Motivation vs Procrastination

(hint: so far procrastination is winning this round!)

I just had a great meeting with my thesis advisory committee today, which is rather surprising, considering that less than 45 minutes earlier, I was sitting in my cubical at work, fully believing that my TAC meeting was scheduled for tomorrow… Suffice to say, I got an email from my supervisor – a really casual “so I will see you at 1, right?” which started the wheels of panic in motion. I dropped everything, sent a quick email to my boss, and biked across town lickety-split to get there on time.

All that drama aside, the actual meeting when really well! We have concluded that my analysis is done! Huzzah!

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Now I *just* have to write my thesis…

This should be really great news! The kind of news that lights a fire under me to chase after that light at the end of the tunnel. But it still seems oh-so far away and oh-so scary

The problem is, I find that motivation is hard to find after a good meeting. When I get a metaphorical pat on the back, a literal high five, and some minor praise, I tend to relax a bit. I think much of my work in general is motivated by abject fear that EVERYTHING IS TERRIBLE AND SUPER INCORRECT AND I MUST WORK HARD OR THEY WILL ALL HATE ME AND THINK I AM DUMB. So when I get minor hints of the contrary, I put my feet up.

However, this is not the time for excessive Pinteresting! Minor success today aside, I have an aggressive timeline to finish my draft and to stay on track to submit on time. Despite this, I can’t seem to train my thoughts to my work.

Instead, I have spent the afternoon organizing my full-to-overflowing iCloud storage, external harddrive, old camera memory cards, and Dropbox. I systematically alternated this aggressive file organization spree with trips around the email-facebook-instagram-online news circuit.

If you have any tips for finding motivation to finish, please let me know! (I actually just googled “thesis procrastination” in a desperate attempt to get over this problem). Now excuse me while I find some necessary youtube videos to view…


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