I’d not heard of Thinker’s Block. But that’s the best description of where I am with my PhD. Having named it as this, I went back and did a search online and I'm not alone in using that phrase.
For the last month or two I’ve been scan-reading loads of papers, doing lots of thinking and disappearing down plenty of rabbit holes. Quite frankly, I lost the plot and entered 'rabbit in the headlights' territory. I lost any sense of how my thesis fits together, or what it is about - and definitely couldn’t face the idea of synthesising everything my mind is grappling with. I had got to the point that if I tried to think, I felt like crying, discovered a burning need to tidy my desk or spent 10 minutes looking blankly at a screen trying to control my panicky breathing and decide how to get started - before crying or tidying my desk.
And that, in my head, is a very close relative of writer's block.
Today I had supervision with the awesome Gideon Calder (seriously, if you get the chance to have him as a supervisor, jump at it!). Less than an hour later, I walked away with a much better sense of perspective, calmer emotions and a set of strategies that I'm going to try.
In case anyone else gets Thinker's Block [note: it's not just the prerogative of PhD students], here are some strategies that I'm intending to test out.
Good luck to us all!
Tackling Thinker's Block
- Create time and space to immerse myself in literature and thinking.
- Be patient with myself.
- Synthesis is hard work - no way to avoid that - and whatever I pick up will feel painful but just persevere.
- Distraction is not always bad; it’s in the distraction that lightbulbs go off and pennies drop.
- Be aware of how much time and mental space I have, and tailor what I try to do in a session to the resources I have available to myself.
- Create some small tasks (some 'ants') so I get the sense of completing some tasks.
Thinking involves getting thoughts on paper, so for the writing bit:
- Try shifting who I imagine I am writing for - repeatedly if needed.
- Splurge. If it’s 40,000 words and a complete mess, so what?
- Don’t filter, tidy or structure, and don't worry whether it is (or more likely if it isn’t but feels) rubbish.
