Done-ish

Jul. 21st, 2014 08:02 pm
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)
I turned in a draft of my thesis today. I thought I'd be happy to be done for a bit. However I'm not. Instead I'm anxious about what is next, and worrying about getting it back covered in red ink. I don't really have a timeline so I'm feeling a bit at sea. However R and I are planning to go out to ice cream tomorrow to celebrate, so that will be nice.

In the meantime while I'm waiting for comments I'm going to try to write every day. I'm planning for some of that writing to be here. So it would be helpful if people could suggest topics they'd like me to write about. That could be more of what I generally write, like stuff about my daily life or books I like. Or it could be more technical about stuff I study (ecology, sustainable agriculture, urban planning, history.) Or something else entirely.
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (glasses)
I have been steadily working on footnote for the last week. If I ever do any type of archival research again I will hopefully take better notes, as this project is giving me some idea what type of notes are useful. Also do better footnoting as go along. I think I've added five pages worth of footnotes to the thesis so far.
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)
We are finally getting to the end of the process in my studio class. This week we started writing recommendations for the final plan. I've been working hard in studio, but I've gotten behind in my GIS class, and I haven't worked on my thesis for ages.

I've been telling myself I'll get back to in this month, but I still have ton of course work, so I'm not sure I'm going to get anything done until final projects are due in December.

Even if I have a spar hour here and there, I find it hard to work on the thesis in bits and pieces. It is hard to hold the whole thing in my head, and much easier to work work on when I can know that I'll get back to it tomorrow.

I have been making time to do background reading. I read all the really critical stuff already, but but I still have pile of kind of related books. Yesterday I finished one I'm started in the summer, then put down for months. Hopefully this week I'll finish the other one I started -- I only have one chapter left. The book is history that happened before the stuff I'm writing about, so I've mostly been skimming. Possibly I should skim more, but it is hard we things are interesting.
forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)
I'm trying to get back in the habit of working on my thesis everyday. I haven't done much work on it since I got back form spring break. It is hard, because it such an amorphic task. I still find being self motivated hard work. Right now I have two tasks: writing what passes for lit review in history, and organizing all the pictures I took at the archives. I've set myself a goal of writing 300 words a day (about a double spaced page -- but I prefer a word count.) Today I met that goal my coping and pasting bits of stuff form other places, with a minimal of new writing.

One of my teachers sent my an article about a method of daily writing. I don't know if I want to try it -- it's based on timing your writing and I generally find that I do better setting myself tasks then allotting myself certain amounts of time. It is also very aimed at academics and goes on about how important publishing is, and I'm not sure I care.

The other thing I'm doing for the thesis right now is that I have book that I'm skimming and I've been taking that on the bus with me -- it's not something I need to have deep focus on so it works as bus reading. Sometimes I try to read stuff on the bus that is too complex and I just end up not reading it. So that's making me feel productive.

So if you have big task, especially a writing task, what strategies do you use to get it done?

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forestofglory: E. H. Shepard drawing of Christopher Robin reading a book to Pooh (Default)
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