The second part of the ‘Books and Papers’ category is of course papers. That includes paper files, and any other paper stuff around the house. I thought this would be brief and breezy, but it turned into days of crushing agony. Read on. Files I tacked our household files on a Sunday afternoon. After implementing Read More…
Category: PhD life
What if Good Enough Were Good Enough?
About a month ago, a strange feeling came over me. It was a strange sort of happiness with the idea of my thesis being good enough. Now, for years I have ended many a project with the reminder to myself, ‘It doesn’t have to be perfect.’ So I have handed in many an imperfect, but still Read More…
Getting Things Done on a Thesis (Coffee Break)
Here I am, taking a coffee break in the midst of my first round of thesis proofreading. I wanted to discuss something I mentioned a long time ago, namely how I’ve been trying to implement some new strategies for organising my PhD work, based on the book Getting Things Done. I’ve discussed this book at length already Read More…
Five Things I’ve Learned from My PhD
I don’t often write about my work here, mainly since a large purpose of this blog, for me, is to give me an outlet to write about other things. But I thought I should give it a little space, at least. I did write a draft post entitled ‘How My PhD Is Going’, thinking it Read More…
Methods of Work
One trick I learned early on in my master’s degree, both from experience and from the advice of others, was to treat my degree like a nine-to-five job. That is, I would set certain working hours for the day and they would form the default framework for when I started and stopped working. I’ve sometimes Read More…
Saving Money Sanely
It’s time to admit that I’ve often had a very unhealthy relationship with money. And by ‘unhealthy relationship’ I don’t mean ‘It’s just never there for me when I need it, sigh’! Anybody who knows me knows that I’m fairly frugal, but over the years I’ve realised that my frugality sometimes goes to ridiculous extremes. Read More…
Getting Things Done: Collecting the Clutter
As I mentioned in my previous post about how to get things done, I’m embarking on a project to sort out my personal and work life. Having moved to a new place it seems like the right time. What’s interesting along the way is to think about what the problems in my system of organisation Read More…
Getting Things Done without Anxiety and Failure
As part of my settling in to a new place and new routine, I’ve been rethinking my habits of organisation and work. It turns out that, in the first few weeks of my marriage, despite feeling happy and optimistic I wasn’t getting much done on my thesis, and my failure to accomplish the work I’d Read More…