To be honest I have never struggled so hard to write something. I can write a fairly decent quality ten page conference paper (having done the research) in two to three days. Writing this seems to be far slower. I keep finding other projects to which I can meaningfully contribute to make myself feel competent. We affectionately call this WABing for Work Avoidance Behavior. I will get around to blogging some of the great, completely non-thesis related ideas I have implemented. In the past I have pushed myself to the point of requiring medical intervention, most notably while on the SRC last year. At the moment however, I struggle writing for more than a couple of hours and end up feeling absolutely awful about myself. I find with a confusing mix of inadequacy, a need for perfection and feelings that the task is too big. Worse still, I am stuck in our quiet university town with nobody here and will be missing out on new year celebrations.
Luckily I have some great friends, a wonderful girlfriend and a supportive family.
I found a kindred spirit in the thesis writing blog and some great advice in Stop Procrastinating and Complete your Dissertation (also see Procrastination & Time Management). Then there is always the great PhD (Piled High and Deeper) comics. However, the best advice by far is in Dr. Tucker-Ladd's chapter on Procrastination, it spoke to me.
As an aside, congratulations to Yusuf who has handed in his completed thesis already.
Aaw, I'm just whining, some people have real problems.
UPDATE: Serendipity went mad on the HTML for this one, it managed to break my atom feed. All fixed.