distracted

I have been distracted and very tired for the past few days because of my moving to the new place. Its been a one-month long move already but so far, Saturday (yesterday) was the killer. One of the last things I had to do was to clean the place I vacated. It was an 8-hour long of grueling non-stop cleaning. No food/snack break; not even a drink of water. By the end of the task, my arms were hurting and my wrist was in a lot of pain. The skin of my hands were so wrinkled that it hurts. Of course my back was killing me too. By the time I finished, I was not only tired but extremely grumpy. So it wasn’t surprised that I slept really soundly last night.

Tomorrow I will have to wait for someone to come and steamclean the carpet. He can’t turn up til 9am and he will take about 2 hours to complete the job. So it looks like there will be further distraction to my writing schedule. Then I have to rush back to Uni to give a lecture. On Tuesday I will be finally dropping off the keys of the old place to the agent. Hopefully all our efforts will not have been in vain and that we get our bond back.

However what this means is that I have been quite distracted from my thesis writing. I feel quite guilty really despite the good excuse. What it does is make me anxious, stressed, and this often manifests as impatience and being slightly short fused with myself and others around me. My tolerance level dips dramatically.

A large component of doing a PhD is about living with and managing guilt. Even taking a break to say, go watch a movie, I find it hard to switch the mind off. While watching the movie, my mind will be whirring away at the background, trying to figure something out or feeling guilty for not working. This of course ruins the movie experience. And if I decide not to go to the movies, I often end up not being productive either. So, once again I feel bad. I guess I am not the easiest to be around when I am feeling this way.

place and rituals

I am trying to find ways to increase the productivity of my thesis writing. From my search and reading, in the main, this has to do with Place and Rituals. Finding the right place that is most conducive to productive writing.

One book acknowledges that what works for one person may probably be disastrous for another. The summation is that there is no ‘right place’ to write. Some work best in a quiet place but others find the library with some background traffic very conducive. In fact some talk about writing from their couch or even bed. I don’t think that would work for me. In fact, the library idea is worth trying. I guess I might have an inkling that it might work for me. A cafe may be too distracting.

Another idea is that of rituals. Spending 5-10 tidying up, clearing the space, cleaning or having a cup of tea sets the mood and prepares the mind for more productive writing. Even lighting some incense or burning some essential oils. Whatever works I guess.

But interestingly, none have mentioned the greatest nemesis to thesis writing, especially for those in the 21st century who are connected: msn’ed, facebook’ed, friendster’ed, gmail-chat’ted, ane of course live-updates from email clients. Someone is always a’beckoning in some timezone, be it night or day. We live in a world of endless modes for self-distractions. Even Google can be the Delilah to our Samson as it teases us with that pure white rectangular box, begging us to type something in.

OK, enough distractions. I will experiment and will report back on how I fare.