll play one song from the list on a loop until either a.) it bores me to death, or b.) I no longer notice it’s playing.
I also write, and use as a memory aid, certain color patterns and smells (the candle store people love me).
I’m not sure if the above advice for writing with someone is helpful. I find it annoying to have that moral support because moral support = one person interrupting another. Now, I’m all for having moral support after I’ve written a piece, but not during. Who knows, I might have been having a break-through when my friend wanted to support me! Also, since my PhDs are in science and mathematics, it’s annoying to get derailed at step 20 in a 25 part solution to something, particularly when I’m keeping track of a fair amount of variables in my mind instead of having everything written down.
Your mileage may vary.
But ask yourself this: what has let you get to the point where you are now? Because, well, I’d suggest that the techniques which have worked for you in the past will continue to do so. You’re this close, don’t go getting smart now or you’ll never get it done!
Ah, yes, that’s important. The person who suggested this did stress that it’s important that you set a time during which no one will speak. You can’t end up sitting around chatting. But for people who tend to slip off into internet surfing, having someone who can see your screen is valuable. I’m also in the humanities, where writing is half the process, but by the time you get there you’re mainly just putting your thoughts on paper.
That said, I don’t really like the idea, because I like to get up every so often and dance around my room to really dorky music. Some people like doing that with their friends, but I would have to be way drunker than I could be while writing in order to lose my inhibitions to that extent.
I chuckled. I’ve written many a paper while not-quite-so sober, which leads to one obvious solution I neglected.
Take time off from writing. Don’t forget to have a life. Carry a notepad or something in case you get an “aha” moment and have to jot something down.
Also, make sure that if you do any drunk writing, don’t actually write into your working, saved copy. As it turns out, not all ideas that sound great when one is drunk turnout being so.
I received news from my supervisor. If I can manage to submit the PDF of my thesis to the examiners within Friday, my viva will be on 11 August. Now that’s something to make me work even more frantically! And let’s say he strongly discouraged me from not submitting on Friday.
Well, the OP had better be typing and not reading, but here goes.
My dissertation was on a language and its associated compiler. The compiler was done in phases, and I wrote a chapter on each phase as I finished it.
But the most useful incentive was having a job to go to when I was done, and needing the money. I didn’t need a lot of push to write, actually. I woke up around 3 am every night when I was working on it, realized that I was sleeping not writing, and went off to the living room to write a bit more. This was pre-PC. My wife spent her days typing what I had written into Multics while I worked on the next phase of the compiler. This meant that I didn’t have as many distractions as people do today, fortunately the SDMB hadn’t been invented yet.
His PhD is just as valid as the 300 page dissertation ones.
More seriously, if you’re at this stage you should know what works for you and what doesn’t. Do more of what works, and less of what doesn’t. E.g., there will still be plenty to read on the SDMB when you get back after your final defense. Since you’re asking the question, you may be less than 100% sure how you can avoid distractions. That’s OK, it’s an eternal question as new and better distractions come along. Try setting a time limit for writing one particular chapter and see how you do. If you’re avoiding work on that chapter - hop to another chapter that holds your interest more. Also, your dissertation should be good and something you are proud of, but it doesn’t have to be perfect. It needs to be good enough to get you through.