On the verge of a PhD breakdown

[Hownowbrownsheep]

I'm not sure what I need from this post. Maybe kind words and tips!

I hate my PhD so much. I know this is very common and normal. I've read the brilliant 'Valley of Sh*t' blog post many times. I've also read some great threads on here, reminding me that the PhD just has to be written, it's only pass/fail, no one else will read it etc.

My supervisors are absolutely wonderful, but there's not much else they can do for me short of writing the thing for me.

I spend hours and hours procrastinating. I've learned about this, and am trying to be kind to myself, understand that this is actually caused by fear and low self esteem. Have had therapy. Also procrastin-eating, and always skipping gym, feel awful and exhausted.

I have three very young DC, so with mat leave I have been dragging this nonsense out for almost a decade. Feel so guilty for wasting time that I could have spent with my DC who get very upset when I go to work.

I probably have ADHD, very impulsive/disorganised/hyperfocused on the wrong things, or maybe my attention is just shot from phone addiction. I can never finish an article. I just start on new ones and have 5 trails of thought going at once, adding snippets to several chapters at once and get very muddled.

I'm wondering if I need to do something dramatic. Like go to sleep when DC do at 7pm and start writing at 4am, so I can spend more time with the kids.

It's a humanities PhD and I have realised in the course of writing it (and by reading MN threads!) that academia is not for me and I want to run away to the private sector or to the Civil Service. Overall I just don't care about it at all, but I am alledgedly submitting it in 6 months. I have written about half of it.

Thanks for listening lovely MNers

Thank you for the further suggestions, I am plodding along getting words on paper, very slowly.

Does anyone have thoughts on the lower limit of a PhD word count?

All anyone ever talks about is the struggle of getting it under the maximum word count. This is not me!

I know it has to effectively cover the niche area, make the argument etc. but in how few words can I do this? Can I get away with 60k? My university specificies max 80,000 with no mention of a lower limit.

Word count doesn’t matter. It’s the novel science you’ve done that’s the key bit. 60k is fine but only if it’s filled with enough results and evidence of deep thinking.

I can only write with a tomato timer (pomodoro technique). I’ll usually do 4 rounds of 25 mins then do something else. In your case 4 rounds of 25 before the kids wake up, and another stint after bedtime. That gives you almost 4 hours of writing a day and you’ll see swift progress

Depends. Some Unis and international examiners are sticklers for word count, particularly the minimum for a Humanities PhD. A 20,000 word short fall is substantial. So your supervisors or Graduate Research office should answer this question.

A 20,000 word short fall is substantial. So your supervisors or Graduate Research office should answer this question.

Duh, of course. Thank you! Need to get over my shame in asking! Have emailed them

But it isn't really a shortfall. It's under the max allowed. I would think 60k is fine. My max limit was 90k and my final word count was around 68k I think.

If it helps, you are ahead of where I was with 6 months to go!

I'd miscalculated my dates and thought I had 3 months longer than I did, and entered my final 6 months with about 16k words done. My method meant most of my analysis was done through writing so it was an intense 6 months 😬

I'm autistic so possibly some similar focus/type attention issues...

What helped was constantly switching how I worked and how I motivated myself.

Pomodoro was great for intense hard-thinking stuff.

More tedious tasks responded well to sticker charts. I listed every boring adminny task and whenever my brain was not working well I would work through those mundane/easy things (the sort of things that usually get done at the last minute like formatting/checking refs, creating tables, prepping appendices, contents page, acknowledgments etc.).

When I got stuck with analysis I created a lucky dip of all the headings and just did whatever I picked out.

I kept a daily record of word counts.

I worked about 4 hours a day for about 6 days a week.

My uni's word count requirements were 80k +/- 10%, and I was just under the lower limit, and submitted at the last minute.

It can be done!

Humanities is quite different from science though. In my department anyways, 20K words short would be rather eyebrow-raising
OP see what your supervisors say but I suggest aiming for 70K at least

Love this thread!!!

Very helpful!

I know it may be difficult with child care, but maybe studying in your local university library on the occasional afternoon or morning could help with motivation? Having a change of scenery helped me get through my Masters dissertation (I appreciate you’re working on a much bigger scale).

How are you getting on? I finished mine 4.5 years ago: took me 4.5 years to do it, supposedly full time, but I swear, if I'd actually worked on it 9-5 each day as I was supposedly doing I could have done it in 2. Honestly, that's how much procrastinating I did! Some weeks I was lucky to actually spend 30 minutes on it.

You just need to keep plodding on. I thought about throwing in the towel 2 weeks before submission buy my supervisor wouldn't let me, got me a 2 week extension and with a couple of all-nighters I did it. Mind you, I went for my 14 week scan the day after dropping it off so I did have a wee excuse at the end!

You can do this!

It's been more than a decade since I did mine but to this day I can recall debilitating anxiety and struggles to sleep of the 'write up' year. I was most productive at night so that's what I did - worked in my productive window.

I found that writing down questions I want to answer that day, then breaking those down into smaller questions/sections helped enormously with writer's paralysis - paragraph by paragraph. Essentially, I'd start by writing down a small structure/outline for that day's work - then write to fill in the gaps/add 'meat'.

If someone told me how traumatizing that entire experience would be - I would never have done it, to be honest. But, I did it in the end (and so will you!)

OP did you submit?