#the task

I always feel like a deflated balloon after my steering group meetings and need more time than normal to recover. And so, after a 3-day weekend off, I am starting to feel alive enough to get back to work... kind of. 🎈

If someone asked me what the hardest part of doing a PhD is, I would say that, aside from the debilitating panic of imposter syndrome, the constant questioning of your abilities, trying to maintain self-motivation and discipline whilst consumed by the feeling of impending doom, it would be planning and starting a new task upon finishing a previous one. You would think that with the amount of work involved in doing a PhD, you could easily meander from task to task to reach the finish line, but it’s not as simple as that. With a bachelors or a masters degree, the steps that you need to take to get to the end are fairly clearly mapped out. In a PhD, you are basically wandering blind, forever taking risks and hoping that you don’t accidentally walk off the side of a cliff. It’s so easy to get lost trying to figure out what is essential to propel your research forward and which tasks are potentially redundant. Once you finally get a grasp of what needs to be done next, you may feel like you are drowning in overwhelm, at which point you just have to start. After finishing said task, the process starts again, which is where I am at the moment. :) 

Picture: Big mood. Source: @rubyetc​

The other difficult aspect of the above process is that you may feel like you’re doing lots of work but not getting anywhere, a bit like trying to walk through a swamp. That feeling is a lie, I can promise you that much. 💛

A few posts back, I mentioned that I have started to allocate Thursdays as my ‘random to-do list’ days, where I address something from the list at random and try to do as much of that task as possible. Unfortunately, it has been weeks since I have actually done this, having had more pressing tasks at hand. However, as the list is 35 points long, I REALLY need to start actually doing it. I am therefore going to try to assign Tuesdays to it also. Wish me luck. :’)

In other news, my garden fence paint finally arrived after a long 6-week wait!!! I will share a photo of our garden once it’s done. ^^ Doing creative projects has been a great outlet of stress for me, 10/10 recommend. 🖌

I have 45 weeks (10 months) until my thesis submission deadline, which is terrifying, especially considering I have been doing this PhD 3.1 times longer than that thus far! It’s also exciting to see the finish line, despite there being a million challenges to overcome before I reach it. Therefore, I better get a wiggle on. 🐛

After all, the sooner you do it, the sooner it’s done. ✨

Picture: Some Monday morning motivation. Source: @rubyetc​