Finishing a PhD
09 Jul 2015Warning “work” in progress. Last update: 09 jul 2015
Abstract
A doctoral student and their advisor walk into a bar. The advisor orders a rough draft and they sit in awkward silence for eight months.
— Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) April 5, 2015Introduction
Academic time management 2.0. pic.twitter.com/j9rB68Eg7Y
— Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) June 29, 2015Materials and Methods
Academic writing:
1% inspiration
12.51% perseveration
13% omission
30% citation
50% procrastination
90% nonnegotiable deadlines
— Shit Academics Say (@AcademicsSay) May 2, 2015Rescuetime
Rescuetime is “A personal analytics service that shows you how you spend your time and provides tools to help you be more productive.” [2].
Beeminder
Beeminder is “reminders with a sting! Or, goal-tracking with teeth. Mind anything you can graph — weight, pushups, to-do tasks completed — by replying with data when Beeminder prompts you. Or connect with a service (like Fitbit or RescueTime) to report automatically. We plot your progress on a Yellow Brick Road to your goal. Keep all your datapoints on the road and Beeminder will always be free. Go off the road and you (literally) pay the price.” [3].
Results
So here’s the only thing that is my working (literally) in this post:
This is the curve of my efforts for the last 8 months. You can see I generally obviously only did the bare minimum (or less) with some short-lived bursts of motivation. I’m hoping when I look back at this graph, there will be a last (impressive!) burst of this type around the month of July.
Conclusion and future work
I have come to the conclusion that in the future, I will not be doing another phd.
Also, that this (post? PhD?) necessitates more effort that I am willing to put. But I had great intentions and good ideas (Yes, I know this can work with both post and PhD).