Decision Making Time

Today I got completely sidetracked by other things that came up during the day and I still have not managed to work on my thesis… which ended up creating a wave of anxiety…

I am actually still trying to work on some of the other things that I have been doing, but I felt that if I actually stop for a moment and write about all the things that generated the stress, I will be able to move on in a more efficient manner.

I have come to an understanding that working in academia involves sending a lot of e-mails for all short of purposes. And, of course, everyone is always very, very busy being involved in all shorts of projects, so being able to manage your energy and time efficiently is an essential skill if you want to at least try to reduce stress and not be overwhelmed by the tasks that you need to accomplish. Having said that, I find myself having difficulty identifying and selecting what needs to be communicated and how to the people I work with, especially when this communication is being done primarily through e-mails.

Sometimes, I end up staying in front of my pc, debating whether I should send an e-mail, and how should I phrase what I have to say in a way that is clear, concise and it doesn’t make things unnecessarily complicated.

Although I think I have managed to become better at this process over time, there are some instances, when I am asked to deal with something that I haven’t dealt with before, where all these questions and the frustration that follows them become more prominent.

Today it was one of those days, where I had to deal with a couple new situations, hence my inability to concentrate on my thesis.

For now, I have decided to declare this day a non-thesis day and regroup tomorrow.

At the same time, exactly because I wasn’t able to concentrate on my thesis, and because I needed to contact my supervisor for some other non-thesis related matters, I started feeling worried that I am not progressing as much as I should have and that I am letting other matters get in the way.

The truth is that I have been planning on contacting my supervisor to discuss what my progress has been so far, but I haven’t felt that I have a clear overview of my project yet. It seems that I am still torn between arranging an appointment anyways, or wait a bit longer until I have a something more concrete to present. On the one hand, I realize that I might refrain from arranging an appointment, because I am afraid of being confronted by the fact that I am not ready yet. Will I ever be ready? How much more shall I still read in order to feel ready to write a proposal? On the other hand, if I actually see that I don’t have a coherent “narrative” to frame my research yet, shouldn’t I trust my “gut”? Shouldn’t I let this develop naturally?

Really not sure about this…

I had planned to have something more concrete to present last week, but I ended up reading more, so I felt I still needed to have a better understanding of the context.

Right now, this feels like it is dragging…

This why I have just decided to give myself three more days to actually develop a draft of a proposal and then immediately contact my supervisor to arrange an appointment. This should be my priority for the moment…

Let’s see how this goes…