Finding Motivation for a Thesis

G

Gibson

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Just a question to all you guys who've done a thesis, where did you get your motivation to pull through and just get it done?

Currently I've got no drive to work, have done and redone the topic after problems and rewrites until its just starting to seem meaningless. Almost there, just the tail end of conclusion (+-4000 words) to write but just cant seemed to inspire myself to do really good work (everything's great by my supervisors standards, but just doesn't seem to be catching me).

Anyone else had the same thing, where you topic and motivation just seem to drain away a bit? How did you get through it?

Thanks for any help you chaps can provide
 
When I did mine, I could tell immediately that my interest in my topic in that depth had a limited shelf life. I also saw a lot of my peers just give up after years of work. I was also working for most of my postgrad work, which made it even harder, so I just decided to plow through it and get it done - I worked 7 days a week (5 days at $ work, evenings and weekends on my thesis) choosing procrastination would have just been a disaster. If I decided to take it easy, it just never would have been done. It would have been a waste of time and money and an unnecessary sacrifice of quality of life for a few years. Basically, I forced myself to finish since not finishing, or delayinging finishing would have just been so much worse.

A bit negative, but maybe that helps put things in perspective. BTW, something I always tell MSc students: if your MSc took more than 2 years, don't do a PhD - it will take forever (and will be at a larger risk of never finishing).
 
One other point: don't judge the worth of your work - let your supervisor and peers do that. You've been immersed in this for years - it'slall going to seem trivial to you, but will look like magic to anyone else.
 
I was told that you will hate your topic after you are done with your thesis. Strangely, I'm giving class in my thesis topic (or parts of it). You have The Slump. The last 20% that takes 80% effort. Motivation is done, you getting tired, you now know the topic in your sleep.

The biggest way to get going again is setting small deadlines (and keeping to it). You have to be x % done by yy-mm-dd.
 
Cheers for the advice, definitely just trying to push through and get it done and then a monster holiday before beginning the PhD.

Just with rewrites, application & scholarship proposals it feels like I've written 5 dissertations this year.

Will take that last bit to heart, bit of a weird thing that nobody but you cares about your topic but you when it starts, but towards the end everyone cares while it starts to all seem a bit convoluted
 
What worked for me is limiting myself to working on it for 10-15 mins a day. It sounds silly but when that stopwatch goes off, you go and do something fun. Often you will work past the 10mins and eventually it becomes 30mins and maybe 2 or 3 of these per day. I got it done that way and I'm quite a procrastinator. This strategy works only for that last 10% though.

Heck even if you do *just* that 10min and then something you want to do, you've done 10min. Obvious but true.
 
Good luck. It can be very very tough. I set artificial deadlines for the different components and then stuck to them.
 
Thanks for the advice guys, just good to know everybody struggles with it a bit.

But decided a 1000 words a day, it puts me well before the due date and only a few hours a day to keep the motivation
 
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