Exercise: I recently started a regime of 2 x 1 hour bodyweight sessions / week with a friend of mine, but we haven’t had a session in a while because he recently took an injury boxing. I think I’ll start running on my own so I’m not so tied to that one activity (and in accordance with the advice in Optimal Exercise).
Pens: I actually like this advice. On the other hand, I use vim, a programmer’s editor, to write everything (including my prose), and I love love love it. (I’m even writing this reply in it.) The ‘feel’ (not only tactile) of being able to shunt text around so effortlessly (at the paragraph, sentence, clause, word level) is so pleasant that it’s hard to give up. On the other hand, there is some sense to what you say about working without a computer.
Natural light patterns: Good thinking. I work in a room with great sunlight during the day; so far so good. But a while ago my monitor broke, and I was able to fix it only by jettisoning its buttons. (Long story.) End result: my monitor is stuck on full brightness all the time. I just checked, though, and I found a linux program (Redshift) capable of adjusting the monitor brightness and colour temperature based on the time of day. I installed it and it seems to work; perhaps it will help. The lamp I use for reading at night also has a slightly harsh, blue-ish hue to it, though it isn’t excessively bright. I’ll see if I can do something about that, too.
Accountability: Hmmm. I’ll think about this. It’s certainly the case that periods of poor work correlate with seeing my tutor less. The causation isn’t just one-way, though: I’m also less likely to want to see him when things are going slowly. (Perhaps there’s something of a nasty positive feedback loop going on here.)
It’s also the case that a master’s degree is really, really hard to get, and the ability to summon an entire thesis from the ether is a part of that difficulty. Most people probably could not achieve such a degree at all; framing your struggles in terms of a deficiency relative to some loosely-defined average is unrealistic and unhelpful. This is true for your colleagues as well- each is an outlier, and the motivating factors that got them to this point are not likely to be directly comparable to your own. You are awesome enough that the bell-curve is not a useful self-assessment, so focus on tactics and not on placing yourself along a continuum.
You also might wish to consider the ways in which you learn or like to take on large projects. Personally, I am a list maker. I like to have a map a plan if you will. When I’m working on a novel I do the same thing and it may get revised several times before the work is completed. When I was in my Master’s program I had my system down so that I could wrote a 25 page paper on International Relations and associated topics in 3 days starting from research to final completion. To do that required caffeine, medication, and no sleep but it was what I had to do at the time to get the job done. You have to create a system, a habit, to do this. If you can find a reliable way of working rather than working ad hoc then you will be able to do more easily and tackle large projects in the future.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
Exercise: I recently started a regime of 2 x 1 hour bodyweight sessions / week with a friend of mine, but we haven’t had a session in a while because he recently took an injury boxing. I think I’ll start running on my own so I’m not so tied to that one activity (and in accordance with the advice in Optimal Exercise).
Pens: I actually like this advice. On the other hand, I use vim, a programmer’s editor, to write everything (including my prose), and I love love love it. (I’m even writing this reply in it.) The ‘feel’ (not only tactile) of being able to shunt text around so effortlessly (at the paragraph, sentence, clause, word level) is so pleasant that it’s hard to give up. On the other hand, there is some sense to what you say about working without a computer.
Natural light patterns: Good thinking. I work in a room with great sunlight during the day; so far so good. But a while ago my monitor broke, and I was able to fix it only by jettisoning its buttons. (Long story.) End result: my monitor is stuck on full brightness all the time. I just checked, though, and I found a linux program (Redshift) capable of adjusting the monitor brightness and colour temperature based on the time of day. I installed it and it seems to work; perhaps it will help. The lamp I use for reading at night also has a slightly harsh, blue-ish hue to it, though it isn’t excessively bright. I’ll see if I can do something about that, too.
Accountability: Hmmm. I’ll think about this. It’s certainly the case that periods of poor work correlate with seeing my tutor less. The causation isn’t just one-way, though: I’m also less likely to want to see him when things are going slowly. (Perhaps there’s something of a nasty positive feedback loop going on here.)
Thanks. This actually did help.
You also might wish to consider the ways in which you learn or like to take on large projects. Personally, I am a list maker. I like to have a map a plan if you will. When I’m working on a novel I do the same thing and it may get revised several times before the work is completed. When I was in my Master’s program I had my system down so that I could wrote a 25 page paper on International Relations and associated topics in 3 days starting from research to final completion. To do that required caffeine, medication, and no sleep but it was what I had to do at the time to get the job done. You have to create a system, a habit, to do this. If you can find a reliable way of working rather than working ad hoc then you will be able to do more easily and tackle large projects in the future.