October 12, 2008

Very almost complete is not complete enough

So it’s now some time later since I’m back in Melbourne, and I still haven’t finished up my Ph.D. thesis. This thing has a tendency to keep going on and on and on forever. Sigh.

I’d put it down to me losing that all important “looming deadline” motivation to get things done. Now I’ve shifted cities and have a technical extension until the end of the year, it’s easy to muddle through things and spend ages thinking of improvements I can add. Plus my productivity is at a crawl because I’m plain sick of the damn thing. I’ve got the document technically complete but rough in parts, and its up to the point where I figure a day or two of hard work will get the thing finished bar minor editing, but I need to draw a line in the sand about what I have to get done and get busy.

I’m on holiday from tomorrow for a few days, and while I was hoping to have everything sorted I’ll use this as an opportunity to kick myself out of the rut I’m in and get to business next weekend when I’m back. A few days on the beach will be good for clearing my mind.

However, once I’m done it’s <i>still</i> not going to be finished, as I’ve got to do some internal reviews; let my supervisor read over it a couple of times; etc. And unfortunately my supervisor is away overseas for a few weeks, so that adds some extra delays before I can officially declare it over. Hopefully though I can get this thing to the point where I only need to do very minor edits by the end of next weekend. If I get it to that point, then I’ll feel happy about moving on to other things (like properly unpacking!) in a gradual shift from Ph.D. work to business ideas.

Permalink • Print
Made with WordPress and the Semiologic theme and CMS • Trazoi Bounce Box skin by David Shaw