Light at the end of the tunnel

[nugget]

I'm hoping to hear some ideas on what people do when they reach a lull so to speak, the motivation is down, but the workload is high and you need to find a way to get yourself back to working on your assignments.

 

I feel like this sometimes and even the fear of having a bigger workload to tackle later on hasn't been helping to motivate me to get down to work. It's not depression at all, rather a lack of motivation. Even the fact that graduation is less than a year away isn't motivating me to get though this upcoming month that is full of deadlines.

 

Please share your ideas and strategies on things you have done that have helped when you felt like this or any useful information you may have come across. Thanks!

Edited November 1, 2014 by jenste

[juilletmercredi]

Personally, I lean into the slump, if possible.

 

I found that forcing myself to work hard through a slump just made me feel slumpier.  I didn't want to work, so the quality of my work wasn't as good; I would sit for long hours procrastinating or staring at my computer screen instead of doing work, and then berate myself for wasting time.  The result was that I felt burned out and really negative towards my work, and I wanted to do it less and less.

 

Instead, I started simply reducing my workload during a slump and giving myself the time to rebound a bit.  I'd give myself the little easy/enjoyable tasks you can do, like data cleaning or reading articles.  And I'd take the time out to pursue something I really wanted to do, like read a book or go see a movie I'd been putting off or just take a long nap.  As I went on in my program I got better at pacing myself and building this extra time into my timelines - I would set deadlines with the expectation that I'd need a bit of downtime away from work to recharge.

 

It works for me.  Obviously sometimes you can't push it off because you have a hard deadline, but if you have the ability to set your own deadlines and give yourself the space to go into a slump for a little while, I think that's a good approach.

 

If you absolutely have to get through a bunch of November deadlines and there's no way to reorganize, then what works for me is to approach it like a big exciting project that I have to break down into parts.  I love lists and organization and so I'll start furiously making lists (using Wunderlist) of the items I need to complete by X date.  I break those into subtasks.  What do I need to get done each week in order to meet the deadline?  Each day?  Take things one day at a time.  Don't think of all of the dates together (which is overwhelming), think about the thing you are doing right that moment or that day and stay focused.

[ProfLorax]

Personally, I lean into the slump, if possible.

Agreed. I'm a fan of just taking a weekend "off" and not focusing on work at all during these moments. I can use this weekend to just veg, go out of town and visit someplace new, or explore my city. I almost always come back revitalized. If you can't afford taking off a whole weekend, even just one selfish day can make a difference.

 

If you absolutely have to get through a bunch of November deadlines and there's no way to reorganize, then what works for me is to approach it like a big exciting project that I have to break down into parts.  I love lists and organization and so I'll start furiously making lists (using Wunderlist) of the items I need to complete by X date.  I break those into subtasks.  What do I need to get done each week in order to meet the deadline?  Each day?  Take things one day at a time.  Don't think of all of the dates together (which is overwhelming), think about the thing you are doing right that moment or that day and stay focused.

Yet more good advice! Agreed, agreed. Really focused, broken down to-do lists can help. I can't handle the thought of grading forty papers, but grading five a day for eight days? Totally doable. Each day I grade five, I give myself a self-high-five and go about my merry day.

 

Good luck!

[nugget]

Thanks for the advice! I've taken time off to do fun things and it helped to a point. But now I've got to work like clockwork for the next 4 weeks to meet all my deadlines (no more weekends off) and progress is very slow right now.