Suffering? Take a break and try again

Sometimes, no matter how you try, you just aren’t making progress. Maybe your schedule is overly full, so you don’t have the time or space to think; maybe your professional responsibilities are taking up every spare moment- or maybe just LIFE has gotten in the way of your dissertation progress. The best thing I can suggest in times like these is to try and keep making progress, but if you get stuck: take a break and try again.

There will be days that are frustrating and times when things don’t go as planned- that’s just how things are sometimes. The goal, though, is to manage your energy appropriately, and to get through these times with a minimum of frustration and suffering. I even remind myself of this on days where it seems like everything is messing up at once. Thankfully, these kind of days don’t happen all that often, but they are really spectacular when they do.

M. Kathleen Casey once said, "Pain is inevitable.  Suffering is optional"- which I completely believe. We always have a choice about whether we suffer or not. When we have crossed the line from pain to suffering, it’s a good cue that we need to take a break for a while and then come back later and try again.

If any aspect of your dissertation process feels like suffering, make the choice to change that, today. This may involve changing your work space around, going away for a few hours so you can get some quiet time, or maybe just shutting the computer off for the day and doing something else. The faster you give yourself what you need, the faster you’ll move through the feeling of suffering.

Your dissertation process will not be more meaningful because you suffered through it.

Share This

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Other Posts You Might Be Interested In:

1. Work more in the good phases. When you are experiencing any kind of chronic illness,...
2. No extra points for suffering. You don’t get extra points for suffering. Your dissertation...
3. Ask for help before it gets too bad. One of the saddest and most disappointing aspects of...