What do you do when you get stuck writing a paper/thesis?

10 comments

1. Do something else to take my mind off it and focus on that. Then recharge and think about what I should do next and how and start again.

   If I focus to long on something that I can’t get done, it only gets worse and takes longer to complete.

2. If it’s because of procrastination i try to just write a sentence. If i don’t know what to write i do a bit of reading and try to paraphrase.

3. If I’m stuck finding words, I pretend I’m explaining it to a friend. If I’m stuck finding information, I look for closely related tangents. If I’m staring at a blinking cursor I take a 20 minute (timed) break because my brain is telling me I’m not equipped to do this right now.

4. I try to come at it sideways, like find a tangent or something interesting that is an offshoot and explore where that leads. It takes the pressure off and helps me make new connections.

5. Make bullet points of the stuff I know needs to go in there. Doesn’t matter how sparse or how informal the language is, just throw it in a doc. Then put it away for a day or so.

   Open it again, look at the bullet points. Anything to be added? Anything to take out?

   Then try and link the ideas together. How does A lead to Z, eventually. Doesn’t matter if it’s in order right now, if you have no idea how to put A next to B but M and N is coming along, just write it in chunks. Put it away for a couple of days, then come back and start linking the different chunks of text together.

   Once you have a cohesive draft…put it away for a couple of days. It’s really easy to lose sense of the whole when you’re concentrating on the parts. When you come back to it, do a scan for content and then one for grammar. Then, and this is crucial, read it out loud. What looks fine on your screen might actually sound clunky or nonsensical.

6. Have a complete break from it and engage my brain with something completely unrelated.

7. Go to the library, but trick myself into going there!

   I get up and have an early walk with the dog which i really enjoy, home and get ready with a coffee (favourite part of my day), laptop and charger into backpack, then into town for a nice coffee and maybe a pastry to take out (which for me is a nice treat!) and take it to the library where I sip and nibble at a quiet desk and then.. it’s too late I’ve tricked myself. Then once I’ve gotten started I can get stuck in for a few hours.

   Once I’m in the zone I usually will make a (short) list of the paragraphs I want done before I leave. I’ve learnt not to be overly ambitious with this!

8. Listen to one specific album (especially soundtracks) over and over while writing it. The more you do it, the easier it is to ‘get in the zone’ for writing & working on things. For me it was the la la land soundtrack for both my bachelor and master thesis.

   Also good recommendations are the ‘how to train your dragon’ ones, any stdio ghibli ones, life of pi.

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10. Personally, my thesis involves searching 3 different and almost not related subjects, and I shall wave them together only at the end.

    So if I’m stuck at warever I’m doing, I switch subjects.

    When I got stuck last time, I went back to the theoretical references and listed what I wanted to include on the text.