Dissertation motivation!

Jolaaled

bitteorca wrote: »

Hi people

I am struggling to find motivation to complete my Masters thesis. I have already left it too late, with 2 months to hand in date. It really grinds on me that I am not doing it. Its a really big weight on my shoulders that I constantly feel, but I still don't do any work on it. I know its massively important to do, but still no action is taken, or not enough action. I have already done a dissertation, and I am quite sick of education at this point, but I know that if I just put my head down for 2 months straight, I can get a good grade and then will be relatively well set up in the world. So why am I not doing it?! Why am I not putting my head down?! Its like I know what I SHOULD be doing, but I don't ACTUALLY do it!

Help

Hi Bitteorca
Gosh..i know how you feel, as I had the same blocks sometimes with my dissertation, which I did a couple of years ago. I decided that it was the sheer enormity of the thing that stopped me getting down to work on it. It was far too scary and seemed just impossible.

I got over this by using my own personal mantra!!...it went something like this...
'You only have to put the laptop on..you don't have to do hours and hours....you only have to write a couple of paragraphs right now....'
etc etc.

This technique worked really well for me, as it broke down the 'hugeness' of the work into manageable pieces, and took a lot of energy-depleting pressure away. I found that once I'd actually turned on the laptop and opened up my files (the hardest part!) and begun to write just a little, I sort of got into it and before I knew it, I'd read and written for a couple of hours or so.
Another thing I'd do sometimes.... I'd pre-prepare my work desk to make it extra nice...lots of fresh A3 sized paper, coloured paper, new pens, bowls of sweets etc!

HTH!!
GOOD LUCK

wireframe_2

I was in the same situation. Left it til the last 3 months to bash it all out.

It was a software engineering one, so I had to write an application to go with it, and diagrams etc.

Sat there every day for 3 months from midday to midnight with my laptop on my lap, papers everywhere.

The day before it was due in, I stayed up til 3:30am finalising it all, got up at 7 to be at uni (1 hour train ride each way) for the final printout, then came back home to get it spiralbound, then back to uni to submit.
80 pages plus appendices (25 pages of testing screenshots + reams of code)

80,000 words.
The same again in code.

Suck it up.